Hello from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I left Melbourne, Australia on 23 March. I felt sad about leaving Melbourne, because I sense there is something charming about Melbourne, and, quite frankly, I’m in love with Melbourne. And it was much quicker for me to feel that way about Melbourne.

I started loving Tokyo after I started spending more time hanging out with friends in Tokyo; it took me a while for me to start seeing the charm of Tokyo. The same applies to Sydney, too. I didn’t miss leaving Sydney, though I do miss people I met there. Sometimes it takes a while to start liking or even loving places… or even people.

I still need to find something charming about Kuala Lumpur. A variety of food you can get here is pretty charming and so is the diversity of people here.

On the first day I arrived in Kuala Lumpur, I got lost, trying to find the hostel I had a booking for. The area where the hostel is located is not huge, but I managed to get lost anyway. In fact, I’m pretty good at getting lost. I should probably practice the art of getting lost and become a black belt in this art.

There’s something nice about getting lost, provided that you are not in a life threatening situation. I wasn’t in such a situation, and even though I actually started swearing due to the fact that this goddamn hostel was nowhere to find, on a retrospect, I enjoyed the whole experience of being a lost stranger.

(Side note: Since there is pretty much no coarse language that sounds strong enough in Japanese, I swear in English. Also, some of people who know me in person may have a hard time imagining me swearing, but that’s OK.)

You can learn a lot from things going against your expectations and assumptions. This point hadn’t come to my mind until this experience, but if there’s one thing I learned from this experience, then this is it.

I did manage to find the hostel eventually, but I was too late. My bed was gone. But the hostel staff was very kind and arranged another room at another hostel nearby. My original room was a dorm room, but this temporary room was a single room with bathroom and shower. Free upgrade for showing up late. Not bad, yeah?

The moral of the story is: enjoy your ride anyway and if you are lucky, you might end up getting a free upgrade, and even if you don’t get a free upgrade, you’ll have a story to tell and some amusing experiences.

Tomorrow, I’ll get back to something about love and romance, so stay tuned…