IT was our first time, my husband Bernard and I, to travel outside the Philippines for a tour of Europe. Our tour guide in the Manila travel agency told us our tour group’s meeting place would be in London, at the Novotel Hotel. Our daughter Rowena was supposed to be our tour companion for she had had a year’s stay in Amsterdam (as a foreign study exchange student) and has a familiarity with European countries, but at that time she had to go and stay in Vancouver, Canada.

So there we were, Bernard and I, having to go it alone, among the other equally senior citizens as listed by the Travel agency. From Manila aboard a Gulf Air flight for a Bangkok stopover en route to London, we opened our notebook of information and instructions provided us by friends in Manila on how to get to our hotel.

Seated beside us was a passenger whose attire was noticeably non-tourist: T-shirt, slacks, rubber shoes, his backpack by his side. He looked like he was in his early thirties, and our first impulse was to look away and ignore him, but his wide and friendly smile beneath a mop of tousled hair somehow erased our anxiety and innate fear of strangers, whether fellow Asian or other races. After a nod and a hello, he glanced at our open notebook with its hand-drawn map, and asked us where we were going.

David Dayan introduced himself, not extending a hand for the usual handshake, but with clasped hands over his lips and a slight nod. After getting our names (“Daróy,” accent on the second syllable, he noted), he talked about himself-a British Jew who had been out of the United Kingdom for the past five months, having been to the Far East, notably in Indonesia and India where he studied Baghwan and the realm of the spirit. “My spiritual name is Manava.”

He then told us: “So you are headed for Novotel Hotel? Don’t get the bus to Victoria station, as per instruction in your notebook. That’s too far away from Hammersmith International Center, where your hotel is located. We will go take the Tube, the English subway. ” We noted that he said clearly, we will go take the Tube, not you go take the Tube.

So from the Heathrow airport, we headed for the Tube. David, or Manava, helped us with our baggage and then down to the Underground. After a few minutes he helped us get off the train and then up the stairs. “See your hotel Novotel is only a few blocks away over there,” he pointed towards somewhere ahead. “But since you have baggage with you, you’d better take a cab. Don’t call it taxi.” He stayed with us, and while waiting for the cab, he explained how and where to change our US dollars and travelers checks into local currency – pounds and pences, no more shillings, mind you.

When a cab arrived for us, David Dayan – or Manava – told us to pay only a pound, waving aside our profuse thanks and saying something like “You are my karman.” Left wondering what he meant by karman, we looked back to see him going back to the Underground to take the Tube.

That evening, while already safely ensconced in our hotel room, we resolved to do some research, perhaps on Jews turning into non-Jews, after watching the sun, no not the moon, as we had earlier thought, still up at 8 in the evening, and on the spiritual realm as David Dayan (God bless him – whatever name he has given Yahweh, his God) had experienced and shared with us. •