Bangkok-born Niki Thongborisute is just your typical Thai-American vegetarian Jew. At an early age she was farmed out to an English boarding school in order to adapt to foul weather and dull food. After passing through the English educational system and failing at every turn to acquire a posh English accent, she decided to make her way to New York, where she survived through 3 years of an unexciting undergraduate dorm life. She made up for this disappointment by discovering the benefits of student pub crawls during her time at Fordham law school.

After graduating Niki came back to Thailand and joined Bangkok International Associates as a corporate lawyer drafting contracts, giving legal advice to multinational clients and generally feeling the ill-effects of a hard-earned income. Five years later she left to join her husband’s travel publication company, Groovy Map. Today she is the director in charge of map-guide production. She is married to Aaron Frankel and is the mother of two young boys, Leo and Lucas.