Joyce’s grand plan … her “intelligent design” for the adventure … was to spend three or four days in Bangkok to chase after a place for us to live out the rest of the Florida hurricane season. Once we were settled in a Bangkok apartment, we would be free to plunge into the Sri-Lanka chapter of our epic.

And so, our relatively brief interlude in Bangkok was like an intermezzo in an opulent meal, or a piece of unscripted fantasy in a musical composition.

We left Taipei at 10:30 pm, typical Asian plane time, on Sunday night. By the time we were installed in Bangkok’s magnificent Peninsula hotel, it was around two or three am on Monday morning. It had been a very long day…again!

The reward was the truly exceptional level of hospitality provided by the hotel. We did not have a suite, but the configuration of the space, the quality of the amenities and the room’s finishes made us feel as if we were in one.

We did not do much that first day other then to rest and write up our Taipei experience. Joyce played with her electronics and made arrangements for our new best friend and faithful guide Nok, who had met us at the airport the night prior, to squire us around town for our apartment quest the following day.

We had dinner that evening at one of the hotel’s three restaurants, “Jester’s” which professed an eclectic cuisine accompanied by equally eclectic music amidst a kinetic illumination theme. The place assumed absolutely magic qualities when the interior scene was coupled with the river activities that the restaurant overlooked, as it was alive with an incredible beehive of watercrafts festooned with amazing arrays of festive lights.  

On Tuesday, August 1st, with Nok’s help, we looked at about 8 or 9 “serviced apartments” - each one more beautiful than the next - all in attractive, but unique districts of Bangkok, all in fairly new and modern buildings equipped with pools, gyms, and some with full service spas. This exercise forced us to experience every conceivable form of transportation, including water taxis that ferried us across the river, metered taxis, which are incredibly inexpensive, tuk-tuks, which cost more (unless you spend an hour bargaining like Joyce always does) but are lots of fun and, of course, the famous “Sky-Train” which is Bangkok’s answer to street-level congestion. 

With reference to the latter, Joyce had an epiphany - PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION can actually work!

In the final analysis, on-foot transport ultimately dominates. But it’s not a serene experience. The side walks are narrow, very crowded, quite littered, flanked by a hodgepodge of old shops and makeshift stands and the pavement is mostly broken and in disrepair. Crossing streets is a real challenge for pedestrians. You know you’ll be run over; the only question is will it be by a truck or a tuk-tuk? 
 
This second day in Bangkok was eminently successful however.  To our surprise, as we were sure that we would be “river dwellers”, we settled on a one bedroom apartment in Bangkok’s embassy district, in a new building called “Natural Ville” managed by Accor, the same company that manages Sofitel and other French hospitality holdings. As expected, there is a bistro and patisserie on the ground floor and, right upstairs is one of Bangkok’s most famous spas…it was as if the place had been designed to indulge our respective lusts concurrently.

We celebrated by having dinner on the 65th floor of the Lebua State Tower at Mezzaluna, a fairly pricey but spectacular eatery of great fame in Bangkok and beyond.

All this entitled us, on day three, to total poolside relaxation to gird our loins for the next two weeks in Sri-Lanka.

On Thursday, August 3rd, the last day of our Bangkok intermezzo, we spent the time making last minute arrangements and a brief shopping expedition before heading into the unknown. Peter traded his Mephisto “city” footwear for a new pair of Nikes that are far more comfortable for uncertain ground surfaces, and Joyce bought…socks!

That night, after Joyce got her nails manicured and Peter his beard trimmed, we bade farewell to the Peninsula and, at the ungodly hour of 9:30 pm, left for Colombo, Sri Lanka. When we got to the airport the airport we were surprised to find our Cathay Pacific flight cancelled as the plane was still in Hong Kong because of the Typhoon threatening the area. We were transferred to a very crowded, chock-a-block filled cattle run on Sri Lanka Air, where the only redeeming virtue was our introduction to Sri Lankan (Indian style) food.