After departing from the brand new, ultra modern and fancy Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok – where you can find outposts of Hermes, Chanel and every other fancy brand – we landed safe and sound, right on schedule, in Mumbai, in an old, dirty and aging facility. After what seemed like a kilometers-long walk, we cleared immigration, got our bags, cleared customs and found the prepaid taxi stand.

The taxi driver, apparently doing nothing out of the ordinary, had to stop several times to ask directions to where we were going. While this didn’t inspire any confidence in us, we stuck with it and found ourselves dropped right in front of the apartment building where our hosts live.

As we slalomed the streets of Mumbai in a Fiat that would have been considered vintage the year I was born, we both felt like we were playing a game of bumper cars. Well, frictionless bumper cars, at least. Everybody just drives where they want and if that means heading towards somebody else, that person moves out of the way as if they had been bumped out of the way. Lane markings are mere suggestions, and since the Fiats and autorickshaws (the Indian tuk tuk) which fill the streets are just wide enough for two people to sit with shoulders butted up against each other, a 3 lane road may have 7 vehicles across.

We’ve decided that Mumbai is most certainly the least jarring place to start an Indian adventure; people are remarkably honest, no taxi meters are “broken,” begging is at a minimum, and in general all of the things we were bracing ourselves for haven’t quite materialized. We certainly have noticed, though, that this is a country of contrasts, diversity and disparity.

People come in a broad spectrum of skin shade; everybody is more brown than us; some only a little bit so, others so much so they’re nearly black. And everything in between. There are all manner of dress, based on religion (of which there are many), or on the latest fashion. Many Indians live in very nice looking apartments or houses and you can find 5 star hotels for $800/night. And then there are the slums, home to people who do not live in anything that could be considered nice and quite likely will never see $800 in their life.

So as we begin aclimatizing to India and its sights, sounds, tastes and smells, we can tell we are entering a climate unknown to us, and one that will forever be with us, in some way or another. So far we’ve had some of the best Indian food we’ve ever had, and we simply went to ordinary restaurants. We’ve noticed, through experience, that waiting in “Qs” (lines) is something we need to get used to, and that paperwork can be downright excessive.

Speaking of which, after about 5 or 6 forms and at least as many signatures – as well as a passport sized photo – we got a SIM card for our mobile. Not, of course, until waiting in the seemingly requisite queue. (If you’d like to call or text us, email us for the mobile number).

We’re staying in the Bandra neighborhood, which is one of the “hot” areas of the city. It’s home to many of the Bollywood stars, hopping night life and an array of tantalizing restaurants and dessert or ice cream parlors. It’s got two main seafronts, one of which we walked along yesterday. And the first thing we were struck by was the scent of oil. The second would be the seemingly oil-soaked rocky shoreline. And walking back home, we turned down a quaint winding road with very nice looking apartments on either side. And in front of these were corrugated metal shacks not big enough to stand up in, housing a number of people I don’t want to contemplate. And as I thought perhaps this was simply a street for the poor, I noticed the fancy pet store open behind one of the shacks. None of the shack residents were shopping there, but the well off certainly were. So Bollywood, in all its glitz and glamor, isn’t quite Hollywood.

Tomorrow we should be on a train from here to Gujarat for our first farm stay. Most trains in India have a foreign passenger quota – a quantity of seats held for foreigners – but this train doesn’t, and it was full, so we got on a waiting list. Now we are apparently “all but confirmed” and should have no trouble getting on board tomorrow, but we don’t, officially, have confirmed tickets. But the person we talked to today when following up on our situation was quite confident we’d be getting tickets no problem. We’re trusting it will work out; this seems to be in the Indian way.

It’s safe to say we’ve left behind the land of smiles. We miss the street food; our stomachs need plenty of time to adjust before tempting fate with the street food here. We miss the Thai friendliness, the clean and easy nature of their trains, and the sense that we had some things figured out.

Now we’re back to square one, where nothing and everything make sense at the same time. Where our stomachs aren’t quite right, but aren’t really wrong. Where the English can be at one minute so easy to understand and the next incomprehensible. But we’re figuring it out, like we always do, even if it is one friendly stranger or one bobbling head at a time.

Because here, that’s one thing to look for. The bobbling head – a movement not unlike that of those little sports figurines called “bobble head dolls” – indicates “yes,” and that means we’ve figured out one more piece of the puzzle. Eventually, we may even figure out what the picture of the puzzle looks like.

I think I speak for both me and jft when I say we are feeling a little morose about leaving south east Asia behind. We’ve enjoyed our time here more than we could have imagined. Thailand, in particular, has become like a second home. We did spend more than two months in the land of smiles, afterall. We will sorely miss all the easily accessible and delicious street food, exploring night markets and sois to see what vendors are cooking up, quick as lightening before our eyes.

Last night we met with a friend of mine from the University of Waterloo, who has been living in Bangkok for the last three years, but has plans to return to Canada with his Thai wife. We all acknowledged that the quality of Thai food, and finding truly painful spicy Thai food won’t be easy back in Toronto, or perhaps anywhere in North America, unless we argue with restaurant owners to let us have our way. We were also feeling quite dejected at the prospect of none of Thailand’s mouth watering fresh fruit. Although we haven’t figured out what’s in seasons when, it doesn’t matter, because something juicy and delicious is always in season, and that’s all that matters when it comes to quenching your thirst with Thailand’s variety and tasty fresh fruit.

I admittedly have some butterflies in my stomach about our next destination. I’ve been dreaming of going to India for more than a decade, and I am feeling both excited and unsure of myself as I take my last few steps in Thailand, onto a plane that will deliver me into my dream, starting in Mumbai. Will India be waiting with open arms, or have I just built up my desire to go there into a dream that can’t be fulfilled?

I am feeling both trepidation and delirium at the prospect of finding out.

For now, thank you Thailand and the rest of south east Asia for showing me your beauty, your simplicity and complications; for hardening my stomach and loosening my stride, for welcoming me and for taking care of me and my husband while we discovered joy, plenty of love, and definitely lots of laughter in your humid and verdant countries.

We’ve covered six Asian countries now in just over four months: Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Lao, Cambodia, Vietnam and back to Thailand, in that order. In Taiwan I got my first glimpse of rice paddies while riding the almost sleek and very punctual Taiwanese train system. I was a little startled to see paddies between what looked like industrial buildings, the square pools of water with green shafts waving lightly in the air, covering every piece of water soaked land.

