Globe Corner Blogs

Lonely Planet Thailand

The food does not take me back. Pad thai here is not pad thai there. And only rarely, if the chef is generous, can you get khao neao gap som tom (sticky rice with papaya salad). In DC I had a chef so excited that someone wanted it he brought the generous portion out himself. But it’s just not the same in a sit-down American restaurant. Sometimes the orchids in vases on a restaurant’s clean white tablecloth take me back to the early mornings in Thailand. Walking to my meeting room, raincoat hood dripping over my nose, I stared at the gracefully curving stems and regal flowers growing in hanging gardens in people’s backyards. One basket hung on each limb of a wooden stand, like impatiens or geraniums, but orchids. And misted to some kind of dewy perfection.

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Millennium park - photo by Jess

Too broke and busy to travel abroad, I instead took three small trips around the country this summer.

It took the Pitchfork Music Festival to get me there, but I finally visited Chicago! I’ve talked about visiting Chicago for four years; the first two years I was promising to visit my best high school friend at U. Chicago, the latter years promising to visit my best friend from college. I was certain a trip to Chicago would be my swan song, but I finally went to the Windy City in July.

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