Greetings from Malaysia

I'm sat in Kuala Lumpur airport. The one and only smoking room in fact. Airport smoking arrangements always tend to be one of a few styles:

- Smoking area in a bar, sometimes an indoor bar (Dubai, Houston, Dallas, Heathrow, Gatwick, most of Europe in fact), sometimes an outdoor bar (Singapore, Hong Kong)

- Outdoor smoking area, Brisbane style

- Indoor smoke-house (Osaka, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Tunisia, most of tourist Africa)

- don't give a toss, smoke anywhere (Trinidad, Cyprus, Turkey, most of non-tourist Africa)

My least favourite is the indoor smoke-house style. I'm not a very heavy smoker and just walking into one of those with the air-conditioner running full pelt, condensed tar running down the walls and the constant sound of hacking is enough to show anyone what an unhealthy habit it is to partake in.

I bet the poor sod who comes in to clean the ashtrays is a smoker though. A non-smoker would not even go near the place, and I don't blame them.

I can't believe I'm sitting in here writing this, my screen will have a yellow twinge by the time I leave. In fact, this notepad window (not got internet connection) is already looking jaundiced.

The flight to here was ok, I can't comment any further as I slept through the first ten hours of it. I'm not much of a sleeper on planes usually, but the last ten days of surviving on cat-naps and 2 or 3 hours sleep per night have obviously taken their toll. And I can't think of a much better way to spend a 12 hour flight than sleeping the first 10.

I spent the last two hours watching "Firewall" Rearrange these words to form my review: "Heap Big Bollocks Of". Wasn't sure if I'd get to see the end but I didn't really care, it was just an activity to pass the final two hours.

Instead of going to the transit lane on arrival I headed straight for immigration - I wanted to see a little of the place in the few hours I'm here. Queued for ages and then set foot into the streets.

I tried to find a taxi tour, I just wanted to pay a taxi to drive me around for an hour or so and show me the sites. It's what I usually do when I have more than 3 hours between connecting flights. No luck today though. Unless I could offer a hotel name the taxi drivers had no idea.

They were friendly enough, and I heard many ask "Have a good flight?", "It's hot here, right?" [32 degrees and humid] and stuff like that but they were obviously just phrases from "Taxi driving for dummies" because non of them actually spoke any English at all, so all those people replying with details of flight and receptions of weather were simply humouring them. They did not understand a word of the reply!

After about 5 attempts to arrange a tour I gave up and returned to the airport. I went into a shop and asked if they accepted stirling as most of these places do. They said they did so I bought a bottle of coke. I offered a £10 because in England the airport charge about £3 and most international places only accept notes rather than coinage.

The girl looked a little annoyed and said "Do you have pound? Just one little gold coin?" I couldn't help but smile that Malaysian girl was describing my own countries coinage to me, but, pleasantly surprised that I didn't have to break a note. I gave her a pound coin. To my shock she then gave me bloody change! Hang on, I'll get it out of pocket now.

ok, it's a 1RM note and a 50? coin I'm sure it's not worth much but I certainly didn't expect to get paper and coin change out of a 1 pound coin! I've got another coin too but I can't be bothered to stand up to get it out of depths of pocket.

I was hoping to chat with TT here on messenger but I only just found out that the internet access is in the other terminal building which requires an airtrain trip and she would have been in bed by the time I got there and I'm not even sure if they'll accept stirling as it's part of Burger King (Hungry jacks) so i guess you have to buy a burger or something before you can use it.

Anyhoo, there are loads of shops here so I'll go and indulge myself by buying weird stuff for TT. It's a kind of airport tradition, and if I don't leave this room soon I'll contract lung cancer as though I'd been smoking 60 a day since infancy.