thailand has been great! but it's time to move on.

today is thanksgiving in the united states. usually a time my wife and i spend with friends from around the world. it's not traditional, but it's neat to have so many people from so many cultures represented on a very american holiday.

this year, however, we are starting our thanksgiving at an airport. today we say goodbye to thailand and jump straight into vietnam!

overall, thailand has been amazing. bangkok is one of the largest and most modern cities i've ever been to, and chiang mai is, well, quite the opposite. while chiang mai was the best launching point to some of the greatest treasures of thailand, the best way i can describe chiang mai is a city stuck in history as every resource appears to be focused on tourism. i'm sure there are more thai people than foreigners in this city, but in the area we stayed, it was a pretty close ratio - and that's giving them the benefit of the doubt that all the asians we saw were thai (spoiler alert - most were not).

so i'm leaving thailand, 30+ years after my first visit, a little confused about how i feel. thailand has so much to offer to just about any traveler, the temples, the nature, the city. it's all here, but in the northern capital, the balance between preservation and sharing has been compromised by the almighty dollar. don't get me wrong, i'm a capitalist, but the line has to be drawn somewhere, and for me, chiang mai has reached that point.