Forget the road less traveled when it comes to camping in US national parks. How about sacking out in places where there are no roads?

Even though most national park campgrounds are easily accessible by motorized vehicles, some of the coolest digs are in places that you can’t drive to. We’re talking permanent campgrounds with basic facilities that you can only reach by foot or boat.

Sure, you’ve got to haul in all of your own food and equipment (and carry out your waste). But the reward is a wilderness sojourn that doesn’t get spoiled by obnoxious car exhaust, annoying RV generators or having your sleep disturbed by people arriving way too late or leaving before the crack of dawn.

Below are eight incredible national park campgrounds that you can’t drive to.

Garden Key (Dry Tortugas National Park)

Have you always dreamed of staying on a romantic desert island? Garden Key is about as close as you can get without being an actual castaway.

Located 70 miles from Key West at the extreme western end of the Florida Keys, it’s the only campground in Dry Tortugas National Park. The only way to reach Garden Key with camping equipment is the daily Yankee Freedom III ferry.

Shaded by palms and other trees, the campsites are situated between two small beaches and Fort Jefferson, an early 19th-century US military citadel that’s the largest brick structure in the western hemisphere.

The campground offers picnic tables, barbecue grills and composting toilets. But that’s it. Campers need to bring everything else: all food and fresh water, tents and sleeping bags, snorkel gear, etc.

Bright Angel Campground (Grand Canyon National Park)

Deep inside the Grand Canyon, Bright Angel takes its name from the adjacent creek rather than the eponymous trail that takes you there from the South Rim.

A favorite for hikers doing the Rim-To-Rim trek, the campground features a ranger station (with seasonal ranger programs), potable water, restrooms, picnic tables and storage lockers to keep your food safe from animals. Meals and snacks can be purchased at nearby Phantom Ranch.

A backcountry permit is required to overnight. The campground can be reached from the south or north rims via three trails, with the 9.9-mile (16-kilometer) Bright Angel Trail as the shortest. Campers should be aware that summertime temperatures can rise incredibly high in the canyon bottom.

Scorpion Canyon (Channel Islands National Park)

Another candidate for best desert island campground in a national park, Scorpion Bay lies near the eastern end of Santa Cruz Island off the coast of southern California.

Island Packers runs daily ferries (year-round) from Ventura Harbor on the mainland. The campground is about a half-mile walk from the ferry pier in a coastal canyon that was once home to the indigenous Chumash people and later a cattle and sheep ranch.

Shaded by large eucalyptus trees, the campground offers picnic tables, potable water, food storage boxes and pit toilets. Campers must bring all of their own food and equipment, as well as their own recreational equipment (snorkel gear, short surfboards, etc).

Half a dozen trails radiate out from Scorpion Canyon across the big island. Be on the lookout for the rare Channel Islands foxes that often hang out around the campground.

Little Yosemite Valley (Yosemite National Park)

Whether you’re planning a sunrise summit of Half Dome or setting off along the John Muir Trail, Little Yosemite Valley offers an awesome overnight adventure.

The path leading up from the big valley runs right past the Vernal and Nevada waterfalls. It’s only five miles from the trailhead at Happy Valley Nature Center, but with an elevation gain of more than 2,600 feet, it can be tough going with a pack, sleeping bag and tent on your back.

In addition to incredible night skies, the campground offers potable water, composting toilets, communal campfire rings and food lockers to keep Yosemite’s notoriously clever bears at bay. Backcountry permits are mandatory even if you’re not spending the night.

Palikū Campsites (Haleakala National Park)

If in your wildest imagination you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to camp on the moon, then head straight away for Maui and this remote campground in the bottom of a Haleakala volcanic crater.

Palikū is popular with trekkers doing a two-day through hike across the national park but can also be a destination in itself on a multi-day out-and-back walk from the visitor center on the west rim. The one-way distance is 9.3 miles across multicolored desert-like wilderness spangled with cinder cones, old lava flows and other volcanic features.

Despite the fact that it’s deep in the crater, the campground lies at 6,380 feet above sea level and overnight temperatures can drop below freezing. Volcano stone walls around the campsites help shield tents from sometimes furious winds.

A wilderness campsite permit is mandatory. The only facilities at Palikū are a pit toilet and non-potable water that must be filtered for drinking.

Washington Creek (Isle Royale National Park)

The big wilderness island in Lake Superior harbors offers around three dozen primitive campgrounds that can only be reached by foot, boat or seaplane. One of the easiest to reach is Washington Creek near Windigo on Isle Royale’s southeast shore.

Washington Creek offers 10 sites and screened camping structures, as well as picnic tables and potable water. Nearby are a seasonal ranger station, camp store, comfort station and dock where campers can leave their boats overnight.

Those who don’t have their vessels can catch ferries to Windigo from Grand Portage, Minnesota and Copper Harbor or Houghton, Michigan.

Although it’s rare to see Isle Royale’s famous wolves these days, the island still sports a fairly healthy moose population (more than 2,000) and many other animals.

Weaver Point (Lake Chelan National Recreation Area)

A dramatic fjord-like valley in the North Cascades range of Washington State provides a stunning location for this walk-in or boat-in campground at the north end of Lake Chelan.

