We returned back to Bangkok today after some delicious last few Isaan dishes and mango sticky rice, and while checking back into our same Bangkok hotel, we were greeted with little glasses of the most intriguing iced tea. It was a faint green color, lightly sweetened, and probably one of the best thirst quenchers I’ve ever had. I asked the woman checking us in what this was, and she responded that it was pandan tea made from pandan leaves. It’s a popular tea here in Thailand, and though I have seen and had it in desserts before, I never realized it was actually consumed as a tea. So now it’s my quest to find this tea before we leave Thailand. And so far, I am failing.

I’m guessing the reason no one is selling it in the loose leaf or tea bag format is because locals actually brew the whole fresh leaves, which are easily purchased at fresh produce markets anywhere here. I saw it so many times when browsing markets in both Bangkok and Chiangmai, but not once did I see the leaves in a dried form. A recipe I found online notes that for two cups, you just need four fresh pandan leaves. Where am I going to find fresh pandan leaves in New York City?! I’d never even seen them in Chinatown.

The only dried versions online I could find were on reseller export sites and eBay, so this was clearly marketed toward people outside of Thailand. I guess I will just need to search for it in depth when I return to Manhattan Chinatown.

As an impromptu activity, Chris expressed interest in taking a Thai cooking class on our last day in Chiangmai before we leave to go back to Bangkok. I was not very excited about this, as I had previously looked into cooking classes to see what was available and was severely disappointed in the lack of variety in the menus. Yes, all the programs offer a trip to the market, all of them offer hands-on experience with cutting and chopping and sautéing, and all of them include a full meal including beverages. But every single menu was exactly the same: papaya salad, a yellow, green, or red curry, pad thai, Thai iced tea, sweet and sour chicken (really?), and sautéed vegetables (that could have been any Asian cuisine, so thanks for being generic). I’ve already made pad thai on several occasions and pretty much have my method down, though I’ll never be able to recreate the “wok hay” flavor since I don’t have an industrial stove with the crazy flames. I’ve made plenty of curries and have faith I’d be able to create a general Thai one. And papaya salad? All I need is that incredible papaya salad julienne tool I picked up at the market for $3.50. But why are these classes all focusing on the generic dishes of Thai land? What about the diversity of the northern Isaan cuisine, such as grilled and spicy pork laab salad, sai oua sausage infused with kaffir lime, chilies and lemongrass, or aeb pla – spicy herbed fish? I don’t want to take a cookie cutter cooking class. That’s why when I was in Mexico, I took a cooking class specifically on Oaxacan cuisine in the city of Oaxaca. I did not want to take a generic class catered toward ignorant white Americans on how to make tacos and enchiladas. I wanted something specialized and specific.

When I booked our day trip to the Doi Inthanon National Park for today, I asked the travel operator at the booth if there were any specialized Thai classes on Isaan cooking, and she said they didn’t exist because there was no demand for it. “Foreigners want pad thai and som tum (papaya salad),” she said with a smile. “It’s what they came here for!” She was very intrigued that I even knew what sai oua was.

No demand for it? Travel really needs to change.

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.

After doing a quick wine tasting at the famed Voyager Estate, we drove back up to Fremantle to do the Fremantle Prison tunnel tour. The prison tunnel tour is a bit different than your usual prison tour in that it’s very intensive in what they require you to do. Because you will be canoeing in water and climbing very long ladders in a harness, they mandate that you take a breathalyzer test (can’t have any drunks on this tour), tie your hair up if it’s long, wear socks so that you can put on gum boots, and also wear helmets and body suits to cover yourself from all the dust and debris that may get on you. I’ve never heard of any tour that makes you do a breathalyzer test, so I knew we were in for something crazy.

