Silverjet, an all-Business-Class airline serving the New York to London route, is known for its exceptionally quick check-in (you can check-in at the Silver Lounge just 30 minutes before departure if you only have hand baggage and 45 minutes if you have bags to check, and you're taken through a dedicated security line).

It's also known for superior food. This month's New York to London menu is a light supper consisting of tender braised lamb with colcannon and carrots, a grilled fillet of North Atlantic salmon with spiced lentil salsa and rocket, or penne with wild mushroom sauce served with shaved parmesan. For dessert, enjoy Häagen Dazs ice cream. Breakfast can be either served onboard or packed up to take away, and consists of fresh fruit and orange juice, with a choice of a warm croque monsieur or raisin bagel with cream cheese.

I had to look up colcannon and found that it's an Irish dish consisting of mashed potatoes with kale or cabbage. The British have a similar dish called bubble and squeak. Gods knows why the Irish insist on calling theirs colcannon - wouldn't you rather eat something called bubble and squeak? Along with a side order of spotted dick. I'm still not sure what the latter dish is and I really have done my best to avoid finding out. I can spend hours pondering what's in spotted dick and those lazy afternoons would be lost forever if I ever discover the truth.

Anyway, you have until April 18 to take advantage of Silverjet's special early summer $919 (one way, excluding taxes) flights to London in May and June. Starting April 19, fares will return to the usual starting price of $1099 (one way, excluding taxes). This will leave you with enough money, after taking into account how far the dollar has fallen versus the pound, to buy a half packet of stale crisps. But still - they're English crisps, dammit!

Minutes after I finished posting the last note on airline bankruptcies, along comes Frontier Air with their bankruptcy. I really hate it when everyone jumps on the bandwagon.

One difference and this is probably major for those holding Frontier Air reservations, is that they did not discontinue operations. They just filed for Chapter 11 protection while they inevitably reorganize and secure new lines of credit and the executives hoover up their bonuses before the coffers run dry.

And in undoubtedly related news Northwest and Delta have agreed to a merger. I'm not sure where on the list of largest American airlines this will place them but it probably will be slightly ahead of Frontier.

So in the past week or so a number of airlines have given up the ghost as it were. Let's see what the rollcall is at this time:

Skybus - a super cheap carrier based in Columbus, Ohio of all places. Probably most famous for having a few $10 fares on each plane. Apparently one cannot actually make money charging less the price of three gallons of gas per flight. Who'd a thunk it?

ATA Airlines - we really knew nothing about this airline as they seem to have specialized in the northern tier of routes which we hardly ever fly. And now we'll never know them unless someone buys the name at the bankruptcy auction. Hopefully not - ATA seems more like the acronym for an association than an airline.

Aloha Airlines - we were familiar with this airline though we never actually flew them since our first trip to Hawaii was only this year. And then we took Hawaiian.

The loss of the two latter airlines will supposedly impact Hawaiian air travel as both were carriers for that market. I somehow doubt that all of the remaining airlines servicing Hawaii are going to have much of a problem obtaining additional aircraft and gates. In any case, I would certainly expect higher fares in the near future. But then that was a forgone conclusion anyway with rising fuel costs and such.

So far it seems to be the smaller regional low cost airlines that are experiencing problems. Of course these are the companies that normally have less resources to weather major increases in fuel costs and other economy driven issues. Me, I'd probably think strongly about trip insurance if I were to book on smaller regional airlines for the foreseeable future.

As part of the Round the World trip I felt it was important that I try as many regional beers as possible. It's always been a theory of mine that one can learn a lot about a culture by imbibing their indigenous brews.  It's a lousy theory but the alternative explanation (and the one that Mary is most in agreement with) is that I have an abiding affection for the brew and will do most anything to acquire some. Still, I did have a great time, and I think it's safe to say that one can travel pretty much anywhere nowadays and find a great regional brew.

 Singapore         

Tiger

Kingfisher (which is really Indian but we ate a lot of Indian food so it just seemed right) Carlsberg (which is European but it was a hot day and the beer was cold and inviting)

Bangkok          

Singha

Phuket Island Beer

Japan               

Kirin Ichiban

Sapporo

Asahi Super Dry

Assorted Kyoto Micro Brews (that I neglected to get the names of - my bad)

Hawaii              

Kona Longboard Lager

Kona Fire Rock Pale Ale

Keoki Gold

Maui Brewing Bikini Blond Lager

San Francisco  

Anchor Steam

Hong Kong       

San Miguel (a Philippines beer but they opened a brewery in HK)

TsingTao

Chang  

Sydney            

Victoria Bitter   

Tooheys New

Tooheys Extra Dry

Boags Premium

Crown Lager

London             

Fuller's ESB  (In my defense we weren't in London long and Mary was feeling poorly so I was a bit loath to go out and do a pub crawl)

Of all the beers consumed I can safely say there is only one that I would not willingly and enthusiastically drink again and that was the Phuket Island Beer. It wasn't that this beer was bad - it was just a little strange as it was noticeably sweet. Also, the Bikini Blonde Lager in Hawaii although drinkable (and that's a pretty broad category for me) was pretty blah, fine if you like the mass market American brews like Budweiser but otherwise not able to compete at all with its tastier brethren from Kona or Keoki.

Of all the places we have visited on our Round the World trip, I think Singapore surprised us the most. Over the years, the things we've seen in the media about Singapore seemed to indicate that it's a small island with a large number of skyscrapers. We weren't even sure where people who worked in Singapore lived - maybe holes in the ground or something.

But starting with the airport and the drive through town to our hotel, we found out very quickly that not only were our preconceptions wrong, they were really, really wrong. Singapore isn't some densely packed, frenetically bustling, somewhat hygienically challenged Far East entrepôt like Bangkok. As you've probably gathered from media reports (which usually focus on the Singaporean ban on chewing gum) it's incredibly, almost painstakingly clean. But rather than being just a huge collection of office towers, the city is well endowed with lots and lots of green spaces and parks, interesting and varied architecture - in short, just a lot different than we expected. I suppose the tropical greenness can be attributed to the fact that the city is located in an area that gets an impressive amount of rain and the temperature is close to the boiling point of water for most of the year.

We had hoped that our stay in Singapore might be one of the highlights of the trip, so it seemed appropriate to stay at Raffles. I think Raffles might be the premier hotel from the colonial era of the British Empire. Originally opened in 1887, the hotel has been expanded a number of times. The last major renovation restored the hotel to look much like it was during the heyday of the Empire (but with air conditioning). I'm not sure if it sets the record for the most restaurants in a single hotel but it'll do for me.

