And so, rather sooner than expected, we found ourselves back in Bangkok.

Back at Mo Chit New Bus Terminal.

Still apparently new.

We ordered a Grab.

This should have been simple.

It wasn’t.

We stood outside watching the little car on the app apparently getting closer and closer.

Then it stopped.

Very close.

According to the app, practically on top of us.

There was, however, no car.

We waited.

And waited some more.

Still no car.

Eventually the mystery was solved.

The driver was exactly where he was supposed to be.

We weren’t.

We had been standing in completely the wrong pickup area.

Once we relocated ourselves to the correct piece of Bangkok, driver and passengers were successfully reunited and we headed towards our new home.

Sadly, we weren’t returning to our beloved Phra Nakhon.

For some reason, finding somewhere decent to stay there for an entire month had proved almost impossible, so this time we were heading into completely unfamiliar territory.

Khet Phra Khanong.

As it turned out, this was hardly a hardship.

It was a rather smart part of Bangkok and our apartment was in a lovely modern building with everything we needed close by.

A very good supermarket.

The BTS.

Restaurants everywhere.

A night market.

A day market where we bought fresh fruit almost every day.

And people.

Lots and lots of people.

The area seemed to operate twenty-four hours a day.

Bangkok does not appear to have been informed that humans occasionally require sleep.

We settled into a routine.

Because our lifestyle involves moving around so often, whenever we stay somewhere for a while we try to live as normally as possible. Having an apartment for a month gave us the chance to work, shop, cook, find a local café and settle into something resembling an everyday routine.

Most days we worked for a while, wandered through the local markets, picked up groceries and stopped for coffee at a café up the road.

Nothing dramatic.

Just life.

Although, while all of this very ordinary life was going on, something much less ordinary was happening elsewhere.

The crisis in the Middle East escalated.

And suddenly that mattered rather a lot to us.

Our onward journey to Europe was booked with Qatar Airways, flying through Doha.

That route was now looking increasingly doubtful.

I generally avoid politics on this blog.

There are enough places on the internet devoted to arguing about politics, and this has always been primarily about travel.

But I will say this.

I find America’s repeated involvement in conflicts around the world increasingly difficult to watch. That is my personal view, and others will obviously disagree, but I was thoroughly sick of watching yet another part of the world slide towards war.

Politics aside, there was also the rather more immediate question of how exactly we were going to get to Europe.

For a few days we watched the situation and waited.

It quickly became obvious that our Qatar flight was unlikely to happen.

Sure enough, Qatar Airways cancelled it.

To their credit, the refund was straightforward and our money came back.

Which left us with our money.

But no flight.

Back to the drawing board.

We spent a few days looking at routes and airlines, trying to work out a sensible way of getting from Southeast Asia to Europe without heading anywhere near the developing trouble.

Eventually a new plan began to take shape.

China.

We would fly to Beijing.

Spend a few days there.

Then fly with Air China to Athens.

It was not remotely the route we had originally intended to take.

Which, by this stage of the journey, made it entirely normal.

And suddenly we had an unexpected few days in Beijing to look forward to.

In the meantime, Bangkok continued doing what Bangkok does.

Even an ordinary dinner could become something of an adventure.

One afternoon AP looked up from his tablet.

“I’ve found a great restaurant for dinner.”

I waited.

“Only half an hour’s walk. It looks good.”

Now, AP’s restaurant discoveries can go one of two ways.

Sometimes we arrive somewhere with crisp white tablecloths, polished glasses and waiters who appear to have attended several years of specialist training in the correct placement of cutlery.

Other times we find ourselves sitting on tiny plastic chairs in an alley eating something we cannot identify, served by somebody’s smiling grandmother.

Both can be excellent.

It is simply difficult to predict which version you are heading towards.

So that evening we set off.

The first part of the walk took us through the usual Bangkok madness.

Night-market stalls crowded the footpaths.

Food everywhere.

People everywhere.

Motorbikes everywhere.

Including, naturally, motorbikes travelling along bits of pavement that most reasonable people would consider reserved for pedestrians.

Traffic rules in Bangkok can occasionally feel more like suggestions.

We kept walking.

Eventually the route took us beneath a series of bridges towards a canal we needed to cross.

And then I stopped.

“Bloody hell.”

We had somehow walked straight out of the busy commercial streets and into one of Bangkok’s much poorer neighbourhoods.

Makeshift shacks leaned against one another beneath the bridges.

Shopping carts were piled high with possessions.

The ground was muddy and littered with rubbish, and there were people sleeping or sitting along the route who were very clearly having a much harder day than we were.

I looked at AP.

AP looked at the route.

He did not hesitate.

He headed off towards what appeared to be a bridge.

“Come on!” he called over his shoulder.

Of course he did.

I hurried after him, picking my way around puddles, mud and several mysterious floating objects I had absolutely no desire to investigate more closely.

Eventually we found the stairs to the bridge almost hidden behind some bushes.

We climbed up, passed several sleeping figures on the steps, crossed the canal and emerged back onto a normal Bangkok street on the other side.

AP glanced back in the direction we had come.

“Think we’ll get a Grab home.”

A rare but sensible decision.

And the restaurant?

After all that, it turned out to be a rather upmarket Italian place run by a smiling fellow from Puglia.

The food was exceptional.

The Negroni was declared almost as good as Tom’s.

And after everything we had just walked through, we did not get a Grab home.

We got the train.

Another day we went to the movies to see Project Hail Mary.

A story involving a man and an alien rock.

Apparently it rated very well.

I didn’t quite get it.

Still, an air-conditioned cinema in Bangkok is never an entirely wasted afternoon.

But mostly we simply lived.

And that is something people sometimes forget about long-term travel.

For us, this isn’t a holiday.

We don’t spend every day sightseeing.

We work.

We shop for groceries.

We buy fruit at the market.

We find a café we like and keep going back.

We cook.

We go to the movies.

We occasionally walk through somewhere that makes us question AP’s restaurant-selection methodology.

It is simply our life.

The difference is that, for this particular month, our life happened to be in Bangkok.

The month disappeared surprisingly quickly.

Before we knew it, the bags were packed again.

Apartment door closed.

Grab ordered.

Airport ahead.

First we were heading back to Kuala Lumpur.

There was still unfinished business there.

My teeth.

Naturally.

And after that, instead of flying west through Qatar as originally planned, we would be turning north.

Next stop: Beijing.

Another change of plan.

Another country.

And a route to Europe that, only a few weeks earlier, had not existed at all.