I was finally able to stand amongst the paddies, green and incredibly cool at sunset — truly splendour in the grass — outside of Phitsanulok, Thailand. I’ve since seen more paddies, varying quality of rice piled high in markets and on dining tables, and rice consumed by hand, with chopsticks and with a spoon and fork than I could have imagined.

Sunset over rice paddies outside Phitsanulok, Thailand

And that’s really the first most important thing I noticed about rice: how much rice people eat in south east Asia.

jft and I have relied on the Lonely Planet (LP) series of travel guide books for every country we’ve visited, supplemented by consulting online travel forums for more specific advice and tips the books couldn’t provide us with. Any travel guide has it pitfalls, because after all it is a book, and can easily be out of date by the time you consult it for things like prices and addresses. However, one thing I will give credit to the LP books for doing well is the introductory sections of each country guide, specifically the sections covering history, cultural norms and practices, and, food and drink, an especially important section for us as food enthusiasts. I lapped up these sections of the LP guides, because I love delving into the history and for lack of a better word, pecularities and idiosyncracies of any place I visit, and because I was curious to compare what the LP had to say with what I actually learned and experienced traveling in each country.

For the most part, I was quite satisfied with the background and preparation these sections of the LP guides gave me. I concede it certainly wasn’t the in depth tutelage and drama I have might have gotten from reading books teeming with history, biographies and fictional characters set in the places we visited. I have read my fair share of fiction and non-fiction about the places I am visiting, as well educating myself through museum visits and the knowledge of locals and tour guides. I’ve got a book list a mile long of all the reading I’d like to do about this part of the world both online and in books, perhaps in the future.

But all this grandstanding about being well-read aside, one thing that stood out to both me and jft time and again in the LP books was the oft repeated LP statistic of how much rice was consumed by the people of each country we visited. I unfortunately do not remember the exact numbers of how much rice a person in Cambodia or Vietnam might consume per day. I do recall that essentially the amount of rice consumed on average per person per week was in the neighbourhood of 1 to 3 kilograms, depending on the age and occupation of the person (i.e a young man or woman between 18 and 40 involved in manual labour would consume a lot more rice than a young child or elderly person). I believe this statistic also covers anything made from rice, such as rice noodles, which are popular in dishes in Thailand, Lao and Vietnam.

(If you are curious, a quick Google search about rice consumption per capita should satisfy with more accurate numbers. Some countries we visited don’t make the chart I have linked to, but I assure you they eat a lot of rice in places like Laos and Cambodia, they just have much smaller populations than places like Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, China and India.)

When our host during a homestay in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam asked us how many times a week we ate rice, we had to correct him and say it was more like how many times a month (we reasoned about two times a month in North America) but that our consumption had drastically increased since traveling in south east Asia (our food set photos show good evidence of this). Our host’s body spasmed and he made a retching sound when we told him this figure. This was the most intense physical reaction we received to our response to how little rice we normally consumed. When we told other people in Cambodia, Lao and Thailand who asked us the same question, they either looked a little dumbfounded or puzzled, and since we usually were telling a local this fact of our minscule rice consumption over a meal, it seemed to me they went back to eating their rice or rice noodles with a little more gusto once they heard this disturbing (to them) piece of information.

To left is our Mekong Delta host, the one who spasmed and retched when we told him how little rice we ate on a regular basis in North America

It’s safe to say that people here can’t go a day without rice. Rice consumption is so important that instead of greeting people with “how are you today?” people in Thai, Lao, Cambodian, and I believe also Vietnamese (all linguistically and historically related languages) will ask, by way of politely greeting, “have you eaten rice yet today?”

The only way I have been able to relate to this need for rice is through my hearty appetite for good quality bread, the kind with a soft center and a crisp crust (Italian, French, German, any kind will do), but even then I can go several days or even a week or more without a baguette consumed during a meal. I suppose the big difference is that in North America I get my carbohydrates from a variety of sources: bread, pasta, potatoes, corn, rice and occaisionally other grains like oatmeal. In Asia, everything is made from rice or its gluten: noodles, gruel (like cream of wheat or warm oatmeal), sweets, desserts, wine and liquor (again, our food photo set has a good snapshot of these sorts of things). As a result rice is part of every meal, paired with everything you can from fragrant grilled chicken to steamed Mekong River fish, from sweet red bean paste to heavenly ripe mango.

Even more remarkable than the amount of rice eaten is who eats rice. With virtually no exception that I ever saw, everyone in Asia eats rice, from the time before teeth begin to emerge to when the last tooth is lost (and that can be quite young in a country like Cambodia, where dental hygiene is poor). And from what I’ve seen every domesticated animal eats rice, too. In the village of Ban Sai, near Buriram, Thailand, on the farm where we volunteered for about 10 days, the young family dogs were fed puppy chow mixed with leftovers, which consisted mostly of rice. In Laos, we witnessed the elephants we rode and bathed being fed rice still in its husk. The elephants used their trunks to push the rice into a pile, curved their trunk around the pile and then scooped up a bunch and shoveled it into their mouths. To me it looked about as easy to accomplish as manouvering chopsticks with my feet.

Cows, chickens and roosters eat rice, whether raw or cooked that they find as they root around to fill their often scrawny bodies. I recall even seeing one of the many street cats that would mew to you for food, usually reliable carnivores, eating spilled cooked rice near a vendor’s cart.

I also imagine that in the field or in storage, rice can become food for rodents and other pests. I’ve seen my share of rats and cockroaches in Asia, fortunately no maggots, and its easy to imagine them infesting a poorly kept rice storage area or a field, if they are hungry enough.

All the rice consumed means a heck of a lot of rice grown, and hence a lot of work — in the form of jobs — for the population of each country. In Vietnam for example, 80 per cent of the 85 million person population is rural. Although I don’t have a statistic off the top of my head for how much of that population is dedicated to rice farming, I can guess it’s more than 50 per cent, since in rural areas I saw mostly fields of rice paddy stretching from both sides of the road to the horizon, and since Vietnam is the world’s second largest exporter of rice, after Thailand.

In our travels, we’ve seen and learned about how rice is grown in paddies, harvested, de-husked and polished, a system consisting almost entirely of manual labour in most countries we visited. Except for water buffalo, who are used to plow flooded paddy, and in some areas large mills that de-husk the rice, the planting and harvesting, and even much of the de-husking and polishing all depends on many, many Asian hands and bent backs. It’s really rather startling to see in person and learn from museum exhibits and guides in every country we visited that the tools used to grow rice haven’t changed much in centuries, perhaps thousands of years. And really when you think about, a big American John Deere tractor, plow or harvester, and many other modern farm implements, just wouldn’t get far in the flooded. muddy paddies in which rice grows, with water sometimes up to people’s knees in the rainy season.

