When is the last time you said good bye to a friend knowing you’d likely never speak to them again?

The tourist-cliché, woven “Thailand” bracelet around my wrist was bought on Khao San Road a week ago. An Austrian, a Brit, and a German are all wearing identical ones. Well maybe they’re not anymore, but I have no way of knowing.

At the end of a bucket-chugging, scorpion-munching night, we all parted ways without exchanging any kind of contact information. Frankly, I’m only 75% sure I knew their first names.

You constantly meet people traveling who are only in your life for a week, or a few days, or just a single wild night in Bangkok. You have conversations with them that are more meaningful and impactful than any you had in years at home. And then you part ways. And it’s not tragic.

It’s the fleeting nature of these relationships that makes them brilliant. It’s the common soul travelers share- the mutual understanding of what is most important in life. The freedom to be unabashedly yourself. The ability to part ways with nothing more than a “see you soon” and the genuine faith that it may actually happen.