But I dash ahead heedlessly. Singapore's Changi airport was interesting and not what we envisioned. Unlike the soaring glass and steel edifices that everyone else in Asia seems to be building wherever there's a flat piece of land bigger than a billiards table, the Singapore airport seems like a bit of a throwback to us. The airport it most reminds me of is Honolulu International, probably because of the low, flat floorplan and open air elements. For some reason the terms that come to mind when we think of the Singapore airport are "relaxed" and "informal."

We used a car supplied by the hotel for the ride into town. Our driver gave us a lot of advice as to where and what to eat. He reminded us of the taxi drivers we've had in New Orleans, though unlike a New Orleans driver, our Singaporean driver didn't claim he could cook any dish better than the local restaurants.

Food is probably going to be the most salient feature of Singapore in our memories, even more than the cleanliness, the heat and the humidity, and the vast number of shopping malls. Singapore is comprised of a whole lot of immigrants from here, there and some places I'm not even sure are on the planet. They all brought their own native cuisines with them and then once they all settled down they started mixing their favorite dishes with those from other cultures. The result is bliss. Pure bliss.

One result of the mixture of cuisines that occurs in Singapore is the ubiquitous hawker stand. Hawker stands are roughly the same as food courts, if food courts served really good food and had several dozen different stands instead of ten or so. And none of them serve Sbarro. Or McDonalds. We did try the hawker stands, perhaps not as often as I would have liked, though this was more a matter of Mary placing patently artificial restraints on my behavior such as prohibiting more than five meals and heavy snacks a day. And there was the little matter of puttering around Singapore during the Chinese New Year. For some reason a lot of things were closed, including hawker stands, which is really just incomprehensible. Obviously we'll have to go back at a later time and check out the other 200-300 hawker stands I didn't get a chance to try.

Still, the ones we did try were pretty great. We got the requisite chilli crab which is interesting but expensive and probably not really worth the money or the mess. We also had the Hainanese chicken rice dish which is famous and it was both pretty tasty and remarkably cheap. This is a dish that I'd be happy to subsist on for a few years if I had to live on a budget. Along with a bunch of other things, we also tried a fried noodle dish that I never did catch the name of, but it was simply awesome.

Another standout in the cuisine marathon was the North Indian buffet in Raffles, which was spectacular -- if you like Indian food, that is. And we do. Mary suggested having the buffet for dinner every night of our stay, but even I had to draw the line there. No more than three nights running. I mean, it's Indian food and that's great, but there comes a time when one more spoonful of lime pickle relish will eat a hole in my stomach lining. I'd willingly suffer that, but I couldn't find out if Singapore hospitals served local specialties or the dread bland stuff scientific dieticians dole out. Singapore is one place where you really don't want to miss a meal. And you might be inclined to add a couple like I did - elevenses and midnight noodle madness.

Singapore's public transit system is one of the best we've experienced. It's not as extensive as Tokyo, perhaps, but then again the population of Tokyo is four times that of Singapore, or almost ten times as much if one counts the greater Tokyo/Yokohama area. (Which is probably a little geekier than I need to be.) In Singapore, one can choose from buses that are clean and well run or subways that are clean and well run.

In fact, pretty much everything in Singapore is clean and well run. I am kind of curious what happens to those things and people that are not clean and well run. There might be a little paranoia speaking there. Maybe because I felt fairly conspicuous whenever I found myself a bit sweaty, which in Singapore would probably occur around 364.5 days a year. I wondered if the Singapore Hygienic Corps would pull me over, offer me wet wipes for cleansing my soiled skin, and supply a free, clean dry shirt, compliments of the Better Living Through Cleanliness and Caning Council.

Besides eating, the other national sport seems to be shopping. We thought Hong Kong was a shopper's paradise and it may be - at least if you want fake handbags, goldfish or puppies. But Singapore really hits it out of the park when it comes to shopping malls. We entered one next door to Raffles and after exploring many subterranean passages connecting it to still more malls, we came out somewhere on the other side of the city around ten hours later. So maybe it's most accurate to say that Singapore is one very, very large shopping mall to which they've added a lot of hawker stands. And some office buildings.

I'm sure there are some other touristy things that people do in Singapore. We pretty much didn't - we took the hop-on, hop-off tourist bus, which was a little odd because while it stopped at all the tourist sites, there was no information provided about them. Still, we wandered around and checked out the various neighborhoods and such. One day we went to the botanical garden but we got there around midday and the temperature had already approached 400 degrees. It looked like a fantastic garden but we quickly decided our time could be better spent finding another hawker stand rather then looking at plants and melting.

So, that was Singapore. At least a little taste of Singapore. We really liked it there. We would go back in a flash for another visit, and not just because of the food. (Though that would be a big draw.) It's clean, it's exciting and it just has this air that it's at the cutting edge of the 21^st century.

Here's a post from Mary relating to our recent gallivantations (I'm looking to get my own word into Webster) around the world. We are home now and everything's fine. We had to cut the trip short and due to the changes and stuff along the way I fell behind on entries. I do have a bunch of articles left to post and will get them up over the next couple of weeks. So here's Mary.

As Mike mentioned in an earlier post, we had to come home from our round-the-world (RTW) trip early. 25 days early, to be exact, meaning our trip ended up being only 47 days long instead of 72. I had some recurring health issues starting in Hong Kong, and by the time we reached Australia, it became apparent I was going to have to go back to the US for treatment.

This meant canceling quite a few planned legs of the trip, including visits to Adelaide, Australia; Christchurch, New Zealand; Dubai; Madrid, Seville and Barcelona, Spain; and Paris and Disneyland Paris. When I figured out we were going to have to reroute, cancel and rebook dozens of reservations, it was absolutely overwhelming. Here's where it would have been so much easier if I'd used a travel agent to book everything - I could have made one call and let the agent do it.

Our recent experience was an interesting lesson in what happens when your well-thought-out travel plans go awry in a big way. Prior to our recent RTW trip, Mike and I have had some pretty amazing luck during our travels, considering we've traveled internationally about ten times in the past five years, usually for at least two weeks at a time. Until this trip we'd experienced absolutely no major glitches.

Before our RTW trip, we'd never had a big screw-up with a hotel or airline. Oh, I had made a few minor mistakes in the past (like booking a hotel stay on the wrong dates) but luckily those errors were all easily corrected and didn't cost us a thing. Well, that luck ran out on the RTW trip. If you've been reading this blog, you know I managed to make a mistake that caused us to miss our very first flight of the trip. That cost us quite a bit, because we had to buy a walk-up airfare at the airport. And unfortunately, stupidity is not covered by travel insurance.

