•2 months ago•
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The morning market in Chiang Mai wakes before the sun does. I arrive at 5 AM to find vendors already arranging pyramids of dragon fruit, their shocking pink flesh split open like flowers. An elderly woman beckons me to her stall, pressing a slice of mango into my palm—sweet, fibrous, still warm from yesterday's heat trapped in the fruit's golden skin. She speaks no English. I speak no Thai. But her smile says everything about the universal language of sharing food.
I watch her hands work, weathered and quick, peeling fruit with a blade that's probably older than I am. Behind her, steam rises from a cart selling
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