Chermchey (Web Novel)

Chermchey (เฉิ่มเชย; RTGS: Choem Choei) opens on the worst week of Eung’s life. The young Thai narrator has just caught his boyfriend cheating, and the relationship he had organized his whole routine around collapses overnight. Friends push him to leave the country rather than sit in the wreckage, so he books a solo trip to Taipei with no plan beyond distance. A visit to a local temple puts him in the path of Intha, another Thai traveler, in eye-catching vintage clothing with an orange monk's bag slung over one shoulder and an unbothered calm that Eung finds faintly ridiculous.

What should have been a passing encounter keeps repeating. Their paths cross again in Taipei, and the stranger Eung had already written off turns out to be steadier and funnier than the outfit suggested. The novel follows the two of them through a shared trip, temples, night markets, long walks and meals, and lets the distance between them thin out one conversation at a time. Everything is filtered through Eung's first-person narration, so the shift registers first as irritation, then as curiosity, then as something he is not ready to name. The obstacle is Eung's own suspicion that trusting anyone again repeats the mistake he just made.

Written by Nottakorn (นทกร), Chermchey was first serialized in 28 chapters on the Thai fiction platform Tunwalai and completed in 2020. It was later published as a single-volume book by Deep, an imprint of Satapornbooks, and released on Mebmarket in Thai and in an official English-language e-book translation. The 2026 Thai television adaptation ChermChey, produced by Copy A Bangkok and Domundi TV, is built around a neighbourhood bar in Thailand.