My hunger has grown so great that I actually manage to wake up in time for the free breakfast buffet. That is, without time to shower or change my clothes, but I make it. The food is as delicious as you'd imagine in a 5-star hotel, so I eat heartily for an hour until I am beset by the consequences of eating heartily after 2 days of near-starvation.

That's right, I'm talking diarrhea on a professional level. And while I am indisposed, I notice in the bathroom a feature that may or may not be unique to luxury accommodations: There's a weird door next to the toilet that leads behind the wall to places unknown.

By the time I am finally able to negotiate a tense cease-fire agreement with my butt, the buffet is already over. Bummer.

On the lookout for whatever other amenities I can wring from this place, I decide to go for a swim. That seems luxurious and, more importantly, free.

Before I've even decided on a pool chair, I'm brought a chilled bottle of water and an apple.

However, I'm not really a guy who goes to swimming pools that much, so I'm stuck for how to make the most of my time. I do some laps, alternating between different half-remembered strokes, because that's something I've seen cool guys do in movies. It starts to rain. I feign disappointment for the benefit of the pool workers who probably despise me.

The hotel is massive, and holds an extensive collection of facilities, but I'm unable to find anything else a scumbag like me can do on the cheap in the couple hours I have till checkout.

I'm going to have to spend money at some point. Seeing as I'm getting hungry, and I've been known to enjoy a drink or two, I visit Arthur's, a pub inside the hotel owned by a famous mixologist, whose name escapes me.

I order an Old Fashioned and discuss with the Malaysian bartender the best techniques in making one.

My drinks are delicious, although some nachos I order need more cheese. IN YOUR FACE, 5-STAR LUXURY. YOUR NACHOS NEED MORE CHEESE. We were right to enjoy Taco Bell all along, guys. After I finish eating, I'm asked if I want a newspaper. Or a taxi ride, or more peanuts, or a hand towel. Alright, 5-star luxury. You're not bad. The guy who brings my bill asks where I'm from, and while he's never heard of Seattle, he has heard of Nirvana, and hums me the riff from "Come As You Are". He further says it makes sense that I'm from Seattle, because of my hair and the fact that I'm writing in a journal. Pretty sure I've never gotten that from a Buzzfeed quiz before.

When I'm ready to leave, the hotel immediately brings me my bags and charters a taxi to my next destination. My next destination is KL Bedz, the cheapest hotel I could find that claimed to have wifi. I never even got a chance to use my room's bidet...

KL Bedz is a comfy communal-style hostel with super-helpful managers, where backpackers are encouraged to hang out around the place. I check into my dorm bed and try to use the wifi, but my netbook is behaving worse and worse. Eventually frustration wins out and I give up, so I leave to go explore the city and experience another culture or whatever.

Of all the major Southeast Asian cities I've been to, Kuala Lumpur is perhaps the nicest and most metropolitan, which isn't too surprising given its status as the travel hub for the area. It's clean and modern, though at the expense of some of the character other, grittier cities like Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City have in spades.

While KL (which I am assured is what the coolest kids call the city) is very urban and upscale, you can still find tropical trees growing between the concrete buildings and skyscrapers, so the whole town looks very lush and green. It's a very comfortable place to walk around at night. I get some curry at Jalan Alor, a street packed with food stalls of every conceivable culture and dish. Here, the city still has a little adorable grime (although apparently this used to be the city's red light district, so in reality it's relatively gentrified).

I can't finish my curry because of a bad chocolate doughnut I ate earlier (we've all been there, right?), but the stall lady insists on boxing it up for me, after which it stinks up the dorm room in KL Bedz. Wherever I go, always making friends. The stink does not put off one Swiss roommate, however, who insists on making conversation (re: talking exhaustively about her boyfriend who must be a winner because he's traveling on a completely separate trip) even though I am turned away from her and trying to merge body and soul with my pillow. She says the best paying places for work in the world are Sweden, Switzerland, and Norway. I tell her I do not live in those places, and likely never will. She continues to talk. At some indeterminable point, I fall asleep. I do not know if she stopped talking.

Since I only have one full day in KL before catching another plane, I hit the tourist trail hard. For breakfast, I find a place advertising free coffee with their cake. Afterwards, I see the Kuala Lumpur Tower. The cake is delicious. The tower is okay.

I go up to the observation deck, and learn from a multimedia PDA guide that KL Tower is the 7th tallest telecom tower in the world. I bet if I told you before you read this blog post that you were going to find out which tower in the world was 7th tallest, you never would have believed me. Actually, the PDA told me it was the 4th tallest, because it was three years ago and we are all made fools by the inexorable march of time.