The tunnels are were the prisoners of the Fremantle Prison worked under the prison during the end of the 1800s, and it was eye opening to see the terrible conditions that prisoners have always had to endure up until today. Not that prisons in the U.S. are known for treating their inmates well, but here, they were forced to wear kilos-heavy shackles on their ankles and climb ominously unstable and thin ladders, carrying all types of heavy material to do their work in tunnels and holes that barely had any light. If anyone died in the prison, their family would be notified only of their death, but not how they died. They had virtually zero rights. And if an inmate ever got on the bad side of another inmate, it would be easy to fake an accidental death by pushing them off the ladder or beating them over the head with shackles. No one would ever find out, so what was there to lose?

I always feel so sad for prisoners. In most cases, many of them did commit wrong and violent crimes. But at the end of the day, they are still human beings who have rights. It especially pains me to think of prisoners who have spouses and children that they can barely see if at all (in the U.S. at least, I know that minors are not allowed to visit inmates). What have the spouses or the children done to have deserved being separated from their husband or wife or father or mother?

Today, we did a tour of the Margaret River area of Western Australia, which encompassed far more than just wineries that Australians usually talk about first when mentioning WA. We started the day with canoeing along the river, visited a little creek area and learned about local, healing honey, and had a delicious lunch among the wine vats at the boutique Fraser Gallop winery. Then we progressed onto seeing the Wilyabrup Cliffs in a secluded area you can access only by a 4WD. When the day ended with our guide, who toured six of us around, we went on to a forest to see these endless regional trees and visited a beach to see the surf.

One person who was on our tour was actually local, and she was originally from Melbourne but moved out to Margaret River once her daughter decided to move there. She originally just wanted to visit, but she fell in love with the area when visiting and decided to stay. Her friend who accompanied her on the tour who was visiting was going back to Sydney, but she had lived in the area for a few years, working random jobs at wineries, reaping the benefits of the wine discounts and just there to enjoy life. When the guide asked her what she did for work, she responded that she just needed a job, any job, and decided to work at a winery. She’s working to live, not living to work, so whatever paid the bills and allowed her the lifestyle she wanted would be what she’d do while in the Margaret River.

It’s so rare to hear anyone in my industry say they are working to live, not living to work. In tech, the way it works is that it’s the cool and trendy and “right” thing to say that you will do whatever it is that is needed for your company so that in our startup case, you will get bought or go public because that’s the end all and be all of your life. If you were to ever say that you worked to live, no one would ever compliment you; in fact, people would be more likely to look down on you and think you are some loser who doesn’t fit into the “culture” of the company. We’re all supposed to be ambitious, trying to achieve the most for the company and our careers. Anyone who doesn’t fit that will not fit in.

In the modern day world of social media where everyone’s travel photos are at the tip of your fingers, it’s easy to see amazing destinations all over the world on your small mobile phone screen and romanticize about how lovely it would be to visit. You see hill after hill of sand dunes and think, what a beautiful place to visit and photograph; I’d love to stand up on that hill and experience that.

Then, your reality comes, and you do visit. And the experience is not as lovely as you imagined. Instead, you end up feeling the greatest winds that Western Australia is capable of and nearly get blown down a sand dune with the thickest layer of sand stuck on every inch of your body, even when you have clothes on. Your mouth is full of sand because the wind blows it into your mouth the few times you open your mouth to either talk to your partner or scream down the hill. All the while, you are trying to do sand boarding for the first time and realize it’s not as idyllic as Instagram uploaded photos want you to think it is. In fact, you are trying to board down a hill against the wind, which results in your eyeballs getting stuck with sand in them; your sunglasses, or your “sunnies” as we call them here, are not enough to cover your eyes from the intense speed of the sand blowing literally everywhere. You have to floss sand out of your teeth later that evening. That’s how much sand there is. It is seriously everywhere and even gets embedded in your scalp and ear canals. If you are a woman, it’s even in your bra. Yep — in your bra. Let’s not even get started where else that sand found its way to.

That was us today at the Lancelin Sand Dunes after our local WA rock lobster lunch north of Perth. We rented one sand board for two hours and stayed only half an hour to board down the dunes. The guy from whom we rented the board said that we came on a bad day and that today had some of the worst winds Lancelin was capable of seeing.  I don’t think I’ve ever experienced more insane wind in my life.

