S'pore to Seremban

7th March: left Singapore from the old colonial train station, owned by Malaysia and apparently scarcely used. The "express" train trundled aimlessly through a monotonous landscape of palm oil plantations, punctuated by regular inexplicable stops.

However, on-board entertainment was provided - large TV screens playing first Japanese Manga comics dubbed in Malay, followed by the "A" movie screening ... a Malay soap opera.

Birgit had booked a guest hut at The Dusun, the home of Helen and her husband in the hills outside Seremban. Seremban is at first sight (at least from the perspective of sweating pedestrians lugging rucksacks) a hard-scrabble market town servicing the surrounding agroindustries.

Our goal was to make it to the nearby village of Pantai by taxi, buy provisions for self-catering and wait to be picked up by Helen. The first surprise was being told that the easiest way to buy food was "at Tesco". We found ourselves at a gigantic Tesco in the suburbs, a rather frazzled Birgit hastening through unfamiliar aisles while I waited outside with the Tamil taxi driver and rucksacks.

So early evening found two knackered Westerners sitting under a tin roof of a roudside food shack, surrounded by rucksacks and Tesco carrier bags, sheltering from the rain and waiting for a lift that had been delayed by a torrential thunderstorm in the hills. I failed to capture the surreal scene on film!