This month our reporter, usually absolutely on top of his case load, finds it hard to understand a bit of a tall ‘store'y!

I'm sorry but we've decided not to stay in your flat because we can't carry our luggage up the stairs".

This was the most important sentence of a conversation my sister had recently with an Indonesian friend of mine who had arranged to stay with her (also Indonesian) husband in a flat my sister and I own in London. My sister was in a work meeting when my friend rang and so did not have time to probe further, such as to inquire where my friends would stay instead or how many squillion suitcases they were traveling with.

If our flat was way up in the clouds at the top of a high-rise building and the lift had broken then I would have understood their attitude. But that's not the case. Our flat is on the second floor - or third for those of you count the ground floor as the first floor - of a house. It is precisely 42 steps up from the ground to our flat. Not exactly an Everest esque ascent, and certainly no oxygen is required, or not for the vast majority of the world's able-bodied population. And my friends definitely fall into that category.
After I'd got over the shock of the friends canceling - I'd told them about the stairs in the first few minutes after they'd initially asked to stay - I began to think a little bit harder about what this episode says about Indonesians. Obviously one cannot generalise about a whole population based on the attitude of two people but I think there are valid conclusions to be drawn nonetheless.

Firstly, were they telling the truth? The answer to this is crucial because it spins the socio-cultural-psychology in either one direction or another. Let us assume, for the moment, that they were being honest. Or rather they thought they would not be able to carry their suitcases up the stairs since I don't think they ever got as far as seeing the stairs they failed to conquer.

This is not completely inconceivable considering that they were in London towards the end of a four-week-long "second honeymoon" traveling around Europe and bearing in mind the average Indonesian woman's inability to travel light and extraordinary ability to shop till she drops while on holiday.