KL - CH

As hard as I may try, I just can't think of any amusing anecdotes from our first couple of weeks in Malaysia. Perhaps this is a direct result of being in a Muslim country where even the Sultan of neighbouring Brunei would struggle to afford a night on the grog!

Kuala Lumpur as a city is a bit like a slightly grubbier version of Singapore. It has accessable transportation, well built roads, enormous shopping malls, a towering business district and friendly, helpful people - 95% of whom speak immaculate English. When you see what the French did for Cambodia, you realise just how lucky the Malays were to have their country colonized by the British - it's all infinitely more civilized!

Oh, I forgot to mention the IMAX cinema, we went to the IMAX cinema everyday. We also visited the worlds tallest building, the Petronas Towers, although disappointingly you can only go as far up as the skybridge, which is only about a third of the way up. However, it's a free day out so I mustn't grumble too much - and we were still back in time for some more IMAX action!

From KL we went to the Cameron Highlands. At 5000ft above sea level, the climate is such that we finaly got some use out of the fleeces we had been debating ditching for the last 3 months. Brisk in the evening, hot, humid and rainy during the day, the British colonialist soon realised that this was ideal tea growing weather and to this day the landscape is dominated by acre upon acre of tea plantations. We visited the largest of them - Boh tea - where the leaves are still picked by hand and crushed, dried and sorted using the same machines they have been using since the 1930's.

The tour was topped off by sitting on the balcony of the main house and taking what was quite possibly the finest pot of tea we have ever had. Quite overcome by the Britishness of it all, and overlooking the plantation asI was, it was all I could do to stop myself requesting a firearm and shooting the occasional native. However, rather remarkably it seems that even in a place like this, the practice of picking off the odd slack worker as a form of motivation is frowned upon these days. They'll be expecting sick pay and holidays before you know it, you mark my words.