Enjoying our first dinner during a group tour of Sicily, I turned to our guide and told him that the meal was excellent. This being Sicily, the reply was not all that surprising. “You can steal my money but don’t touch my food,” Alessio remarked. He followed that remark by claiming: “If lunch or dinner doesn’t have at least five courses, it’s just a snack.”

It was such a serendipitous meeting. While strolling the gilded Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar's most sacred Buddhist shrine, we stopped to talk to a monk. A very chatty fellow of 51, and a monk for over 25 years, he was very eager to show us the photos from his recent trip to Japan – yup, on his Smartphone. When he actually invited us to lunch at his monastery two days hence, things got even more interesting.

There is very little that can entice me to get up at 4 a.m. but how often do you get a chance to bathe a Buddha? And not just any Buddha but one that the actual real Buddha is said to have embraced himself. The statue at Maha Muni Pagoda in Mandalay, Myanmar is believed to be one of only five likenesses of Buddha created during his lifetime. And the daily cleansing ritual for the hundreds of pilgrims who attend is both literal and spiritual.