Chiang Mai, Thailand

Beside this temple was a little grove of trees with planks covered in a set of proverbs without origin. The one closest said "until death, there is never enough". I've spent more than a few hours of this trip stuck in a mind loop criticizing whether I'm seizing this incredible opportunity enough, "enough" as though anyone but me was measuring, as though it could even be set to a scale. The quenching of enough comes immediately with letting go of the idea that there could ever be such a thing. Today I'm grateful for that reminder.

Hanoi, Vietnam

As a solo diner the custom in Vietnamese culture is to be sat alongside any one else that's on their own. It seemed odd at first, an uncomfortable infringement on my Western expectation of personal space, but I came to appreciate it. Sharing a meal in silence with strangers, the occasional smile or knowing nod as the spice kicks in and your breaths intensify. This kindly gentleman educated me through miming on the proper assortment of condiments to add to my Pho this morning and applauded when I went for a second large squirt of chilli sauce.

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Night market at the Chang Phuak Gate, Chiang Mai. The air is stifling, though I've started to acclimate to a slow, steady sweat. A legendary lady boss wielding a cleaver and wearing a Stetson prepares her widely regarded specialty, khao kha mu, pork stewed for 72 hours and served over rice with garlic and mustard greens. Laced with cinnamon and five-spice, the meat is tender enough to shred with a spoon, and it's broth soaks the rice, eating like a richer, bolder cousin of pho. To finish, a bright chili vinegar sauce I could drown basically everything in. Northern Thai cuisine (Lanna) veers away from the staples of fish sauce, palm sugar and coconut so central to Southern Thai cuisine and leans instead on the roots, herbs and warm spices that lay softer and subtler on the tongue. Wild game and pork assume the starring role in place of fish and the average heat level is palatable even to the wimpish. It's incredible to see the pillars of cuisine shift as I move North, a separate but equal flavor profile which borrows from its Burmese border and is rooted in what natural treasures the mountainous, land-locked region has provided. Tomorrow I descend further into Chiang Mai's mountains (and markets) via motorbike. 

Krabi, Thailand

A little girl, no more than six, lays down a blanket to perform outside the Krabi night market in the still oppressive evening heat. Her expression haunting; poised yet afraid, anxious but dutiful. I looked for any sign of an adult watching over, but it quickly became clear she was alone, arching her long fingernails in half circles around her frame as though weaving invisible strings. Dropping 40 baht into her case, I stood to watch awhile as men with tuk tuks crowded in a kind of barrier line yelling "taxi!" to the stream of tourists leaving the yellow aisle. 

Bangkok, Thailand

View into the local village from my quaint attic room in an old colonial villa. The grand buttercream facade sits at the end of this tiny "Soi" (street) crowded with crooked wooden houses, smoking street carts and old men who sit shirtless on reclining beach chairs in front of slowly whirring box fans, reading the paper or blankly watching the neighborhood rumble along. The big yellow house is complicated evidence of the ever present paradox between poverty and luxury, East and West. A room costs as much as a roadside motel 8 in USD but is worth a week's salary of its neighboring residents. After 10 days I've grown accustomed to the sounds of Thai streets in the early morning--roaring motorbikes, a chorus of unfamiliar bird calls, the constant rise and fall of hurried conversation in a language I can't understand. A bittersweet goodbye goes to Bangkok and it's hot, dense streets with unpredictable pavement, the harrowing, seatbelt deprived tuk tuk rides of 80mph surrender, the wild, unending labyrinth of alleyways and market aisles, and the numerous kind strangers who through miming and smiles helped me along my way, khob khun kaa.

