Ink to byte.

Here's some hopefully acute observations, courtesy of my poor abused notepad:

• The women! So shapely. So nimble. So pert and prim and lithe, like ballerinas each and every one of them. Their skin so smooth, so taut, pigmented velvet, a caramel-mocha hybrid. Egg-frying stomachs. Tractor-pulling calves. Coathanger shoulders. Hair blacker than night, hypnotising in the wind. Eyes forever askance, and I am falling in love with every second girl I see.
• The heat! Is heavy. Is dense. Makes you earn your destination. Renders hair burdensome. Has a particular disdain for foreigners. Is violent. Is uncomprising. Is an insomniac. Is a scourge. In K.L., the heat is so bad that the occassional squall of wind is something like a piece of art.
• You know you're on vacation when you can afford to drip-dry.
• When the lightning strikes here, it strikes with a scary cosmic gusto. But the thunder never comes.
• The Petrona Towers: An arresting and formidable sight. With a midday sun glaring off its upper panels, you cannot even see the top. So modern it hurts. So big they're almost celestial. People throng at the bottom in throngs of throngs. Their din inescapable, stretches hundreds of metres. Everyone's vectors crissing and crossing, enough to drive a man insane! The very heart of Kuala Lumpur.
• Where is the karaoke? I miss it.
• Chinese lanterns everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. They are all red and festooned from trees, buildings, powerlines, and anything else you can think of. From up high on the balcony of our hotel, they're all I can see. They look like the red blood flowing through the streets, the arteries of the city.
• The women!!!

Already one blue pen exhausted. How many to go?

From a platform, quietly.

A guttural hiss starts to appease. Fetid industrial fumes linger. I am at the monorail station, one of many, elevated ten metres above ground zero and its traffic's interminable purr. I can see the boxy purple rear of the monorail, the monorail I have missed, as it follows the curved concrete destiny of its track onwards, away. Its passengers peer back at me all lachrymose, a sort of implicit plea for amnesty from the squeeze, for a moment of silence in a city that refuses to stop. It is peak period at 5pm, and I can only look away. I do.

Alone in the station, sweating thus stinking. I fish the local rag from my bag, The New Strait Times, take a seat on the hard warm floor. Arresting bold font, front page, states: "Dengue Fever Escalates." The article warns people visiting to Penang to (a) cancel and go elsewhere, or (b) be especially vigilant; 68 have died in recent months.

Tomorrow, 7.30am, our plane leaves for Penang.

A gaggle of gorgeous locals sashay up the steps, past me. Their hips are supple, postures flawless, eyes catty and captivating. They do not afford me a glance. Two businessmen and now the human deluge has started. A few schoolkids, shirts spilling out back, voices boisterous and unchecked. An emaciated Indian, eyes rolling and precariously shuffling in his torn and tattered rags, probably moribund. An older woman, hair a shimmery grey, with lines of wisdom blotting her forehead and an umbrella overhead, despite the roofing. Three hipsters now, adorned with requisite shades and tats and a bouncy sort of strut. They're generous enough to afford a glance. Nay, it's a scowl.

Claustrophobia strikes; everything caving in. Not four minutes since last shuttle, but already the space's simple comfort gone. The heat is abdominable. The electronic schedule is a defunct black screen. The bins spill with junk, ants crawling toward so slowly I videotape them. Down the length of the station and beyond, the sun melds with the clouds and mountains, a gradual descent into Kuala Lumpur darkness.

That same guttural hiss is born in the distance. The horde swarms forward, desperate for a spot. The monorail, this one emblazoned with a commanding green text beckoning us to Buy buy buy Nokia!!! pulls up with a forlorn sigh. It is full but will be fuller. People push, prod, pounce on the smallest gateway that avails itself. The gangly Indian is swept inside like a twig in a stream. The old lady's umbrella is packed away. The schoolkids I can hear but not see. And the attendant shrills his whistle from the vanguard, looks around the now-empty station, eventually locks sight on me. Again the whistle, churlishly, threateningly, an aggressive sweep of his arm designed to lure me aboard. But I can only shake my head. I do.