Reaching the campground is a huge adventure all by itself. Campers need to pilot their own boat or board the ferry in Chelan for passage across the long, thin and mega-scenic lake to the Stehekin. From there, it’s a 3.5-mile hike or paddle across the lake to Weaver Point.

Lake Chelan Boat Co. transports kayaks but not canoes, paddleboards or other watercraft. Weaver Point Campground is first come, first serve; no reservations or backcountry permit required. Campsites are equipped with picnic tables and barbecue grills. And you can bring your dog!

Sea Camp Beach (Cumberland Island National Seashore)

Seventeen miles of pristine Atlantic beach and falling asleep to the sound of surf each night are the main attractions at this overnight spot on Cumberland Island off the Georgia coast.

Tucked into the oceanfront forest, the well-equipped campground features picnic tables, fire pits with grills, food storage containers, potable water and restrooms with cold showers to wash the sand off before you hit the hay.

Campers can bring their bikes on the ferry from the mainland or hike to the Dungeness Mansion ruins, Stafford Plantation or High Point ghost town near the island’s north end.

Joe Yogerst is the author of National Geographic’s “50 States, 500 Campgrounds” and “100 Parks, 5,000 Ideas.”

Being an environmentally friendly tourist can be challenging. Tourism is an industry that brings many negative environmental impacts – our pleasure often comes at the expense of local habitats or wildlife.

Maya Bay on Thailand’s uninhabited Ko Phi Phi Leh island became famous as the location of the 2000 Hollywood movie “The Beach.” But this led to rapid growth in visitors to the bay – as many as 8,000 a day at its peak – and put enormous strain on the bay’s natural habitats.

In 2018, the bay was closed to tourists for four years to let its coral reefs and wildlife recover.

But tourism can also be an inspiring way to connect with oneself, with others and with new places. As tourists, we can learn, share and contribute to positive environmental practices.

As a tourist, you also have influence. The money you spend, the social interactions you have and the resources you consume all help to shape an area.

So here are four pieces of advice for making your next vacation better for the environment.

Spend locally

We’ve all heard variations on the mantra “take only memories, leave only footprints”. This message of less consumption and lower impact is a good ethos for environmentally sensitive tourism. The first thing to do is think about how you can leave more positive footprints behind.

An excellent way to make the most of your economic footprint is to stay and shop in independent businesses. These businesses tend to pay local taxes and are owned by and employ local people. More of the money you spend stays in the immediate area as a result.

Where tourist money directly benefits local people and businesses, their support for conservation is often encouraged. Tourists visiting rhino sanctuaries in Botswana, for example, bring income and support jobs. In 2010, the country’s Khama Rhino Sanctuary employed 26 permanent staff and many more casual laborers.

This economic security can, in turn, prompt local people to appreciate the importance of protecting vulnerable animal species like rhinos. Separate research on people living around Kenya’s Maasai Mara nature reserve found that people whose livelihoods were dependent on tourism were more likely to support efforts to conserve local wildlife.

Tread lightly

Tourism creates waste and uses up resources. Treading carefully will minimise the environmental impact you have on your vacation destination.

A simple way to lower your environmental footprint is to use fewer resources at every stage of your vacation. A single tourist uses 300 liters of water in their holiday accommodation on average each night. Reusing towels, flushing the toilet less and shortening your shower time can all help to reduce demand for water resources.

Thinking about the footprints you leave as a tourist is a useful mindset. You may even become more aware of the positive legacy you can leave behind.

Learn about the local area and the environmental issues that matter there. If habitat loss is a problem, contribute to local organisations that support conservation. Organisations like the National Trust even offer vacations in the UK that help to fund their work.

Place matters

Tourism shifts you away from the familiar and gives you space for self-reflection. Research has found that people have been inspired by travel to make life changes such as relocating or shifting career.

Many keen rock climbers, for instance, adopt a minimalist and mobile lifestyle. One study on climbers’ lifestyles in the US showed that the challenges of life on the road, gatherings at campgrounds and the considerable amount of time spent in nature can be enriching.

Rock climbers’ lifestyles are inspired by and connected to natural settings. And many alternative types of tourism are too. These tourists can become powerful advocates for the protection of the places they care deeply about. Surf tourists, for example, have driven various campaigns against the discharge of sewage into UK bathing waters.

You and those you travel with can be similar cheerleaders for the places you care about. Join organizations fighting for their conservation, contribute to their sustainable development and share your appreciation of these places with others.

Stay curious

A final thing you can do as a tourist is to keep exploring. It can be tempting to stay in a tourist bubble and not leave the confines of your resort or stick with familiar travel groups and activities.

Cruises are a classic example of bubble tourism. The places visited do not really matter; the floating hotel is the main attraction.

But cruise tourism rarely benefits local populations and brings significant negative environmental impacts. In the Trujillo Bay area of Honduras, for example, increases in garbage and sewage have been reported since commercial cruise tourism began operating in the area in 2014.

Similar concerns have prompted calls to restrict cruise tourism in popular European destinations like Venice, Marseille and Barcelona. In 2022, more than 50,000 people signed a petition to ban cruise ships from Marseille.

Going beyond familiar or fashionable tourist bubbles can help you avoid such negative associations. Short-haul city breaks are a more environmentally friendly option.

Travelers to these destinations are more likely to use means of transportation that are associated with less CO₂ emissions than long-haul travel, such as trains or coaches. And in urban areas, their activities are likely to take place in a concentrated geographical area.

