Well it's only seven-fifteen and gosh it's been an eventful day already: I've been locked inside a building, late for yet another flight, and been told by a self-proclaimed devout Christian from Florida that there isn't long for this world according to Daniel. I'm not that sure who exactly Daniel is, but I didn't care for his preaching at five-thirty in the morning.

I couldn't sleep for fear of missing the alarm, so eventually just got up at four-fifteen, but to my dismay it appeared that the toilet didn't flush and that the last few people who used it knew this before me. Lovely.

I left the hostel at five, letting myself out of the front door that automatically locks you out, and headed to the lift. The lift was out of service overnight. I walked down seven flights of stairs to let myself out, but the gates were chained shut. I began to feel terror at this point, terror that I didn't have a plan like my firefighter Dad always said I should, and that I'd miss the flight to Kota Kinabalu.

I ran as fast as I could holding a daypack and fifteen kilogram bag back up the seven flights, ringing the hostel's doorbell to wake the bleary-eyed skinny man and relay my panic, only for him to point to the left, which was never where I'd left the building from before, but apparently is the only way you can leave it after midnight. If only there was a way of stating this, a sign for instance.

The streets of Mong Kok were still surprisingly busy as I headed out, the slaughtered pigs were being pulled onto a trolley from the back of a fly-covered so-called-white van, and the Florida preacher and his Chinese wife were already at the bus stop. They were off to Beijing before Australia, and as we waited for the forty-five-minute late bus he managed to tell me his complete and unabridged views on Obama, Bush, Palin, the US dollar, travelling, and even how I should be careful in Malaysia and Cambodia because 'to them a westerner means their family will pay a ransom'. Joy. I spent those three quarters of an hour mopping sweat from my brow as I tried to continue holding both a conversation and my bags.

I arrived at the airport at six-twenty, and as my flight was at eight-ten there was some more panic. I then thought I'd cool myself down by buying an iced green tea latte, as I'd come to quite like iced tea. It was horrendous; so foul that I wanted to hand back the mouthful I'd swallowed, but in my haste I'd ordered a large so had to drink every last drop to get my money's worth.

I managed to get an aisle seat, but it was next to a mother and child who, whilst good, had his nappy changed mid-flight, and behind a Chinese woman who insisted on trying to push her seat back even when my knees were obviously causing some form of obstruction. Her husband could not get that the frog in his throat out, no matter how much he snorted, coughed, and snorted again, try as he might. They got their comeuppance later though when immigration told them in no uncertain terms to clear off to the back of the line when they tried to push in by simply standing next to me - I didn't try to hide my disdain.

When through immigration there was a man with my name on a placard waiting, but as we had to wait for two more I read through my itinerary, only to find I'd miscalculated my tour and needed to book somewhere to stay for the 23rd. Days just don't feel right without some sort of panic. I found a nice clean hostel up the road from the hotel though, so I'm all booked up now, and the hotel room is nice too. I'm sharing with a girl called Nanna, oddly the name I also refer to my grandmother as, from Denmark who's travelling with her two friends Mette and Lonna; she may not have had the best first impression of me though, as I was apparently snoring on the bed when she walked in, having lay down after a shower and, as you read, a very long day.

We had a our tour briefing at seven, where I met thirteen of the other fourteen doing the tour, including three over sixties, three Aussies, one New Yorker, four Danes, one Brit who grew up in Qatar, one German, and then a Kiwi who's due to arrive tonight. We heard about this small matter of climbing the four-thousand-metre high Mount Kinabalu, and then went for dinner, dry wanton noodles and apple juice that was purely squashed Granny Smiths. Here's to a good tour.