Today and tomorrow are travel days. We leave our wonderful B&B/Inn-like hotel at noon for a flight to Shanghai and after an evening arrival we leave at noon on Sunday for home. I'll just summarize a few key observations.

Our taxi driver in Chiang Mai is well-educated. He actually got his master's and practiced law in Bangkok for a while. His dad drove a tuk-tuk in Chiang Mai. After several years of living in Bangkok, and about 4-5hrs daily commutes, he and his wife chose life over riches and became self-employed taxi drivers and guides in Chiang Mai. He said he couldn't be happier. If you need their numbers, let me know. He's a great person to ride with.

What is it with trash bins in Asia? Do people take these off the streets to sell? Are they privately owned and/or not highly valued? Is the trouble that nobody would empty them? Because there aren't many around. Several times I walked around for a while with a little trash like a plastic holding the cap on a (plastic) bottle, or holding an empty bottle, looking for a trash bin to appropriately deposit, and finding one only after walking for 15 minutes. And even then more often than not on the other side of a wide and busy street. It became a thing: I spy with my eye… Let's see who spots it first.

You can eat carbs three times a day and stay at a very healthy weight. Some Asians eat noodles or rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner (or generally at least two of those three) and don't seek out the large amounts of protein we need to "build muscle", as we like to tell ourselves. The real affect of protein is that you grow, so too much protein when you're no longer growing vertically just makes you rounder, a few athletic exceptions aside. Do note, however, that they eat in much healthier, smaller portions than we are used to. I should try this.

Traffic may seem crazy, where people treat lanes with a lot of fluidity. Unlike Atlanta, they don't usually do so at 70mph. And they don't drive bumper-to-bumper just to not let the other guy in. I particularly find that in Atlanta bumper-to-bumper can be self-preservation, defensive, and certainly reinforcing. Because it's those few people trying to cut in that jam everything up. What if there was a world where there was more space and you wouldn't notice a few people cutting in? Well, there is, just not in America. A little tolerance/patience/Zen goes a long way.

Sometimes you can bargain, sometimes you can't. It's not always clear when you can or can't. Or maybe we're just not good at it.

In Shanghai, a taxi driver who would drive us to our hotel for $50 stopped us quizzically looking white folk. I said I have no cash, he said he takes credit. I respond with "the hotel is 1 mile away", so he offered $30. I said the hotel has a shuttle and he said it will take at least 10 minutes for a shuttle to come get me. I politely smiled and said "I'll take my chances" and he said "okay, shuttles are at door 8". Huh. And he was right, about door 8. And I was right, about the shuttle being there. We just hopped on and were at the hotel 5min later.

This was a beautiful trip. We met so many friendly people, felt welcome everywhere we went, and learned a good bit about cultures rather different from our own. And the food. Man, the food… I think it may have forever changed our own culinary activities, now that we actually know a little bit how to cook Asian foods and how it should taste. We're glad we took the extra time for this trip, because it is not likely that we return next year. But return we will, that much is for sure.

A special thank you to mom and dad for making the beautiful island of Bali the place to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Without them, none of this would have happened at this stage of our lives.