Fourteen hours later, I’m sitting in the back of a neon-pink taxi. It’s a hazy, grey late afternoon in Bangkok. The rain is eager to start splashing down and it doesn’t feel like five minutes since I was last here. In reality, it’s been four months. I arrive at the Asia Palace Hotel, which, I know, sounds grand. It’s cheap, immaculately clean and as I enter the small lobby I’m greeted with many a heartwarming Sawasdee ka and Sawasdee krap and a zesty aroma of lemongrass. The hotel is a confusing blend of corporate business and backpacker, with conference rooms and a rather soulless gym either side of a rainbow-painted cafe with plastic red chairs. The lady on the reception desk tells me about the happy hour on the rooftop, where there’s also a hot tub. When she hands over my hotel keycard, I get a rush, a tickle in my tummy.

You see, I’ve always been a bit of a holiday junkie.

I’m the kid who was first in line to get a t-shirt for the kids’ club and entered myself into every competition going, even Killer Darts, which weirdly, I was pretty good at. I’d get over excited about Fanta Lemon, something you could only get ‘abroad’ back then. As a teen, once I’d been initiated into a gang of others my age, we’d buy bright-coloured bottles of cheap liqueurs, amazed we got served without ID. We’d get stupidly drunk and all snog each other, swapping addresses on the last night and, through dramatic tears, promise to keep in touch forever and ever. I don’t plan my holidays well, don’t give myself an itinerary or pre-book trips, nothing like that. But I always want to do and try everything, all in the moment. I’ll go to the club that somebody on the street is handing out flyers for; I’ll eat the food on the specials board; I’ll take a tuk-tuk over a taxi wherever possible.

And, oh my. Jack Carmichael was the same. The same! We were two loose cannons when we arrived in Bangkok, exploding with child-like bounce.

I put my keycard into the door, dragging my suitcase behind me.