I remember after bagging a ten pound flight from Bradford to Alicante thinking how far I would be willing to travel on a budget airline. If Ryanair did London to Bangkok (or Oxford to Pattaya, more likely) for a hundred quid, would you? Two weeks ago we sort of answered that question, flying to Kuala Lumpur with Air Asia. At 200 GBP each for a flight with just one week's notice, it was almost half the price of any competitors. Bags and food were extras, as was paying, but we got a decent deal. The first thing we realised was the reduced leg room, then we were shocked to find there was no in-flight entertainment at all. Luckily we'd got seats next to each other （an extra we didn't pay for, but managed to get anyway by being early）, and it was a midnight departure from Stansted so the 12 hour flight went in chatter and the kind of high quality sleep you can usually only find on a national express coach. Still, it was exciting and quick - it took me nearly as long to get from Bradford to Saffron Walden the week before using woeful UK transport. And of course, it could never be as bad as Ryanair even if they'd insisted on prodding me awake every time I closed my eyes until I paid a 50 pound sleeping fee.

Arriving in Kuala Lumpur hits you like walking into a greenhouse, but there's already a pleasant buzz about the place. The taxi hustlers are nowhere near as bad as Bangkok, and you get into the centre pretty quickly. I'd booked a trendy 'cube' hotel after staying in a really great one in Amsterdam, the one in KL was appalling. After swapping rooms twice, we eventually found one which was acceptable provided we kept the aircon running 24-7 to keep the air smelling reasonably clean. After this, we treated ourselves to a bit of luxury - and KL definitely does luxury well! All our favourites from Singapore were represented in a less fussy and much cheaper version, just like all the knock-off gear they seem to sell on every market stall. I'd definitely recommend KL, it's got a great buzz about it - especially at night. The parks are superb and so is the food. On our last night we had a shisha near our hotel and had the owner treating us like royalty, bringing us all kinds of recommended treats. The other major cheap alternative in KL is visas - it cost a quarter of what it would from the UK to get a Chinese visa, and was processed 3 times as quickly. The whole thing was very polite and respectful too, not like the embassies in London.

While we were in KL, they were celebrating the anniversary of independence from the British. Despite getting dressed up like a BNP version of Rob Roy, we found that it was celebrated with about the same enthusiasm as St George's day in the UK. We saw a film in the national museum where an old man was telling his 3 children (who happened to be Chinese, Indian and Malay) about what Merdeka meant, and how they should never forget it. After that we went to Merdeka square, which marks the place where the Malaysian flag was first flown. It was empty. But maybe that's better than the guilty patriotism you get in the UK, complete nonchalance I can respect. We finished with a trip to the skybar where you have a great view of the twin towers (the largest in the world, at least now). To actually go up the tower means queueing from 7am, but you'd probably only get a view of hotels anyway so we figured being in a hotel bar looking at the towers was better.

So that was KL, a very exciting city and a great way to reacquaint with Asia. The haggling started to annoy me, but I'm seeing the fun in it again. I even had to haggle over a haircut after I'd had it and they tried jacking up the price.

That was rambling and uneventful… hopefully I'll be more interesting when I write about China.