The City That Made Me Write Again

I flew to Bangkok in the spring of 2025 for what I believed was another trip. I needed to clear my head. I did not expect to discover things anew, nor did I romanticize or expect anything. I just wanted to get away from Manila, from the noise, from myself. But Bangkok had different plans.

I know the exact moment that it began. I was in the back of a cab, half asleep from exhaustion, when I saw it. Not a spark, not a rush. But something slower. Like a city that had somehow been waiting for me to stop running. I didn’t expect to stay. I didn’t expect to feel.

The last thing I thought by far would be that I’d start writing again.

But this city saw me in ways. Not the loud, performative kinds Manila had trained me to seek, but in quiet corners, soft mornings, strangers’ eyes, moonlit rooftops. Suddenly, I was getting out of bed to a weight I knew how to call by its name. A grief I had borne in silence for months. A longing that wasn’t only love or loss, but a confrontation with the parts of myself I had grown used to ignoring under deadlines and detachment. And for the first time in years, I didn’t shut it up. I let it speak. And that voice also brought me back to the page.

I’d always feint toward astrocartography —  that esoteric, beautiful map of where your soul feels most alive. Odd lines and planetary pulls that appeared to be poetic at best, and useless at worst. But when I pulled up my chart one slow night in Silom, it all made more sense than anything else had before.

My Moon line goes right through Bangkok. So does Jupiter, flanking it softly.

The Moon stands for feeling, inner safety and the self underneath the appearance. Jupiter is all about expanding, growing, and the bounty that comes with surrender. I’m not here to pursue astrology. But it found me somehow. Or perhaps, just perhaps. I was always destined to come back here, long before I knew what “back” meant. 

I used to write with urgency.

With that pressure to be first, relevant, to be seen. My 20s were a time of visibility: front-row campaigns, endless events and parties, social gatherings, boardroom discussions, corporate power, and aesthetic perfection.

But somewhere in the course of that chase, I lost my voice. I got lost in the noise I contributed to.

Bangkok took all of that away. It didn’t demand performance. It just asked for presence. And in that presence, I remembered who I was before the timelines, the clients, the titles. The kid who had to blog to breathe. The artist who used to pen songs of heartbreak as though they could rescue him. The storyteller who knew that being vulnerable was a kind of power. So I started writing again.

At first, it was quiet. Words hurriedly typed in the Notes app. Snippets of poetry written between Grab rides and quiet cafe moments. Then came the memories of strangers who were strangers no more. The one who made me believe in softness all over again, even if just for a week. The one in the jazz bar who inquired about my photography like it was significant. The one who held my hand on a train journey through Ratchathewi like it already belonged there, always. The one who kissed my forehead as though I were made of light. The one who squeezed my hand too hard, as if I might disappear. The one who taught me to say “stay” with nothing at all. The one who had looked at me as though all the stars in the night sky were in my eyes. The one who made me laugh until the pain split open. The way it all went down… fast.

Love, language, longing. In the most ephemeral and untranslatable of ways, Bangkok supplied me with all three.

But everything I witnessed, I always had something to say. Something to remember. Something to forgive.

And over time, it grew into something I couldn’t ignore. The words returned. The voice followed. And I learned: I’m not trying to be some new person. I’m going back to somebody that I’ve always been.

I didn’t write again to teach or preach or pretend that I have it all together. I’m here to document. To witness. To be honest, especially when it’s painful.

And, yes, I’m still living in between the cities. Between Manila and Bangkok. Between past and present. But now I also live between memory and meaning. Because stories save us. They are the ones holding what we cannot hold alone.

So here I am again… here I am all over again, not as a photographer or a brand builder, but as a man who writes because he is compelled to.

Because Bangkok asked me to. Because somewhere between goodbye and welcome home, I got it back. And I am determined to keep it this time.