March 10th - Luxury

The staff at the Mandarin Oriental are eerily efficient. After breakfast on the verandah (peaceful and delicious) we made our way back to the elevators. The porter, a man we'd never before met, greeted us and said, "tenth floor?" With a knowing smile and a sleight-of-hand click of the 10th floor button, we were on our way. The floor butler then greeted us on 10, "Mr. Dallesandro, Ms. Valby." Of course we'd never seen this man before either. It's the little touches at the Oriental that help you feel creeped-out.

Our room has a daily selection of exotic Thai fruit. Day 1 featured the orange. Day 2, the banana. Each fruit comes with a description such as follows:

The Banana, (Musa sapientum) is native to South East Asia and from here has spread to all the world's tropical regions. The Banana grows not on a tree but a herbaceous perennial with impressively large leaves, often torn to strips by the wind. The bananas are available throughout the year, the best coming from Nontaburi.

Unfortunately, we had to leave before receiving day 3's selection. Perhaps the apple? We'll never know.

We rode the ferry boat up to the crowded sweatbox known as Chinatown. A brief foray into the bustling alleyways, past food stall upon food stall (who eats all this food?) left us disoriented (no pun intended) and quite hungry.

We decided to spend the afternoon at the hotel pool where I quickly learned that the staff would greatly prefer you do nothing for yourself. It was a foot race between me and pool guy number 2 for who would get me a fresh towel first. I decided I might get the guy in trouble if I'm seen helping myself so I sucked it up and let them wait on me.