Another day of sensory overload yesterday.

Honestly, more happens to me in one day here than in one week back in England.

I think my brain might explode.

In theory, Saturday began as Friday night’s gig ended: meeting more new people in the bar, going nightswimming by moonlight (which deserves a quiet night - and we got one), and going to bed at 5am. Not a terribly smart move given that we had to get up to an alarm, but still.

And the reason we were getting up to an alarm was that a lovely businessman here, who’s been to the bar a few times, absolutely insisted that V and I used his chauffeur-slash-bodyguard to drive us wherever we wanted around the island while he himself was away on business in London.

TK’s act, I’m learning, is typical of Malaysian generosity - which goes completely above and beyond what you usually encounter in the West.

And so it was that B collected us in a ridiculous black 4×4 with chrome bumpers - although this actually turned out to be less ridiculous when we had to scale Penang Hill in it. First off, took us for a multi-course Chinese lunch, over which he presided like a generous father figure (my life as a film, part three: Eat, Drink, Man, Woman) before driving us to Kek Lok Si Temple.

Kek Lok Si is supposedly the largest Buddhist temple in Malaysia, and it looks something like this:

and this:

It was breathtaking, made up of multiple buildings on different levels (which are still being added to), decorated in brilliant colours - and made even more colourful by the hanging red and yellow New Year lanterns which currently adorn it.

I had another Lost In Translation moment when, as Scarlett does, I wrote and hung a wish on a wishing tree (in LiT the wishes were white, but here they were multi-coloured). My wish is in the foreground, on red. No, I didn’t write it in Chinese. It’s on the back:

I felt quite emotional when I wrote it, too.

After the temple, B drove us to the botanical gardens, which V and I mainly wanted to see for a) the greenery and b) the monkeys.

The monkeys apparently bite, and there’s a fine for feeding them, but I couldn’t get enough of them. Especially this one:

I even saw them fighting and having sex. Yes, the monkeys were that good.

From the botanical gardens, we drove up Penang Hill - which is a) a four-hour walk, and b) an incredibly steep gradient, and therefore c) only to be attempted by lunatics.

Or by softies in 4×4s.

Here’s the view from the top:

- which in parts was just so, so beautiful:

The English, shortly after setting foot on Penang in the late 18th century, built homes up on Penang Hill (and originally cultivated it for strawberry-growing - hence its old moniker Strawberry Hill), because it was cooler up there and therefore more bearable to their delicate English constitutions. Apparently, in the days before the road and the furnicular, they used to be carried up by sedan chair. As I remarked to V, going up in an air-conditioned 4×4 is probably the modern-day equivalent.

More pictures from our Big Day Out here.

It’s 0200 hours. What does the ‘O’ stand for? O my god, it’s late.

So I’ll keep this one brief.

After invitations to sing in Guangzhou (China) and Jakarta (Indonesia), there’s now another Asian location apparently crying out for the dulcet tones of Andrea Mann.

Hanoi.

In particular: a posh hotel in Hanoi. And I know it’s posh because it’s ranked fourth out of 196 hotels in Hanoi on TripAdvisor.com.

I think from now on I may make it my new policy never to play at any hotel rated lower than fifth on TripAdvisor. Especially if there’s only five hotels in said town. But I digress.

This hotel in Hanoi would like me to play there for two months - and soon.

I’ve told T that I don’t really want to go away again for that length of time so quickly after my time here. But I don’t get off that easily, ohhh no. Hanoi is calling, and if I can’t do it soon, then apparently they want me there in November and December.

I’m seriously thinking of going.

At this rate, I may end up the British jazz equivalent of the Fun Lovin’ Criminals, ie. famous in Asia but unheard of back home (no one in America knows the FLC, although no one in Britain would know that). Maybe I’ll become Asian Famous. Which, like being Jazz Famous, isn’t that famous at all. Or maybe, better still, I’ll become Asian Jazz Famous, which is less famous than both Asian Famous and Jazz Famous.

Actually, I took another step to becoming Asian (Jazz) Famous in the bar tonight, when I was interviewed in my break by a journalist from the New Straits Times, a national newspaper described to me as “the Malaysian Daily Telegraph“. It was fun. He asked me questions, I plugged T’s agency, he didn’t make many notes, I told him how to spell ‘Brad Mehldau’… And so on.

Who knows. Maybe I’ll become so Asian (Jazz) Famous that I will actually, one day, be Big In Japan. Now that would be fantastic.