Speaking of travel insurance, here's how our situation played out. Last fall, I considered buying full travel insurance coverage, meaning trip cancellation/interruption insurance and medical coverage. I quickly discovered that it was difficult to get a policy to cover a 72-day trip. The few policies I found (through insuremytrip.com) were also wildly expensive. So I sat down and thought about what I really needed.

First I thought about what would happen if we suddenly had to cancel our trip or cut it short, which is what trip cancellation/interruption insurance covers. Most of our hotel reservations would be refundable up until just a few days prior to check-in, because I had deliberately booked rates that allowed changes and cancellations. In fact, only the two stays we had booked for vineyard cottages in the Barossa Valley and Marlborough wine regions would not be fully refundable. So it wasn't likely that we'd be in danger of losing much money on hotel deposits. (Now, if we'd been traveling on a vacation package or a cruise, trip cancellation insurance would have been critical, because you pay for those upfront, and if you have to cancel or change your plans at the last minute, you just lose all that money, unless you have insurance.)

Also, unlike the typical discounted round-trip airfare, which is quite inflexible, RTW air tickets are designed for relative flexibility. (That's why they are very popular with college kids backpacking around the world -- in the much cheaper Coach version, of course.) I realized that if we needed to change our flights, we'd only have to pay a relatively small change penalty, there would be no last-minute fare penalty, and getting seats should be no problem. Thus, trip cancellation/interruption insurance didn't seem really critical.

That left me with the issue of medical coverage. We are members of MedjetAssist, which is a program that provides medical evacuation by private jet from anywhere in the world if you require hospitalization. That is much better than standard travel medical insurance, which will only pay for evacuation if the insurance company deems it necessary. With Medjet, if you're in the hospital and you want to go home, they will transport you, as long as you're stable enough to fly. Medjet is not, strictly speaking, insurance - it's a private program for which you pay an annual fee of a few hundred dollars.

So we didn't need medical evacuation insurance. That left travel medical insurance - in other words, coverage for medical care if one of us should have an illness or accident during the trip. I double-checked our regular medical insurance and determined that it would only cover limited emergency care outside the US. If we sprained an ankle or got the flu, that wouldn't be covered. So for $370 I ended up buying a two-month travel medical policy that would cover the dates we'd actually be outside the US. It covered up to $250,000 of medical expenses, with a $250 deductible.

As it turned out, I wasn't hospitalized and I could just barely manage the long-haul flights necessary to get home. (Here's where being in First Class was a complete godsend, because I could lie down during the flights.) Changing our flights was fairly painless, though because it was a RTW ticket, we had to come home from Sydney the long way around. It would have been a lot faster to fly straight to Los Angeles, but that would have meant doubling back across the Pacific, which is not allowed by the RTW ticket rules. So we had to go home via Bangkok and London. Fortunately I was well enough to manage it. And frankly, if I had been much worse off, I probably would have been in a hospital bed, in which case we'd have used Medjet to get me home.

While I'm sad about missing the other planned stops on our trip, at least I'm not upset about the cost of our plane tickets. The very first leg of our trip, if purchased separately, would have cost more than the entire price of our RTW tickets, so we were already ahead of the game at the beginning. Yes, it would have been nice to get even more value from the tickets, but that's life. We had to pay a reissue fee of about $300 to change our ticket, but that wasn't too bad, all things considered.

Our travel medical policy should pay for the over $1400 in medical expenses I incurred during our trip, less the $250 deductible. So assuming that happens, it was worth buying.

We lost half the cost of one of the vineyard cottages and the full cost of the other - a total of about $1000. We were able to cancel all of our other hotel reservations in time to avoid penalties. We also lost some prepaid European train fares amounting to about $700. In hindsight, I made two mistakes with the train tickets. First, on such a long trip I should not have bought nonrefundable tickets. (They were nearly half the price of the flexible tickets, and I succumbed to temptation.) Second, it really wasn't necessary to buy those tickets so far in advance. Since we were traveling in the off-season, I could have waited to buy the tickets in Spain and France. Yes, it would have been a little more trouble and the tickets would have cost a bit more at the last minute, but I would have had a lot more flexibility. Live and learn.

If I had purchased trip interruption insurance, it's possible that, with a doctor's note, I could have been reimbursed the approximately $2000 we were out for air ticket change fees, lost accommodation deposits and nonrefundable train tickets, but after paying the high cost of the insurance (which as I recall was about $900 for such a long trip) and the deductible (which I think would have been about $250), I wouldn't have been all that much ahead.

In any case, I'm glad to be home and glad to be feeling much better!

There is yet another reason to yearn for the privilege of flying Virgin America (besides seat back video systems). Now, first class passengers have access to the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse at San Francisco for $40. At first blush that doesn't seem like all that great a deal but we've been in that Clubhouse and it's pretty nice. And in a couple of hours I bet I could put away enough beer and comestibles to put a healthy dent in $40 and be a lot more comfortable to boot.

This is quite a step up from the current situation where we access American Airlines lounges when we have a first class ticket and show our Platinum Amex card. There's actually one or two airports where even this free access isn't worth it in our opinion. American Airlines lounges are pretty marginal in a lot of places. And sometimes they're too far from our gate so we just don't bother going to them.

Oh, well. Still waiting on Virgin to get their act together and drop some flights into Denver International. If they ever do, I very probably will be a devoted and slavish adherent to their corporate cult. I for one, welcome the opportunity to worship our frequent flyer overlord, Sir Richard Branson.

I had to rewrite this article after I lost the original in an unfortunate demonstration of both my inability to remember to back up files and Vista's inability to function adequately as a desktop operating system. I've had to reconstruct the article from memory. And my memory is faulty and failing. So here goes.

We flew from Bangkok to Tokyo, Japan on Japan Air Lines (JAL). Our first mistake was opting for a night flight. Our second mistake was opting for a night flight even though the flight itself was only five hours long. We thought we'd settle into quiet slumber in the first class seats on JAL and arrive in Tokyo refreshed and ready to face a new day. However, we didn't sleep, for reasons we can't quite fathom, and arrived in Tokyo not ready to face the day, but instead yearning desperately for a nice soft bed. But that was not to be. It's Japan - they have rules. First rule, do not check into your hotel till 3:00pm, do not collect room key and go to room and fall into bed till 3:00pm. Do not pass Go. You can play Go though.

