Just 18 months ago, I wrote about how this ordinary aircraft would change my life. And it did. This Boeing 747, or one very like it, took me on my first trip outside Australia, to Thailand. I’m about to be changed again. Dramatically.

I can’t tell you about my SEKRIT project just yet, except that it will expose me to things which are Very Different from anything I’ve experienced in my life so far. This morning, though, I’ve been re-reading the pieces I wrote when I returned from Thailand, each labelled “Unreliable Bangkok”.

You may like to re-read them with me now. I quite liked them at the time. If nothing else, the photographs are interesting. Perhaps.

• Unreliable Bangkok 1: Smell
• Unreliable Bangkok 2: Street
• Unreliable Bangkok 3: Bureaucracy
• Unreliable Bangkok 4: Lust
• Unreliable Bangkok 5: Polite
• Unreliable Bangkok 6: Haircut
• Unreliable Bangkok 7: East
• Unreliable Bangkok 8: Henge
• Unreliable Bangkok 9: Train

My SEKRIT project will also involve international travel, but not to Thailand. I’ll be posting every day while I’m away — because that’s the point of the trip! — and more reflective pieces upon my return. Stay tuned.

For just one day in Thailand, we got out of the 10-million-person wonder that is Bangkok and headed East to Rayong. We had lunch with ’Pong’s parents. Over a mountain of ultra-fresh seafood and a bottle of rum, we watched this view. Need I say more?