Cartagena, Colombia

Dusk on the streets of Getsemani. The oppressive heat only just lifting, the waning sun dimming the swath of facades to a set of soft pastels. The streets and town squares once again swarming with people: the sweaty and well-suited business set making their way home from work, hostel hunting backpackers haggling over the cost of an evening empanada, and long standing locals passing the time in doorways and crumbling stoops, already 6 cervezas deep. Stray dogs curl into their frail bundles throughout the plaza de Trinidad, no doubt awaiting the carnage of street food scraps as the international parade of aguardiente guzzlers line their stomachs for the night ahead. My last night in the effortlessly charming, chaotic, enlivening Cartagena and I am (as travel always leaves me) on a new page of my story, sharply aware of the ease of my American life as I've known it, fearful for the fate of my country yet grateful for a surge of perspective on its place in the world.

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Hanoi, Vietnam

The temple of literature, built in 1070 to honor the great Vietnamese scholars is a sprawling oasis in the center of the city. Pagodas dot the i's of symmetrically picturesque walkways, and in the center you find a large pond known as the "well of heavenly clarity". This little fella was beside himself with joy over the clot of wriggling coi fish that responded to his erratic clapping. He was 2 and a half and without being told, shared 1 of his 5 remaining MnM's with me while pointing at the school of orange, frantically, endlessly, as though I could forget.

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Hanoi, Vietnam

The wild streets of old town Hanoi at midnight as the street stalls dismantle; police enforcing curfew with a cacophony of megaphones as the throngs of locals and tourists alike funnel to secret locations throughout the city. The squat neon plastic stool tradition was born of the need to quickly stack and surrender when police cars begin their slow crawl through the old town streets. The Vietnamese government requires a strict 12pm shutdown which has naturally given rise to a subset of discreetly shuttered speakeasies around the edges of the district where one can indulge in smoking entire packs of $2 cigarettes indoors, sucking down laughing gas from "happy balloons" and drinking .50cent cans of Tiger beer with an in-the-know ex pat crowd comprised of English teachers, aging Australians and the occasional assuredly underage local teen. Some of my favorite moments in Hanoi were spent sitting on these chaotic streets, sipping plastic steins of the fresh draught "Bia Hoi Hanoi", brewed daily and sold till the keg runs out for 5,000dong (.25cents) a glass, sweating so hard you'd stop caring, watching the chaos control and release itself. 

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Hanoi, Vietnam

The street stalls of Hanoi are lined with hearty, careworn women who come from villages well outside of the city, leaving behind their husbands and children in order to earn enough to keep the family afloat. They live in cramped boarding houses with 10+ other women, waking well before dawn to purchase their selection of goods from the wholesale market and set up in the manic streets of Hanoi, carrying their loads in balance baskets, a bamboo bar rigid across their shoulders, or a cornucopia of produce fanned out on a bright cloth in the center of the sidewalk by the time the city is only just awaking. In two weeks time, women will earn the equivalent of roughly $20 USD to bring back home. Family is everything to the Vietnamese--they worship their ancestors as a kind of deity and work grueling jobs to give their children the best possible opportunities. These women are selfless beyond comprehension and I don't imagine I could ever complain about a days work again in my life without first picturing them.

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Hoàng Liên Son Mountains, Sa Pa, Vietnam

the children of the village, moving splotches of saturated colors against the green and gray scale of the rice fields. They roam the steep roads in packs without watch, barefoot, their toes callused and ringed with dirt, clothes that have seen several days wear. They show incredible tenderness with one another, a girl of four guiding her younger sister by the hand, babies carrying even smaller babies, a crying toddler in the rear being gently herded every so often by the pack, all processing home from school with a sense of duty and a wide smile that shrinks in caution when they catch my eye. In their presence I shrink too, my privilege seems to echo in every part of my physicality--I am a strange emblem of a world they've never known and don't need and a humbled, wide-eyed visitor in theirs.

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Hoi An, Vietnam

When the rain comes, street vendors methodically unroll protective plastic sheets, pushing their stools and crates just inside, an inch shy of the unrelenting wave funneling down. The small slice of universe they've carved out for themselves suddenly gone dark and soggy and the hoard of customers scattered, they seem to hold steady, visually unfazed, built bone deep for two extreme seasons, feast or famine, hot or hotter, eternally wet or searingly dry.