Thinking about the footprints you leave and the memories you take can help you to become a more environmentally aware tourist. Leave positive imprints behind, tread carefully, put yourself out there and keep exploring.

This is a mantra to adopt and share with your travel groups to get the most out of your holiday experiences while simultaneously reducing your impact on the planet.

Editor’s Note: Brendan Canavan is a senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Nottingham.

Debra Dolan was 21 and on her first solo trip when she first sent a postcard to herself.

It was 1979, and Dolan, who grew up in central Canada, was visiting Vancouver for the first time. She was immediately blown away by the city’s vibrancy, and the beauty of the surrounding region.

Dolan wanted to capture the joy she felt when she looked out at the towering Vancouver skyline and the nearby soaring mountains. But although she was usually a keen diarist, Dolan was swept up in the excitement of the trip, and found she barely had a spare moment.

“I thought, ‘I don’t have time to write in my journal.’ And I didn’t travel with a camera,” Dolan recalls. “So when we went to Whistler, or Vancouver Island, or saw places in Vancouver, I decided, ‘I’ll just send a postcard to myself.’”

On the back of each card, Dolan scribbled a paragraph or two about her impressions, thoughts and feelings, and then mailed it to her home address, signing off each dispatch with a single heart.

Some 10 days later, Dolan returned home to a stack of postcards from herself. Receiving them, recalls Dolan, was “an absolute joy.”

Dolan had grown up writing letters to various pen pals, but there was something different about writing to herself – knowing the contents were for her eyes only. She already sensed the postcards would serve as time capsules of a place and a moment.

And the trip to Vancouver was significant in more ways than one – it also awakened Dolan’s love of travel. As a kid, she’d only ever gone on camping trips in Canada with her parents – the family hadn’t traveled much outside of their province, let alone overseas.

“But after I’d come to Vancouver, I realized, ‘Well, it’s easy to travel. And it’s easy to travel solo. I don’t have to be nervous about this,’” says Dolan.

She pushed back the pressure she felt to get on the corporate ladder and kickstart her career and decided exploring the world was her first priority.

“I felt brave and courageous. And I wanted to be unusual,” says Dolan. “Next thing I knew, I just decided to hitchhike across Canada.”

From there, Dolan traveled on to Australia. Then she stayed on the road for months on end, traveling the globe.

“I went traveling for almost three years,” Dolan recalls.

On these adventures in the early 1980s, twentysomething Dolan kept travel journals, but she also continued her new habit of sending postcards to herself.

She mailed these dispatches to her parents’ house in Canada, sometimes sealed in envelopes so she could keep some of her thoughts and adventures private, away from any prying parental eyes.

Over 40 years later, Dolan is still an avid traveler. And she’s still a keen postcard writer. Over the decades, she’s sent hundreds of postcards to herself from trips across the world. Amazingly, they’ve all arrived – albeit sometimes over a year delayed –  and Dolan’s kept them all as memories of a life well traveled.

“They really tell me about – not only where I’ve been, but who I was that day,” says Dolan, who says looking over the postcard collection also makes her “realize the longevity” of her efforts, as well as inspiring her to reflect on “the experiences that I’ve been able to have.”

“I made it a core value to incorporate traveling into my life as a young person, I really did,” adds Dolan. “I felt the most free traveling, I felt the most independent traveling, I felt most myself traveling, my most grateful, always, traveling. And I think that’s what the postcards capture.”

A life in postcards

Today, Dolan is 64 and lives in Vancouver, the city which first awakened her love of travel. She spent her career working in administration, always saving up for her next adventure.

Dolan’s postcards used to be scattered around her home, but as her travel slowed down in recent years – first following an accident, then due to the pandemic – Dolan found herself in a reflective mood and decided to compile all her postcards into one place.

“So I purposefully took them out of journals, took them out of drawers – there were things in different places – to put them in one spot,” says Dolan. “I remember it was really overwhelming for me to see them, it was a very personal experience.”

Some of the postcards, now over 40 years old, were discolored and fading. Many contained descriptions of thoughts and emotions once felt intently, now almost forgotten. Most of the cards were emblazoned with photos, others were illustrations, or replications of famous paintings or artworks.

I felt most myself traveling, my most grateful, always, traveling. And I think that’s what the postcards capture.”

Debra Dolan

Dolan’s always enjoyed the process of choosing the postcards as much as she enjoys writing and receiving them. She explains she’s deliberate and considered with her postcard picks.

“For instance, from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, you might send an overall postcard of Amsterdam to a friend or a family member, but to yourself, you’re sending the picture, or the painting or the portrait that you saw there that moved you, or that you spent extra time with,” says Dolan.

Given the choice, Dolan prefers to buy her cards from independent stores and museum gift shops – although whatever vendor she chooses, Dolan’s noticed that postcards have a tendency to depict an imagined ideal of a destination, rather than its reality.

“You go, ‘Really? That’s not what it looks like. This is so stylized. This is so photoshopped. This is not what it looks like – or maybe once, on a nice day, but this isn’t how it looks for me.’”

That’s one of the reasons why Dolan sometimes opts for illustrated cards.

“An artist gives you a different rendering of it, or an interpretation – whether it’s abstract, or just their emotions come through in it,” she says.