I’ve noticed and absorbed all this information about rice, and to whatever degree extended travel lets you absorb cultural impact, I’ve sucked that up about rice as well. I’ve sampled many varieties of rice: Thailand’s Jasmine rice, considered the best in the world (and both jft and I would concur, after eating copious amounts of it during our volunteer farm work in Thailand, and both agreeing we could live on that rice alone and be quite content); Laos’s sticky rice, eaten with the hand, by grasping a clump, rolling it and eating it together with meat or vegetables; Cambodia’s rice, so precious in that country after extensive faminine in the 1980s, the result of agrarian mismanagement and exploitation under the dreadful Khmer Rouge and their leader Pol Pot; Vietnam’s rice and rice noodles in particular, delivered in the form of pho, rice noodle soup, with veggies or any kind of meat, truly some of the best rice noodles I have ever savoured; and rice in Taiwan and Malaysian, but not as much because we weren’t there as long.

Because I’ve only traveled here, and not lived or studied the cultural impact of rice, I can only share what I fleetingly grasped of this cultural impact based on a couple anecdotes.

My first encounter with the effect of rice on the minds and customs of the people who consume it was during a performance of Khmer ancient royal court style dance by young local children. We actually saw this in Thailand, on a tour of the area not too far from where we were doing our volunteer farm work. This north eastern region of Thailand is just a few miles from the border of Cambodia, and in fact was part of the Khmer empire only a few centuries ago. The everyday language of the people in this region is actually Khmer, the Cambodian language, and some of their customs resemble closely that of Cambodia. We have 17 photos posted (the link takes you to the first photo and you can move forward from there in the Thailand 2007 set) of the performance we witnessed. At one point during the performance of fanciful hand gestures and stamping yet elegant foot movements, I realized the boys and girls were making gestures that mimed the planting and harvesting of rice bundles. Before this moment, all the art related work I had witnessed in Thailand pertained to Buddhism. But here suddenly were children, trained to move in what appeared to be seductive ways by a young man who wanted to preserve local tradition, and their moves depicted what you could witness in any rice field, if you could stand and watch a lifetime of growing and harvesting rice on fast forward. I was in awe, because on one hand it was simple, to depict everyday life in art, just as cave drawings, hyeroglyphics, painting and sculpture might do, and on the other hand, it paid hommage to such an important life cycle in the Asian landscape. I was startled that such simple yet exotic movements by children could convey so much.

It wouldn’t be the last time, however, that children in Asia taught me about the cultural importance of rice.

Ironically, it was in Cambodia that I learned much about rice, a country where we witnessed by far the poorest people in our travels. I can say this with a large degree of certainty without pointing to economic indicators, statistics or the country’s tragic history under a Communist agrarian experiment gone awry.

Both jft and I simply noticed big differences from the other countries we visited. We noticed that people and the animals, especially cows, were skinnier than anywhere else we visited. Of particular note, younger children under 5 went mostly shirtless and often naked, and it was the only country where I could see children’ rib cages so clearly, with roundish bellies protuding below. People weren’t starving to death here, but they were getting just enough to eat, barely. And as the LP guide told us, 80 per cent of their diet was made of up rice, with fish and anything green playing second fiddle.

I noted that family homes were rarely made of concrete, almost exclusively of palm thatch and bamboo, whereas in Thailand and even Laos, there was a fair amount of concrete in use to build houses in rural areas. In Laos, we noted that as soon as people had some wealth to speak of, a satellite went up outside thatch homes, even before making a move to build a house from concrete. There were almost no satellites to speak of in Cambodia, save for at nice hotels, but people in rural areas did manage to run televisions with antennas off car batteries.

In Cambodia, roads were horrendous compared to anywhere else we’d been. A mix of sealed and packed red dirt roads took us wherever we needed to go, but pot holes and flying dust, even in the larger and more touristed areas of Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, reminded us we were in a developing country. From our own North American experience with government scandals, we knew corruption was a firm part of the political machine just about anywhere. In Cambodia we encountered corruption in the open with bribes exchanging hands for favours, and locals bitter with govnerment officials lining their own pockets instead of bringing prosperity to the whole nation that continues to reel from their time under the twisted leadership of Pol Pot and his cronies.

Perhaps the most jarring indicator that we were in a less developed nation, somewhere poorer than anywhere else either of us had been, were the number of children, from four or five-year-olds to teenagers, following us around and chanting incessantly for us to buy their bracelets, their postcards, their books, their water and a whole host of other trinkets. Many of these kids weren’t in school because their families needed everyone able to walk and talk to do their part to bring in much needed income. Some of these kids told us they were trying to go to school for at least part of the day, however they needed the money earned from selling us things we didn’t need to pay the bribes that would keep their badly paid teachers in the classroom.

Cambodia was admittedly hard to take, mentally and spiritually. It was also hard on our wallets. Food and intracity transportation were a lot more expensive than most of the other countries we visited, and bargaining got us almost nowhere. Whatever budget we had in mind was history here and people were happy to not sell us something if we weren’t willing to pay their price. The main problem was that as soon as locals saw they were dealing with a foreigner, the price for fruit, bread, water, a usually dependably cheap local meal — pretty much anything — went up many times the price a local would pay. So it was in Cambodia that jft and I took more time to talk to the locals we interacted with to find out their back story, because we needed to know if these people really needed to sell us a 900 mL bottle of water for $1 instead of the usual $0.25 or if the books about Cambodia sold on the street really helped a father or mother send their kids to school. In the case of locals missing limbs, it was obvious landmines, still a plight six million strong in Cambodia, had put them in the place they were, unable to work in a field, so selling books about the Khmer Rouge’s secret torture prison, LP country guides, and the history of the Angkor temples seemed to make sense.

But beyond the limbless, we were unsure what to make of people’s stories of past suffering under the Khmer Rouge and current needs only met by giving up work in the fields to come work in the tourist industries. Looking back we probably experienced some truth mixed with duping to part us from our greenbacks (The US dollar is the main currency in Cambodia, and everything is quoted in US dollars. The local currency, riel, is really only good for small food purchases) so they could find a way to rise above their tragic history and all those dusty, pot holed roads. Frankly, I don’t blame them if we were actually duped: the government wasn’t setting any example the people could live by, so why not line your pockets with the money of foreigners for who it was still cheaper to live for two weeks in Cambodia than it would be to live for the same amount of time in Toronto or Chicago?

We eventually encountered some kids saavy to this knowledge, who knew to appeal to our sense of fairness, selling bracelets, fish shapes and country flags all handmade from colourful polyster string.

