Our hotel concierge was wrong. The sky lanterns, the ones you light up with a flame and release into the night sky, actually are going up tonight all over the city of Chiangmai, and fireworks still happened, just perhaps on a lesser scale. The viewing of the sky lanterns being released was not as picturesque as it is during the Yi Peng Festival, when they are traditionally in unison released, as the New Year’s sky lanterns release was really started because of its popularity with foreigners (like us), but it was still beautiful. We released one at a temple near the Thapae Gate, and thank goodness that it actually released properly and floated up into the sky with some others. We saw so many that failed to release, caught fire, and got stuck up in trees. At Thapae Gate, the local firemen were ready in the event of an emergency and had their fire trucks lined up at the center of the square.

2016 is ending. It’s been an intense year with our wedding, travels, Hillary vs. Trump, Trump disgustingly winning the 2016 presidential election despite being a complete racist, sexist, and ignorant moron, and work becoming tumultuous for me. It has been a bittersweet year, one where I’ve gotten more emotional and angry about politics than I ever have before, a time when I’ve been overwhelmed with gratitude for family and friends flying from all over the world just to see Chris and me exchange vows, and for their generosity in donating to my AFSP fundraising efforts. I hope 2017 has more positivity in store for us and the world, and that despite a Trump presidency that progress will still happen. I am hopeful in spite of the odds because if I weren’t, I probably wouldn’t be here today. If we don’t have hope, we have nothing.

We arrived in Chiangmai this morning after a short flight, as we’ll be spending New Year’s here. The first few things on my list of what to do was… to eat as much khao man gai (the Thai version of Hainanese chicken rice) and khao soi (Northern Thai coconut, kaffir lime, and lemongrass egg noodle soup with chicken) as possible. I only recently learned of khao man gai earlier this year when a food-obsessed colleague of mine insisted we try it at a tiny spot in Elmhurst, Queens, my old neighborhood. When I went with him, I realized it was just like Hainanese chicken, just with added spicy sauces on the side (the Hainanese version uses a more traditional Chinese ginger-garlic dipping sauce). Thais have adapted it to make the dipping sauces for the chicken spicy, and the two places we visited that have khao man gai here have been both spicy and herby in a way that I’d never had before. The first place had a very gingery, nutty dipping sauce with a very hot ending. The second place had my favorite dipping sauce – a strong and forward initial burst of kaffir lime, lemongrass, and ginger, followed by a nuttiness likely from peanuts, and then a spicy finish from the chilies. The sauce was so addictive, as was the moo satay dipping sauce we had for our grilled pork skewers.

The khao soi we had was completely unlike the khao soi we first tried in Toronto at Chris’s brother’s favorite Thai restaurant when we visited him in September 2013. He told us that khao soi was his favorite dish at this spot, and when we had it, I felt that while the bowl of egg noodle soup was tasty, the coconut milk made it far too heavy to enjoy a single bowl all by myself, so luckily we were sharing all our food. In the khao soi we enjoyed today, the broth was far more chicken stock than coconut milk, as it just had a hint of coconut milk flavor. The dominant flavors were actually the same herbs noted above – kaffir lime and lemongrass. A bowl would have been easy to eat by myself, and the chicken on the drumstick in the broth was so tender that fell off the bone as soon as I poked my chopstick into it.

I’ve been lucky in that while living in Elmhurst, I was exposed to so much Thai food from the north that I’d never tried before residing in Queens. So much of the Thai food we have in the U.S. is generic – bland papaya salads with no heat, overly sweet pad thai. But this trip so far has been a food revelation. Americans in general love and accept Thai food, but the Thai food we’ve had here is so different than the average Thai food you get back home, with the exception of the authentic spots I’ve tried in Queens. This is a huge reason that travel is so exciting; it exposes us to the real flavors (literal and figurative) of a country that you cannot get just by reading textbooks, online articles, and seeing images in videos. It also makes you realize what you don’t know because you only know what you know and have been exposed to. Travel can help undo the stereotypes you had of a culture, whether it’s of its people or its cuisine, and help you understand what you previously didn’t understand.

Thailand – it’s a country that conjures up many images. It’s a country filled with colorful, ornate, and bejeweled temples and palaces, fresh flower strings and food offerings to Buddhist monks, and a complex and fiery cuisine known for its focus on spices, limes and lemongrass. It’s also a place on the map that is marred by its reputation for prostitution, human trafficking, and “happy ending” massages. Thailand is a place that tends to be either loved or hated depending on who you ask. Those who love it admire it for its spirituality, cuisine, and culture (plus how far the U.S. dollar goes here if you are American, as you can easily get by spending $3 USD/day or less here on food), while those who avoid it are like a friend of mine, who recently rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah, I have no interest in going there (Thailand).” She felt no need to explain herself, but I knew what she meant, as she was referring to all the negative aspects I mentioned above. That saddens me, though, because I think that after just two days of visiting, Thailand deserves far more respect than it gets. For the most part, people seem happy and healthy here. Their life expectancy actually exceeds that of the U.S. (another way that Americans are far less superior despite being a “developed” Western nation. Service, whether at a tiny open-air food stall on the street or at a mid-range restaurant in the middle of Bangkok, is always with a smile, even when I speak no more than three words in Thai.

The king recently died in Thailand, so the country is currently in mourning. This year’s New Year’s festivities have been toned down according to our hotel concierge, as the country’s government feels it would be disrespectful to have celebrations as big as in past years given his recent passing. And it was clear that the country was in mourning as we visited the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha this morning, as literally hundreds of people, men and women, old and young, lined up wearing all black and black ribbons pinned to their shirts to pay their respects to the king at the temple. Initially, we wondered given the sheer number of people dressed this way whether a black uniform was just a work thing in the country, but as we walked into the temple grounds, we realized… no, this is just the citizens of the country coming to pray for the king.

Although as tourists we are visiting these sites to see the temples for their architecture, intense handiwork in creating mosaic-like jeweled facades on these vast structures, and to simply see what makes cities like Bangkok and Chiangmai famous, I realize that everyday people come here in droves just to pray and give offerings to the Buddha. Spirituality runs deep here, as does respect for authority.

Respect in Asian cultures is so deeply ingrained. It’s rare to see the same type of respect and devotion in a country like the U.S.