Now I must make clear that I have no personal reason to express these views (though there was a ‘black Maria’, packed tight with suspects just picked up down the street) but there is plenty of hearsay on the matter, and it does detract from the possible enjoyment of the many bars and restaurants that exist and which are patronised by the young Guatemalan and gringo. I know most hotels lock the front door at night but here they’re locked all day too, and there are grills on all windows, attractive in wrought iron but still protective. Think Durban in spades.

  On a more positive note, Antigua is undoubtedly picturesque, all jacaranda trees and palm trees, with dozens of dirt-poor country folk in traditional dress carrying huge bundles of colourful weaving and trinkets and all with a couple of sprogs in tow or on their backs. They all have their spiel off pat: your husband will pay etc. No one yet says ‘Your wife will pay’, I notice. With house fronts closed to passing scrutiny, life goes on in peaceful inner courtyards, often decorated with exotic plants and water features, private dwellings and many of the restaurants too.

  The last stop before returning to the United States is Lake Atitlan, about three hours from Antigua and surrounded by three volcanoes. One has a sense of being on the inside a crater as the villages seem to cling, like Amalfi, to the steep slopes that soar upwards around the lake. It is not often one’s room is blessed with a view of a towering volcano. Divers will tell you that the rocks at the bottom of the lake are hot to the touch.

  Almost every woman and female child wears local costume in multi-coloured woven material, and many have been selling their wares this Sunday at the busy weekly market in nearby Chichicastenango, where my dear wife had to be physically restrained from buying up the total stock. This proves to be a fitting end to a memorable if somewhat hectic trip through Central America which has gradually improved as we have travelled northwards ending in Guatemala.

  Postscript: however, two events on the last day, one amazing, one very sad.

  We were fortunate to have chanced upon a meeting of a confradia, a Maya religious brotherhood, at a kind of voodoo ceremony for people who have chosen to be excommunicated from the catholic church in order to worship their own pre-Christian deity: Maximon (St, Simeon to the Spanish), depicted by a wooden effigy to whom the mixed indigenous people make offerings of cigarettes, liquor and candles. The small dark private room in a member’s home contains what seems to be a glass coffin, the life-size wooden effigy of Maximon draped in colourful silk scarves and smoking a cigar, together with effigies of Jesus and Christian saints, candles and offerings. The ceiling is covered completely in balloons and paper decorations together with gaudy flashing Christmas tree lights. The room is thick with incense as the women gather seated on the floor and the men, many with a mouthful of gold teeth, seat themselves along the wall. One in dark glasses looks like Jimmy Savile in fancy pants. It seems that there are no black arts practised, at least not in the presence of gringos. This has got to be the weirdest experience of the trip, tucked away down the narrow alleys of Santiago Atitlan on the lake. The funny thing is that it was all very cheerful, especially when compared with a visit to the Catholic church nearby where the small congregation were overwhelmed with emotional wailing and sobbing over something (our guide did not speak nor understand their dialect), so maybe the Maya were right to hold to their original beliefs.

  Our departure by boat was interrupted by great consternation at the harbour explained in due course by the fact that a leisure craft had smashed into a fisherman’s boat killing the owner, a sad end to the fascinating day.

  Chapter 17

  Indonesia

  They say you should never return to a favourite place as it will never match your recollections, assuming they were positive of course. In Bali’s case, it is just as hectic as remembered, only more so. Fortunately, this pace of life is limited to the south and east of the island, so we are heading to the lesser known west and north, where village life and traditions are alive and well.

  Leaving behind the congested towns of the south east, we soon discovered the picturesque landscape of lustrous green rice paddies, fan-shaped banana trees, ubiquitous village temples, all currently festooned with gold and white umbrellas celebrating a major religious festival. A traffic incident forced us off the main road on to local byways whose condition put severe stress on our vehicle and the driver’s ability to find his way without frequent stops to make enquiries. The upside of this unplanned detour occurred when we came upon a local ‘WI meeting’ at a village meeting hall. Two dozen village ladies had come together to prepare offerings of flowers, fruit and displays to celebrate a (fairly) recent birth in the village. In fact, local tradition celebrates the baby reaching the age of 105 days (3x35 as the number 3 is very important to Hindus, the majority faith on Bali in an otherwise Muslim country). This is the first time a baby is permitted to touch the ground (and wear silver or gold jewellery!). The only male present and attempting to organise the chattering female massed troops was the village shaman, decked out in sarong and headdress. The overall impression was only slightly let down by his Hard Rock T-shirt.

  A few words about an Indonesian coffee I have been told is rather special. It is called luwak and is made from the beans that have been offered to a wild civet cats to excrete before they (the beans, not the cats) are ground up for your next cuppa. Somehow, I feel it will be a while before it is available at Starbucks. Some say it is just crap (which technically it is) and as difficult to sell to a European as sea slugs, roasted scorpions, fried guinea pig or balut (unfertilised Filipino duck eggs). More on this subject below.