We were on the beach in Sihanoukville, about five hours east of Phnom Penh, and we were happy to enjoy whatever locals were selling, if the price was fair. We indulged in a manicure for me and massage for jft. We sucked on the best mango we had ever tasted sold to us by a child carrying a basket platter on her head. We dipped fire roasted squid and fresh rolls of tofu and shrimp (rolled in soft rice paper of course) in a sweet chili sauce sold to us by women balancing baskets on a rod carried on one shoulder. At some point in all this finally inexpensive indulgence two girls approached us asking us to buy their handmade bracelets and fun string-made fish. I looked at the fish with some interest because they were pretty, and responded with a laughing “n”o but they continued to pester us. “If you buy fish or bracelet, you buy from me ok? You buy from me only. You promise?” I said “maybe” laughed again, not at them, but because I didn’t want to bind myself to them. Then they strode away.

At some point another kid came to us, and in our exchange it came up that he could weave together a flag of Cambodia using colourful string and small hands. I requested a Cambodian flag and what I thought looked like a girl set to work. When the two girls we had enountered earlier were in our vicinity again, they saw the kid making my flag and abomished me for buying from someone else. I told them the youngster was making me a flag and not a fish or a bracelet. I defended my action, telling them I preferred a flag of Cambodia rather than a fish as keepsake. They replied, “We can make flags, too!” and flopped at my feet in exasparation at the unfairness of it all. They insisted it was only fair I buy from them, too. After some battling, I eventually gave in, and an assortment of bracelets, anklets, 3D fish weaved together from string and the flag were made and sold to us, all the work and money divided fairly amongst the three young people we encountered. It was then it occurred to me to wonder why these kids were rather tough and pushy about their bracelet business dealings. And, hey, why weren’t they in school?

In Sihanoukville, I help Lam, 12, on the far right by holding the end of a flag he is knotting for me, while the two pushy string weavers complete some bracelets for us.

The girls had gone by now, happy that everything had been done fairly and that they had made a sale. I turned to the remaining child string weaver, who was making us one last bracelet and peered at the child with a baseball cap pushing hair into big dark eyes. I realized then I didn’t know if I was dealing with a boy or a girl. I asked and found that Lam, 12, was a boy. His small, agile hands, almost shoulder length uneven hair, and a fine face had duped me to think he was a girl dressed rather like a tom boy. Lam didn’t seem offended by my error.

I then asked Lam how much business he did on the beach, and he replied not much. So jft and I both asked, almost in unison, I think, “so why do you bother?” Lam replied, “Better to try, than to stay home. No business, no rice.”

As I recall, I think I just stared at Lam with some awe after he said. What a wizened thing for such a young person to say.

His answer to me explained everything: why the girls were so pushy about being fair and making a sale, why he was so quietly determined as he knoted and weaved coloured strings, why so many of Cambodia’s children were constantly pestering me to “buy my bracelet, madame!” or pleading with their eyes to buy their set of 10 postcards of their heritage, the ancient Angkor temples, and really why everyone across Asia was eager for my baht, my kip, my riel, my dong and my dollars. Most of these people who serviced me in the tourist industries, who I photographed preparing my noodle bowls, who I bartered with for silk scarves, who I haggled with for a cheap ride to the bus station, I don’t really think they were after whatever I might have as a middle class citizen of the Western world. Really, I don’t think they could care less about how I live and what I have.

To them, rice is king, rice is gold, rice is worth more than diamonds, a BMW, and maybe, just maybe satellite television. If they don’t get any business — be it mine or their neighbour’s — then their won’t be any rice on the table for them or their families. And their families, that’s the clincher really, because ultimately most of these people aren’t in whatever business they are in for themselves. They are usually bringing home money that will support parents, children, sibilings and more often than not, extended family.

I suddenly realized that my foreign investment in Cambodia and most likely all the countries where I bought local goods from locals wasn’t about a money grab, it was simply a way to get to the gold, rice in all its forms, just a little quicker than selling things at cheaper prices to locals.

I’m not sure how much rice I will be eating when I return to North America. I told jft that at the very least when buying rice, I will be looking for the best quality, the best tasting from places like Thailand and Vietnam, because quality and taste does matter. Less flavourful, broken rice can truly break what could have been a delicious meal, at least in Asia. I know for certain that I don’t look at rice in the same way anymore. It isn’t just a simple fact that rice is a staple of the Asian.

In Asia, having enough rice to eat can make or break you. Rice on the table means someone’s efforts in the old quarter of Hanoi, amongst the colonial buildings of Luang Prabang, in the boisterous night market of Chiang Rai, on the beaches of Sihanoukville, in the hawker centers of Penang, and the alleyways of Giayi, and every rural corner of Asia, have made possible another day, and reinforced what song, dance and the mouths of babes have told me: no business, no rice.

Our circuit of southeast Asia has been amazing; a journey that was truly eye-opening and educational, both in ways we expected and in ways unexpected. And upon our return to Bangkok, our independent yet nearly identical reactions to being in Thailand were telling.

We have loved every country we visisted, and have had amazing experiences in each. The food in Laos was a bit of a disappointment, as were a few of the logistics, but we also had some of our best experiences there. Our two day boat cruise was made more wonderful with the company of a Canadian couple; our time in Luang Prabang would not have been half as good without meeting local teacher Somphet. And bathing elephants in a river, well, it doesn’t get much better.

Cambodia tugged at our heartstrings the most; that is one country in desperate need of help. The people are poor, surviving on a rice-based subsistence diet. You can’t go anywhere without encountering landmine victims and children too poor to attend school. The government would work on these things, but since corruption is the only way things happen, and the poor don’t have the money for bribes, it’s a very slow development process. Yet the people are incredible. Well, most of them… plenty of people, especially in Siem Reap, are simply looking for ways to separate us from our money (not by theft, but by overpriced everything). But the temples of Angkor, the beaches of the south and even the city of Phnom Penh are captivating. And the food, once you scratch through the surface, is remarkable.

Vietnam perhaps grabbed us more than any other country we’ve visited, and it was definitely a bit hard to leave, although we’d had enough of Hanoi. From the Mekong delta of the south to the capital of Hanoi in the north, we found incredible experiences, sights, people and food throughout. Mattieu and Marjorie, of the southwest of France, quickly became good friends and provided a week of great company. And while there was no Adrian Cronauer waking us each morning with a big ol’ “Gooood morning, Vietnam!” we were excited for what each day had to offer. Even though we found Hanoi much more prickly than the rest, our last day somehow turned out perfect, capturing all we loved about the country.

