We arrived in Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City, this late morning around 10:30am. As we took a Grab ride and headed towards District 1, the city felt very much the same and different from the first and last time I was here in January 2008: the roads were still narrow, the street signs were in Vietnamese and English. The buildings were anywhere from two- to five-stories tall, all just as skinny as I remembered from before and was surprised by. But what shocked me was seeing a very different skyline: far more skyscrapers and multiple-storied, modern buildings were there today, not to mention Landmark 81 and the Saigon Skydeck/Bitexco Tower, which were built just in the last couple of years. In 2018, the tenth tallest building in Asia is Landmark 81 right here in Ho Chi Minh City. Endless Starbucks abounded in different neighborhoods. Many bubble tea chains from Taiwan and mainland China dotted the streets. Even major well-known Korean cosmetic brands like Innisfree have brick-and-mortar shops here. We’ve arrived in one of the fastest growing economies in the world, one of the top 20 globally and depending on the source, one of the top 5 in Southeast Asia. This is a world my mother never would have dreamt of coming into existence given what she saw and knew from the 1960s and early 1970s before she left the country during the Vietnam (American) War.

I took a picture of the skyline from our hotel room along the water and emailed it to my dad so he could see it and show my mom. I looked out at the view and marveled at it. In just 11 years, this much growth has happened. But since 1975 when the war ended, who from that period, like my mother, could have imagined Saigon to look like this, to be this prosperous? Who could have fathomed that the city would be this developed, that Wi-Fi would be available at even random hole-in-the-wall restaurants, or that pretty much every young person in a major city like Saigon, Hanoi, or Danang, would own and regularly use a smart phone? My mom always insisted, no matter when the conversation happened, whether it was in the 90s, in 2000, in 2008 when we came, or even last year, that Vietnam was the poorest country in the world. She liked to say often, “there wasn’t even enough rice to eat! We were so poor!” I never agreed with her in her absolutes, but what was the point of arguing? When I show her these photos, she will know she is wrong. But more importantly, she will see that the country that she once called home, a country where she and many of her family, friends, and extended relatives, witnessed heartbreak, tragedy, violence, and terror, is actually moving forward. It is growing. It is thriving. It wants and has stated goals to be a “developed” economy. And she will have that to smile about, knowing that life there has moved on, and at a relatively quick rate.

In Christmas celebration depictions and decorations seen around the world, you can expect to see a fat Santa Claus riding in his sleigh with reindeer, traveling atop the clouds, above snowy, wintry towns around the globe. But what you rarely see, unless you are in the Southern hemisphere in December, is Santa wearing shorts, sunglasses, a “Santa” hat, standing on a surfboard in the ocean waves or standing by a barbeque grill. This is the normal picture I see when I am in Australia during Christmas time. In the beginning, it was a bit strange for me given that I never knew a warm December or summery Christmas. But to be fair, it’s not like white Christmas is a norm in San Francisco where I grew up, or really anywhere in California or on the west coast of the United States. It’s normal in the Northeast, in Boston and New York where I’ve lived and do live now. But I didn’t grow up with that, so I never “missed” something I never had. In fact, I embrace summer Christmases. I love that when everyone else in New York or on the east coast is complaining on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter about how cold or icy it is that I can chuckle a little because I get to soak up anywhere from 70-100 F heat in Australia (or last year, in South Africa). I get to bask in the glow of the Australian Southern hemisphere sun, only to grumble a little that in a couple weeks, I will return to that negative-zero temperature, wind chill, and snow, grounds that will be covered in ice, and streets that will be slushy with snow semi-melted, but not quite. I mumble and groan while thinking about the short daylight hours we have and the early darkness that descends across New York city around 4-4:30pm. Short daylight hours – the absolute worst.

It’s funny to me that others who have never experienced a summer Christmas would immediately reject it. It reeks of ignorance and small-mindedness. I’ve had many a colleague across companies I’ve worked at say it’s weird, that they wouldn’t like it, that it’s not “normal.” But then, what is “normal” to you is different from “normal” to me or to Chris or to anyone depending on where in the world they grew up. It’s a common theme that comes up no matter what the question or situation regardless of whether it’s in a work or social environment. For whatever reason, people seem to reject what they are not accustomed to regardless of how much background information they have on it. And… well, from my perspective, that’s kind of their loss. California doesn’t experience snow period unless you are on the border of California-Nevada during the winter time; is that “abnormal” or “wrong”? I was used to 40-50-degree F winters in San Francisco – is that “bad”? Or then I have a friend who grew up and now resides in Arizona, so all she knows is an 80-degree F Christmas, which she deems as “mild” weather in terms of warmth. Is she a weirdo then?

The older I get, it seems the less patient I am becoming with ignorance and lack of openness to what is new. I am less inclined to hold my tongue and more likely to ask deeper questions, which could result in discomfort for those around me. If anything, when we learn about new things, we should be pressed to ask more questions and explore it rather than to outright reject it. Otherwise, how do we ever grow and evolve?