So we exchanged some cash, hit an ATM, and Mary picked up the phone rental she had ordered from a booth at Tokyo Narita airport. (Mary's Blackberry wouldn't work at all in Japan, even with roaming so we rented a phone that we could switch her SIMM chip into and thus get calls in Japan. Technology! As it turned out, practically all we did get while we were in Japan was lots and lots of text messages that were all gibberish. We never did figure what that was all about.)

Our chores completed, we then caught the Limo Bus to the Ambassador Hotel at Tokyo Disney Resort. Strangely enough, since our last visit the seats have been enlarged. This is the only logical explanation as we have most definitely not gotten smaller, but we fit into the seats with only a bare minimum of Vaseline applied. Mary got to nap on the way out to the hotel but I, paranoid as usual, was sure that if I fell asleep we'd end up somewhere in the far north of Japan or possibly sold to North Korean cigarette smugglers or something. So I stayed awake for the hour long trip to the parks. By the way, for those new to Tokyo, the Limo Bus is a service that uses tour buses to take passengers to various hotels in the Tokyo metropolitan area. It's very convenient, especially when you have a fair amount of luggage. It's much easier than using the trains and quite a bit cheaper than a taxi.

We finally arrived at Tokyo Disney, where we were dropped off right at our hotel. We put our bags into storage and while Mary got the passes to the parks, I got the monorail passes. And it turns out we never used the monorail because it doesn't actually stop at our hotel - or any other for that matter. It just goes in a big circle around both of the parks, with a couple of random other stops that aren't actually AT any of the hotels. You have to take a shuttle bus to the monorail stops. We'd have to walk further to the nearest station to catch the monorail then we would have to just catch a shuttle to the park and walk to the entrance. So we did that.

I'll have an article on Tokyo Disney to post on MouseSavers.com soon, but in the meantime you can check out our observations from several years ago which are largely still relevant, as not much has changed in the intervening period. Which is going to make my follow up article nice and short and simple. Good for me!

So we wandered around Tokyo Disney all day, though towards the end our pace was not unlike that of marathon runners that gave the sport up several decades and a couple of thousand packs of cigarettes ago and then decided to run the Boston marathon because there weren't any good movies playing that weekend. The preceding passage can be construed as a fairly accurate depiction of our mental processes at that point - mostly free association with random whining. I think we both fell asleep during the five minute shuttle ride from the park to the hotel but we awoke just long enough to get checked in and collapse into our room. We slept, or more accurately entered a state of general unconsciousness, for five or six hours, awaking just long enough to pick at some food and then go back to bed. Some more sleep. When we awoke the next morning around 10 o'clock we were ready to face a new day. Right after a nap. Face it, we're not young anymore. Thirty-six hours without sleep tears us up. Completely.

Anyway, after a couple of days sampling the extreme funness that is Tokyo Disney, we departed to check out parts of Japan that don't have Disney characters and merchandising opportunities. Finding this impossible, we decided to just go and visit Kyoto because we heard a rumor that they had temples and castles and stuff.

Mary got us tickets on the Shinkansen, which is the Japanese bullet train. It was massively cool. The ride is so smooth it's hard to believe that you're speeding along at 300km/hour (185 mph). Mary's research established that since the trip took three hours or so from Tokyo to Kyoto, many people pick up a bento box to eat on the train. Think picnic lunch, sans potato chips but cunningly packaged in wood boxes with many small compartments containing many squiggly bits that defy identification and some outright odd things that Americans might consider going beyond the pale, at least for lunch stuff. But then what do I know, some people in the States eat head cheese or much worse, peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwiches. So if the Japanese want to eat cold chewy octopus tentacles for lunch - I say go for it. And they weren't bad. I wouldn't want to choke down the tentacles on a hangover, but otherwise it was no stranger than the aforementioned fluffer nutter sandwich.

Mary got a vegetarian bento and I went with the extra large bento box o' bounty. I'd say that fully 30% of my lunch was a mystery (or as Mary put it, a culinary adventure) while Mary felt that hers only had a 20% mystery ratio. We pretty much just poked at the cold gelatinous items to see if they wiggled like Jello and then left them alone. It was an interesting lunch and I liked most of what I ate. I did end up disposing of a few items in the Kyoto train station but then I usually end up tossing something from Western box lunches, too, so it's pretty much a wash. Even with octopus tentacles.

After debarking at the Kyoto train station we took a taxi to our hotel, the Hyatt Regency Kyoto. For informational purposes we can confirm that taxis outside Tokyo also have lace doilies on the seat backs. Our hotel was surprisingly nice. As we drove up, the façade looked pretty much like every Midwestern Ramada Inn I've ever seen, but the interior was beautiful. Very spare and clean and Japanese. We relaxed and had dinner in the hotel, which we found was quite well endowed with French tourists. As an aside, we encountered a lot of French tourists all through our travels through Asia. I don't know why; from prior experience I always assumed that most of them went primarily to former or current French possessions like Martinique or Tahiti. Perhaps I just haven't been that observant. Or possibly the recent strength of the Euro has resulted in more French citizens wandering the globe.

We had a full day to wander around Kyoto and we got a smidgen of a taste of the city by visiting one of the more prominent temples, as well as the cultural history museum and generally just wandering around. For a while. A pretty short while. It was cold. Not sub-zero Colorado cold, which is dry and pleasant (or as pleasant as something that is described as sub-zero can be). No, Japan has bone penetratingly, soul crushingly, deep seated cold. The type that settles in and makes you feel like you'll never be warm again after just fifteen minutes outdoors. And it was still only in the low forties or upper thirties. We weren't used to it and it was difficult to get acclimated after the last several years in Colorado. I didn't think it was possible for it to be so great a difference, but there you go.

Anyway, we did the wandering and sightseeing thing and enjoyed it a lot. We wish we had more time, since there are a lot of other sights to see. Maybe someday when it's a little warmer.

Our trip back to Tokyo on the Shinkansen was as smooth and trouble free as the trip out to Kyoto. This time, though, we decided to skip the bento boxes and the squiggly bits. We had a big breakfast in the hotel instead. In lieu of lunch we tried some Japanese snack foods to see if they had improved since our last foray several years ago. I can safely say that Japanese snacks have not gotten any better in the interim. As a matter of fact, they may have gone downhill, hard as this may be to believe. Mary got me one thing that might be the vilest thing I have ever tried, some sort of marinated chicken in a pouch that was uncommonly disgusting. So disgusting that I have a hard time envisioning anyone, no matter how bad a case of the munchies they might have, ever managing to choke this stuff down. Did I mention it was horrible?

