After sleeping for 12 - count ‘em! - hours, this is the view I woke up to:

And here it is if you look slightly to the left:

Since I got up, I’ve been unpacking and ironing - how thrilling!* - all to the strains of some terribly cheesy ‘radio station’ (clue: I don’t think it’s an actual radio station) I’ve found on my TV.

I was listening to my own music via my iPod dock - but it felt very odd, I quickly realised, to be listening to, say Lloyd Cole, in a hotel room in Penang, looking out at that view. In short: it feels wrong to listen to music from back home while abroad. I’m not sure if this is a phenomenon restricted to hot countries (I know that when I’ve been to Ibiza, for example, I am overcome with the urge to listen to nothing but Cafe Del Mar albums); or whether it’s to do with properly throwing yourself into a new place and a new experience. Although the latter implies conscious thought, and it doesn’t feel conscious at all. In fact, it just feels instinctively wrong to be listening to ‘Jennifer She Said’, and instinctively right to be listening to ‘Fields of Gold’ played on a Spanish guitar.

Hopefully that’s the only time in my life that I will write that sentence.

And on that (easy-listening) note: I’m going to answer some emails, then hop in the shower, get dressed, and go out exploring. I’ll be back. With photos!**

*Actually, ironing here is thrilling. Because someone calls you up ten minutes into said ironing and says: “Hello Miss Andrea, just checking you received your ironing board?”

**Although given this post, that’s not guaranteed.

So, I am here. And right now, you can picture me looking exactly like this. And I mean *exactly* like this. I’m jet-lagged, remember:

Things I learned on my journey:

- A 12 hour flight isn’t half as bad as it sounds.

- ‘When Love Breaks Down’ by Prefab Sprout is a really good song (thank you, S).

- Malaysia Airlines: Maverick does not count as a classic film.

- It’s still dark in the morning in Kuala Lumpur at 6.30am.

- Malaysia is hugely green, and full of verdant hills and palm trees. Not unlike a large Majorca.

- However, Malaysia is much hotter than Majorca.

- The twin towers in Kuala Lumpur are very impressive, even from a distance.

- The agent, T, is terribly nice, and looks like my brother, only younger and Malaysian. His wife, C, is terribly nice and looks like my second cousin, only younger and Malaysian. T’s business partner R, is also terribly nice, but doesn’t look like any member of my family.

- The Malaysian Department of Immigration is housed in a building which is enormously grand and modern, in a communist sort of way, and yet which houses crappy market stalls in its lobby. Go figure.

- We drove through a state in Malaysia which sits under a raincloud every day, rather like the geographical equivalent of Charlie Brown.

- Smoking is perfectly acceptable in public areas in Malaysia. How frightfully 20th century!

- The hotel is unbelievably swanky; and I have a gorgeous room with a king size bed and a sea view.

- A flute and tabla duo playing ‘Smoke On The Water’ is surprisingly good.

- Squid tastes better than I thought it would.

- I have been up for 30+ hours, save for snoozing on the back seat of a car/747.

- I am a bit delirious.

- The ‘Smoke On The Water’ thing really happened.