The view is pretty nice. Not like the nicest ever, but like 7th nicest:

There's a little theme park area called the Cultural Zone, but it is awful. All the employees are gone, and the area is just sterile fiberglass recreations of old Malaysian houses with some notes on their history. There are also some traditional dancers doing hourly performances, but theme park dancers for some reason always remind me of the film They Shoot Horses, Don't They.

The tower's also got a zoo, which is way cooler and a good time. After paying 5 RM, the zookeeper puts a big-ass ball python around my shoulders.

For a small zoo exhibit that has to play second-fiddle to the questionable tourist draw of the 7th whateverest whatever, they actually have a good selection of weird or rare animals. Some lizards, birds, tarantulas, an albino turtle, and hey! a 2-headed turtle:

...This monkey, which zoological scholars have dubbed "one of the rare species in the world":

...Sugar Gliders:

...Hairless Somethingsomethings:

...A whole display of tarantulas:

And...a raccoon:

What's harder to see from the photos is how small the cages are, which is why some animal rights activists hate this zoo and want it shut down. I figured I would lead with the pictures before dropping that tidbit, 'cause it's kind of a bummer.

After the KL Tower, I walk to the Petronas Towers, picking up a margarita at Beach along the way. I will come to learn that Beach is KL's most infamous meat market, and a favorite among ladies of the night. They advertise having "the bestest margarita in town" (the bar advertises this, not the prostitutes). If that is true, the margarita standard in Kuala Lumpur is very low.

By the time I get to the Petronas Towers it's too late to use the sky bridge, but I've seen all I need to of it in Entrapment anyways.

My tourist quota filled, I find a bar called Palate Palette, which is kind of a chill, artsy hang-out, but mostly notable for the crazy number of locks on their bathroom door:

I'm starving, but by the time I'm ready to eat it's 11, and funnily enough the kitchen closes at 10:45. Back to Jalan Alor, for some humbow, barbecued pork skewers, and grilled corn. It is all great.

Before heading back to KL Bedz, I grab a beer from 7-11. Their selection is weirdly expensive, until I realize they're all 8-9% alcohol. I choose one that is 9% and also the cheapest. It is awful but strong, like a racist gorilla. I check my email, and there's an email from Sarah, asking if I'm still coming to South Korea.

This is probably as good a time as any to mention that my next destination is South Korea. A friend from my days working there is having a birthday and, as John Francis Donaghy first said, I need a vacation from this vacation.  However, because I'm a wee bit of a prankster, I think it'll be funny if I tell Sarah that I'm not coming, and surprise her! It'll be hilarious.

There's another morning of very narrowly making my flight because of circumstances almost entirely out of my control, but everything's gravy once I find a restaurant called Chocolate where I'm able to order a gourmet chocolate shake and these waffles:

After eating and drinking liquid chocolate for breakfast, I feel fucking terrible. It takes forever to get through security and passport control, especially after some parent actually tries to get a giant toy BB gun onto the plane, and I only get to my gate just as they're boarding. My netbook is now completely fucked, as in Windows won't even load anymore, as in no entertainment for Jamie's 6-hour flight. Sure, there's still starving kids in Africa, but I bet they also don't like contorting themselves into the least-painful position to almost-sleep-but-not-quite for half a day. You know, like rickets.

The plane lands around 9:30 pm, and it takes almost 40 minutes to get my luggage. Normally I'm able to get my checked backpack almost instantly, probably because I'm always late to the airport and my bag is on top or something. However, as the minutes pass I can tell the baggage handlers here are doing all the small, lighter suitcases first, leaving all the heavier suitcases and backpacks for last. Normally I'd keep an objective view about this, because being a baggage handler isn't my first choice of career, but my ride on the KTX (the Korean bullet train) is leaving at 11:00, and it takes about an hour to get to the Seoul train station from the airport. Most infuriatingly, the train from the airport has a display above the doors that shows how far you are from your destination through a line of LED lights that turn red the closer the train gets to its destination. I get to watch in slow, increasing horror as the lights are simply not turning red fast enough.

So, I pull into Seoul station at 11:30. But! There is one last KTX train leaving, and I get on this one just in time, no ticket or anything. I've learned from my time being a scumbag in Korea that you can board a train with no ticket, and the porter will simply issue you one when they find you out. Or, as in a couple of scumbag cases, they do not find you out.