We had decided to stay again at the Park Hyatt Tokyo for our last three nights. We had stayed at the Hyatt during our first visit to Japan several years ago. For fans of the movie Lost in Translation, this is the hotel depicted in the film. Although it's a beautiful hotel, it does suffer from being a little out of the way, located in a complex of office high rises. On the other hand, since the rooms start at the 41^st floor and go up from there, the views are pretty awesome, especially at night.

After arrival we took it easy, as Mary was feeling a little under the weather, and had a quiet dinner down in the basement of the building, where there are a plethora of restaurants serving pretty much everything one could desire as far as Japanese cooking is concerned. I was intrigued by the Snacks And A Shot restaurant, but Mary nixed my plans to check it out. Sometimes she can be a bit of a stick in the mud. We settled on some Indian food in a place where we'd eaten before, which was pretty good and decently priced. And it was a break from Japanese food, which we like a lot, but every once in a while you just want something where you can identify everything you're eating. Just as a change of pace.

Of course the following night we decided to try a katsu restaurant, and this turned out to have several farcical elements. Ever since our first visit to Japan I had vowed to try a katsu restaurant, though until recently I was unaware what the Japanese appellation was, instead referring to them as the pork cutlets restaurants. Every where we went in Japan - there they were, with their enticing plastic displays offering several variations on pork cutlets that were deep fried and then sliced. Mary, although she's generally opposed to fried foods, finally agreed to try one. The particular restaurant we picked represented a bit of a problem, as there no waiters who spoke English. We figured this wasn't a huge hurdle as they had nicely laminated menus with pictures of the various dishes. However, since everything in the pictures was fried, it was a little difficult to tell what the items were. As Mary discovered, a fried chicken strip (which is what she thought she was ordering) looks very similar in a photo to a fried oyster (which is what she got).

The meals came in "sets" with several courses like a salad and stuff. One of the courses, or so I thought, was a nearly raw (possibly slightly poached) egg in a small cup with seaweed shreds and a couple of other ingredients that I wasn't quite sure of. I promptly stirred the egg together with the other ingredients and started trying to eat it, though it was a challenge with chopsticks as it had the consistency of a thick soup. When our cutlets arrived, the waiter indicated that the bowl with the egg and other items was actually used for dipping the cutlet slices in, along with a scoop or two of what could only have been Worcestershire sauce that was in a large crock on the table. I imagine the staff had a pretty good laugh over the Westerner eating the Japanese equivalent of a bowl of ketchup. Ah, well. The pork cutlets, on the other hand, were juicy and tasty and pretty much everything one could hope for in a pork cutlet. It's not a high bar.

On our last day in Japan, Mary was feeling much better, so we decided we'd go and spend the entire day jetting around the city and hitting a couple of places we'd never been to before, as well as some favorites like Harajuku and the Ginza. Alas, it was not to be. Tokyo was hit with a very unusual snow storm that lasted all day. It was pretty impressive and snarled up all the traffic in the city, though fortunately it was a Sunday. From our hotel there was a four block walk over to the entrance of a pedestrian subway that would allow us to walk under cover for the rest of the trip to Shinjuku station, the closest subway station to our hotel. Just those four blocks or so in the open got us fairly wet, as the snow was turning to a lot of slush. It soon became obvious that a lot of places weren't open, it being a Sunday and all, and those that were didn't have things like snow shovels or sand or salt, at least from what we saw.

So we decided to spend the rest of the day in the comfort of the subterranean tunnels that led through the Shinjuku area and connected to all the major department stores. As you can tell from our previous visit, we love Japanese department stores. They are wonderful emporiums full of pretty much every thing one could desire and lots of stuff you never knew you needed. Or wanted, either. Mary did a little shopping for baby things for a friend who is preggers and apparently doesn't have enough Hello Kitty stuff. Or giant fighting robot models (my contribution). We also love to buy things in Japan because they wrap them so nicely.

On our last morning we were scheduled to depart from the hotel pretty early in the morning. The plan was to take the Limo Bus back to the airport. As it turned out, the hotel concierge gave us a call around dawn to warn us that due to the snow, which continued late into the night before, the highways were pretty much shut down. No Limo Bus. This left us with really only one option - we had to take a train out to Narita airport. We had never done this, for the simple reason that most Japanese train and subway stations (and for the most part these are the same thing) do not have many escalators or elevators, but do have many stairs. Dragging our luggage (one large bag, one carry-on and a day bag each) up and down interminable flights of stairs is not my idea of fun. The drinking of beers and the eating of indigenous snack foods while watching and attempting to understand local television programming is my idea of fun.

In any case, staying at a five star hotel really paid off in this situation. The concierge, through whom we had originally arranged the Limo Bus pick-up, contacted us when the service was cancelled and recommended the Narita Express train, which fortunately for us departed from nearby Shinjuku station, so we wouldn't have to make a transfer. And they arranged a taxi to take us to the station (the city streets were marginally clear) and then one of the hotel staff helped us get tickets and assisted us with the bags, taking us all the way onto the platform and staying with us until the train actually departed.

As it turned out, we made the train with literally no more than a couple of minutes to spare. Without the Hyatt staff's help, we would definitely have missed the train and we'd have had to wait an hour till the next. Based on the delays we experienced on our train, the later one probably wouldn't have gotten us to the airport on time to make our flight.

If you have minimal luggage I would recommend the Narita Express. However, unlike its namesakes in London, the Heathrow Express and Gatwick Express, the trains don't run nearly as often. Narita Express runs around once an hour, so it's not great unless your timing is superb or unless you like hanging out in train platforms. We know we do. Still it is convenient and cheap, even cheaper than the Limo Bus, but then again it doesn't drop you right off at your hotel either.

Our flight to Singapore was on Cathay Airlines and we were happy to be back. Unfortunately the plane in use on this leg was older equipment without the newer suites. In fact the older Cathay equipment was pretty much equivalent to the JAL seats. The food was good, as was the service, and we did actually get a bit more sleep than on the leg to Japan, as we had been awakened early and the whole rushing to the train station and stress inherent in all the dashing about made us pretty fatigued by the time we settled in to our seats. The leg to Singapore was longer, too, so there was a bit more time for us to relax and get a bit of a snooze.

So it's time for a little check on how technology is impacting our trip, for good or ill, at the halfway point. So far, since the meltdown early in the trip, we've had relatively few problems. Well, relatively few problems with products that are not produced by Microsoft.