Sometimes Dolan will have a predetermined idea of what she wants her chosen postcard to look like, and will hunt around the destination until she finds the perfect realization of her vision.

“I knew that when I was in Vienna, and I was there at Christmas, it had to be a postcard that showed snow and the beautiful lanterns that are lit outside the Opera House,” recalls Dolan. “It couldn’t be anything else.”

Other times, Dolan stumbles across the postcards when she least expects it. She recalls a visit to Helsinki, Finland, calling into a beautiful hotel. In the glamorous bathroom was a writing desk, pens and free souvenir postcards.

The moment felt serendipitous.

“I guess this is an invitation for me to write,” Dolan recalls thinking.

Dolan’s always sent her postcards mid-trip, she never “cheats” and posts them once she’s back home in Canada. She says hunting out the post office, buying stamps and finding a mailbox is all part of the process.

“I love the whole postmark piece too, and the date stamp,” says Dolan.

While walking the Camino de Santiago in 2008, Dolan made an exception and opted for letters over postcards, figuring purchasing cards while en route might be tricky. Before embarking on the trail, she bought airmail paper, envelopes and stamps and then enjoyed searching for rural post boxes en route.

“They all arrived – not in order, but they all arrived,” says Dolan.

Charting time and adventures

Looking back at her postcards over the decades, Dolan also notices how her handwriting has morphed, how her choice of language has evolved and how her travel habits have changed – nowadays, she often opts for slightly more luxurious options than the backpacking that characterized her early travels.

Somewhere along the line, Dolan also switched from being known as Debbie to Debra, so how she addressed the postcards also changed.

But the writing of the postcards has remained constant – and so has Dolan’s sign-off of choice.

“I have always ended my postcards with a heart,” she says. “I don’t know if that’s just love for myself, or love for the experience of this, or that appreciation of that moment, that time.”

Sometimes, Dolan will write her messages horizontally, other times she’ll flip the postcard 180 degrees and write vertically, to squeeze in as much as possible.

A message on the back of one of her postcards, dispatched from Fiji when she was 25, was written in a circle. Rediscovering this card recently, Dolan was baffled. Then she cross-referenced the date in her travel journal and found her answer:

“I had a quarter hit of LSD on the beach,” recalls Dolan.

Some of the postcards invite wince-inducing memories – unrequited crushes on fellow hostel dwellers, for example – “some of them you just want to rip up” – or embarrassing moments.

And while Dolan is grateful for all her travel experiences, there have been times she’s felt lonely, sad, or out of sorts on the road, and she’s expressed those more complicated emotions on the postcards too.

Capturing the moment

Dolan remains committed to traveling without a camera – and while she has a smartphone she uses in her day-to-day life in Vancouver, she always leaves it at home on her travels.

That said, her partner, who often accompanies her on trips nowadays, always has a cell phone in his back pocket. But while the couple enjoy taking the odd photo or two mid-vacation, Dolan’s postcards remain her favorite mementos from any trip.

For Dolan, the postcards to herself capture a moment, and epitomize the importance of living in the present.

“Those special moments in your life that are uniquely yours, they’re only yours. We may all see the same thing on our travels. We may all do the same thing – we go to the Coliseum in Rome, because that’s what you do. But our experience of that day is all different or that hour or that moment is all very, very unique,” says Dolan.

“I think that that’s the thing that the postcards capture. They might have sold 10,000 of that image. But each one of us who wrote on the back of it, wherever it went in the world, is different.”

Former world No. 1 Naomi Osaka has given birth to a daughter, the WTA announced.

The four-time major champion announced her pregnancy in January, posting a photo of an ultrasound scan on her social media accounts, and in June, she confirmed that she and her boyfriend, rapper Cordae, would be welcoming a girl.

Osaka has not played since the Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo in September last year, but has previously said she plans to return to tennis in 2024 for next year’s Australian Open, a tournament she has won on two previous occasions.

Osaka took some time away from competitive tennis and made several highly publicized disclosures about her struggles with mental health following an incident in August 2021, where she was visibly stressed and emotional while addressing the media during a mandatory news conference at Roland Garros.

Osaka subsequently pulled out of the French Open that year and revealed she had “suffered long bouts of depression” since winning her first major championship in 2018.
Alongside a photo announcing her pregnancy, Osaka wrote: “These few months away from the sport [have] really given me a new love and appreciation for the game I’ve dedicated my life to.

“I know that I have so much to look forward to in the future,” she added. “One thing I’m looking forward to is for my kid to watch one of my matches and tell someone, ‘that’s my mom.’”

Aryna Sabalenka reached her fourth consecutive grand slam semifinal on Wednesday after brushing aside American Madison Keys in straight sets at Wimbledon.

Sabalenka, who will regain the world No. 1 spot if she reaches the Wimbledon final, was far too good for her opponent, winning 6-2 6-4 in just an hour and 27 minutes.

The Belarusian’s huge serve and powerful ground strokes are proving highly effective on the zippy grass courts in SW19 and the 25-year-old Sabalenka has looked largely unbeatable so far, dropping just one set en route to the semifinals.

Sabalenka has enjoyed remarkable consistency this season, winning three titles already in 2023 – including her maiden grand slam at the Australian Open – and has reached the quarterfinals of all but two of the tournaments she has played in.

