Strangers in a Strange Land

You've probably met someone like Mandy. She's a Manhattanite who now lives and works in Bangkok but has never bothered to visit the Grand Palace, because she dismisses it as too touristy. When her moneyed family visits from the U.S., she wrinkles her nose in the lobby of their five-star hotel and shivers, because she claims she's not used to air-conditioning. She has just enough Thai to order a dish she knows won't be on the hotel menu, and when her mother idly wonders at the notion of eating noodles for breakfast, Mandy shoots her a smile both pitying and...