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.