Supper in Tokyo. Breakfast in Kuala Lumpur. Lunch in Jakarta. Dinner in Bali. 

When I was still a wee lad in short trousers I remember my grandparents telling me that in ‘their day’ a ‘holiday’ meant taking the suicide-inducing local train from Belfast to Bangor for the afternoon. That’s a 30-minute journey. 14 miles. To eat a poke (that’s an ice cream to you and me), dunk their feet in the paddling pool and then go home again. I don’t dispute it – though I don’t envy it either. These days, travel, like so many things in life, has evolved to the point that what was once completely unimaginable is now perfectly feasible. 24 hours ago I was dodging mosquitoes in my house in Tokyo. 12 hours ago I was being ushered across a misty runway in Kuala Lumpur after just being woken up from a red-wine-induced coma. Two hours ago I was drinking espressos with a Japanese girl in Jakarta. And now I’m in Bali, surrounded by bats and frogs and god-knows-what-else and pondering the age-old saying, “it’s the journey that counts, not the destination.” That may be true: it was a hell of a journey. But in this case, it’s the destination that triumphs.