Universiti Utara Malaysia, up in the green, green world of Kedah, is like a small town. There are something like 20,000 students there, and it takes quite some time to drive from one end of the campus to the other.

I was briefly there last weekend, having been invited to speak at a student-organized seminar on conflict and refugees.

I arrived in the dark, but in my little tour of the Saturday-night campus, I came across students hanging out on pleasant cafe terraces, shopping in the little "mall", and practising Chinese drum routines. It felt relaxed but busy.

It was great to catch up with the Malaysian students who had been on exchange in Yogya last semester, as well as the latest batch of UMY students now studying at UUM (they arrived a month late because of visa issues as well...).

And it was also, of course, a good food weekend. Pulut kukus and chicken rendang for breakfast; and nasi kandar for lunch.

Most memorable, however, was the testimony of a Kurdish academic at the Sunday seminar. He'd experienced the ethnic cleansing of his village, the injuring and maiming of his siblings, and a year and a half in a refugee camp. He'd undergone the extraordinarily stressful process of applying for refugee status in another country, and had somehow managed to escape the threat of both real, sudden, physical death and the slow death of hope through bureaucratic foibles and inertia.

I salute his courage, and the courage of all those like him. There are more than 50 million refugees and displaced persons worldwide...

Of all the travellers in the world, these are the bravest.