Eglise Saint-Germain-des-Pres is one of the oldest Churches in Paris and is located in the middle of one of the most exciting, interesting neighborhoods. Each time I visit Paris, I hop on the Metro and zoom over to the Church.

It’s always one of my first stops when I’m in town, primarily because I still, always light a candle there in memory of my Grandmother. I took the image shown above and tucked into the middle is one candle taller than the rest.

That one’s for you, Grandma.

On one of my visits, it was a cold, dark, and rainy day, and the Church steeple was covered in mist. I walked up to the steps and pushed against the closed front door. It was stuck, so I had to press a little harder to open the door.

Behind the door is a small vestibule before you actually enter the Church. I stood there for a moment before opening the second small door to enter. The door opened a couple of inches, and as I entered, I had one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

The Church was rather dark, and suddenly a ray of sunshine poured through one of the windows like a beacon directed to me. At almost the same moment, I heard an organist begin the opening notes of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” The music became louder and louder, with notes soaring to the very top of the Church.

I was transfixed. I thought to myself: “Wow, is this a sign, or what?”

I sat down for about 20 minutes while the organist continued the practice session. During that time the music started and stopped, and each time I was stunned that for that one session there were only three people in the Church.

The organist, my Grandmother, and me.

I

While we were waiting for our Thai permanent residence permits, we had to leave Thailand every 90 days and return as tourists. Then we waited another 90 days before leaving Thailand and returning with a new visitor’s temporary visa. Everyone had this process down pat and knew what to do. The Thai railway offered a route that was ideal for us (and our fellow travelers). There was a morning train that departed the Bangkok station at 0800 every day, reaching its final destination, Nong Khai, Thailand, in the afternoon. The same train left Nong Khai station a few hours later, giving all of us the chance to take a boat across the Mekong River to the Laotian side to have our passports stamped.

Once we got to the Laotian side, we climbed into one of several small taxis and sputtered off to Vientiane, where we arrived at the Lang Xang Hotel for lunch. Vientiane was once a French Colonial city, and even then, most people in the shops and hotels spoke French.

Everything about the restaurant, including the menus and food, was straight off a dusty Asian version of the Champs Élysées in Paris. Food was always great, and we washed everything down with cans of Beaujolais. Who knew? After lunch, we’d reverse the process, taking the taxi to the river and crossing back into Thailand at the ramshackle immigration booth, where we received our “new” entry stamp to stay in Thailand for another 90 days. We all reboarded the same train and wheezed our way back to the Bangkok train station some 12 hours later.

There were several variations of this immigration theme until we had our permanent visa, and we also took the Thai train several times from Bangkok to Butterworth (the arrival station for Penang, Malaysia) to repeat the process. This was just one more amazing experience in a long line of fantastic events.

We were so fortunate.

The first week our family lived in Bangkok we were staying at the then-new Siam Intercontinental Hotel until we found a place to live. We were sitting near their swimming pool on Saturday, and I was reading an article in the newspaper (The Bangkok Post) about places to visit near Bangkok.

I turned and said to my wife, “would you like to see the bridge on the River Kwai?” She immediately replied, “I’ve seen it in San Francisco,” meaning that she’d seen the movie made about building the bridge. After I explained that the actual bridge was, in fact, in Thailand near the town of Kanchanaburi, she grudgingly agreed to this expedition, and we packed up and blasted off in our tiny car, piloted by our local driver.

We were crammed into the car, and even though I was seated in front, it was a little frightening, to say the least. Suffice to say we had no idea where we were going or what to expect once we arrived. Until this point, the only things we’d seen in Thailand was the Bangkok airport and the highway leading to our hotel.

Within a mile of the hotel, we were blasting along a highway at what seemed to be 90 miles an hour, dodging trucks, cars, and motor-scooter taxis that darted around like daredevils. During the ride, our driver said very little, so we were left on our own to try to figure out where we were. We had a useless map (it was written in the Thai language of course), so we looked out the window as the countryside literally flew by.

After about 3 hours of our rocket ride, we arrived at the town near the River Kwai. We were thrilled to get out of the car, and when we looked around, the first thing we saw was a small, very well-kept war Cemetery and parts of the original bridge that was built by the prisoners of war.

We were the only people there, and we stood in the sunshine trying to visualize how that all came about and what happened to all of the men who built the bridge. We saw grave markers stretching into the distance and later learned more than 7,000 prisoners were buried there.

At that moment, we realized we were looking at something very, very powerful and it was a long way away from the movie that played when we were at home.

For the first time, we all understood we were living in Thailand, half-way around the world from San Francisco and that we weren’t tourists in another country; we were in our new home, anxious, excited and ready for the adventures ahead.