1. THAILAND: Mooching Around

Just catch someone’s eye, even a passing motor cyclist, and they smile.  Westerners scowl.    This may be partly the weather, weeks of cold rain freezing faces into disappointment.   We fly from Heathrow.  The relief of getting in the plane and sitting down.  The man in front of me has biceps tattooed with a glaring skull.  The plane bumpily trundles along, trying to get up speed, it’s not going to make it then miraculously it rises and we are off.  By night we are flying over the snowy mountains of Asia, and at a dawn of khaki and rose we are over Burma, with dazzling gold domes and...