I’m sitting in a small restaurant in the heritage area of Luang Prabang in Laos. There has obviously been a lot of money spent restoring some of the traditional beautiful wooden houses and those from the French era, with wide verandas, slatted shutters – known as jalousies in India and Mallorquin in Spain – silk cushions on teak recliners. But so much is façade. Open the doors and windows and behind the mask of restoration you all too often see the mess and apparent squalor of much of Asia, as if the continent suffers the advanced stages of Diogenes syndrome (also known more descriptively as senile squalor syndrome). But this is a judgement of western eyes.

The restaurant is on a very quiet crossroads on a very quiet street, no more than one vehicle passing every three of four minutes and even then they are usually motor scooters, with a car every ten minutes or so.

I look up and see a young Caucasian man crossing the road toward me, tablet in one hand, smartphone in the other and headphones underneath his baseball cap – a typical neo-techno who can’t be without his mobile technology, even when walking the streets in a fine drizzle, always needing to be talking to someone. As he passes I hear him reciting phrases, repeating those he is presumably listening to through his earphones; a language class on the move.

A young Chinese couple pass by on a bicycle, he on the front, pedalling, she on the pannier seat above the rear wheel. With one hand he steers the bike, with another he holds an umbrella over his head. Hers is protected by a large, floppy straw hat with a pink floral ribbon. She giggles and pulls at the tail of his white T-shirt, apparently oblivious to the rain. It’s unusual to see young Asian people without a smartphone in hand, texting or flipping through Facebook even on the back of a bicycle. She smiles and is clearly happy just to be wandering the streets of Luang Prabang while her boyfriend does the work.

The Lao have a different approach altogether. If there are two people on a motor scooter the person on the passenger seat holds the umbrella slightly forward, tilted at a shallow angle to protect passenger and driver. If the rider is solo they will hold the umbrella in one hand and steer with the other, a difficult task for the inexperienced but part of life if you’ve been doing it since you were twelve (even if the legal limit is 15). If a child in on-board during the rain they will usually be standing, holding onto the handlebars, making it easier for mum or dad to angle the umbrella to protect them both. I’m dazzled by a scooter of four that whizzes by, child standing, lady driving, with another lady parked well back on the seat, sandwiching another child. Passenger lady holds the umbrella tilted forward and driver simultaneously steers and holds the front of the umbrella forward against the wind and rain. This is in drizzle, Lord along know how dangerous the manoeuvre would be in the torrential Monsoon rains, which, given the heavy black clouds, aren’t too far away.

It’s 2.30 pm and the most raucous noise is that of the oscillating fan fixed to the pillar by my table and a cockerel whose body clock is out of sync. The muted sound of Lao music drifts from a few buildings away, cheerful and danceable, even for an old westerner like me, although obviously in the steamy heat of Monsoon I don’t ‘get down and boogie’.