According to Opta, Sabalenka is the first player to reach the semifinals of the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon in the same year since Serena Williams in 2016.

“It really feels amazing to be back in the semifinals. I can’t wait to play in my second semifinal at Wimbledon and hopefully I can do better than last time,” Sabalenka said in her on-court interview, referring to her 2021 semifinal defeat by Karolína Plíšková.

“It was a really tough match, she is a really great player. I’m super happy I was able to win that second set. That game at 2-4 and love-40. It was just incredible.

“Thank you so much for the atmosphere, even though you supported her more,” Sabalenka laughed. “I still enjoyed playing in front of you guys.”

Sabalenka was unable to play in last year’s Wimbledon due to the blanket ban imposed on Russian and Belarusian players following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but she has returned this year in some style.

Sabalenka will next play Ons Jabeur after the Tunisian got the better of defending champion Elena Rybakina in a rematch of last year’s Wimbledon final, winning 6-7 6-4 6-1.

Christopher Eubanks’ run at Wimbledon has ended, with the 27-year-old American losing to world No. 3 Daniil Medvedev of Russia in the quarterfinals.

Medvedev, the 2021 US Open champion and a two-time Australian Open finalist, advanced to his first Wimbledon semifinal, winning 6-4, 1-6, 4-6, 7-6(4), 6-1. He will face either world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz of Spain or No. 6 Holger Rune of Denmark in the semifinals.

How improbable was this streak Eubanks was on? Not only was this Eubanks’ first major quarterfinal appearance, but this was his first appearance in the main draw at Wimbledon, period.

Before Wimbledon, Eubanks was 2-8 in grand slam main draw appearances. He had entered Wednesday on a nine-match win streak.

Not too long ago, Eubanks had doubts about his professional tennis career, taking a job as a commentator for the Tennis Channel during the 2022 clay court season while he continued to pursue playing. He broke into the top 100 in the singles world rankings in April.

Right before Wimbledon started, Eubanks won his first ATP Tour title, winning the grass court event in Mallorca, jumping from No. 77 in the world to a career-high No. 43.

His breakthrough into the top 100 came with his performance at the ATP Masters 1000 event in Miami, advancing to the quarterfinals and losing to Medvedev in their only other head-to-head appearance.

Defending women’s singles champion bows out

The defending Wimbledon women’s singles champ is out, as world No. 3 Elena Rybakina, who represents Kazakhstan, lost to Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur.

Jabeur, currently the world No. 6, advanced to the semifinals with a 6-7(5), 6-4, 6-1 win.

The matchup was a rematch of last year’s Wimbledon women’s singles final, in which Rybakina came back from a set down against Jabeur to win her first major title.

Jabeur will face world No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka in the semifinals. Sabalenka, who is from Belarus, was forced to miss Wimbledon last year when Russians and Belarusians were banned from competing in the tournament.

Sabalenka could rise to No. 1 in the world for the first time should she advance to the final. She won her first major title earlier this year at the Australian Open.

When Anajak Thai opened in 1981, most people who walked into the Los Angeles restaurant weren’t familiar with Thai cuisine. They just thought it was spicy Chinese food, said Justin Pichetrungsi, the restaurant’s current head chef and owner.

The Sherman Oaks eatery, started by Pichetrungsi’s father Rick Pichetrungsi, was one of the first Thai restaurants in L.A., according to Pichetrungsi. The restaurant’s original, multi-page menu in the ‘80s listed around 60 dishes — among them pad thai, pad see-ew and panang curry — that introduced American diners to the flavors of Thailand while remaining approachable.

Forty years later, Anajak — and Thai food in the US — has come a long way.

“Our diasporic cuisine became part of the rotation of American takeout,” Pichetrungsi said.

Thai is now one of the nation’s most popular cuisines, with more than 10,000 restaurants in the US despite Thai people making up about 0.1% of the nation’s overall population. Still, Thai food has struggled to shed a reputation of being cheap takeout fare — something that Pichetrungsi has been trying to change since 2019, when he left his job as an art director at Disney to take over Anajak full time. Over the last few years, he’s overhauled the menu and transformed Anajak into a culinary hotspot.

Anajak’s evolution from a hole-in-the-wall joint to foodie favorite has been a decades-long process. It’s also, in some ways, the story of Thai food in the US.

How Thai food came to the US

To understand how Thai restaurants became so widespread in the US, you have to go back to US intervention in southeast Asia during the Cold War, said Mark Padoongpatt, an associate professor of Asian American studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the author of “Flavors of Empire: Food and the Making of Thai America.”

The US established a strategic relationship with Thailand in the 1960s as it sought to prevent the spread of communism in the region. An expanded American footprint in the country meant that ordinary Americans were able to travel to Thailand and experience its food, which set the stage for the eventual interest in Thai cuisine back home, Padoongpatt said. In one example detailed in his book, a White woman named Marie Wilson accompanied her husband on a stint in Thailand teaching English and published the cookbook “Siamese Cookery” upon her return.

“Food became the place where a lot of Americans came to understand Thai people for the first time,” Padoongpatt said. “So when (Thai people) come to the United States, they then have to navigate their identity in relation to food.”

Thai people started immigrating to the US in the late ‘60s and ‘70s. Many of them were on student visas that restricted their employment options and ended up finding work in restaurant kitchens and other food businesses, according to Padoongpatt.

