Someone said to me the other day, "Ageing is brutal."

The next week, someone stated, "The only way to prevent ageing is to shoot yourself in the head."

It’s rather drastic, I know, but he’s known for stating it as it is.

He is right. No amount of plastic surgery, exercise, juice diets and detox regimes can prevent the ageing process. You may be able to slow it down and trick it a little bit but you can’t reverse it.

It is the age I am at, I suppose, which is why conversations with friends these days are more about aches and pains than about thrills and spills. On a Skype chat this morning, a girlfriend, 51, gave me the middle finger and said it hurt when she bent it. "Don’t bend it then," I said sagely.

Another friend, of the same vintage, has had to remove all alcohol, fruits, sweets and carbohydrates from his diet – the onset of diabetes.

Let’s face it, ageing is the most universal thing there is in life. It unites us like no other. And Asia is rapidly ageing. What was once a young region is rapidly turning grey.

It used to be that I’d notice more elderly people in Europe but I am beginning to see a similar grey tide now in Asia.

Last weekend in Taipei, I was struck by the number of elderly people on the city streets and also the number of disabled who were out and about – families taking their frail parents and grandparents out on wheelchairs to restaurants, on sightseeing trips and to shopping malls.

When I mentioned this to my Taiwanese friends, they said they hadn’t noticed it partly because they live with it and for them, it’s nothing unusual – the elderly and disabled are well-integrated into Taiwanese life; they are as part of society as the young and able.

Which is how it should be. After all, isn't it said that a sign of a civilised society is how it treats its elderly and disabled?

I then cast my mind back to the International Conference on Accessible Tourism that I had participated in a couple of years back and Taiwan had been singled out as one of the friendlier countries for the elderly and disabled.

Perhaps it’s the deep Confucian values of Taiwan society – respect for the elderly – that make this possible but I wish more Asian cities would learn from Taiwan in this regard.

As user-friendly as Singapore is to the visitor, it is not as friendly to the elderly or disabled. I know this from personal experience when I had an injury and you certainly don’t see a lot of elderly and disabled people in the urban areas, which seem designed only for the young and able. Ditto with cities like Bangkok or Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur.

I shared my observations with Ulf Bremer, general manager of Shangri-La’s Far Eastern Hotel. His hotel employs 12 disabled employees, one of whom is a pastry chef. "She makes an incredible volume of pastries and in 2008, was Employee of the Year,” said Bremer.

His hotel was ranked second in the Shangri-La group for being most-disabled friendly and recently was named the second Most Outstanding Employer in Engaging People with Disabilities in 2010 by the Taipei Government's Department of Labor, the only hospitality player to be recognised,

"I think it’s more of a disability if you don’t speak English when you work in hospitality," said Bremer. "For us, these employees are as part of our team as anyone else – if you have a personality and you can find a way to express yourself, that’s more important than anything else.

"They may not have the highest productivity – but that’s not that important – they tend to be the happiest people, they smile a lot."

For him, it’s a question of bringing the three sides together – the disabled employees, the rest of the staff and the guests. "All have to work in tandem with each other."

I asked him how Taipei compared to other places he had worked in. "It’s more organised here, it’s a way of life and it’s integrated into the society and workplace. Here, it’s natural," he said.

I hope that one day, as I continue to travel round Asia, it will become as natural in our cities as it is in Taipei – so natural that I won’t notice it anymore.