Music often evokes memories, or at least, the feelings behind memories. The memory itself may be an actual recollection, or a collage of recollections muddled together. It's perfect accuracy is not important for the emotion is quite authentic enough.

I have learnt to mistrust my memories, in some cases because I have unaccounted for blind spots in my past, and in other cases because my diaries tell me something other than what I seem to remember. If you are going to write an autobiography, keep diaries. Otherwise large parts of your work might be unintendedly fictional.

It is with this in mind that I venture into today's entry. This morning, while listening to an old Pink Floyd album, The Division Bell, I was flooded with an apparent recollection from Thailand from the late 1990's. I was travelling with a colleague from work and we were on a bus on the way from Pai to Chiang Mai. I had my Sony Walkman plugged in and was listening to the aforementioned album, which I had picked up in cassette form at a market in Chiang Mai. We were winding our way along a road that snaked, sometimes precariously, through rain forest. 

Was the memory correct? Well, it seems that it was not far off the mark, because I was able to check with the notes my travel friend had made on the trip (and had somehow left with me), notes which seemed more interested with what I was doing than what she thought of Thailand. It only goes to show that keeping a diary can pay off, even if it's not your own! (It helps too if you have kept an annotated travel guide from the trip. Thank you Lonely Planet).

As for Pai, back then it was sleepy little village in beautiful surrounds. We stayed in a common or garden guesthouse and hired motor bikes to see the countryside. If I look at a map today, Pai has kicked on a lot, for there are now resorts and all manner of cafes and restaurants.

Some people think that's progress and like to say so. But I'm not so sure.