How did we get inside the bottle?

BANGKOK — A day before we competed in the Amazing Thailand Grand Sale Shopping Challenge last June 18 (the “amazingly” discounted sales are until Sept. 30), Bulletin’s Shirley Pizarro and special-events organizer Ambie Burac and I took a quick tour of Art in Paradise 3D Museum (#99 Esplanade, Room 408, Fourth Floor, Ratchadapisek Road, Din Daeng, Bangkok, telephones +66[0]26609130/+66[0]26413016) and, as the pictures on this page show, we had a wonderful experience in optical illusion.

“Have you ever been inside a bottle?” Minjae Kim, the Museum’s managing director & CEO asked as he ushered us into the Paradise. “Feel free to get inside,” the bottle that is, “but don’t ask me how you can get out of it,” he added with a wink. That’s Minjae (photo in far right) flashing a warm welcome to us, including our newfound friends Joseph and Wilbur of Singapore (also participants in the Shopping Challenge), and Wipaporn Waleesajjakarn (third from left), the Singapore-based marketing officer of Tourism Authority of Thailand, who brought us to Paradise. We posed for a “family” picture, click!

After having my picture taken beside a legless-armless sculpture of a woman (presumably inspired by Venus de Milo), I dared get inside the bottle and “prayed” to get out of it “alive.” I did. Shirley and Ambie then dragged me inside a giant bubble and we also got out of it unscathed.

Spotting a giant cat, Shirley succumbed to the temptation of lying beside it, enjoying its furry closeness. We “risked” our lives crossing a wooden bridge amidst waterfalls but, surprisingly, we didn’t get wet!

How does it feel to be puppets on strings? Hmmmm, it was a “moving” experience.

And what about precariously “hanging” from a painting on a wall? Happily, I didn’t fall flat on the checkered floor!

Shirley and I capped the quick tour by posing for magazine covers, I with an astronaut for National Geographic and Shirley for Time.

So how did we get inside the bottle and out of it…”alive?”

Clue: “Picture” the trick in your imagination.

(I will spoil the fun if I tell you, sorry!)

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