The HP Pavilion laptop I got to replace the Dell did have a burp a couple of days ago but the issue was Vista again and not the laptop itself. During download of some Microsoft updates, the computer decided to go into a loop that I couldn't get out of, even with multiple reboots. We finally had to do a system restore. A couple of weeks of articles were lost but that's partially my fault for not backing up: something I've gotten out of the habit of doing but Vista is encouraging me to relearn. If I buy any computers over the next couple of years I'm going to be sure and get them installed with XP as Vista is frankly a steaming pile of offal. Or maybe I'll even buy a Mac.

In any case, I like the laptop when I'm not having problems with the operating system and am pleased with it. Mary is also pleased with her old Blackberry replacing the newer phone. It works consistently and what more can you ask for?

One item that I got kind of on the spur of the moment was a Cruzer thumb drive from Scandisk. This was a replacement for a thumb drive that took a little submersible trip through the washing machine, from which it emerged a little the worse for wear. The drive has been a real lifesaver for transferring files from the Dell to the HP laptop and transferring photo files to Mary's notebook.

And to top if off, the thumb drive came with a copy of Skype preinstalled, which we've put to quite a bit of use. We've spent a total of about 6 hours on the phone to people back in the States and this has cost us a grand total of $8 US. Skype isn't a replacement for a cell phone, since you can't receive incoming calls easily, but in times and places where we're settled in and have access to the Internet, we can use the program and our laptops to call pretty much anyone for around 2 cents a minute, versus an average of $2 per minute for international cell phone calls. Mary estimates that this has saved us over $700 in cell phone bills.

Our biggest happy has been with our Sony Reader digital books. These have worked out better than we hoped. Basically, the Reader is a display device that can store around 160 or so books in a digital format on the Reader itself and then as many more as one would care for on a computer. The software operates much like iTunes, in that you access the Sony site or others and download digital books onto the computer and then sync with the Reader. Overall the Reader has been pretty easy to use; there are two different sets of buttons for turning the pages, depending on how you like to hold the Reader. There's also a menu button, buttons 0-9 for entering page numbers and moving through chapters, and a button to zoom the text size up or down. The display is very similar to that of an actual book; since there is no backlighting, one needs good light to read. The Reader is around the size of a trade paperback, though considerably thinner.

The really nice thing is that on a long trip like the one on which we are currently involved, we'd usually read something like 20-30 books each. Yes, we read a lot. We'd have needed another suitcase just to carry the books. And frankly, my back would never manage the abuse (I am getting on in years, as I like to tell Mary now and then, or three to four times a day). Now, it all fits in the palm of our hands. We can recharge the Readers in an amazingly short time by just connecting them up to a laptop using a USB cable. On a full charge it seems like the Reader will go maybe 10-12 hours of solid use.

Not long after we got the Reader, the Kindle from Amazon came out. We took a bit of a look at it but decided against it. The one big advantage the Kindle has over the Reader is a keyboard, which can be used to take notes or for a rudimentary web surfing capability. But when it comes right down to it I can't remember the last time I took notes in the margin of a book - not since college at least. The web surfing is something I have my laptop for and it shows color and graphics, so the Kindle isn't really something I'm going to need for that. And the ability to download books on the fly using cell phone networks was a non-starter with us since we were going mostly places where American cell phone networks don't exist - like the rest of the world in fact. All in all, the Kindle seems like a pretty decent product but we like the fact that the Reader really only does one thing. I'd even be happy if they took out the ability to play music, since I don't intend on using that, though Mary says she might use hers for audio books.

So as you can see, we like our Readers. I think Mary sleeps with hers under the pillow. She's certainly given hers a more endearing nickname than she gave me. Mary has filled hers up with the collected works of Jane Austen and such while I've gone with the collected space operas of various authors of the 30's and 40's. To each their own.

On one last issue - cost. I have to say that the Reader is not going to save anyone a bunch of cash. First of all, the Reader costs around $300 a pop. The digital format of the books costs less than the paper version, but not a whole lot less. If you buy a steady diet of mysteries, say, then it is possible to save money over the long run, but it will take two to three hundred books. On the other hand, the Reader can be used with files in several formats - not just the proprietary one from Sony - and so one can download books from sites like Project Gutenberg for free.

One advantage the Kindle does have out of the blocks is that Amazon offers around 80,000 or so books for download, while Sony is much lower at 25,000. It would be nice if Amazon started stocking digital books in a variety of formats, but I'm not sure what their business model is - do they intend on making money on the Kindle itself or primarily on the books they sell?

The check-in procedure, at least in Bangkok, was pretty extraordinary. The First Class check-in desk was ultra high tech and cool - something one would normally expect to see on Star Trek, one of the good series, not Voyager or anything like that. After we were checked, tabulated, vetted, and searched we were escorted to Passport Control by one of the agents. Although there were fairly good sized lines at all of the desks there was none at the one labeled Diplomatic and VIP's. And that's just where we were escorted to. I guess it's official. Mary's a VIP and I'm honored to be her own personal flunky. Mom would be so proud. Needless to say, Mary was a little uncomfortable but I decided to do my best to give off VIP vibes.

After scooting through Passport Control the agent continued to escort us to the Sakura Lounge, JAL's lounge in the Bangkok airport. We were led to a private room, which turned out to be rather nice as the main lounge permits smoking everywhere. And since most of the clientele is Japanese, the lounge was a bit smoky, kind of like the Pacific Ocean is a bit wet. We relaxed there until our flight was called and then proceeded to the gate, going through security on our way.

Boarding was efficient and quick. Again, we weren't called till after the majority of the other passengers had boarded. JAL's First Class cabin is on the lower level and front of the 747. My only complaint with this location is that the nose gear is directly under the cabin and when it deploys and is stowed it's incredibly noisy. Scary sounding noisy. Fortunately, as a former aerospace engineer I was pretty confident that the screeching, scraping and thumping noises was not the result of some essential piece of aircraft structure breaking off and sending us all to our doom. But it sounds a lot like it.

The seats on JAL were not our favorite. First, they're obviously designed for their primary customer, small Japanese men. They're a little too narrow to be really comfortable for us. And unlike the first class seats on Cathay, Virgin, or British Airlines, there are no easy to reach pockets for storing essentials like magazines, water bottles and Dramamine. In fact, since the seats have so much leg room, in order to reach the pocket in the back of the seat in front of you, you have to unbuckle your seat belt and bend way forward, unless you have unusually long, apelike arms.

On the other hand, the seats do recline fully and they supply a nice blanket for long flights to sleep under. On the other, other hand (we're up to three - are you keeping count?), the controls for the seat back recline and foot rest are located on the inside of the arm rest. This positioning, coupled with our beefy thighs, produced two fun incidents. In the first, Mary needed to get up from her seat to visit the little girl's room. As she started scooting forward in the seat her thigh would hit the switch raising the footrest. At which point Mary was stuck and couldn't get out. So she held the switch down and retracted the footrest. She then started to inch forward at which point the switch was pressed down, footrest came up, and so on and so on. As Mary said it was quite a bit like an I Love Lucy episode.