We left the hotel around noon, after packing for our evening flight, and headed out for some food. We had found an alley with some great street vendors, especially a noodle dish with pork, greens and the amazing addition of peanuts and fried shallots and I wasn’t leaving the country without another bowl of this amazing goodness. While in the alley, not only did we end up with several bowls of noodles, there were also spring rolls, fresh draught beer and fresh squeezed sugar cane juice. We ate so well, so cheaply, and left beaming. Even the noodle lady had a big smile for us since we loved her noodles so much. After that we started walking toward a tailor where we had some clothes to pick up, and found ourselves at the “bia hoi junction.” Bia hoi is fresh draught beer, made the same day it’s consumed and contains no preservatives. You can find it all over Vietnam, but especially in Hanoi, and this particular intersection has about 8 places offering the tasty brew. I decided I should sit down and have a drink, so I picked the place with only one guy drinking. He looked local, and the other places looked filled with tourists. Turns out it was a man born in Vietnam but raised and living in France. He was great fun to talk to, and instead of one beer I had three. And an incredible doner from next door. And then an incredible “soup” with noodles, greens and grilled pork that is just about the best pork you can imagine eating. If Andre had not paid for everything without our realizing it (he can speak the language, so we had no idea he had worked out paying for us and a group of French people he also befriended and had sat down after us), the 3 beers would still not have cost 50 cents. I guess I forgot to mention, bia hoi costs 2,000 dong, and it is 16,000 dong to $1US. And it’s not a small glass of beer you get. And after this, stuffed and giddy, we picked up the last of the clothes we had made and got readyto say goodbye to Vietnam.

So it was with a tinge of sadness that we departed Hanoi and flew to Bangkok. But after a super easy cab ride to a friend’s apartment and a good sleep, we were ready yesterday to walk to to the Indian embassy. It took about 5 minutes for us to find cheap water on the way, make photocopies of our passports, get some absolutely incredible corn, streetside, and to get loads of Baht from the ATM. Then, after the stop at the embassy, we had to walk all of about 2 minutes to have a delicious lunch, cheap, and then we didn’t have to walk too much further to supplement lunch with some fried banannas and fresh fruit. Our shared reaction to Thailand – the ease of everything, the deliciousness of everything – made us giddy. But we were also tired, so we came back to the apartment, popped Little Miss Sunshine into the DVD player, and did laundry while snacking on some amazing pomello.

Maybe it’s because things are so easy in Thailand. Maybe it’s because we’ve spent nearly 2 months here. Or maybe there’s just something about this country that grabs us subtlely, quietly, without any warning and makes us love it. But it feels good; it almost feels like we’ve come home.

For example, while living in Chicago we rarely ever drank bottled water. We went all “fancy” by filling a container with tap water and putting it in the fridge so we’d have nice cold water all the time, but it was the rare occasion we had bottled water. Now I can’t really remember the last time I’ve had a sip of tap water. Must have been L.A. Maybe an airport drinking fountain?

Water here is cheap, though, and plentiful. Even in the most remote locations you can find water. The cheapest local brands cost less than 20 cents for nearly a liter. There are also western brands for a bit more. But no matter the day, when it comes to water, we never leave home without it.

It’s also normal here to drive a motorbike. The streets are packed with them. The motorbike is just like the car back in the US or Canada. It holds the same amount of stuff and people. Family of 5? No problem. 50kg sack of rice? No worries. New refrigerator? Simple. We have been on motodops (motorcycle taxis) where the driver keeps our big pack between him and the handlebars and we ride on the back with a small bag. And that wouldn’t even be considered a full load here!

People here eat rice. By the kilo – literally. An average man will eat .5-1 kilo of rice per day. Per day! In the U.S., most families of 4 or 5 would buy a 1-pound bag (or box) of rice. For one meal no more than half the bag would be used (1-2 cups max, typically) and it would be more than enough rice for all. And that would be the only rice anybody in the family would have that day. By contrast, the same family in Vietnam would need at least 2 of those packages of rice for just the Dad (for the day). The Vietnamese family would need probably 2kg of rice per day, or 2.5 typical American packages of rice.

While doing a homestay in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam our host asked us if we ate rice back home. We said yes, but not like people here eat rice. So he asked how many times per week we ate rice. Our reply was that we could not answer that question; it needed to be per month, and that a typical family may have rice two or three times per month. No words came from our host’s mouth. The look of shock, horror, disbelief consumed the jaw-dropped face. In general, we can estimate how “westernized” a restaurant is by how much rice they give us with one serving. Local joints give you practically a whole pot!

Internet cafes are plentiful and cheap. Most locals cannot afford to have a computer at home. Not only is the computer expensive, but so is the electricity to run it and the programs they’d use. Although pirated software is plentiful. Anyhow, most locals do their computing — often it’s children playing games on the network — at the internet cafes. And, of course, foreigners are doing their thing. The going rates are anywhere from about 20 cents to $1.25 per hour, with most around 50-60 cents.

Guesthouses and hotels vary dramatically in quality, and price, but we always seek out something clean and relatively comfortable. The standard stuff is a bed, fan and light. The bed usually isn’t much to brag about, and we’ve slept on more than a few things that seemed pretty much like rocks. We prefer a private bath (although shared can be ok), which would have shower, sink and toilet. We are enjoying Vietnam because for about the same price as Thailand or Laos we get extremely comfortable beds, nice blankets, tv (with cable or satellite), a fridge, a table and a private bath with a very nice shower, including hot water. Even has a tub. But never a shower curtain. Wet bathroom floors are par for the course.

It’s also typical for small children to go around naked, or at least pants-less. It’s comfortable, less clothing to clean, and it’s not like they’re using diapers around here. Of course, it’s also typical for grown men to take a leak just about wherever they are. At one place our bus in Cambodia stopped, all the guys just walked out back (essentially a back yard) and just found a place to do their thing.

Lastly (for now, at least), people just throw their garbage wherever. In most places there are people who have the job, which seems endless, of sweeping the street and collecting the garbage. We’ve had bus operators who, as we’re driving along, will just chuck any garbage they have out the window or door. This littering, though, is one thing we won’t partake in. We always seek out garbage bins, even if it means carrying some trash with us for a while.

While we want to try to live life somewhat more like the locals, we draw the line at certain places. But for the most part, we really admire the local way of life. It’s pretty remarkable.

So as you may be able to imagine (or tell from our photos), one of the things rIAm and I are focused on during our travels is food. And perhaps we’ve talked about food a bit on this site; we’ve definitely shown photos and made commentary on flickr. But when we had a question come in about food, it seemed to make perfect sense to write a bit more about food, and how we approach the culinary adventure that is Asia.

