Nara I saved for this one for a long time. Freelance money comes in waves, and for a year I put a little from every wave into an envelope marked elsewhere. Then one day the envelope was thick enough.
The flight left Bangkok close to midnight. Seat 23A, window, obviously. Twelve hours, nonstop. I watched the city lights thin out into dark and then into nothing, fell asleep against the wall, and woke up over a country I couldn't name, with my neck at a terrible angle and a stranger's blanket on my feet.
Paris was grey and gold at the same time. That's the only way I can describe it. Grey stone, gold light, and a grey sky that kept opening for ten minutes at a time like it couldn't decide.
from the same roll
I did the things the films told me to, and some they didn't. I ate a croissant from a paper bag on a bench, the flakes went everywhere, and a pigeon followed me for a full block about it. I sat by the river at the hour when everyone sits by the river. I got lost on purpose in streets where every door is painted a different colour: dark green, deep red, a blue so nice I photographed it twice.
People told me Parisians are cold. I didn't find that. A woman at a bakery corrected my French so gently that I wanted to thank her in Thai. An old man moved his bag off a bench so I could sit, then went back to his newspaper like nothing had happened. Small kindness, no fuss. My favourite kind.
the souvenir · kept
A boarding pass, seat 23A
I didn't keep a metro ticket or a museum stub. The souvenir from Paris is the boarding pass that got me there. The stub is gone, torn off somewhere between the gate and my seat, and there's a coffee ring on one corner from my first morning, when I used it as a coaster without thinking. It lived folded in my passport for a month, soft as fabric by the end.
It's the most expensive piece of paper I own. Also the cheapest. Depends how you count.
ปารีส ไว้จะกลับไปอีกนะ
— nara