I took shelter from torrential rain in the car park of a scruffy high-rise block in the suburbs of the city. I was here to meet a Chinese bloke who was selling cheap camera battery chargers from his apartment. I found this guy on a Malaysian web site after finally admitting defeat with my solar charger. There is only enough power when in direct sunlight on the very brightest of days, so it just isn't very convenient. But every photograph you have seen in almost 5 months since I left home was powered by the sun - now that's fairly impressive isn't it?

Back on a dusty field in southern India whilst attempting to photograph elephants, deep in the bowels of my camera lens the metal within the ribbon cable was beginning to crack. This meant that the aperture wouldn't close any more when zoomed out, so I couldn't get any depth of field. This presented me with another challenge in KL. It was like a wild goose chase from camera shop to camera shop, until I finally found the wild goose in the form of a specialist service centre somewhere above an out-of-town shopping plaza. I had to live without the camera for two days, but when it came back I was delighted. Not only had they fitted the lens with a new cable so that it works again, they had given everything a thorough clean. My camera and lens were like new. So, I was soon off to photograph the monsoon rain, though I'd actually missed some good photo opportunities in the bad weather, with the stormy skies as a backdrop to the impressive futuristic skyscrapers.

Coming to this modern city after four and a half months on the Indian sub-continent is like taking a sudden leap forward in time by about two decades. And apart from the explosion of cell phones and Wi-Fi, it hasn't even changed much since I was last here ten years ago. Even the red and white Proton taxis look like they are the same ones that were scuttling around last time. It was at the end of a big economic boom in South-East Asia when the tall gleaming Petronas towers were virtually brand new, and at the time vied for position as the tallest buildings in the world. I still haven't been up to the sky bridge between those towers, but I just can't be bothered with the long queues for tickets in a morning.

The smells of India, which were often not all that pleasant, have been replaced with new smells. Often there is another revolting smell that reaches my nostrils, and I look around to see that someone has just walked past carrying a durian fruit in a plastic bag. Many hotels carry signs saying "no durian fruit", but built in the middle of a very diverse rainforest; the city has a large variety of other tropical fruits to choose from too.

For food, I am making the most of the huge variety here, just for a change. The hawker stalls are my favourite, each trying to get your business, so you sometimes end up ordering a main meal from one, rice or veg from another, and a drink from a third leaving you with several small bills to pay; all set around a scene of plastic chairs and tables filled with hungry locals.

There are many interesting sights just outside the city, which I saw on my last visit, so this time I have been getting to know the city better. There is an interesting mass rapid transport system. Be it the monorail or the LRT or the inner-city train or the MRT, each line is great. But since they were all conceived and built independently, there is no integration between them. You come out of an "interchange" station looking for another line, there are no signs and you find you have to walk two blocks and cross a busy main road to get to it. A classic case of engineers not talking to one another!

And it's been great to be able to find a bar or two here, though the beer is expensive, so I didn't indulge too much.