With my netbook out of commission, I flip through magazines until I come across a timetable that says this train doesn't go all the way, and I'll have to transfer at Daejeon to get to Daegu, where I once resided and Sarah still lives. I'm in luck: there's one last mugunghwa (the cheapest class of train) to Daegu. I should be there by 2 am which, since Sarah works evenings, should be perfect.

Except that I'm tired, and you know what tired people do? They fucking fall asleep on the last fucking train to Daegu. I end up at the end of the line, in Busan on the East coast. My only option now is to wait for the 5 am KTX inside a PC bang (sort of an all-in-one internet/LAN gaming cafe). I finally make it into Daegu around 6 am, and hesitantly knock on Sarah's door.

As it turns out, after she had gotten excited over me visiting only to be told I wasn't coming, her friends had thrown a Jamie-bashing party that night where they all commiserated with her over my duplicitous plan-making nature, and generally discussed what a fucking cunt I am. So what am I saying is, the surprise was extremely successful. One more feather in my prank-fedora.

I stayed in Korea three weeks, and since the visit was mostly a relaxed affair about seeing friends, let's fast-forward a bit: I went to my pal Austin's birthday in a town called Gyeongju, where we did one of those adventure packages where you get to ride ATVs and play paintball, but not at the same time because...holy shit why is that not an option somewhere? I'm...kind of upset now. Austin's thing was fun. Whatever.

I also finally went to the DMZ, through a tour organized by the USO, who apparently do stuff besides get used as a plot device in WW2 films. Actually, I had previously tried to take the tour twice when I lived in Korea. The first time I forgot my passport which it turns out is a necessary item, and the second time there was a North Korean artillery attack (I just found out it was called "the bombardment of Yeongpyeong"), and for some reason they called off the tour as the most militarized border on the planet went into high alert. At least they gave me a refund that time.

This time, no surprise artillery attack! Probably something I should always be grateful for, all the time. The drive up to the border takes a couple hours from Seoul, and we were all previously instructed to dress nicely, with no messages or imagery on your clothing that could be construed as provocative. We are further told to never make eye contact with the guards on the North Korean side, and always conduct ourselves respectfully. I heard that on the North Korean side, they let you do whatever the fuck you want. Flip off the South Korean guards? Go for it! When we reached the JSA, or Joint Security Area, I was kind of hoping I'd see on the other side at least one bored tourist, maybe some desperate Vice journalist, drop trou and show the Forces of Freedom their pale, white ass.

Our Marine officer tour guide tells me he likes my hair, and he used to have his styled in a similar way. I doubt this very much, because I just had Sarah re-bleach my hair and dye it white, but it's too long now for the style to really work, so now I look like an alien porn star from the future:

At the JSA, there's a building where North and South Korean officials can have talks, and since this building is situated in the center of the border, half of the room is technically in North Korea.

So if you're ever out and you meet some guy at a party who's so cool and says he's been to North Korea, like we all do when we're trying to impress people, fact-check that shit. Stop letting people like that get laid from only being to North Korea on a technicality.

From the JSA, we can just about see Kijong-dong, North Korea's Peace Village, otherwise known as Propaganda Village. After the 1953 armistice, both South and North Korea each have maintained their own village in the DMZ. On the South Korean side there's Daesong-dong, where our guide tells us civilians living there are given government stipends of something like 100,000 USD, but have curfews and can pretty much never move out, not to mention the constant knowledge that if any shit starts they're gonna be the first to...get bummed out. On the North Korean side, in lovely scenic Propaganda Village, it's pretty well-known that no one lives there and all the buildings are fake and rigged with timers to turn the lights on and off at set intervals, because the DPRK is the kid who "totally has a girlfriend who's a model and they have awesome sex all the time in all the positions, but you wouldn't know her 'cause she's from Canada" of world nations. Actually, the fake buildings house giant sound systems that used to blast pro-DPRK, anti-Western propaganda over the border, until 2004 when both countries finally agreed to stop broadcasting at each other.

Next, we were taken to the site of the Axe Murder Incident, which is about as serious business as incidents can possibly sound.

