It was culture shock, to be honest.

Outside our Cititel window, the city sprawled in all directions. The roar of the traffic penetrated our sealed frames.

It was Saturday evening, and the glitzy shops of the Midvalley Mall next door were packed to the gunwales.

It was all a million miles from the ricefields and the perkutut, from the simple warungs and the quiet perumahan.

But, sitting at T and Co, having a cup of tea and a sandwich and a bit of banana cake (34 ringgit!), and feeling, frankly, slightly overwhelmed, we began to recall how interesting the people-watching is here. So many ethnicities. So many sartorial and behavioural variants.

And the food, of course... Memories of old favourites. Plus lots of temptingly different things to try. Mooncakes are everywhere at the moment. (And there is, it seems, a lot to be learned about mooncakes.)

Cititel breakfasts are good. To celebrate Hari Merdeka (Malaysia is 57 this year), I had an eclectic plateful, with contributions from each major Malaysian ethnicity.

(It was particularly nice to encounter string hoppers again, in the guise of putu mayam, which are eaten with brown sugar and grated coconut. Yum.)

Lunch at Sri Melaka in the Amcorp mall was a blend of peranakan and mamak. Chicken pieces wrapped in pandan leaves; a green chicken curry that was pleasantly different from the Thai version; an excellent vegetable curry... Different flavours that it was nice to meet again.

From our traffic-filled window, I can see a mosque and a Chinese temple. Just below us -- so vertically below us in fact that I can only see the roofs, one of which has a lion on it -- is an Indian temple. The anarchy of cars and the sound of shawms and drums yesterday morning suggested a special event.

We're back in the cultural swirl of this crossroads of Asia.

We'll be OK. We'll be OK. We'll be OK.