As we thought more about it, it became apparent that it had nothing to do with the canvas. The location. The destination. How could we have momentarily forgotten our purpose on earth? Nothing we ever did was about the destination. It is about value. The journey. The pleasant surprise. The spontaneity. Our journeys have always been a metaphor for life.

We went back to our roots. I mean 1999 roots, where theatre-of-the-absurd was a business model and Bond films inspired trip ideas. Our singular mission was to start a company to deliver the ultimate commodity: joy. To this day, it has nothing to do with destinations. At its most basic level, travel is merely about dates and destinations – but for us travel is the medium through which we create joy.

We zoomed in on innovation and Imagination. We needed to gain this group’s trust from day one, flight one, meal one, evening one. We had to send a message that we were about to unfurl the world as we see it with only them in mind.

A well known and well-to-do group of locals invited Smiling Albino to design an epic cross-country honeymoon adventure for 15 people just before Christmas. The areas they wanted to explore were some lesser-visited parts of Northern Thailand – areas that even well-traveled scallywags like us had scant experience with. This was going to be a challenge.

The group in question knew of the zany imagination and stubborn perfectionism Smiling Albino was known for. Like a deer stunned by oncoming headlights, we nervously took it on with a gut-wrenching feeling that it might just be the last trip we’d ever do. COVID has made every job in travel feel like this – shrouding the future like an opaque curtain. But COVID be damned – if this was to be our last trip, we were going to go out with a bang.

Logistically it was one of the most challenging missions we’d ever executed. With less than an hour to transform two railway cars into a glittering mobile fantasyland, then cue numerous performers, caterers, bartenders and fixers, all while choreographing guest arrival antics and mobilizing friends-of-guests boarding the train at different stations, the journey into escapism was a synchronous effort across multiple provinces and teams.

“Putting this experience together, it was a massive risk. An almost absurd and foolish risk considering the moving parts and need for perfection. We were doing something we had never done before, in places we had never hosted trips before, for a group of Thailand’s most influential people. This was a once-in-a-century gamble with so many elements beyond our control. To pull off the ultimate surprise in Bond-film like fashion, the cards were stacked against us with daunting expectations and pressure.”