In our second case of seat mayhem, I scooted forward to get something out of the pocket in the seat back ahead of me. While I was doing that I unknowingly hit the switch to drop the back down into the fully reclined position. When I sat back down I fell backwards and Mary's view of me consisted of a pair of legs pointing pretty much straight up. From this point onwards we considered our seats out to get us and acted accordingly.

Our first flight on JAL was just under 6 hours from Bangkok to Toyko-Narita Airport. Since the flight left at 11:00pm Bangkok time and we'd be going east through two time zones that meant that we'd arrive in Tokyo very early in the morning - around 5:00am. For some reason, neither of us could really get much sleep, I think because the seats, as previously mentioned, are a little narrow and the seat cushions a little too hard. And by this point we were scared that they'd try and fold us into a origami crane or something. So we arrived in Tokyo excited but kind of tired.

There was a snack served on board shortly after we took off but both of us decided to go with dozing rather than eating. However, since we weren't all that successful even at that, we both opted for a full Japanese breakfast before landing. It was....interesting. I liked it, Mary was a little less enthusiastic. The main entrée is a piece of broiled fish which I can see no problem with for a breakfast item. The egg omelet pieces (solid rectangles of cooked egg) were okay though they're frequently served cold, not exactly my cup of tea. The other items on the breakfast tray were pretty hit and miss. I always like a bowl of miso soup, but pickles, one of my favorite things in the world, just don't excite me first thing in the morning. Still and all, it was interesting and I'm glad to have tried it.

Service was pretty omnipresent. Cabin crew seemed to circulate through the first class cabin frequently, like every fifteen minutes or so, unlike domestic flight attendants who disappear after meal service until shortly before landing. If the JAL flight attendants catch you awake they immediately begin to ply you with snacks, drinks, shoulder rubs, that kind of thing. It's better to either feign sleep if you don't want to be bothered or to put on the headphones and watch a movie or something. By the way, I'm kidding about the shoulder rubs, I think. I didn't actually ask for one and wonder what would happen if I did?

Landing and disembarkation were relatively quick. Japan now is requiring all visitors to undergo fingerprinting and a photo on entry. But it's all electronic and totally non-invasive so no big deal. It helps that we were one of the first flights in that morning so the airport was very uncrowded.

Overall, we'd rate JAL below Cathay and Virgin and possibly roughly equivalent to British Air (though to be honest we've never sampled First Class on British Air and the Business Class we did use once was around five years ago). We'll have a better feel for that in a few weeks when we do take a BA First Class flight. The JAL service was on par or maybe even slightly better than Cathay's and a bit better than the British carriers. And as compared to domestic American carriers, well, it's not even in the same space-time continuum.

The main drawback with JAL is that their seats, while offering gobs of leg room, are not of a standard to compete with Cathay or Virgin (or as far as we can tell from others' opinions, Singapore Airline). If these were updated to a more modern configuration I think they'd be giving Cathay (our new Gold Standard) a run for their money.

We arrived on a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong. Bangkok International Suvarnabhumi Airport is new and very nice. According to articles we saw later there are some maintenance issues, apparently, but we didn't notice anything untoward. We arrived in the middle of a pack o' planes and immigration was a little jammed up but we still got though in around 20-30 minutes, grabbed our bags and entered the main terminal where representatives from the Sukhothai, our hotel in Bangkok, were waiting to meet us. I'm guessing that they maintain a desk there in the airport as they had two people to take our bags and place them in the car that was waiting outside. When we left a few days later they had someone meet our car when we arrived at the airport and take the bags right into the terminal to the JAL desk. He then stayed with us till we entered Passport Control. That's service.

The trip to the hotel was relaxing enough on the highway, but when we got on the city streets - wow! Bangkok is the most congested city I've ever seen. It's insane. From stuff I've seen, like on Amazing Race, India probably has Bangkok all beat to hell in the congestion sweepstakes, but my depth perception impaired self found Bangkok quite scary enough, thank you very much.

Our hotel, which I'll write up in a little more detail later, was beautiful. Lots of ponds and alcoves with statues and brick tupas or whatever they're called. I liked it a lot. And again the service - weee!

We spent the majority of our time while we were in Bangkok using a local guide service (Trails of Indochina) to take us around. One look at the traffic and the layout of Bangkok and we're pretty happy we did. In essence the guide service gave us our own personal guide and a van with a driver for the two days and an itinerary for both days that hit a lot of highlights in and outside the city.

For instance, the first day we visited the foremost Buddist temple in Bangkok, which as our guide pointed out, was just one of the total of 411 temples, just in the city alone. Don't ask about the country as a whole - it's something in the tens of thousands. Thais do seem to like their temples. After touring a couple or three I can see why. The temples are frequently beautiful, impressive, monumental, outlandish, and usually all of the above. Having a guide along was great as she taught us some basics of how to behave in the temple (drinking beer and rubbing the monks' bald heads, especially if you're a woman, seems to be frowned on - go figure).

After the first temple, there was a second, a third, a fourth, and somewhere around sixty two we begged for mercy. Well, not really. We went to a total of two temples and begged off on a third, not because we didn't want to see it but because at the point at which we were offered the opportunity to see it, the daylight was waning and we'd already lost 20% of our body weight through perspiration. And we were bushed.

After the temples we had lunch, arranged by the tour company at a restaurant on the river somewhere in town. We're not sure where, we were just passengers. From the appearances though I'd say this was a restaurant that had arranged with a fair number of other tour companies to bring their clientele there. The food was considerably toned down, though we told our guide we liked things spicy. It was apparent that she was fairly surprised and not convinced about our ability to handle the real stuff. The lunch was quite flavorful but not nearly as spicy as Thai food we've consumed elsewhere. She compromised and had the restaurant add a spicier beef dish to our lunch, I'm relatively sure in order to test us. We passed. The lunch, by the way, was enormous. Either they looked at us and said - "oh, those people can eat a lot" or they think all Americans can eat a lot. We tried, but even we, tried and true trenchermen that we were, could not eat everything they gave us.

After lunch, groaning in body if not in mind, we toured some markets, specifically flower markets where we watched them making flower garlands called Phuang Malai or something like that. There's lots of other stuff they make too, which was pretty intriguing, at least Mary thought so. I enjoyed it though it's not exactly alligator wrestling.