One such immigrant was Pichetrungsi’s father. Rick Pichetrungsi, born in Thailand to a Cantonese family, came to the US at 18 and spent more than a decade working in various Los Angeles restaurants before deciding to start his own, Pichetrungsi said. Anajak Thai, like other Thai restaurants of the era, primarily served the stir-fries and curries of Central Thailand, along with Chinese dishes like wonton soup to entice less adventurous customers.

Despite the seemingly standard fare, running a Thai restaurant at the time required a degree of creativity and inventiveness. Many key Thai ingredients weren’t readily available in the US, and chefs had to make substitutions that altered the intended flavors of certain dishes. In making the northeastern Thai dipping sauce nam jim, for example, Pichetrungsi said his father used jalapeno in place of Thai chilis and white sugar instead of palm sugar.

“A lot of those flavors were somewhat more assimilated flavors,” Pichetrungsi said. “They were him trying to find the analogue of this or that or this in order to make that flavor for himself.”

Some chefs tried to move beyond pad thai

Over the next several decades, Anajak Thai became a homey neighborhood go-to with a loyal customer base. Other Thai immigrants opened up similar restaurants across the country, cementing the cuisine’s foothold in the US.

Thai food became so popular among Americans that the Thai government took notice. In the early 2000s, it launched a program that would train Thai chefs and send them abroad to open Thai restaurants, with the aim of encouraging tourism to Thailand, Padoongpatt said. As part of that campaign, the government also attempted to standardize Thai restaurants and their menus, in hopes of making dishes like pad thai as synonymous with Thai culture as say, the Big Mac is with McDonald’s.

Even as the Thai government tried to standardize restaurant fare, some Thai restaurateurs were beginning to venture outside of what most Americans had come to associate with Thai food. In 1999, for instance, now famed chef Saipin Chutima and her husband Bill opened Lotus of Siam in Las Vegas, introducing diners to the northern Thai recipes that were in her family for generations.

Padoongpatt, who considers the chef a friend, credits Ricker with pushing regional Thai cuisine and Thai street food forward in the US and opening up the market for a new generation of Thai American chefs. But he notes that Thai immigrants didn’t necessarily lack imagination — rather, they had to consider how serving dishes that were unfamiliar to most Americans might affect business.

“I think it tells you something about race and food in America — that it took someone like Andy Ricker to break that door open,” Padoongpatt said.

But there were also plenty of Thai chefs who also stretched that boundary. In 2011, Chiang Mai native Hong Thaimee opened Ngam (later renamed Thaimee Table) in New York’s East Village, which she characterized as “modern Thai comfort food.” Rather than serving customers exactly the kind of Thai food she ate growing up, she stayed true to classic Thai flavor combinations while adapting certain dishes for a Western palate.

“If I put sai-ua (northern Thai sausage) on the menu, it might be too early or too soon,” Thaimee, who is working on an upcoming Thai food podcast called “Sabai Talk,” said. “But I made that in the form of a Thai burger, and it was a hit.”

While the Thai restaurant scene was starting to shift in the mid-to-late 2000s, some chefs still felt like they had to tread with caution.

Food writer and cookbook author Leela Punyaratabandhu recalls how Thai restaurants in Chicago back then had secret menus that Thai customers and more adventurous American eaters could order from. Those secret menus featured bolder, lesser-known dishes that those working in the back of the restaurant would be more inclined to eat. Over time, as Americans became more knowledgeable about other cuisines, they started paying more attention to the secret menu offerings, emboldening Thai chefs to serve the kind of food they wanted.

“Fast forward 20 some years, the secret menus are the regular menus now,” said Punyaratabandhu, author of “Bangkok: Recipes and Stories from the Heart of Thailand” and the newsletter The Epestle.

Thai food in the US reaches new heights

Today, the Thai restaurant scene in the US is perhaps the most exciting that it’s ever been.

More and more restaurants are catering to specific, regional Thai cuisines, be it the spicy and pungent flavors of Isan in the northeast or the Malaysian- and Indonesian-influenced curries of the south. And Thai American chefs like Pichetrungsi are continuing to defy stereotypes and misconceptions of what constitutes Thai food. On the menu on one recent evening in July were dishes such as southern Thai fried chicken and haw mok, a steamed fish curry custard.

“We’ve gone beyond what the common staples within our cuisine are, like pad thai and pad see ew,” Pichetrungsi said. “People are really diving a lot deeper.”

In addition to its rotating, seasonal dinner menu, Anajak under Pichetrungsi boasts Thai Taco Tuesdays and monthly Thai omakase meals — changes that have earned critical acclaim. The Los Angeles Times named Anajak restaurant of the year in 2022, and Pichetrungsi recently won a James Beard Award for best chef in California.

Still, given the Covid-19 pandemic’s serious toll on the restaurant industry, Pichetrungsi feels like he has to strike a delicate balance. He wants to show diners just how innovative Thai cuisine can be, but he’s hesitant to take familiar comforts like pad thai off the menu altogether. “Pad thai pays for the party,” he added.

Diners might not be ready to part with pad thai, but Pichetrungsi hopes that restaurants like Anajak will help them see Thai food anew — and maybe even try something different.

