Midnight in a perfect world.

We are driving alongside the Burma-Thailand border, six of us sardined, over the looming mountains and through the gaping valleys under a cloud-stained sky. In four langorous hours we'll arrive in Chiang Mai, again, but we're all too exhausted to converse in the meantime. What we do do and cannot avoid doing, is thinking.

I am thinking of Chiang Mai's allure. The predominant catch phrase is sabi sabi - easy easy - and it couldn't be more befitting. The smiles around here absolutely besiege you, from across the placcid moat, beside you on the motobike, above you up the mountain, beneath you from the tame domesticated animals. The vibe is languid like a licorice river, an eternal Sunday, a community annulled of worry, the place we should all retire to. Oh, Chiang Mai Chiang Mai...

I am thinking of home, how it's so far away, of my friends and family and frisky cat Gus, of how I cannot wait to see them, but will do so patiently.

I am thinking of my first day in Chiang Mai, of the man who pillioned me to the mountains on a whim. His name was Ting, with a gravelly voice and leathery skin, who offed the engine as we rode the decline. The low sun cast funhouse shadows over the snaking road that day, and we could hear the intermittent buzz of faceless insects whirring by. I had no helmet and felt free. He took me to a local eatery nestled on the side of the road, offered me food and drink and a whirlwind explanation of his hometown's rich and intriguing history. I went to the toilet, squatted and laboured and knew I was in Asia. When I re-emerged, Ting was on the bike, engine revving. He'd footed the bill without even thinking. We cut our way through the brittle dusky air, but when I realised everything looked foreign, that my guest house was in the opposite direction to that which we were heading, I tapped Ting softly on the shoulder. He said we were going to the silver factory. I thought I had stipulated earlier that it was the mountains and food I was after, nothing more nor less nor else. He pulled over with a squealing skid. Turned to face me, fire in his eyes. He started accusing me of lying, of treachery, of indecency and impropriety. He said I had told him to go to the silver factory, and he was merely granting my wish. I had not said this, oh no. I fought my case with a collected demeanour, but Ting was resolute. He told me he had many, many friends from Australia, and they were all good people, not liers like me. He told me I could do what I want, live how I chose, but that my way was not the way of the Thai people, and that I was unwelcome here. He spat on the ground beside my dirty shoe, and took off. By the time I'd made my way back into town, I'd garnered a sunburnt palette and antsy psyche. The rest of the day I mourned for the disparity between cultures, our fracturing of communication. I wished we all spoke a common language and had a common God. I hoped I could mend the wound between Ting and I, but wasn't confident. I haven't seen him since.

I am thinking of the friends I have made, Steve and Olivier and Youcef and Offy and Lek and Fon and Paa and Wan and those whose names I was daft enough to forget. Their faces will remain forever with me. The late nights of thong-clad boogying on glass-sharded dancefloors. The impassioned debates on scabbing oriental tattoos and premature aging and right-wing fundamentalists' plots to assassinate venerated Venezuelan leaders. The Beer Chiang and urban myths mystifying it. The nights whittled away playing cards on the balcony, cheating rife as ever. The stories, oh the stories!, told with the gusto and vigour and expertise that comes only with much travelling, stories that we shared and relished like little vibrating flickers of gold. And the hearty laughs suffusing everything we did, always so unprecedented, whom once they started never ever stopped.

I am thinking of the all-too-vivid images seared into my memory: the orange-cloaked, bald-headed, bare-footed monks shuffling through town at daybreak, large wicker baskets in hand, collecting their daily meals from the generous faithfuls. The towering temples punctuating every street and soi and alleyway, their chimes tinkerbelling the night away like lullabies pilfered from the immortal world. The helpless writhing fish pinned to wooden flatboards, freezing with death when the knife sweeps down and beheads them. The homeless man's slow and painful bow and wry and subtle smile upon receiving our offer of discarded clothes, now his.

I am thinking of the drunken promise the three of us made, Steve and Wan and I, to return to Thailand next June with not so much as a bag, to sniff our way around its perimeter without looking backwards, in search of the laziest place and easiest people in Thailand. I, we, us- bide by our promises, no matter how drunken.

I am thinking of a friend called Poi, and am hoping she is thinking of me.

But most of all, I am thinking of a land that is a veritable world unto itself. Aswarm with yaks and gers and hills and deserts and fossils, wielding a lifestyle shirked long ago by the burgeoning modern world, arrowing-firing and faeces-burning and with streams so glazed they offer a perfect reflection of every shapely little nuance of the clouds above-

Seven days till Mongolia.

Outside, night has fallen with the gentle grace of a feather from a balcony. The full and flawless moon glows faintly mustard, appearing and disappearing and appearing again behind blackened mountains. The others in the car slouch in their seats, asleep, except the driver, who tears along at a breakneck pace, wild-eyed. I know he knows these roads better than anyone. I know we are safe. I am gazing out the window in a tired sort of trance, headphones in, and one particular song comes on: 'Midnight in a Perfect World.' It reaches the haunting middle bit where the strings sway into action, where the sound ripens into something robust, and the goosebumps rise in an instant. It is good. Magical. And just then, in the back-left seat of a rusting van snaking its way through the mountains toward Chiang Mai, I vow to record the moment, to throw it on the blog in the next internet cafe I come across, to share this with you, my friends, and to do so at the stroke of midnight in this here perfect world.