travelwithattitude.com

Ten years ago someone other than Artie cut my hair. I appeared at my high school reunion looking like I was trying out for Moe in an amateur Three Stooges production. The time before that I visited in Wales with my hair so "stylishly short" that people called me "sonny." Someone other than Artie is about to cut my hair. If it were possible to be nervous after a two-hour Banyan Tree Spa Rejuvenation Treatment, I would be.

Saffron’s recipe for romance begins with a piano and trumpet playing Sinatra-era music, handfuls of white orchid sprays and one light-spangled Bangkok night. It blends in an urban luxe décor spiced by a bar of burnished copper, angular silvery crossbeams and panels of black glass studded with lights. On Banyan Tree Bangkok’s 59th floor, sit at a dining table or relax around a cocktail table and discover Saffron’s key ingredient gracious service and nouveau Thai cuisine. 

It’s cool on the River Terrace. Steam wafts from rich coffee to wake the senses before a steamy Thai day dulls them again. The Bangkok Post, propped up on the sugar bowl, is surrounded by cool papaya, sweet passion fruit and heliotrope orchids. Attention is drawn from the news, whatever it is, to the river as it revs up for the commute. 

A quiescent opening to a wind-down day. Over cool lemongrass tea, Anumba’s spa-cialists help you decide where and how to be pampered. Unlike most spas where the where is either here or there, Anumba's 25,000 square foot home has a where for most every mood. 

Then, the Oriental was nearly one hundred years old. It was all neoclassical white, tropical gardens, wicker chairs and slow rotating ceiling fans. It felt like something right out of Somerset Maugham or Joseph Conrad - and indeed it was - both authors frequented the Oriental in their time. 

Dawn. The cloud-mist disperses in layers. The bamboo-forested Mekong River valley emerges. It is cool, but not quiet at Thailand’s Anantara Golden Triangle. Birds babblers, mynahs and rollers carol, chortle and call. Insects hum and drum. Staff sets up the indoor-outdoor, Thai-French-Chinese-American buffet breakfast. Gardeners release water into the rice paddies and collect lemon grass for tea. Down at the elephant camp, the mahouts cut sugarcane into elephantine bites. 

Green rice seedlings shoot out of a small pot on the tables of Sala Mae Nam, Anantara’s Thai restaurant. It is an elegant whimsy, harbinger of delectables to follow. Fans hang from the teak and Thai-peaked ceiling gently stirring the night’s soft air. On the restaurant’s veranda, traditional Thai music drifts down from the lounge above and the night crickets chorus floats up from the jungle below. 

We met on an October dawn, the sweetest time at Anantara’s Elephant Camp. Yom is a 62-year-old Asian elephant. Like most female Elephas Maiximus, she has no tusks. She stands eight feet tall, weighs in at 4 tons and grazes through 250 pounds of fruits and veggies a day. To greet me, Yom swirls her trunk into an S curve, its tip floating in front of me to read my smell. Satisfied, she returns to scratching her belly, now careful to avoid hitting me on the fore swing. Gingerly, I feed her a banana.

The label says Doi Tong, like all the world’s great coffees, is 100% Arabica. It is shade-grown for the slow ripening that develops a coffee’s character and handpicked so only red-ripe coffee beans will get in the mix. Machines suck up green beans along with the ripe the equivalent of adding bitter tomatoes to tomato sauce.