The Axe Murder Incident occurred in 1976, when there was this tree that was blocking line of sight between a UN Command checkpoint and an observation post. US and South Korean forces were all "Hey guys we're gonna trim the branches of this tree," and North Korea was all "Okay that's cool guys" and then when they actually went out to cut the tree, a bunch of North Korean soldiers showed up and were all "OMG what are you doing that's Kim Il Sung's personal tree that he planted and watered and whose photosynthesis he personally supervised." Cpt. Bonifas, the dude in charge, was like "Fuck those dudes and fuck this tree, keep trimming," which the North Korean dude, Lt. Pak, did not like one bit. He sent for more dudes, and then was like "Seriously don't cut that tree," but Bonifas was still like "Man fuck these branches, they gotta go" and turned his back. So, Pak shouted "Kill the bastards!" (really) and, using axes dropped by the tree trimmers, killed two soldiers and wounded another nine. The outnumbered Americans and South Koreans were also unarmed, since rules at the time strictly limited weapons for JSA personnel.

Kim Jong-il went to the UN like "They totally attacked us! Also the Americans should leave South Korea and stop helping and the UN Command should get out of the DMZ, so that everyone stops picking on us." America was like "Screw you bro" and ordered Operation Paul Bunyan, and instead of simply trimming the tree, they were gonna cut that mother down. They sent in unannounced 23 vehicles of military engineers to cut that leafy bitch down with chainsaws, along with 60 other armed dudes for security. And another company of dudes, with machine guns and rafts for escape, and a 64-dude South Korean special forces team of Tae Kwon Do experts, with sandbags, machine guns, grenade launchers, and Claymore mines strapped to their chests. And a handful of attack choppers, and B-52 bombers, and F-4 and F-5 jet fighters. Oh, and an aircraft carrier just offshore. Did I mention the bombers were nuclear-capable? One way or another, that tree was going down.

The North Koreans showed up too, with like 200 dudes with machine guns, but they just watched the whole time, 'cause what the fuck are they gonna do. The tree was successfully cut down, with the stump deliberately left standing.

Kim Il-sung afterwards was like "It sucks that thing that totally wasn't our fault happened, hopefully in the future you don't start shit, won't be shit" which everyone kind of just accepted because it's North Korea and the first time since the armistice that the DPRK had actually accepted any sort of responsibility for violence in the DMZ, so...progress.

As we're taking pictures of the site, we can just make out some sort of noise coming from the border. It sounds like the very faint, static-y voice of a woman speaking Korean. Our guide says he's never heard it before, but we all know a North Korean propaganda Communist opera when we hear it. Someone had their fingers crossed behind their back in 2004!

Nearby is the Bridge of No Return, where the two sides used to hold prisoner exchanges, and so-named because if a prisoner chose to go home, they could never return, and supposedly many of the prisoners held by the US didn't want to go back. After the Axe Murder Incident, the bridge was never used again, and concrete bollards were put in place to prevent vehicle access. Our guide tells us about how in 1993, Bill Clinton walked to the middle of the bridge for a photo op, which prompted a bunch of North Koreans with Kalashnikovs to come out and take aim, which the Secret Service probably did not like very much.

From there, we're taken back to safer ground at the DMZ Theater & Exhibition Hall.

The theater shows reels about the Korean War and history of the DMZ, while in the exhibition hall they have an assortment of displays and artifacts.

Once we've taken in all the history our Western capitalist overlords have to offer, the tour heads to the Third Tunnel of Aggression. It is named such because it is the third of four tunnels they discovered North Korea making under the DMZ so they could make a surprise attack on the South, although people suspect there could be more than a dozen more. North Korea tried to pretend the tunnel was for coal mining, and you can still see where they painted the walls black, which I bet totally fooled everybody. They don't allow pictures, but I can assure you the tunnel was sufficiently cold, damp, and generally tunnel-like. It's got a gift shop as well.

The tunnels are also a part of the tour that South Koreans can actually visit, as they're not allowed to actually see the JSA for security reasons. All around us were hundreds of tourists: Korean families and school groups here on field trip.

After the tunnel, we're whisked to Dora observatory, where you're given an extensive view of the border and a bit of North Korea, aided by pay-telescopes.

Last sight on the tour is Dorasan station, a railway station that used to connect North and South Korea, and has been restored and now sort of acts as a symbol of hope for reunification. Although, it was opened for about a year in 2007 and used to ship materials to the Kaesong Industrial Region, where North and South Korea work together, granting South Korea access to cheap, Korean-speaking labor, and giving North Korea actual money that doesn't come from meth or massive-scale insurance fraud (those crazy kids!). In 2008, though, North Korea closed the border crossing, because of reasons. It's getting old now coming up with different ways to write that they're fucking crazy.