To top off the day we took a cruise along the Chao Phraya river, the main waterway through the center of Bangkok and back through a lot of the canals, along which live an intriguing collection of people. I'm not sure what the boat we used was called, but they featured prominently in a James Bond movie of my youth, Man With The Golden Gun. Take one river canoe, the shallower the draft the better, and mount a automobile motor on the back using a very long shaft with a propeller on the end to propel the boat. If at all possible, try not to muffle the exhaust too much as this just lessens the effect. It's great! We had a blast shooting up and down the river and back through the canals. Sure we were slightly deaf afterwards, but it was great!

Life along the canals is very emblematic of Bangkok in general. There are tumbledown shacks that seem like they would need only the wake of an boat just fractionally larger than our own to send them crashing down into the canal, side by side with mansions that wouldn't be out of place on a Palm Beach waterway. It's kind of interesting to see it now. I imagine in a decade or two, if the economic trends continue for Asia as they are, many of the hovels will be torn down and replaced with condos. It'll be cleaner but not as interesting.

The second day started with a long drive out to the famous floating markets in Damnoen Saduak. Here again we got our own boat with oversize engine though slightly smaller then the one the previous day - it probably came from a compact car. The use of the large engines bemused us greatly as the canals are narrow enough and wind so much that no one can get any real speed up before they have to throttle down. Though they do sound impressive. It was interesting to see the market with lots of stuff being sold from shops lining the canals (mostly tourist junk) as well as the boats selling foodstuffs and fruits and vegetables. Our guide bought a number of things to sample including bananas (a variety our guide called vitamin bananas) coated with corn starch and flour with sesame seeds and fried - delicious, and I don't even normally like bananas. Mary only got a couple of pieces but that was because she was sitting all the way in the front of the boat, at least a foot and half away. Too bad! We also sampled some fruit of various types that we've mostly never seen before. All were quite good.

After the market we drove back to town to visit two famous sites, the Teak Palace and the Jim Thompson house. The Palace was a residence of the Thai royal family built early in the last century using European architectural techniques and Thai materials. It's quite attractive and because it's almost entirely made of wood, more interesting than a lot of the stone edifices that European royalty like to build for themselves. As a change of pace anyhow.

The Jim Thompson house was the abode of an American ex-OSS officer who came back and settled in Thailand after WWII. He became enamored with the Thai silk industry and from the accounts pretty much singlehandedly renovated the industry and made the products popular throughout the rest of the world. Along with that he also liked Thai art and sculpture and he took a number of Thai teak houses and combined them in Bangkok to make a singular residence for himself. The effect is quite stunning. When he disappeared during a trip to Malaysia during the Sixties his house and art collection were saved by a organization that preserved them and put them on display for greasy palmed tourists like ourselves. The gardens, the houses and the art works were certainly one of the highlights of the whole trip to Bangkok.

After we finished the Teak Palace tour we adjourned to a lunch counter for our noontime repast. We had told our guide that we would love to try some Thai street food but I think she was a little scared that we'd either contract something intestinal and highly resistant to antibiotics or that we were still making it up about liking spicy food. Or possibly she thought that what we ate in America that was called authentic Thai food was the same as calling KFC authentic pan fried chicken. So she compromised by taking us to something where we could sit down inside but the clientele was all Thai - no tourists. Then just to make sure she apparently told the cooks to go lightly on the peppers and stuff. Even so it was mighty spicy. So spicy that I did a real numbskull thing. Mary and I each ordered a dish. Mine turned out to be a bit spicier than hers but I was enjoying it. A lot. Then our guide brought a couple of other dishes for us to try, still convinced that because of our size, we would be ravenous if we did not eat the equivalent of a side of beef at each meal, and we might take it out by devouring the guide or something. In any case, when she brought the second set of dishes I looked over and said to myself - hmm, more food and ignored what she was saying about the dishes, specifically that the minced pork salad was really spicy. All I could see was a fresh, green, crisp salad with a tart dressing and some small pieces of pork. Perfect, I thought - something to cool the burning sensation I was experiencing after eating my first dish. But try as I might, no matter how much salad I ate, the burning didn't diminish: indeed, it got hotter and hotter. I drank my whole bottle of water. I drank a whole glass of iced coffee and coconut milk. I drank Mary's water. I was sweating profusely. When I pointed out to Mary that I just couldn't seem to cool my taste buds off she noted that it was no wonder. The salad that I was bolting down was incredibly spicy. My mouth was so cauterized that I didn't realize that each bite was increasing the pain and not giving me cooling relief. It took about an hour or so till my mouth quit feeling like the fiery pits of hell. But it all tasted very, very good.

Other observations about our time in Bangkok. The people seem to be genuinely pleasant and friendly. The food is very hot. Don't even think about driving in Bangkok, the traffic is insane. Basically one sits at an intersection until someone in the cross traffic leaves just the smallest hole in the flow and then the whole line of traffic you're in just bull their way into the street. Weirdly enough for a place with the densest and most incredibly volatile traffic I've ever seen there's little honking nor shouting, screaming or cursing. Maybe they keep it all inside.

We did use a tuk-tuk at one point which is a motorized trike which was cool. Though the benefits of them are marginal - they use up almost as much space as a compact car. One can get around using motorcycle taxis. They're basically motorcyclists that belong to one or more taxi companies (you can recognize them as they all wear orange vests) that will take passengers from point to point. You just get on the back of the bike and hold on. Pretty useful as the bikes and their riders have no discernible sense of fear nor mortality and they dart through and around and possibly over traffic everywhere. Mary wouldn't agree to try one as she seems to have this unreasonable fear of death or at least dismemberment, so maybe next time.

Bangkok as a tourist destination - wonderful. We suspected that we'd have a good time but I have to say we were bowled over by the amount of things to do and the food, and the scenery. We were less bowled over by the climate, hot and sticky 365 days a year seems to be the rule. And to be perfectly honest, the city is an amazing conglomeration of ultra-modern and ramshackle ruin side by side. As a matter of fact, one needs to understand that Bangkok is completely chaotic, pretty dirty, possibly somewhat insane, and utterly amazing. I'd encourage anyone to go and give it a go. And from the looks of it a lot of European tourists are doing just that.

We had a late flight out our last day so we opted for a late check out and then hung around the hotel and relaxed. Mary got a massage and pronounced it good. I had a few beers and a cigar in the bar and pronounced it good also. As we were wandering around the property Mary noticed that there was a YWCA next door. This coupled with the YMCA next to the Peninsula at our last stop l