Malaysia
There are some beautiful and poetic names for places out there. Japan's name in Japanese really does mean "Land of the Rising Sun", "Australia" comes from the latin for "Great Southern Land", "New Zealand." in an obscure Maori dialect really means "We Of The Big Drinkers". (One of those is not true.) And then we have Kuala Lumpur, which means in Malay, and I shit you not, "muddy estuary". Really, guys, can we lift the bar just a little? The choice of name makes a little more sense when you realise that this was originally a British colony. Can't you just see Francis and Merriweather Smythe sailing up the river and thinking to themselves "This all looks a bit shite, doesn't it. River's pretty damn muddy, what?" and from there the legend is born. (But really, who would trust the British to start a colony anyway? Can you name one Brit that you would trust to run a 7/11, let alone a country? I thought not.)

Anyway, it's hot. Damn hot. The first few day I was walking short distances, in and out of airconditioned hide-outs. (God bless fast food stores.) But by today I've just given up. Sweat dripping off my shirt under the equatorial sun still feels pretty damn uncomfortable, but I have achieved a zen-like determination to ignore it.

Weird natives approaching me has been limited to Bob, who plays in a cover band that seems to specialise in Madonna. We had a good old chat, but he was a little upset when I told him I was neither going to come and see his band, nor stay with his Aunt that night. Everyone speaks pretty good English here, which was quite a pleasant surprise (with the possible exception of Bob). But when you do as little travel planning as moi, you get quite a few surprises, pleasant and otherwise.

I went on an extremely cool tree-top walk north of KL yesterday. About a 2 km hike up a mountain through dense forest (no wild orangutangs, unfortunately) and onto what is basically an aluminium ladder with some fishnet either side, suspended twenty metres above the canopy. Completely terrifying but absolutely amazing.