Travel is full of odd conjunctions. Things that don't quite fit, or associations that stick in your mind for no apparent reason, or little cameos that poignantly recall other times and other places.

Such as:

-- Reading a novel in Timor Leste about the massacres of Armenians by Turks;

-- Watching "Law and Order" in a Dili hotel, purely to drown out the Saturday evening karaoke from the joint next door;

-- Acquiring "Girl on fire" as an earworm from the lobby of the Ibis, Balikpapan, as we slowly and laboriously copied photos from the camera to the flashdrive;

-- Being transported straight back to my family home and the 1960s by Tom Jones crooning "The green, green grass of home" in the taxi to our hotel in Samarinda;

-- Reading a novel about the spying shenanigans of post-Cold War US and Russia, while cruising the Mahakam River, East Kalimantan, Indonesia;

-- Watching The Hobbit on cable TV in Surabaya, while outside the train horns on the thunderingly busy line reminded me of learning to live with the night noises in San Leandro, California (long-distance trains, dogs, the BART), and inside, Ritter Sport chocolate brought my years in Germany flooding back...;

-- Listening to the 1812 Overture, played via the sound system on the train from Malang to Blitar, as the children across the aisle created their own catastrophe of epic proportions, with the aid of sticky cake, cushions, and two sleeping parents...