Slow mornings in Chiang Mai
I arrived with a list of temples and left with a favourite table. Somewhere in the second week the list stopped mattering: the walk to the same café, the same nod from the woman selling fruit on the corner, the light arriving at almost the same angle each day.
The value of a repeated route
Tourists optimise for novelty; residents optimise for rhythm. Neither is wrong, but rhythm is where you notice small things — which dogs sleep on which steps, when the market really wakes up, how the street sounds before eight.
By the third week I could tell the time by the traffic. I kept no schedule, and that was the point.
What I would do differently
Book fewer nights in fewer places. Carry a paper notebook. Ask one more question than feels polite.