On the Road/Rosita Boland: There is one question above all others which I've found myself being asked on this journey. It's not: "Where are you from?" or "How long are you travelling?" It's: "Why don't you have a camera?"
I've never had a camera and don't have even one photograph from any of the places I've travelled to. My camera, I guess, is in my head. I prefer letting memory filter and select images, so that I'm always surprised by my recollections of places.
After four months on the road, I've met only one other Westerner travelling sans camera and that was because hers was stolen along the way.
It's given me an unexpectedly unique perspective on "camera etiquette". I have realised that being anywhere scenic or interesting is a licence for people with cameras to order you out of their way so they can get an uninterrupted shot.
But what do you do when you see people filming or taking pictures in a place where the signs forbid it? Only once in the past four months have I challenged anyone taking pictures where it was forbidden to do so, and that was because I was curious to see the reaction.
At the Haw Pha Kaew temple in Vientiane, I watched a man filming rows of ancient Buddhas and drew his attention to the prominent "No Photography" sign. He just ignored me. When I pointed to the sign a second time, he turned to me and said: "Don't worry, I'm going to slip them a few dollars on the way out."
For that man - and for the many, many others I've seen filming illicitly - literally nothing was sacred.
Worse by far was the behaviour I saw in the tribal villages in Laos. In many of these villages, members of the Yao, Hmong, Akha, Thai Dam, Khamu and Laen Taen tribes still wear traditional dress and follow a traditional way of life. There is, at best, an uneasy three-way relationship between tourists, guides and the tribal villagers.
It's only in the past few years that tourists have been arriving on guided treks of up to three days. Overnights are spent in stilt houses in the villages, usually in the home of the head of the village, which is where I stayed on my trek to Ban Long Lao. An amazing experience, certainly, but I kept wondering at what cost to the cultural preservation of these villages.
At Nam Tha and Maung Sing, where some of the most famous tribal villages are, a local guide took three of us around. These are extraordinary places and the two people on the trip with me went rampaging round with their cameras. You are supposed to ask people if you may photograph them (many tribal people refuse). These two Westerners abandoned every rule of decency when faced with the temptation of exotic photo opportunities.
Watching them charge around - poking cameras into people's huts, complaining that the kids stopped smiling, literally chasing after old women, posing in front of spirit gates you are not meant to touch and yelling "Say cheese!" to the village head, who spoke no English - I was reminded of big-game hunters out for the kill.
When they had finished, they handed out hotel soaps and shampoos to the villagers, miming washing as they did so - contrary to the advice of the trekking companies that gifts should not be handed out.
Laotians dislike confrontation, so the guide did nothing to stop them.
I knew nothing I said would have stopped them either but I wish now that I had at least tried.
Victorian travellers mindlessly plundered many Asian treasures and took them home but, from what I've seen, Westerners today are still collecting things to which they have no moral right.