  One of the local village communities is quietly assembled in the midday heat under a large tree for shelter, accompanied by the obligatory gamelan orchestra. While the whole island is in fact Hindu, there is a sizeable Muslim community up here as we are only an hour’s boat trip away from Muslim Java. To continue, the men all wore white jackets and sarongs, the women and children in multi-coloured local batik outfits, and were being blessed with holy water by the priest, as were the offerings being carried mostly by the elders. These consisted of fruits, incense, flowers and something like a pile of gold, probably made of paper. They and their offerings then headed for the sea to be semi-immersed as part of the ritual.

  Back at our hotel, a three-man hit squad has just left our room carrying a rifle which one of them let off several times before killing his target stone dead: a seven-inch long gecko, making a nuisance of himself with his racket (the gecko, not the man). Now I feel a bit guilty having called for assistance, but after two interrupted nights recently, we were not looking forward to another sleepless night. In any event, they never seem to travel solo, so its mate carried on the good work instead.

  Of course, what readers really want to know is: what was the luwak civet cat-processed coffee like, so in a word, well three words: no great shakes. I shall be sticking with Whittard’s best, and anyway, I found out that the poor cat lives in a cage in the grounds (garden – not coffee), not in the wild, so some poor member of staff has to sort through the mammal’s excrement every morning looking for the precious output. Too much information I hear you cry so having spent months trying to eliminate poo from the grandchildren’s conversations, I shall follow my own advice.

  Today has passed pleasantly meandering through acres of terraced rice-fields in the hilly centre of the island fed by a complex series of ever-flowing channels, often giving the sense that the young rice shoots are sitting on huge mirrors glistening in the evening sunlight. These fields have been tended in the same way for hundreds of years, based on techniques imported from India, the reason the area has been granted world heritage status.

  There was just time, however, to admire a motley collection of tethered tame bats, chameleons, iguanas and pythons loitering by the roadside before hitting Ubud, the cultural centre of Bali.

  Almost inevitably in Bali, we got caught up in a funeral which is quite a public affair and is always well attended. This one took place in what you would describe as a bit of scrubland surrounded by a low wall with a large tree to provide shade for the ‘congregation’. The general atmosphere was similar to that you would find at a country fair: kids playing with toys, makeshift stalls selling flowers, snacks etc., not a tear in sight, even from the family because the release of the soul is considered a joyous moment. The pyre can only be described as a makeshift barbecue arrangement where two white clad priests were officiating with holy water, flower arranging and prayers. The ‘fire’ was provided from a gas canister with a long lead, though firewood can also be used apparently. Etiquette says that as soon as the body is set alight, the crowd can immediately disperse back to their village. We were told that his wife had survived the dead man, surprising perhaps, as it was claimed her deceased husband was 108 years old when he died.

  Have we hit the crime centre of the Indonesian archipelago? You could certainly be forgiven for thinking so, because the sound of screaming police sirens has been constant since we made the 18-minute Boeing 737-800 flight (capacity: 156 passenger and they served a drink) from Bali to the peaceful ‘laid-back!’ island of Lombok. At least, it drowned out the sound of the geckos and the five times a day call to prayer. This place is either a hive of gangsters or the police are tough on jaywalkers here. With riots currently in Jakarta as elsewhere in the Muslim world – Lombok is 90 percent Muslim, there was also this other possible explanation. We were not encouraged to hear from our guide within an hour of arriving that 9/11 was due to bombs being placed by the Americans and Israelis in the basement of the twin towers and that the architect had stated that planes could not have brought the towers down.

  However, as so often in life, the explanation for all this police activity is more prosaic in that an ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) meeting is taking place on Lombok and ministers and staff are staying in hotels all over the island including here, therefore requiring maximum police protection. Large contingents of ladies with national headdress and men in black suits mingling with Aussies in body-covering tattoos and earrings. Noodles for the nationals, eggs and ‘bacon’ for us westerners.

  We had been congratulating ourselves on just missing the Kate and William hullabaloo in Singapore last week only to find that when we get back there later this week, the Singapore Grand Prix starts, so it looks as if we shall have to wait till we get back to minding the grandchildren before we get any peace and quiet again.

  Finally, a word of warning about photography in Indonesia. Once you have framed your shot, pressed the shutter and then look at your handiwork, you will tend to find it includes the top half of a Japanese tourist doing a V-sign and making a silly face. Not only is it essential for the Japanese tourist to provide hard evidence that they were present at a particular landmark, but now they have to jump up in the air as well. I have made it my mission to show that Photoshop Elements can easily create the same end result without ruining my pictures.

  So, at last, we catch up with both our daughters who have already made it to Lombok, although we have been just too lazy at this stage of the trip to explore much of the island.

  Consequently, things have been pretty uneventful except for the surfeit of police activity even on the way to back to the airport. However, we were lucky to witness a ceremony apparently unique to Lombok where a just-married bridegroom walks with a colourfully dressed entourage of wife, family and friends for about a kilometre to his in-laws’ house ‘to show the local community his wife is no longer ’on the market’, as it were, so ‘hands off!’ Our guide, who removes his wedding ring when he leaves home happily explained all this without a note of self-awareness.

  Finally, I note in today’s Jakarta Times that by 2030, Indonesia’s GDP will exceed that of the UK with its population more than twice that of ours, but it is also the fifth largest market in the world for cigarettes so not everyone will live to see it.