We’ve been quite spoiled for food and drink the last few days here in the Adelaide area. Without even really trying that hard, we’ve had delicious and fresh Australian, Malaysian, Argentinian, fish and chips, and of course, wine. All the vegetables and fruits were brimming with richness and flavor. We had a tasting menu with a wine pairing last night (the latter of which we almost never do because of how expensive it is in the U.S.) that I loved every bite of. We even had a flat white today from a random coffee shop in the Barossa Valley that Chris marveled over while drinking. “Ugh, I’m going to miss having good food without trying hard when we go back home,” he grumbled on our drive back to Adelaide.

He’s kind of right. You could rarely just pass by a random Malaysian hole-in-the-wall back in New York and just trust that the food was good without looking up reviews.This place we stopped by on a whim made its roti dough from scratch every single morning, and while we just stopped in to grab a snack, a queue quickly formed after we sat down, proving how popular and delicious the place was to locals. Back home, you also couldn’t stop in for a coffee at a discreet coffee shop and just assume that the coffee quality was high. Even after we finished our shared flat white, the creaminess and well-roundedness of the coffee still lingered on my tongue. I enjoyed it for the time that it lasted.

Whenever we are here, I always tend to eat more bread. I rarely eat much bread back home because I just don’t really care for it that much as a food group. I’d much rather have rice or noodles. Bread in the U.S. is the same as with most food; you have to know the company and the brand in order to trust that it will be tasty. Here, any random grocery store or market will have delicious and fresh multigrain bread that would be amazing as toast or a part of a sandwich. Maybe it’s just higher quality wheat, lesser sugar, and higher freshness here.

For most Americans, visiting a winery is about doing a formal winery tour, looking at barrels and being photographed with them, taking whiffs of different scents that are associated with wine grapes and other flavors that you get when tasting wine. You go for tastings or a full fledged wine tour. They tend to feel a bit formal. You might feel like you will be judged for liking or not liking a particular wine. You will inevitably have to pay for that tasting (and in Napa or Willamette Valley, you will certainly have to pay at least $20-30 for a very simple tasting with average to mediocre-sized pours). It is not value for money that you are getting. You’re doing what the average person would consider something that higher-brow people do… because wine is a luxury for the well-to-do, right, unless you are buying 3-buck-chuck from Trader Joe’s? One of my cousins even said I was “acting like a white person” by drinking wine and visiting wineries; so nice of him.

In Australia, wine is just kind of part of the culture. The Europeans brought their vines (from South Africa) and settled in South Australia, and the rest is pretty much history. Most wineries here do not charge for tastings, and when they do, they will waive the fee or apply the fee to a bottle purchase. The pours are generous, and the feeling is not even remotely pretentious. It is casual and fun. Even the rule of thumb Americans typically are told, that you can generally trust that the cuter or funnier the wine label, the worse the quality of the wine will be — this does not exist here. A few of the best wineries have whimsical names and even funnier wine names (e.g. “Floozy” or “Mongrel”).

We spent the day visiting wineries in the Maclaren Vale region, just 40 minutes outside of Adelaide. The most interesting cellar door (as they are called here) that we visited today was the D’Arenberg Cellar Door, also known as “the cube” in Maclaren Vale because if you had to look at it from the outside, it does not appear like any winery you’d ever see in the U.S.; it’s a very modern building shaped like a blue, white, and black-patterned cube. And the inside of it is like a museum, full of interactive exhibits, scent-testers, and even a bathroom that begs to be photographed, with “human mouths” as urinals and flora covering the walls from floor to ceiling.

Wine drinking shouldn’t be perceived as pretentious or so serious; it should be fun and playful the way it is here.

Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, a city that Americans would consider not high on the priority list (if on any list) of places to visit in Australia, since most travelers would prioritize Sydney, Melbourne, and Cairns/the Great Barrier Reef over this city; I get why they would. I guess Chris has, too, in showing me the glories of his home country. It’s my seventh time visiting Australia, yet this is my first time visiting South Australia. But it’s far more diverse and interesting than I could have imagined before, with interesting and modern architecture, cuisines representing the entire globe (today alone, we had a Malaysian snack, Australian meat pies, and Argentinian food), and one of the world’s most famous wine regions with Barossa Valley among others right in the city’s backyard, some areas less than an hour away from Adelaide. Honestly, before Chris, all I really knew about Adelaide was that it was in South Australia and that the musician Ben Folds spent some time living there with his then-wife, who is Australian. Folds has a song called “Adelaide” that mentions things like the quaintness of this capital city and places to visit like Rundle Mall.

With the wine scene being so vibrant, I found that in my restaurant research that many of the highest rated restaurants for local eating in the country are actually right here in Adelaide. Many had won national awards for restaurant of the year or newcomer on the scene by well recognized dining publications or newspapers. It was comical to read in many reviews that some restaurants were so posh, modern, and in high use of local ingredients that “it feels like we were eating in a Melbourne restaurant!”

Traveling for food and wine — what could possibly be better than that?