The question was posed by good friend Eric, and went about like this: “what’s been your experience with varying food quality? I’m sure Thailand, like any other country, has its greasy spoons as well as great little finds, and am curious whether you’ve had good instincts for selecting eateries so far or have run afoul of anyone.”

Well, one thing is for sure, we impress locals with our (ok, especially my) willingness to try most all the food. Admittedly, some things are simply not appealing — just about any form of protein is consumed here, and just about every part of the animal is considered edible. So while I’ve tried fried bug and had parts of animals I normally don’t eat included in some dishes, I perhaps haven’t stretched as far as I could. Even though I say we impress the locals, it’s more like bonded with locals. And we’ve definitely eaten at a full range of food serving establishments, from ramshackle to swanky.

The photo above is from a night market in Phitsanulok, Thailand, at a vendor that sells many different dishes, most of which are some kind of curry. As you can see, I blend right into the scene and have become so darn local you can’t even pick me out of the crowd. Or not. But you can, plainly, see that this vendor is frequented by many Thai people. This doesn’t make it more authentic than anybody else, but it is a good indication that it’s tasty food. So that’s one thing we do — go to a place that’s busy, because then it must be good. And if its locals eating there, then locals must think it’s good (and it’s probably not pricey).

But the other benefit of a busy place is that it’s also a safe place to eat. We could pick any old vendor, but if we pick a non-busy person, then we run two risks. One is that the food isn’t as tasty. The other is that the food may have been sitting for a while and now is full of not-so-tasty bacteria that cause not-so-pleasant reactions. The vendor pictured above refilled several dishes while I was waiting to order and then waiting for my food. So the result was extremely tasty, fresh, safe food.

I should add that it’s really easy to pick these vendors. Often, many (or all) vendors are busy. And it’s fun to check out the market before buying, although in Nong Khai we bought at the first four or five vendors we got to (but it was also a relatively small market). The other thing is that with many vendors, things are made up fresh (and quickly) for each patron. This is the case for somtam, fried rices and fried noodles. In other cases, foods are partially or mostly cooked, but then reheated or finished upon ordering. The other way to get fresh food is to eat at normal meal times; there’s more food turnover, and in turn, safer food.

Of course, we also don’t eat at vendor stalls all the time. Restaurants give us a great opportunity to sit down and relax and also try some dishes that maybe don’t lend themselves to being street food. Some of these restaurants look pretty shabby, but crank out great food. Others look great and serve ok food, and others still look great and serve great food. (We try to avoid the places that look bad and probably serve bad food!)

We have a guidebook, traveler recommendations, local person recommendations and our own instincts and sense of adventure to help us. For the most part, we’ve been very happy with our food choices. One thing we learned in Thailand was that even though many guesthouses serve food, and that those places are often in guidebooks, the “Thai” food tastes about like it does in North America. Which isn’t to say it’s bad, but, well, we came here to eat Thai food the way Thai people would eat it. So we figured out how to assess a restaurant or at the very least find much more satisfying meals. Meals that had the chance to “wow” us.

The big shift to consistently better meals happened in Nong Khai. In the south it was hard to avoid tourist food (even if it was Thai food) and on the farm we ate most of our meals on the farm, which was good food for sure. In Prakonchai we ate well, too, but then when we got back out on the road we were feeling underwhelmed. But we figured it out in Nong Khai, righted the ship, and ate really well (and usually really cheap) the rest of our stay in Thailand.

In Nong Khai it started with a place serving local specialties alongside the Mekong and quickly accelerated at the night market, especially with the grilled chicken and somtam. In Phitsanulok and Sukothai the night markets and restaurants we chose were more than satisfying, and then in Chiang Mai we pleased our palates regularly. The noodle soups were consistently fantastic, sometimes from a streetside cart and other times from a sit down place. And the very best Thai food either of us has ever had the great pleasure of consuming was at the most wonderful of restaurants just outside Chiang Mai.

The restaurant outside Chiang Mai had many private nooks outside where you could dine in privacy in the open air — even ring a bell to beckon your server (who would otherwise leave you alone). There was also aircon indoor seating, but really, who wants that? Each dish we had, which will have pictures up on flickr eventually, with detailed description, was one of the best things we have ever had. I can still taste the garlic fried spare ribs. And if only green curries tasted like that everywhere…

So in my rather roundabout way, I have tried to sum up that there are all manner of ways to eat here, and rarely do they disappoint. You cannot go by looks, although peeking at the kitchen isn’t a bad idea. We toss in the occasional western food place, and while we can taste a difference at different places, a good noodle or curry dish isn’t wildly different from place to place. The local people we interact with while ordering or dining love that we’re trying local foods, and they love that we try to speak their language, and we love seeing their smiles.

Chiang Khong (lots of Chiangs and Maes up here in the north) is across the Mekong from Huayxai (pronounced “way sigh”), Laos, where we plan to cross into Laos later today. We are looking forward to being in a new country, where we can cruise along the Mekong, try out a new language, although the Laotian language is similar to Thai, and then push on into Cambodia and Vietnam. We think we will be headed back to Bangkok, on a flight from Hanoi, Vietnam, sometime in late April.

We have heard Internet access, along with eletricity, could be intermittment in Laos and Cambodia, particularly along our journey into the southern portion of Laos, on our way to the Cambodian border. We will do our best to post photos, updates and reply to emails, but if you don’t hear from us too often, rest assured we are thinking of you and feeling wonderous for taking this time to seize the day in south east Asia.

The next morning we found ourselves at the rental place right when it opened and for 220 Baht (and a 300 B deposit, as well as holding my passport) we had ourselves a Honda Wave 110cc motorbike, and two helmets, for the day. The woman running the place gave us her thorough tour of the bike. How to turn the ignition on and off, as well as how to turn it to the locked position. She showed us the fuel gauge was at half, and that’s how we should return it. She showed us how to open the seat to get to the fuel tank, and at the same time pointed out that there was a chain and lock in there for our use as well, and that it should go through the back tire. Then she said bye and started going into her office.

We, however, felt a bit slighted by the explanation. We thought she should have included how to start the bike, how to go faster or slower, and as it turned out, how to shift gears. Of course, it was at that point that if I were running the place I may have asked to see a driver’s license. Or perhaps even refused rental. This lady? She started the bike, put it in first, and told me to drive around.

Welcome to Thailand.

