Well, that about wraps it up for Peninsular Malaysia

Check out how much stuff I did in Malaysia! And I haven't even been to the Borneo bits yet.

I wanted to finish on a deliberate anticlimax by recounting my trip to Subang Jaya to experience Malaysia' tallest pencil (formerly the world's, but it doesn't even have that going for it any more). But after walking around the city for hours and discovering that no one who lives there even knows about its existence, I left empty hearted.

Luckily, I went to Johor Bahru next, the gateway to Singapore, which turned out to be an even more effective anticlimax. As well as a reminder that, if somewhere is generally ignored by tourists and is objectively of no interest whatsoever (it doesn't even have any oversized stationery, that's how crap it is!), this should be taken as a hint rather than a challenge.

A good read

One of the benefits of not having 24-hour internet access - apart from meaning I subject you people to slightly fewer pointless blogs each month (it'll take more than that to stop me) - is that I spend less time at the computer and more time elsewhere.

Although I still invariably end up wasting the precious gift of life, at least I'm wasting it offline and getting lots of reading done.

Dave 2031

What will become of me?

Right now, I'm happy enough visiting new places and writing about brain injury claims and Berlin city breaks for a living (those are just two random, recent examples - I'm not paid to write endlessly about brain injury claims and Berlin city breaks, and never are the two combined). But will that still be the case six months from now? Or in a year? Or 20 years down the line in the space-age sci-fi future dystopia of 2031, when I'm 45?

Do I really want to end up like Graham?

You must be Malaystaken

Another smugly superior, borderline racist guffawing at the poor English skills, accidental double entendres and deliberate copyright infringements of foreign shop owners, this time across Peninsular Malaysia.

Travel babies

Artist's impression.
(Note: Artist is a racist)

It's exactly nine months since I started travelling, which means that any day now my tiny mixed-race offspring will start popping out of all those exotic women I had reckless unprotected sex with.

You might call this slightly troubling behaviour, but it'll be worth it to get a rough idea of what I might look like if I were a bit more Italian, Greek, Israeli, Egyptian, Taiwanese, Thai, Cambodian (it still counts) or Malaysian. I'll be honest, it's going to be hard to tell the difference between some of those.

Let the welfare payments commence!

Mandarin Wednesdays

Sort of like Orange Wednesdays. Except in this case the orange is specifically Chinese.

North Korea's the safe one... right?

I may or may not be going to North Korea in a couple of months. I know, surprising isn't it? I don't normally make plans beyond the week.

The uncertainty isn't because of any safety concerns (as if I have the self-awareness for that), but because the planning is being done by someone else, who I don't even know. This is annoying because, as I've said before and stick by, people are unreliable and often downright rubbish. Especially me. I might just bail out of the whole thing. Or should I go?

Only one thing for it: let's bypass the deficient decision-making part of my brain and discuss my private business openly on the internet. Let's!

Revenge of the amusing podcasts

Podcasts have proven to be great travelling companions. Whether I'm wandering around unfamiliar streets or taking long cross-country bus journeys, having a couple of people jabbering on about next to nothing inside my head in amusing ways beats developing schizophrenia to achieve the same end.

There are quite a few good podcasts around at the moment - some old favourites tediously refusing to give up the ghost, and a couple of new kids making their mark on the block by essentially doing the same thing other people have done, but in a slightly different London accent. Is the podcast still an exciting and limitless medium, or just an excuse for people to not be very good because it's free?

That's right - these things are all free to download, so why not give them a try? It's only your invaluable life you're wasting. I've made a cheeky podcast sampler of some good bits (or in some cases, bits) from recent 'casts. If you like anything you hear, you can download full-length podcasts by following the links. This has been a public service announcement; now continue with your pointless lives.

Literally everything I'm carrying

Following my needlessly thorough budgeting blog, I thought I'd offer a further tedious and intrusive glimpse into my life with an exhaustive list of everything I'm currently carrying in the two bags I travel the world with and the pockets of the shorts I'm wearing right now.

People have asked me a couple of times about what I carry when I'm travelling, or seem bewildered by the compact size of my luggage. But I still think I have too many socks. So here's my dubious advice about packing for the long haul, which you can feel free to ignore (I am best though).

Who's Taman? I'm Taman!

Against the odds, I survived the ordeals of Malaysia's Taman Negara national park. Mostly by limiting my adventurous trekking activities to tourist tours in safe groups, rather than heading off on my own. Not exactly Tarzan, am I? I'm not even bloody Mowgli.