I figure that, hey, I'll just wait for the next one. Perhaps even the one after that.

The plane is soaring.

The plane soars at 803 km/hr. Outside it is -15C. The sun bleeds orange athwart the horizon, rich and mesmerising from this vantage. But just as its searing nexus dips behind our quivering white wing, my glum German neighbour slams the window shut, sans asking. She is pissed, I assume, to be returning home. I can't help but wonder if, in 5 adventure-addled months time, I'll be harbouring similar sentiments.

The grumpy German, pre-furore, sideways.

The hotel is a model of opulence. The family and I are ensconced within its towering marble walls, feigning normalcy amid orchid-toting ashtrays and cute trickling waterfalls and floors so buffed it seems irreverent to mount them. We awake each morning to a panoramic view of Kuala Lumpur's awkward jutting skyline, of the mountains beyond perpetually shrouded in smog. Then downstairs, we glut on a multifarious buffet of Indian, Malay and Western cuisine, always with coffee, always chased with that little yellow malaria-staving pill. Back up the lift to our rooms, bloated like boars, we shower with craned necks and hunched backs, cursing those diminutive Malaysian architects and their inconsiderate drafts. At long long last, we're ready. We venture out the grand lobby doors held open by the impish but solemn concierges to face the fierce and steaming Kuala Lumpur day. We gush sweat in an instant, and the sad, unspoken truth is: we already crave return to our glorious hotel of grotesque grandeur.

A story:

We arrived late on the first night, starved and listless. Everyone but Paul and I retired to bed. Rather, we trudged without direction through the clammy midnight streets with hearts set on food. All was shut but KFC, so KFC it was. Ordered, ate, digested, but needed more. Just as the girl in her hijab passed me the whipped potato and gravy, which looked very dubious indeed, a din sparked at the entrance. It was two pallid tourists singing godforsaken songs badly, arm-in-arm. They stumbled up the steps toward the counter and, instead of ordering, accosted us with with an arcane charm.

"Hallo. You are Irish? Where you from, friendy friend friend? Scottish?"

Their breath reeked of booze. Paul used me as a shield, hiding behind.

"No, you are very wrong. We are from Australia."

It registered for a fleeting moment, but their attention waned. They started capering around, these middle-aged gentlemen, in the middle of a busy KFC in the middle of a bustling city in the middle of a country hosting them as guests. They started playfighting, giggling and grunting and groaning, then broke out into a lurid spontaneous spankfest, wherein each offered the other their ass high and inviting in the air, before the other fairly spanked it with a whizzing roundhouse slap square in it nucleus. And they took turns at this, these middle-aged gentlemen, a squillion miles from home.

All-the-while Paul and I sidled exitwards, inconspicuously as possible. But not inconspicuously enough.

"Where you go, crazy Ozzies? You no say goodbye. You play with us if you want. We are Russian men!"

Like that demystified the whole hubbub.

"No thanks. We are tired, we are boring, we are Australian men."

The Australian men left. The Russians followed, without having ordered. Paul hadn't made a peep in three straight minutes by this juncture. We walked along the gum-blotched, litter-strewn, narrow craggy footpath with the slurring and stumbling Russians.

"Ah, you men, you are boyfriends?"

We jagged left into the foyer of our hotel, our home and salvation. We had shuckered the brazen, drunken, gay Russians, along with their charm.

The beloved Uncle Paul, pre-Russians.

And when I say everything is going swimmingly, you have to trust me.

It is.

A blog is born.

My name, should you not know, is Mark.

Tomorrow I will trundle onto a big, cumbersome aeroplane, which will lift on up into the clear blue sky, nose facing north. It will land many many miles away in autumnal Asia, where I'll debark bleary-eyed but satisfied, with yaks and misadventure in mind. I won't return home for an entire 5 months.

This here blog will document all the epochs of the trip, and then some.

So, without further ado...