Thailand (feat. Venecia)

It’s our last night in Siem Reap. Alice is on her third movie of the evening after having dinner by herself at the hotel, and I just got back from an evening exploring the town, where I finally satisfied the craving for piping hot, wok-charred street food that I’ve had ever since we left Chiang Mai.

Our time in Thailand was almost a shock after two months spent almost entirely away from cities. Finding tasty food once again became the goal that determined our daily schedule, and we remembered what it was like to be one of a hundred tourists shuffling through historical monuments and religious sites. The short time we spent in Thailand (the result of some haphazard last-minute planning) made me appreciate our extended time in Japan, and was a good reminder of how there isn’t any shortcut to absorbing the culture of a place.

Far-flung friends

Somehow, we only spend time with Venecia in exotic locations like San Diego, Ireland, and now Chiang Mai. She’s been living here for the past two months, and took us to some of her favorite bars and mango sticky rice stalls over the three days we were in town. At the Chiang Mai flower festival, we managed to take the one picture of the three of us from the whole time we were together. We’ll be adding Madeira to the far-flung hangout locales with Venecia in two short months!

New rules

We happened to be in Chiang Mai during the weekly Sunday night market, where we spent hours with Venecia wandering through the old town’s maze of elephant pant stands and pad Thai stalls. The big hit of the night for me was the pad kaprao, fresh off the wok with loads of wok hei and served with a egg fried Thai-style—tons of oil, the edges fried to a golden crisp. Our two rules for street food: it has to be hot and fresh, and there has to be high turnover, ideally from locals. We learned these lessons the hard way after a trip to Bali in 2022.

Photography assignment

In the late afternoon on our last day in Chiang Mai, I sent myself on a photography assignment to capture the streets at golden hour while Alice and Venecia did errands in our hotel room. This was the first time on this trip that I had gone much out of my way to take photos, and with that goal, I saw the details of the city in a new, deeper way. On the walk back home, I ran into the smell of pork belly being deep-fried in a vat of oil wafting out from a hole-in-the-wall, and brought back an crispy, delicious appetizer ahead of our night out.

Mahout and elephant

We spent two nights at the Golden Triangle—the tripoint between Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand—at the Four Seasons’ tented camp. The resort partners with a foundation that rescues captive elephants from the streets of Thai cities and illegal logging operations. It was a complicated experience to see elephants in captivity—even if their situation seemed nearly as good as it could be, given past circumstances—after encountering them in the wild at the start of our sabbatical.

Iced latte stop

The overwhelming heat and humidity in Bangkok led us to a first for our travels: hanging out at a cafe for an afternoon. We found this one down an alleyway next to our last planned stop for the day, a khanom bueang place. Alice spent the afternoon making reels for Instagram, and I started to do some research about diving some day at Darwin and Wolf in the Galapagos.

Wat Arun

The sunsets in Bangkok were surprisingly beautiful. The smog hanging over the city meant we could stare directly at the blood-red sun as it approached the horizon, and the whole city was bathed in a golden haze each afternoon.

Srinakarin

We spent an hour and a half sitting in traffic—the traffic in Bangkok is unlike anything we’ve ever seen, LA and NYC included—to make it out of the city to a night market that was filled with locals enjoying their Saturday night out. While the food stalls ended up being a bit disappointing, we did find a bunch of rock bands playing sets at restaurants along the edges of the market.