WORLD OF WILL

Our spo nta neous visit to Malaysia was made easy by the fact that it's connected to Singapore by a bridge and all we had to do was jump on a bus. Who knew? So it was that we entered Malaysia and, havi ng done absolutely no research beforehand, headed to the nearest town that looked mildly interesting. That happened to be Melaka (sometimes spelt Malacca), a small but perfectly formed ex-colonial outpost that has just shot to number one in my list of "Surprising Towns I Have Fallen In Love Wit h" (just edging out Tallin in Estonia, Szeged in Hungary and Gdansk in Poland). Melaka is exactly the sort of town I'd hoped we'd be coming across in Asia but which, up until now, had eluded us. It is a maze of little streets, colonial shopfronts, shuttered windows and laid back coffee houses. Everything is slightly run down and crumbling with peeling paint - it's w hat glossy magazines would call "tatty-chic" - and is a living picture-postcard of anoth...

The next couple of days after New Year were a little bit surreal. It rained torrentially and solidly for a day and a night and drummed on the tin roof of our hostel as if someone was continually emptying gravel onto it. It became an appropriately semi-hypnotic soundtrack to our collective hangover. As the rain eased, so did our headaches and we were able to venture out in search of food, coffee and other such necessities. The footpaths that linked the various parts of Railay peninsula had bec ome rivers and we now had to wade along these, knee-deep in places, to get to where we were going. Because of all the standing water there were now also whole new squadrons of mosquitoes eating me alive (my legs look like gourds) just to add to the misery. W e headed to West Beach only to find half of it missing - the rains had washed away huge swathes of sand and, in places, huge ravines had been created where storm drains had failed and collapsed. I ordered a cup of coffee to try to deal with ...

We spent Christmas in Phuket which is a strange island that seems to be inhabited, mostly, by Russians and Swedes. We arrived at our hotel in Kata Beach and were pleased to see the whole town bedecked with Christmas trees, lights and tinsel. On Christmas Eve all the resorts and hotels held big gala dinners with special buffets, live music and other entertainment. We spent the evening sat at a cocktail bar on the beach watching the locals sell fireworks and paper lanterns to the tourists. By midnight, as more and more people piled on to the beach after their gala buffets, the sky became full of floating lanterns and there were so many increasingly loud, weapons-grade fireworks being let off that it was a bit like sitting in t he middle of a re-enactment of the D-Day landings. "This is great ," we thought, "imagine what it'll be like tomorrow!" So we asked at the various restaurant s what the deal was for Christmas Day and would we need to book and would the...