After clearing immigration and tossing our checked bags to get rechecked on our flight back to New York through LAX, we went through the regular security check line at Tom Bradley International Terminal and passed our carry-on bags through. Much to our annoyance, the tray with all three of our laptops in it got marked for inspection, and we waited over 20 minutes for a TSA rep to do a formal check on our computers. When we asked why there was no one coming to do an inspection, a rude TSA worker said they didn’t have anyone to do it. Chris said to her that we had a flight to catch. She responded back, clearly annoyed, “Everyone here has a flight to catch.” Yet, she stood there the entire time just looking around and not physically doing a single thing. The even more ridiculous part about this was that there were three other TSA reps standing by the body scanners, chatting away and doing little to nothing, plus a random TSA employee standing there and watching the trays pile up at the end of the security line (while there was a shortage of them at the beginning of the line), and the TSA guy who ended up calling out for bag check ended up doing the check on our bags. So he called for someone who never ended up coming, and in the end after over 20 minutes, he decided to do it himself. Wow, what a good idea.

As much as I love Elizabeth Warren, I have to strongly disagree with her when she gets mad that people knock government agencies and say that “nothing in government ever gets done.” When you see incompetence and flat out laziness like what I’ve described above, it’s quite hard to have respect for government workers when they do not value efficiency and actually getting their jobs done (which they are paid very well for). At the end of the day, what is their incentive to work faster with getting travelers through security, anyway? Their wages will be the same, and they’re not incentivized to work faster, be friendly to travelers getting through, or to take on tasks that they may not have gotten officially assigned at the beginning of their shifts. People work based on incentives. If there are no incentives, there’s no reason to do a better job.

Our last day in Thailand included a complete cluster with our in-unit washer at the hotel. We thought it would be a good idea to return home with all clean clothes instead of the massive dirty laundry bag we normally have, especially given we’re coming back from a very humid city, but it resulted in a flooded kitchen and sopping wet clothes. We had to manually wring out all the clothes into the kitchen sink, then dry the clothes in the dryer machine three times before everything was dry enough to pack. Why do washer and dryer units have to have so many complicated settings and then fail? You’d think they would have gotten simpler and more intuitive as time has gone on.

I’m sad to be leaving Thailand, especially all the incredible street food and the array of beautiful colors everywhere, but I think I’m ready to leave. Traveling to cities as crowded and fast-paced as Bangkok is rarely relaxing, even when you are taking breaks for indulgent yet cheap activities such as massage or facials. And with places like Chiangmai, there is so much to do, see, and eat that you feel like you have to see as much as you can in order to make your time traveling there worth it. I’m actually looking forward to relaxing on the couch when we get back to New York, because as Chris says, our vacations are not our relaxing times; that’s what couch time back home is for.

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.