Kuala Lumpur

Food heaven. I've been staying in Bukit Bintang, half a stone's throw from Jalan Alor... What else to say? I've feasted on Chinese roast pork, la la, kai lan, durian and even had a real bacon butty with a beer in Finnegans. This on top of all those other old favourites - mee mamak, nasi lemak, nasi campur and roti canai. The streets round here are buzzing with people, food, bright lights and shady taxi drivers. I've had foot massages, back massages, been shopping for books and DVDs, with plenty of breaks for coffees in pavement cafes while watching the world go by.

I ended up in The Pavilion shopping mall, to find the Emirates office to delay my flight back. This has to be the most scary mall I've ever been in. I'm surprised I'm not still there. The place is huge. It has banks of escalators and lifts that only service certain floors so you have to go down to go up (well, I did), then across to another wing to go up again. It took me fourteen of the fifteen minutes till the office closed to find it. Then returning to the ground floor where I'd started, I found myself in an underground car park. On the positive side, it has a good bookshop and outside there is a nice collection of eateries. Including La Bodega, so I treated myself to a small plate of my favourite chilli garlic prawns, feeling I had earned them with my frantic exploration of the Pavilion.

What else of KL - not much that I haven't said before. It's been great to catch up with old friends, visiting old haunts and discovering new ones. There's a strange but not unpleasant sensation of being a visitor in my home town. And some things never change. I've quickly reverted to Manglish, been repeatedly mistaken for a man and played the shop-assistant-shuffle. This last is a simple game based on the fact that shop assistants are contracted to stay exactly 16 inches away from a customer. Therefore your slightest movement will be followed inch for inch. I managed to get a girl in the Body Shop to follow me twice round the same display unit and very nearly got her out of the door. Imagine my disappointment when she pinged back as if I'd snapped her elastic on the threshold.