Things are a bit different here than in North America. All of the rules of the road are identical, except they drive on the opposite side of the road, but roughly none of them are enforced. Eggs are never refrigerated. And if you order a drink “to go,” chances are that it will be in a plastic bag.

After my little test drive, I came back to the shop for rIAm, who climbed on board. I started going toward the highway, rIAm started screaming “you aren’t practicing anymore?!” We settled on getting across the main road to the gas station.

Gas is sold by the liter here, naturally, and it goes for 25-27 B/liter, or about 74 cents US. That would be about $2.67 per gallon. Not so different from North America, surprisingly. But there is no such thing as self service, and “pay at the pump” means you give your money to the attendant who filled your tank.

With a full tank of gas, rIAm’s hands clenched firmly around my waist, we got back on the highway (think 2-lane country highway with fairly wide shoulders), headed toward our first waterfall of the day. We decided to limit ourselves to the 72km from Phitsanulok to Kaeng Sopha (a purportedly beautiful falls with an area to swim), and to start we’d go all the way to the 72km mark and work our way home at our leisure. One stop, 90 minutes or so, and two sore (numb) butts later, we found ourselves at the turnoff for the falls. Where they wanted 400B each as the foreigner entry fee! Almost $12 per person. Most every place that has an entry fee in Thailand is under 50B. Nowhere else had we encountered such a rip off of foreigners. And every other waterfall, they said, was free.

Since that first day on the motorbike, we have ridden hundreds more kilometers, in Sukothai around ancient ruins and all over Chiang Mai. All I know about motorcycles I’ve pretty much learned in the last week or so. Basically, I know starting the bike, accelerating, shifting gears, stopping, using the turn signals and headlight, and how to lay on the horn. Everybody kind of just does their own thing on the road, and sometimes that means you need to get their attention with the horn. But mostly, I feel safer riding the bike here in Thailand, on the wrong side of the road (as far as I’m concerned), than I would back home. Because here, everybody rides a motorcycle. And most roads have a wide shoulder or a motorcycle lane. And every driver on the road is used to having loads of motorbikes riding around too. So cars pass at will, but do so with a wide berth.

So there we were at marker 72, the heat of the day building, and we still hadn’t seen a waterfall. But we sure as heck weren’t paying as much as we paid for the Grand freakin’ Canyon (and that ticket was good for a week!) at this waterfall. We started back toward town, knowing we weren’t far from the next falls. As we cruised down a big hill, rIAm noticed a cluster of photogenic Buddha houses, so we made a stop. But it was hard to stop going down that hill; I was still learning to ride and we were going at a pretty good clip. We got stopped on the side of the road just before a guard rail (no worries, not that close), and rIAm went up the hill to get her pictures. I stayed with the bike, and worked on turning it around. Unfortunately, it also fell over, and, unbeknown to myself or rIAm, our plastic ziploc bag with the camera case, a spare battery, our Thai phrasebook and our mobile phone fell out. I got the bike back upright, by the side of the road, and rIAm came back to the bike and we were on our way again. Poi Waterfall was only 11 clicks from our first, failed, waterfall visit, and it offered us a scenic stop and a place for a tasty lunch.

Thai people never think a farang can handle spicy food because so many white-skinned tourists come through who, indeed, cannot handle anything spicy. We’re not those people, however. We came to Thailand to eat real Thai food, the way real Thai people would eat it. And despite the occasional craving for western food, or the desire for a break from spicy, we quickly discovered we need to learn a few certain words:

arroy (mak; mak mak) = (very; extremely) delicious
(mai) pet = (not) spicy

The first is obvious. We love food, and we want to express our satisfaction. The second is useful in a few ways. On those occasions we don’t want spicy, we know how to ask for it. But more importantly, we know to listen for those magic words “mai pet,” which inevitably get uttered, no matter how we’ve ordered, and we can intervene. We can get animated and argue and (hopefully) convince the cook to belay that order. That we do want pet — please leave those chiles in the somtam, don’t change the perfect recipe for those noodles, we want it spicy!

After our pleasant visit at Poi Waterfall, we got back on the road and stopped at a wat – temple – that was doing an ordination of new monks. There was a big festival going on, and the ordination was a part of it. We enjoyed the scene, admired the ceremony, and wished we could understand what the heck the head monk doing the sermon was saying. There was a lot of talking, occasional laughter from the crowd, some singing and not quite enough fans to move around the air, heated by the sun and all the bodies in the open-air sermon hall. We had a good dose of the ordination, amused that outside under a tent there were a few people just as content drinking beer and several kids running around with toy plastic guns, purchased from one of the vendors who set up shop outside the temple. Again, we reminded ourselves, we are in Thailand.

It is remarkable to us to see a country that is Buddhist. There are temples everywhere, as well as Buddha images. It is easy to see how this is very different from the dominant western religions with which we are familiar: Christianity (especially Catholic) and Judaism. But the more we visit wats and see religious life here, the more it seems the same. Thais revere Buddha the way Catholics revere Jesus. Instead of amazing frescos or other images of Jesus and the various important characters from the Bible there are gorgeous (and often enormous) Buddhas. Instead of kneeling at a pew, upright, you kneel on the floor and touch your head to the ground. Instead of using the roasary in a particular way, where each bead has a meaning, you may use a rosary to count beads and help you clear your mind for meditation. Basically, even though the God takes a different form, the way people approach their God feels awfully familiar.

Our next stop was Kaeng Song, a somewhat more impressive waterfall. But more importantly, we could also swim at this waterfall. Upstream from the main falls the river is good for swimming in, and nearer the shore there are some very minor “rapids” you can play in. For 40 Baht we rented two innertubes, got a free mat to set down on some rocks, and before you knew it we were in the river playing around. This whole stretch of road is popular with tourists — Thai tourists — and so we were the only white folks playing in the river. And after we went down one particular fun stretch of rapids, we had caught the attention of a few groups of late teen / early 20s Thais. They all wanted to know where we were from, what we liked in Thailand, and whether they could get their picture taken with us. And in explaining where we were from, rIAm always made sure to say that even though I’m American and she’s Canadian, we are husband and wife. Even though she says it never crossed her mind, it kept the girls off of me I tell ya. After playing around for a while, rIAm went to get the camera to get a few shots of me going down the rapids one more time. It had been in her pocket all day, but at the river we just put it in the bag. But now, having to go into the back for the camera, rIAm realized she couldn’t find the phone anywhere. After I came over to help look, we realized that the bag with the phone, phrasebook, etc was missing. But where could it be?