“I hope that people realize that Thai food is something as worthwhile and as eventful and as night out-worthy as any other cuisine,” Pichetrungsi said. “You can get dressed, listen to a bunch of live music and buy a really baller bottle of champagne while eating some really humble, rustic food.”

The United Nations has warned that Sudan could be on the verge of all-out-war after a weekend airstrike killed dozens in a residential area in the Sudanese city of Omdurman.

At least 22 people were killed and many injured in a shelling attack early Saturday, the country’s health ministry said, as months of infighting between Sudan’s rival military forces continue to rage on across the country.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the weekend bombing was an indication that Sudan was now on “the brink of a full-scale civil war.”

“The Secretary-General remains deeply concerned that the ongoing war between the armed forces has pushed Sudan to the brink of a full-scale civil war, potentially destabilizing the entire region,” a statement from Guterres’ office said condemning the airstrike.

“He is appalled by reports of large-scale violence and casualties across Darfur,” the statement further said while expressing concerns about renewed clashes in some of Sudan’s worst hit states that have seen large displacement of civilians.

“There is an utter disregard for humanitarian and human rights law that is dangerous and disturbing,” the statement added.

Guterres urged the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — the two warring factions fighting for control in Sudan to end hostilities.

The RSF blamed the SAF for Saturday’s airstrike, describing it as “the most severe aircraft bombing … on innocent citizens.” It also placed the death toll at 31.

Fierce fighting erupted between the rival groups in April, leaving hundreds dead and thousands injured.

Data from the United Nations International Organization for Migration, (IOM) said nearly 2.8 million people have fled Sudan, many without passports, for neighboring countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia and Libya.

The United States has confirmed it will supply cluster munitions to Ukraine as part of a new military aid package.

Here’s what you need to know about the weapons – and why they are controversial.

What is a cluster munition?

Cluster munitions, also called cluster bombs, are canisters that carry tens to hundreds of smaller bomblets, also known as submunitions. The canisters can be dropped from aircraft, launched from missiles or fired from artillery, naval guns or rocket launchers.

The canisters break open at a prescribed height, depending upon the area of the intended target, and the bomblets inside spread out over that area. They are fused by a timer to explode closer to or on the ground, spreading shrapnel that is designed to kill troops or take out armored vehicles such as tanks.

What type of cluster bomb is the US said to be giving to Ukraine?

The US has a stockpile of cluster munitions known as DPICMs, or dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, that it no longer uses after phasing them out in 2016.

According to an article on the US Army’s eArmor website, the DPICMs Washington will give to Kyiv are fired from 155mm howitzers, with each canister carrying 88 bomblets. Each bomblet has a lethal range of about 10 square meters, so a single canister can cover an area up to 30,000 square meters (about 7.5 acres), depending upon the height it releases the bomblets.

The bomblets in a DPICM have shaped charges that, when striking a tank or armored vehicle, “create a metallic jet that perforates metallic armor,” the article says, adding that it can take 10 or more bomblets to destroy an armored vehicle, but it may take only one to disable the armored vehicle’s weapons or render it immobile.

Have cluster bombs been used in the war in Ukraine before?

Yes, both the Ukrainians and the Russians have used cluster bombs since Moscow’s forces invaded in February 2022. More recently, Ukrainian forces have begun using Turkish-provided cluster munitions on the battlefield.

But Ukrainian officials have been pushing the US to provide its cluster munitions since last year, arguing that they would provide more ammunition for Western-provided artillery and rocket systems, and help narrow Russia’s numerical superiority in artillery.

Why are cluster munitions more controversial than other bombs?

As the bomblets fall over a wide area, they can endanger non-combatants.

In addition, somewhere between 10% to 40% of the munitions fail, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. The unexploded munitions can then be detonated by civilian activity years or even decades later.

The Cluster Munition Coalition, an activist group trying to get the weapons banned everywhere, says potentially deadly cluster submunitions still lie dormant in Laos and Vietnam 50 years after their use.

However, critics have raised questions about the military’s testing process, including whether it was done in ideal conditions, or tested under different weather and terrain conditions that might affect how the munition reacts. The defense official did not address whether the munitions were tested under those different conditions.

Announcement exposes divisions

The White House is defending its transfer of the weapons, despite the concerns on the possible effects on civilians.

“While Russia is using them in Ukraine in an aggressive war on another country and indiscriminately killing civilians, the Ukrainians will be using these cluster munitions – obviously, which have a very low dud rate, but they’ll be using to defend their own territory hitting Russian positions,” National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby told ABC on Sunday.

“We can all agree that more civilians have been and will continue to be killed by Russian forces with whether it’s cluster munitions drones, missile attacks, or just frontal assaults, then will likely be hurt by the use of these cluster munitions fired at Russian positions inside Ukrainian territory,” Kirby added.

Reacting to Kirby’s comments, the Russian Embassy in Washington condemned the decision likening it to “war crimes.”

In a statement Friday, Human Rights Watch said both Ukraine and Russia had killed civilians with their use of cluster munitions in the war so far.

“Cluster munitions remain one of the world’s most treacherous weapons. They kill and maim indiscriminately and cause widespread human suffering,” Gilles Carbonnier, vice president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said at a conference on the munition in Switzerland last year.

“Any use of cluster munitions, anywhere, by anyone, must be condemned,” Carbonnier said.

Much of the world has banned the use of these weapons through the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), which also prohibits the stockpiling, production and transfer of them.

