The fan in my Ari flat does a full rotation every four seconds. I know this because I have been staring at it since six, running through a mental list of everything that has to happen before I can point myself north. The flat is bare now, my backpack packed, the deposit receipt folded into my passport. Today is not about sightseeing. Today is about the paper trail.
The thing about setting up a life somewhere, even a temporary one, is that nobody tells you about the middle part. The visa approval is the exciting bit. The bank account is the satisfying bit. But the middle part, the part where you need a signed copy of your lease to prove you live where you say you live, for the immigration office that wants to know where you live, that part is pure admin. And it is the part that will decide whether I can come back to this city as a base for the next two years.
I pull on a pair of jeans that are already damp from the air and head out. The street below my building is doing its morning thing. A woman is sweeping water across the pavement with a coconut husk broom. A man is setting out baskets of mangosteen and rambutan on a low table. The air smells like rain that has not fallen yet and diesel from a passing songthaew. It is twenty-seven degrees at eight in the morning, and it already feels like thirty-five.
My first stop is the landlord's office, a small glass-fronted room on the ground floor of a newer building two lanes over. I need him to stamp the lease copy, the one with the TM30 filing receipt attached, the one that proves I have been reported as a resident. He is already there, drinking iced coffee from a plastic bag, watching a ceiling fan spin. He recognises me, nods, takes the papers. He stamps them without reading, the way you stamp something you have stamped a thousand times before.
This is the part of travel that does not make the brochure. The TM30, the address reporting, the ninety-day check-ins. It is not glamorous. But I am telling you about it because if you plan to stay longer than a tourist stamp, this is the actual shape of the work. Since 2025, the immigration folks have been cracking down on visa misuse, so a proper paper trail matters more than ever. The one piece of advice I would give anyone: keep a folder, physical or digital, with every stamp, every receipt, every form. You will need it, and you will not remember where you put it.
With the stamped lease in my bag, I walk toward the BTS station. The sky is a pale, milky grey, the kind that could go either way. I decide to risk it without an umbrella. The walk to Ari station is about eight minutes, past a fruit stall, a pharmacy, a laundromat where a row of white shirts hangs in a line, and a tiny shrine tucked between two shophouses where someone has left a garland of marigolds. The incense is still burning.
I tap through the gate at Ari station and check the fare board. A single trip on the BTS is now distance-based, somewhere between seventeen and forty-five baht, depending on how far you go. Twenty-five trips a month works out to around nine hundred baht, which is roughly twenty-six dollars. I am not going far today, just a few stops to Siam, so the fare will be on the lower end. I slide my Rabbit Card across the reader and take the escalator up.
The train is crowded but not packed, the air conditioning a blessed relief. I stand near the doors, watching the city slide past. Condo towers, the green smear of a park, a rooftop garden somewhere above a car park. The rain starts just as we pull into Siam station, a sudden heavy curtain of water that floods the gutters in seconds. I had planned to walk the remaining ten minutes, but the sky has other ideas.
I duck into the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, the big curved building at the Siam intersection, partly to escape the downpour and partly because I have a loose end to tie. The blurborders International Performance Art eXchange is on its first day today, with live artists from Europe and Asia working under the theme Intimate Distance. Its free, on the fourth floor, and its the kind of thing that only exists in a city like this. The gallery spaces are air-conditioned, which on a day like today is its own kind of luxury.
The performance art is strange in the best way. A woman sits at a small table, slowly wrapping a piece of red thread around a stone. A man stands in a corner, breathing in a rhythm that matches a low hum from a speaker. I do not pretend to understand all of it, but I feel the effort in it. I stay for forty minutes, long enough for the rain to soften to a drizzle. The exhibition runs through the ninth if you want to catch it, and the main galleries upstairs are free through mid-September.
My stomach makes a decision before my brain does. I need som tam. Not the tourist version, the one with the peanuts and the mild heat. I need the real thing, the one that makes your eyes water and your scalp prickle. I know a place in a small soi near the BTS, a stall run by a woman who pounds the papaya with a mortar that must weigh as much as a small dog. I order it with sticky rice and a small plate of fried chicken, because the sweetness of the chicken cuts the heat of the salad.
The som tam costs about fifty baht, the chicken another forty. Around two and a half dollars for the whole plate. She asks if I want it spicy. I say yes. She laughs, which should have been a warning. It is ferocious and perfect, the chilli hitting the back of my throat like a small fire. I eat it under the corrugated awning of the stall while the rain drips off the edge, and for a moment, this is the entire world.
After lunch, the rain has stopped, leaving everything slick and green. I make a decision. I have one afternoon left, and I want to spend it somewhere that will remind me why I am doing this. I take the BTS one stop to Phaya Thai and switch to the Airport Rail Link, just for the feeling of the elevated track, the city opening out below. I ride it to Makkasan, where I transfer to the MRT, the underground line that feels cool and quiet after the noise of the street. I tap my contactless card on the reader at the gate, and the fare is small enough that I barely notice it.
I emerge at Lumphini Park, the big green space in the middle of the city, ringed by glass towers. The rain has brought everyone out. Joggers on the path, a group doing tai chi near the trees, a man flying a kite that seems to be winning a battle with the wind. I walk toward the lake, and there they are. The water monitor lizards, sunning themselves on the bank, as long as my arm and considerably more relaxed than I have ever been. They lie still, prehistoric and patient, while office workers in suits walk past without a glance. This is a city where something ancient lives right next to the metro.
I sit on a bench by the water for a while, watching the monitors and the joggers and the sky doing its slow grey dance. A heron lands at the edge of the lake and stands perfectly still, waiting. I think about the next two years. The old railway north, the ancient capitals of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya, the monsoon-green valleys of the far north. Bangkok has been a starting point, a place to get my feet under me. Now I have to actually go.
Before I leave, I have one more thing to do. I take the MRT back to the centre and walk to the Bangkok Bank branch at Siam Paragon. It feels like the final piece of the puzzle. I deposit a small amount into the account I opened earlier this week, the one tied to my Thai phone number and my PromptPay. The teller, a young woman with a kind smile, stamps my passbook and hands it back. I hold it for a moment. It is just a book of numbers. But it means I exist here. It means I have a place to come back to.
Back in Ari, the evening is doing what Bangkok evenings do. The street food stalls are setting up, the smell of grilling meat and lemongrass drifting through the lanes. I stop at a small shop that sells nothing but banana fritters, still warm and golden, and eat one standing on the pavement. It costs ten baht. Less than thirty cents. I watch a monk in saffron robes walk past, his alms bowl catching the last of the light. A tuk-tuk honks at a taxi. A woman laughs somewhere behind me.
I climb the stairs to my flat one last time. The room is bare, the bed stripped, my pack sitting by the door. I open the window and let the city in. The rain has left everything fresh and clean. Tomorrow, I take the train north. Next week, I will be somewhere new, a different river, a different market, a different set of papers to file. But this week, this city, this green monsoon, this is where it all started. I close the window, turn off the light, and let the sound of the city fade into my sleep. Tomorrow, the road begins.
Sawasdee, Bangkok. I will be back. But for now, I am taking your rain and your heat and your paper trails with me, and I am going to find out what is next.