At our final DMZ gift shop, I pick up some North Korean beer and wine. The beer is okay, the wine is awful. Definitely not worth financially supporting a totalitarian dictatorship. More like dick-tatorship, eh? Eh?! Between this and Burma, my trip has funded a worrying number of police states. Moving on.

Let's get back to fast-forwarding. I watch Biodome for the first time. I see a Korean drag show at a gay club that I didn't know existed in my 13 months of living in the country, so that was a delightful surprise. Koreans treated it like a strip club, making it rain 10,000 won bills on the performers. It was pretty fun. I format my netbook and try to reinstall Windows, which doesn't work. Sarah and I go to the Itaewon district in Seoul, and see a Korean theater performance of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which apparently is a musical that Koreans go nuts for.

I'd like to point out the earlier photo from Dora Observatory, I wasn't supposed to take that, but what the hell. No one noticed. At Hedwig we aren't supposed to photograph or record anything, but I couldn't help it, and had to get a snippet of the experience. Staff were on me instantly.

The next morning, hungover in the way you can only get in the hardest-drinking country in the world, Sarah and I eat our weight in Taco Bell before she has to go back to Daegu. God above how I've missed you, lettuce-smothered filth-pockets that only tangentially qualify as food. It was great seeing Sarah as well, her giving me a place to touch down and having my loneliness alleviated if but for a few weeks, but the Bell always has and always will come first.

I need new reading material, and Sarah leaves me with one of her favorite books, Bukowski's Women, because maybe she thought I needed more inspiration to drink. Bukowski certainly does the job handily, although after living it up in a first-world country for almost a month, my budget is casting very inhospitable glances at my "hobby".

Resuming the grand adventure, next on the list is Brunei, once again by way of Kuala Lumpur. And once again, I get to my gate 10 minutes before boarding. The plane ride is a melancholy one. I miss Sarah, I miss Korea, and my head just isn't back in the game. I bet Bukowski's got some advice for me in this here book that'll help.

This time, there's no 5-star shenanigans. I need somewhere conveniently located by the train, so I can be responsible and not get to the gate with minutes to spare once again. POD Backpacker Hostel is just the ticket:

After a nap, I ask what there is to see that I haven't already, that is feasible before my 6 am flight. The very accommodating staff give me info and directions to Batu Caves, which is in an actual jungle at the end of the train line.

Whaddaya know, there's a Korean couple in my car! In stark defiance of the prevailing train segregation paradigm. Badasses. We strike up conversation, and I find out that the fella is a Christian preacher with a daughter in Juilliard. I never got any info about his wife. When we get to Batu Caves, he buys me a coconut, takes a bunch of photos of me, and leaves me with his email address and phone number, which I'm not entirely sure what to do with. I thought this was just a casual train conversation fling-type situation, but apparently he's expecting more. I am not your whore, sir.

Batu Caves itself is a scenic limestone cave formation that also houses multiple popular Hindu shrines.

There's a lot of hullabaloo around one of the shrines in the cave, and one onlooker tells me someone is shooting a movie that's an Indian/Indonesian collaboration. There's a famous actor present as well, drawing a decent crowd of looky-loos.

As I'm taking the scene in, another Korean guy comes up to me and says that he saw me sleeping at the airport waiting for my last Air Asia flight! That's what being a world citizen is all about. People caring about other people. Take it from me: Next time you run into a stranger, brighten their day a little by mentioning that time you watched them sleep. It'll put a little pep in their step. Pay it forward, guys.

In addition to the Hindu shrines, you can also see the Dark Cave, where the trapdoor spider, the rarest spider in the world, resides. I've still got some time to kill, so I go on the tour. We're given low-intensity flashlights and walked around a very dark cave where we can't really see anything, much less some tiny spider.

On the way back to KL Sentral I accidentally take the Ladies Only car, and absolutely nothing happens. The staff at the hostel also recommended seeing Chinatown and the old Central Market, so I make a stop nearby the market. Maybe once it was quite the sight, but now it's just a gussied-up mall, with the different stores made to look like street stalls, separated by country. If there's one thing I can say about the Central Market, it's that I never thought something could make me appreciate an actual street market.

Chinatown, on the other hand, is exactly one of those actual street markets that I just so briefly missed. It is crowded and pushy and hot and loud and awful, like all good street markets.

Back at POD the staff give me some further advice for Brunei, which I take with a grain of salt this time, then I have just enough time for the bus to the airport. For the first time in I don't know how long, I arrive early and unhurried. It's boring and I hate it.