Though 123 nations have joined that convention, the United States, Ukraine, Russia and 71 other countries have not.

Using the munitions to attack enemy troops or vehicles is not illegal under international law, but striking civilians with the weapons could amount to a war crime, according to Human Rights Watch.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Saturday his country, a key NATO ally, is a signatory to the treaty banning cluster munitions, and “discourages” their use.

Another NATO ally, Spain, put forth even stronger opposition to the transfer.

“While respecting the decisions of the sovereign country of the United States, Spain does not share their (judgment) in sending cluster bombs, we are against sending cluster bombs,” Spanish Defense Minister Magarita Robles said.

Where have cluster bombs been used before?

Cluster weapons have been used as far back as World War II and in more than three dozen conflicts since, according to the Cluster Munition Coalition.

The US last used the weapons in Iraq from 2003 to 2006, the coalition says.

US forces began phasing them out in 2016 because of the danger they pose to civilians, according to a 2017 statement from US Central Command.

Its annual conferences have attracted the who’s-who of right-wing and hawkish, conservative politicians from the West, including former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former United States National Security Adviser John Bolton and ex-Vice President Mike Pence.

But recent setbacks for the most powerful Iranian opposition group have some observers wondering whether its glory days are numbered.

A shadowy dissident group in exile, the Mujahadin-e Khalq (MeK) was once a US-designated terrorist group but today counts prominent anti-Iran Western politicians as key allies. Iran accuses it of terrorism, saying it carried out a series of attacks in the 1980s. The MeK denies those charges.

It is one of the best-organized opposition groups confronting the Islamic Republic, but it has little support among Iranians, largely due to its violent past and for having supported Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during his almost decade-long war with Iran.

However, analysts say that recent diplomatic activity between Iran and its foes however may not bode well for the group.

In the span of one week, the MeK last month witnessed a rare raid on its sprawling base in Albania, where it is headquartered, as well as a brief ban on a planned annual rally in France, where it has held such events for several years.

Albanian police said the June raid on the MeK’s Ashraf 3 camp near the capital Tirana was due to suspicions that the group was involved in political activity, according to local media. Political activity is banned under the agreement that allows them to stay in Albania. One person was killed in the raid, and police denied they were responsible for the death.

Iran welcomed the raid, and last week an Iranian official said that some of the seized hard drives arrived in his country, and that Iranian experts were working on data recovery to identify the group’s agents and sabotage cells, according Iranian state media.

The MeK called on Albania to clarify whether any of the hard drives were indeed sent to Iran.

‘Illegal and subversive activity’

In the same week, French authorities banned a planned MeK rally in Paris citing “attack threats.” The ban was later reversed by a judicial order, and the rally took place on Saturday coinciding with an annual MeK meeting on the outskirts of Paris that hosted some of the most prominent right-wing figures.

Gobadi said the MEK’s activities in Albania and elsewhere have “aligned with the laws of their host countries.”

Albania severed diplomatic ties with Iran as a result, but Tehran denied involvement.

The coordinator said it was “deeply insulting” to be accused of appeasement given that Albania “welcomed and provided humanitarian protection to the MeK, when no other country in the world would accept them.”

The setbacks for the MeK also follow a landmark deal between Iran and Saud Arabia in March, which saw diplomatic ties re-instated after almost eight years of tensions.

Iran has for years accused Saudi Arabia of supporting the MeK. Speculation about the kingdom’s alleged support for the group was further fueled by the appearance of Prince Turki al-Faisal, a prominent Saudi royal and former ambassador to the US and the UK, at an MeK summit in Paris. In his speech in 2016, al-Faisal declared: “I, too, want the downfall of the regime.”

But in a sign of changing winds, Al Faisal in March told the France24 news channel that he wasn’t aware of an imminent normalization pact between Tehran and Riyadh and that he was surprised by it.

The prince has insisted that he plays no official government role, but his public endorsement of the MeK has enraged Iran, which called the group the Saudis’ “adopted children.”

The brief French ban on the MeK rally also came just days after a 90-minute phone call between French President Emanuel Macron and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on June 10.

It is unclear whether the recent diplomatic activity between Iran and its foes is directly responsible for the developments in France or Albania, but analysts say they’re unlikely to be coincidental, especially as Western states hope to restart nuclear talks with Iran.

‘Hardened neo-cons’

The MeK’s support overwhelmingly comes from the countries that have tensions with Iran, said Trita Parsi, vice-president of the Quincy Institute in Washington, DC.

Politicians who have attended its conferences also include former Donald Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, and former British Prime Minister Liz Truss.

At least one speaker at the event reportedly received tens of thousands of dollars from the dissident group.

Ali Ahmadi, an executive fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, says those who go to support the MeK are “usually a lot of hardened neo-cons” as well as “retired politicians who are happy to take a really big cheque.”

As the US and EU attempt to reach new agreements with Iran, they may be “throwing in the future of the MeK in the mix” to see if a broader comprise can be found, said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC., adding that removing the group from the picture could be a Western concession to Iran.

Analysts say however that the MeK is unlikely to disappear anytime soon, having survived over the past six decades despite shifting geopolitics.

“They are gradually becoming weaker I think,” Vatanka said. While the Saudi-Iran rapprochement will weaken them further, it will not spell their demise, he said.