2019 Highlights: Travel and Food
I blame the heat of Singapore that I keep forgetting the year is drawing to a close. Every attempt to dive deep into the holiday spirit is a little bit ruined when we’re sweating through our clothes. But, last night we got sprayed with fake snow at a Christmas festival and it reminded me that our annual summaries about our year in travel were long overdue on the blog.
For brevity’s sake, rather than split our annual highlights into food and travel, here you’ll see both here in roughly chronological order. If you’re interested in looking back to previous years when we were much more verbose, you can view ramblings going back to 2015 (!): 2015 World Travel, 2015 Food, 2016 Travel, 2016 Food, 2017 Travel, 2017 Food, 2018 Travel, 2018 Food.
The “Ultimate Day of Eating” Award – Bangkok, Thailand
Our tour guide reminded us so much of Drew’s brother, Brad, it was impossible not to immediately feel like fast friends. So it’s no wonder that our half-day Bangkok street food tour, eating our way around his hometown, was destined to be a highlight of our visit in February. We sampled banana fritters that were crispy and sweet and markets teeming with fresh fruit and the indistinguishable smell of durian.
And yes, you can eat street food in Bangkok and not get sick, despite every basic travel guides’ warning.
Fast forward a few hours, and we were tucking into a multi-course, fine dining experience at Bo Lan, one of Bangkok’s preeminent Michelin-starred eateries. Course after course, served family-style, hit our table. There were deep, dark curries with incredible depth of flavor, noodles with the sour tang of tamarind, and plenty of dishes with the typical punch of Thai heat and freshness of aromatics like kaffir lime and lemongrass.
It was a fantastic tour of the high/low of the Bangkok food scene, all within a few hours. And whether you go high, or you go low, you will eat well in Bangkok.
The “Feels Like Home” Award – Various Locations
This award goes to a selection of meals we had that reminded us of home. The longer we’re away from the States, the more sweet these meals are…the buffalo sauce smothered, deep-fried, crunchy sweet, ice-cube heavy meals that really define being an American on some kind of visceral level. It’s hard to describe, but any serial expat can certainly feel the pain of missing and beauty of finally taking that first bite of whatever it is that has been occupying an unnatural amount of brain space since the last time you were confronted with those special flavors.
Among the most memorable this year were: Double-Double Animal Style, Protein Style at In ‘n Out on Drew’s brief visit to Utah, Cheesecake Factory at Shanghai Disneyland (the cheesecake was on point), duck fat fries at the appropriately named Duckfat in Portland, Maine and fried onion middles and lobster rolls on the waterfront in South Freeport, Maine.
The “Make an Impact” Award – China
Some of our most important travel in 2019 was with the charitable organization Heart to Heart Shanghai, where Drew was a dedicated volunteer throughout the year. We’ve written previously about the H2H after his first trip with the group to Anhui province, but we also went together to Henan province and in the autumn, Drew was off again to Shandong. We got to see a whole different side of China, far way from the modern, sprawling cities. Huge fields of wheat, rice, and soy. Tiny villages of not more than a few dozen cement homes, devoid of indoor plumbing. And people who were incredibly gracious, welcoming us into their homes for a visit.
This travel is not glamorous, spending hours cramped on a bus, but it has a massive and immediate impact on the communities it touches. We feel humbled and privileged to be affiliated with such an outstanding organization.
The “Lions, Tigers and Bears” Award – Yala National Park, Sri Lanka
This award goes to our first spotting of a cheetah in the wilds of Sri Lanka. And a sloth bear. Because there is nothing quite like the sight of a majestic and elusive wild animal that could claw our eyes out to remind us how insignificant we are in the world, a reminder of which we are always grateful.
Our trip to Sri Lanka in April was overshadowed by the horrible events in Colombo, just days before we arrived on our week long trip around the country. Our flight was nearly empty, our hotels were quiet, and restaurants were sparsely populated. But we still had an amazing time and didn’t regret visiting for a second.
And we were especially thrilled that we added a stay at Chena Huts near Yala National Park. In fact, we made an impromptu alteration to our travel schedule, adding another night at Chena Huts because we loved our private villa, including our own pool, surrounded by wildlife, and the twice daily safari tours of Yala so much. It worked out well, considering our leopard sightings (yes, sightings…as in multiple leopards, including cubs. It was awesome) and running into a sloth bear, occurred on our second day.
It pays to be flexible.
The “Perfect Day” Award – New Zealand
What made our New Zealand holiday this autumn so special was that we shared it with my sister, Alice. The three of us were quite the crew, indulging in all of our interests at one point or another, talking about everything under the sun, and solving a myriad of world problems (including the price of an American college education).
There was zip-lining over a 300m tall river gorge, wine tasting in Central Otago, hiking along the coastline, soaking in geo-thermal baths, and plenty of good food and drinks.
After two weeks of travel, we had Alice fully obsessed with The Great British Bake-Off bandwagon, Drew had memorized the entire Rent soundtrack and I was schooled on the beauty of The Rewatchables podcast. It was such a treat.
2019 was a year with many twists and turns. It began with a major family loss, a year of working in China, an international move to Singapore, and now, the holiday season is hurtling to completion. We, as always, feel so privileged and grateful for the opportunities in our lives and these reflections serve to remind us about just how lucky we are. As we turn to another year (decade!) we are excited about what’s next.