  Chapter 18

  Laos and Thailand, Again!

  They say travel broadens the mind, but it is perhaps more accurate to say that travel causes one to question the great mysteries of life.

  Take, as an example, the sight of a local angler, clothed in a simple loincloth type of garment, sitting on a remote rock recently underwater but now exposed by the falling river level at this time of year, on the bank of the mighty Mekong River, swirling its way down from the high plains of Tibet to the distant river delta in southern Vietnam. There he sits, rod in his right hand, seemingly miles from the slightest sign of human habitation, surrounded by jungle-covered soaring mountains on every side and yet, and yet, in his left hand he holds to his ear a mobile phone into which he is excitedly communicating with some remote third party. The mystery is this: how come a third-world country where the average annual income is a few hundred dollars provides a better phone network in such alien surroundings when it beyond the capabilities of UK networks to provide a similar service in the flattest part of East Berkshire a couple of miles from where we live?

  I ask you. Who can fathom these great mysteries? I might put it to one of the many young men who roam this small town in gangs, all dressed in similar garb, often congregating in large gangs on street corners. Yes, these are the young novice monks, all of them clothed in distinctive bright orange robes, some with yellow sashes, many with black umbrellas doubling as sunshades in the 35-degree heat. At times, they seem to outnumber the visitors on the streets, especially early morning as they process single file in their hundreds collecting rice from the locals anxious to earn credit, or at sunset as they return for the evening chanting. After all, it is not uncommon to see a senior older monk clutching an expensive camera or mobile phone these days, so maybe they know the answer. Unfortunately, my Lao vocabulary is limited to a single word learned this morning: pronounced something like ‘aemng mum’, meaning spider, but that’s a story for another time.

  All I know is that even on our fourth visit here over the last ten years, it has never failed to recast its magic spell as one of our favourite spots in Asia.

  Luang Prabang (meaning Royal Buddha image) is not a place, it is a frame of mind, a daily pattern formulated eons ago and still recreated today with the same precision. This mountain kingdom in today’s northern Laos is no longer a French colony, part of Indochina and no longer boasts a royal family (the last king was sent off for ‘re-education’ in 1975 and has not been seen since, but life goes on in much the same way regardless of these changes.

  The day starts before dawn, when temperatures are still well below the high thirties of midday heat. The muffled pounding of monastic drumming stirs one’s sleep around 4 am, an hour before the first cock starts his noisy routine and believers head to market to acquire sticky rice to offer the procession of hundreds of resident monks as they snake their way down the street from 6:30 onwards. The local people then find a place to squat along the monks’ route, joined by curious and often intrusive visitors keen to record the daily event for posterity, thrusting their cameras almost into the faces of the silent shoeless monks’ faces as they pass opening their alms bowls to receive the proffered rice portions from believers. For locals, a time-honoured ritual; for visitors, a unique spectacle, to be followed by coffee and baguette in a nearby coffee house. All this before 7:30 am.

  The morning is a time for commercial activity, the early morning silence now broken by multi-coloured tuk-tuks, motorcycles, bicycles, a handful of cars and minivans restocking shops and restaurants and markets, collecting bread before the midday heat overcomes everyone with a complete state of lethargy until late afternoon, hours after the monks have consumed their last meal of the day. Only the thousands of butterflies keep going; I guess you have to if you only live for twenty-four hours.

  Towards 5 pm, the main road (main is a relative term) is closed off to traffic as out-of-towners move in to set up their stalls and set out their wares of textiles, artwork, jewellery and other craftwork laid out under red awnings lit by naked light bulbs.

  A few dozen visitor stalwarts brace themselves for the 200-step climb up to the temple of Mount Phousi on the highest point in town to witness the going down of the sun over the Mekong River, raising a round of applause as the sun is finally extinguished by the sharply focused mountainous horizon. Simultaneously, there will be gatherings in many if not all of the temples of monks and worshippers for evening chants and moments of reflection.

  Within a couple of hours, all will be silent in the many temples as the monks return home in twos and threes for an early night, ready for tomorrow’s early start as the whole cycle repeats itself once more while backpackers and the more mature travellers head for a local eatery to try out Lao cuisine or French fine dining.

  The pace is languid, the scene serene, the pattern satisfyingly unchanged from visit to visit.

  No doubt the UNESCO designation has helped to retain Luang Prabang’s charm. That’s the trouble with mysteries: you solve one and then along comes another one. I knew it was tempting providence to emphasise the peacefulness of this town, and so it has proved.

  Mystery of the day: If you are going to have the mother-and-father of a shouting match with your beloved, would you choose 05:45am, and would you pick as the location a small hotel completely full of guests? Now if you are a mainland Chinese family over from Beijing celebrating Chinese New Year, then, based on this morning’s fracas, clearly the answer is yes. If this were an Olympic sport, it would be another gold for China. But would a buttoned-up English couple do so? Somehow, you can’t picture this happening in Bournemouth or Torquay.

  OK, we’ll I knew you’d say: ‘of course’ but it does raise certain questions, doesn’t it?