2004-05-20 - 4:59 p.m.

Tiom@n Island, Malaysia

Arrived in Kual@ Lumpur after a sanity-testing 13 hour flight to find a city about as alluring as three pints of guff soup. Pollution and brutal weather seem to be the main trends, though thankfully the religion is more Islam-lite than I�d imagined. Me and the other journalists headed over to Super Noodle for some authentic local cuisine � it�s right next to Starbucks and KFC, so we weren�t optimistic. It turned out to be quite exotic, though, and among the usual Chinese sweet n' sour fare are fried frog, boiled intestine and roasted ducks tongue. I didn�t even know that ducks HAD tongues, but maybe I just haven�t been meeting the right kind of duck. If you were having trouble forming your intestine preferences, there was the reassuring variety of the mixed intestine plate, always a popular choice.

One of my colleagues is a girl who expresses wide eyed surprise at almost everything you tell her, regardless of its shock value, which is in turns amusing and tedious.

Me: I live in north London.

Her: REALLY?! That�s AMAZING!

Me: I�m involved with a ring of deckchair smugglers from Albania.

Her: You�re JOKING!! That�s INCREDIBLE!!!

Me: I think I�ll have the soup.

Her: No WAY! That�s so exciting!!!!

And so on, until the end of time.

We�ve escaped the city now, and are resting on a tropical isle complete with its own hugely varied range of biting insects. I have to tell you about jungle trekking and snorkeling, but first I have to go and find someone to attend to my chronic sunburn, maybe around the POOL BAR POOL BAR POOL BAR.