And the end part that was really bad and is lingering? I didn’t have my hair tied up because I wasn’t thinking, so this monstrous Lancelin wind destroyed my hair. I ended up getting large knots all over my fine hair, resulting in huge chunks getting ripped out tonight with a wide-toothed comb. And I never get knots. Now, my hair is brittle at the ends and probably in the worst condition it’s ever been in. I never thought hair masks or leave-in conditioner was important until now. I’m going to need at least a night’s worth of coconut oiling to get my hair back.

This morning, we flew from Melbourne to Perth, Western Australia, as our side Australian trip this year. Western Australia is one of the largest states in the world, and just getting from Perth to the top of Western Australia could take 24-36 hours driving time. During our five days in the state, we’ll barely be touching a dot of it but are trying to see as much as we can that is in the vicinity. This will be my first time on the west coast of Australia, and my first time seeing the Indian Ocean.

Western Australia isn’t really a place that the average person thinks to go to first when they think of Australia. Oftentimes when you meet people who have been to Australia, they think of or have been to Sydney, Melbourne, or Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef. Perth, Broome, or the Margaret River aren’t top of mind unless they are Australian. WA has a more rugged “bush” feeling than the east coast of Australia – at least, that’s what I’ve been told since I’ve been here for only a day at this point. Of all the friends I’ve told about our WA trip, only one had heard of Perth before and had a strong desire to go. And if it weren’t for Chris, I probably wouldn’t have known anything about Perth or the Margaret River. I’d even heard of Adelaide, South Australia, before I’d learned about Perth.

That’s actually a shame, though, because Western Australia has so much that is amazing about Australia: gorgeous aqua beaches, intense waves for world-class surfing (yeah, not for me, but I will happily watch), white sand, golden desserts, tropical flora and exotic fauna everywhere. And because it is lesser known on an international scale (especially for Americans who probably don’t know where to identify Australia on a world map), it’s satisfying to tell people I’m going here when they have no clue what or where it is. Popular destinations are popular for a reason, but that’s because enough people have gone there to make that road known. We have to start somewhere, and someone is eventually going to do it. But some places that were once relatively unknown eventually blow up – places like Iceland, where I personally know three clients, three colleagues, and five friends who have gone in the last year. I’m not crapping on Iceland; I’d love to visit it, but it’s such a turnoff when everyone and their grandmother is going to a specific destination like Iceland.

Jeju Island, the honeymoon island of South Korea that was once virtually unknown outside of Korea, is now incredibly popular with foreign tourists to the point that now, many tourists go to South Korea to visit Seoul and Jeju, and then leave. It’s fun to take the roads less traveled to then come home to friends and tell them what an amazing experience you had at a place where few people to no one you know has gone to, and then convince them that this is a place worth adding to their travel bucket list.

Perth is also one of the most isolated major cities in the world, and maybe this is the introverted side of me, but the idea of being isolated from the rest of the world is actually quite exciting.

It’s hard, though, when you have limited paid leave, a fixed travel budget, and need to make hard decisions about how and where to spend your holiday, especially for Americans with such annoying and stingy paid time off policies. Oftentimes, we end up doing what is the easiest – visiting major cities that people we know are aware of and skipping everything in between those cities. Chris’s cousin recently biked through Vietnam from the south to the north and was able to see so much of the country that the average Vietnam visitor would not have seen. “I just don’t see how anyone could just go to Ho Chi Minh City, then fly up to Hanoi, and leave,” she said.” “So many people do this. Why would you do that? There’s so much else to see!” I understand that sentiment, but then the reality of everything above I mentioned kicks in; you want to see what you know and have heard of when you know your time is limited and you don’t have weeks or months to explore lesser known areas. It’s all about how you set your priorities given your time constraints. Me? As the saying goes: I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.