South East Asia correspondent signing in

Hello party people.

We're currently sitting in an internet cafe in Kuala Lumpur. The first half of our trip was spent on Pulau Perhentian, an island off the north east coast of peninsula Malaysia.

Memorable (and mostly good) events from our time there include:
-a number of days snorkeling during which we saw some sharks, a huge variety of tropical fish, and swam with sea turtles;
-lazing about on the beach;
-going to a jam session which we were randomly invited to by some locals.

-living with all manner of wildlife in our cabin including giant geckos in our cabin which Margie was certain had a taste for human flesh, frogs which kept finding their way into our bags, bats which lived in the space in our ceiling, and something that sounded like rats scurrying about in our roof at night.

-Margie getting violently ill for a couple of days straight. Perhaps the crowning moment of this sickness was when, after doing nothing but trying to sleep and throwing up out the window of our cabin for the last 24 hours, she made a mad dash for toilet to throw up again, didn't make it at all, and ended up throwing up over all of our stuff. Of course, as the dutiful husband nursing my beloved wife back to health, the delightful job of cleaning up the mess fell to me. I guess the gist of this responsibility was covered in the whole "for better or for worse" promises we made to each other recently, but I would recommend that anyone looking to get married in the future consider including something about "for honeymooning on a tropical island, and for cleaning up your vomit when necessary" just so they really know what they are getting themselves in for.

We spent a day in Kuala Terenganu doing some sight seeing and while we were in a park in front of the Sultan's palace we walked past a middle aged couple dancing and being filmed by a couple of other people. At first we thought that maybe they were filming for a bollywood film (I know we're not in India, but it seemed possible) or a music video. They convinced us to come dance with them, much to the amusement of the palace guards and some random passersby in the park. They took us out for drinks afterwards and as far as we could figure out they were performers who do some sort of stage show, and I'm pretty sure there is now going to be a performance involving videos of us dancing in a park being shown somewhere in Malaysia. It was a bit hard trying to figure out exactly what they were really doing, seeing as their English was about as good as our Malay, and the phrase guide in the back of Lonely Planet is strangely lacking in Malay phrases to use when you want to find out why someone wants to film you dancing in a park.

We're just about to start exploring KL, so expect an update once our experience here amounts to more than visiting an internet cafe.