We coordinated our vacation days to visit Thailand together. The trip would be for a week, which was a long time for us.

Gyu-ho had kicked up a fuss making sure that I had my passport, that I wasn’t forgetting anything. I would’ve told him to quit it with the nagging, but I couldn’t in good conscience because of the bad precedent I’d set. Back when we were preparing for our failed Japan trip, we had gone together to apply for our passports at the Jongno district office. It was to be his first trip overseas, but he had acted like an expert; I did think that was a little cute. And this time, unlike the last trip we took, things went well for us from the beginning. We got a discount on our room at the new Park Hyatt in Bangkok because their remodeling wasn’t finished. As a joke, we’d filled in “honeymoon” as the reason for our trip, but there was champagne and a card waiting for us when we got into the room. And not only that, the electric curtain was broken in the room we’d booked, which prompted the front desk to upgrade us to a suite on the top floor. As soon as we stepped into it, Gyu-ho and I couldn’t help shouting out in amazement.

That night, we used some expensive Le Labo body cleanser to make a bubble bath, something we wouldn’t do at home normally because of the price, and had champagne in the tub while making Marie Antoinette hairdos out of bubbles on each other’s heads, giggling and taking photos. Drunk, we posted them on Instagram, finished the bottle, and lay in the tub until our fingertips wrinkled. Just as our bodies were turning red from the heat, we got out and put on our bathrobes and sprawled on the bed. I fell asleep gazing at Gyu-ho’s reddened face.

When I woke from a dreamless sleep, I found us naked in each other’s arms with our bathrobes sloughed off. There he lay in my arms, quiet as always. I touched the tip of his long nose and his cheeks. The air conditioner made them feel cold and dry to the touch.

We spent that morning shopping. Gyu-ho wanted to go to Khao San Road, which he’d heard so much about, and we decided to take a river taxi there. There was a squall as soon as we got onto the boat, and we were drenched through by the time we arrived. The rain kept coming down, and there was no place for us to go except a guesthouse nearby that charged around 50,000 won. After using the communal shower (basically a concrete floor with a few water hoses), we lay down on the creaking bed with our clothes off. And we had sex. Watching the ceiling fan rapidly slice up the air above us, I felt as if we had been connected into one body. I hadn’t felt that way in a long time.