We know we are in Thailand when we can take off our shoes and leave them outside — at a wat, at a home, at an internet cafe in a city — and they are still there when we leave. Even if that is hours later. Here, it isn’t rude or impolite to ask for the toilet; nobody would understand if you asked for a bathroom or restroom anyway. Refrigeration is a fairly new concept here, so most things just sit out. Some things, like fish, are usually on ice. But eggs are never kept cold, and it would never occur to anybody to keep eggs in the fridge anyway. They also never go bad. On a hot day walking in a city, one of the best things is to walk past an ice shop… a storefront where the guy who sells ice has his huge blocks of ice out. This is so good because everything is open air, and that nice cooled air from the ice sure feels good on the feet.

We are now riverside, packing up, frantically trying to think of where the phone could be. When did we first take out the camera? Some debate, until it’s realized we can look at the first picture of the day in the camera. It was at the Buddha houses. OK, but did we take the camera out at the bike shop before we left? We find somebody willing to let us borrow their mobile so we can call the bike shop. We try to explain we want the lady to look for our phone. Unfortunately, those English words are not in the bike shop lady’s vocabulary. Fortunately, the person who lent us the phone understands and communicates for us. No phone at the shop. OK, so we must have taken the phone out at the Buddha houses. The bike fell over! That must be it! The bag fell out when the bike fell, and in wrestling the bike back to the road, I must not have noticed. And since rIAm pretty much just hopped back on the bike, she wouldn’t have noticed. OK, we need to drive back there. From this direction, it would be at a curve right at the end of a guard rail. Off we went.

You can get anything in Thailand, pretty much. We’ve gone into pharmacies for things like mosquito repellent and the miraculous Tiger Balm. But even things that are prescription only in North America are in these pharmacies, no Rx necessary. Want antibiotics, “male enhancement,” or a birth control pack? It will only take you as long to buy it as it takes for the pharmacist to collect your (small amount of) money and hand you the pack. We talked to one older man from Las Vegas who comes to Thailand to have fun, but also to get all of his medicines real cheap. Says its better and cheaper than Canada, and that the current White House occupant has made it too hard to go there anymore anyway. We don’t know his full list of drugs, but it’s a list of heavy hitters for post heart attack patients who have smoked and generally treated their bodies poorly their whole life. And he didn’t need to bring prescriptions with him. Or fork over all that many Baht.

As we race down the road (ok, go 60 km/h) we’re each thinking about what the heck we’ll do if we don’t find this phone. rIAm is feeling horribly. I’m trying to stay rational. But the kilometers aren’t ticking away fast enough. Finally, we reach a familiar curve with a guard rail. Is this it? Maybe not, let’s keep going. Wait! Here’s the Buddha houses. We stop. rIAm gets off the bike to retrace where she walked. I roll down the hill with the bike. And as I approach the guard rail, I see it. The bag! It’s full! Phone, phrasebook, everything is still there. Some shouting, some sort of happy dance, life is ok again!

Now we are headed back to Phitsanulok. There were some rice paddies about 20km from the city that we wanted to see at sunset. Now we’re not sure if we’ll make it since we kind of feel like stopping for dinner. But we press on, and after this day on the bike and at waterfalls, we find ourselves in the midst of a very green field of rice paddies as the sun plunges into the earth. Even as cars whiz by a few meters away, a peacefulness settles over the land. We came on this journey for many reasons, but one of them was to see a rice paddy. And this one was perfect.

I mentioned that we made sure to learn a few food-related words. Well, we really learned more than that. We know some words for noodles, rice, chicken, fish and so on, which makes navigating restaurants a bit easier. We sure put our skills to the test at our dinner stop this night. At a scenic unnamed restaurant along the highway we stopped for dinner.

We tried to express what we liked, but we also wanted to sample some local specialties. Our server, who knew about as much English as we knew Thai, sort of understood. Maybe. Eventually we figured out that she was going to make us some sort of stir fried chicken dish, and something with fish. She served another table some fried rice paddy fish, and asked if that’s what we wanted. rIAm almost said yes, but when I mentioned what they were we nixed the idea; we had them on the farm, and although not gross, they’re not really anything special either. After that, though, we didn’t hear from our server.

Then, the chicken arrived. It was stir fried with cashews in a tasty sauce. Cashews are grown all over Thailand, and are often used in stir fries. It was a very good dish; rIAm rather enjoyed the cashews and I was happy with the chicken. But the real winner was the tord man plaa gai, or fried fish cakes. Oh man, those were good. Served with a spicy-sweet sauce and some bits of cucumber, this dish was fantastic. When the server asked if wanted anything else, I asked for vegetables, she decided they should be stir fried, and rIAm was thankful I had thought of that because the meal was rather light for her otherwise.

Another way to tell you’re in Thailand — or outside of North America or the UK — is that everybody speaks a much simpler English. You drop off extra words, and instead of using many different ways to say a dish tastes good, it’s just delicious or very delicious. Sometimes it sounds funny and often seems wrong, but it’s a lot easier on everybody if you learn to speak in abbreviated ways. So if two things are similar, it’s “same same” or “same like this.” Even when things are different, it might be “same like this, but different.” And when bargaining you may say “give better price,” as you don’t need to add in “me.” It’s hard to explain, it’s even hard to adopt, but slowly we’re getting the hang of the “international English.”

The highlight of the meal though, by far, was communicating with the waitress through a bit of Thai, a bit of English and plenty of gesturing. Particularly, about the name of the fish dish. She said what it was, we nodded our heads, then we forgot what she said. So we asked again, she said it again, and I wrote it down how I thought I heard it. We tried looking in our phrasebook, which has a handy section with foods, organized alphabetically by how they sound in Thai. I couldn’t find this dish. So we had the server say it a few more times, and that’s when rIAm realized it was a “t” sound at the beginning — tord. Sure enough, the book had it, the server’s eyes lit up when she saw that, and we excitedly made sure we could say the name correctly.

That interaction, however small and brief in the scheme of things, is emblematic of our journey. As much as we can plan our weeks, days or hours, in the end we’re in a foreign place. There aren’t always clear signs or easy moves. But if you take the risk, take the chance, get off the beaten path and work at it a bit, the other end is one of the most rewarding feelings.

Before getting home, showering, and crashing for the night, having had a wonderful day, we stopped at a festival. It turned out to be a Thai food festival, basically a Taste of Chicago, Thai style. There were loads of vendors around a bunch of tables and a stage featuring Thai singing and dancing. One of the booths was serving up something familiar. rIAm stopped, pointed, and asked, “tord man plaa gai?”

The two or three Thais in the booth had shocked looks, eyes wide, and smiles from ear to ear. We got it right.