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.