We were up and packed and ready in plenty of time this morning. A quick glance at the ticket to see if it was 10 or 10.30 and we found we actually had to have been there at 7.45. Two hours ago... Oh well, these things happen, but it made all the rest of the plans go awry and left me confused for the rest of the day.

We made a quick phone call to the tourist office to see if we could change the tickets, and they said it would be easier if we went to them. We made arrangements to stay here for another night, and then walked slowly through the thick morning to the tourist office. The nice lady took one look at the useless bus ticket to Kuala Tembeling and said that she had already checked availability on the bus tomorrow and she'd just swap the dates for us. No fuss, no charge, we were out in ten minutes. Then we wanted to see if we could change our bus to Penang for a day later, and that entailed a long walk to the bus station.

Thick black exhaust clouds hung over the roads and the mopeds lined up six-abreast at junctions, and unhealthy engines struggles and moaned. Some of the shops around the station pumped out thin clouds of water as makeshift air-conditioning on the street but it just made everything more clammy and uncomfortable.

Mikey had been told about a shopping mall specialising in computers and software so we decided to use the coolness there to gain strength for the bus station next door. I took six films in to be developed - I realised that Airlie Beach about three weeks ago was the last place I'd done any. Since then we'd cruised and dived the Whitsunday Islands, seen Cairns and Darwin, done three Northern Territory National Park tours, spent six days in Singapore, stayed in Raffles and moved on to Malaysia. Which is nice. The photos would take three hours, and I didn't think I could take that much of an IT shopping mall, but Mikey seemed to be in his element. We looked for a small mini-disc or MP3 recorder for a bit, and then Mikey found the pirated software and DVD section and I lost him for a bit. He did buy me some games though.

We finally braved the heaving, screaming, hot and dark bus station and asked the grumpy lady behind the counter if we could change the date to Penang. It really wouldn't have been a problem if we had to buy new tickets, they only cost a couple of pounds each, but she screamed into a walkie-talkie for a few minutes, had to repeat herself three times, and then we found that she'd asked for the wrong date. She didn't even look at us when she'd repeated the process for the 5th September and handed back the ticket with several felt-tipped pen ammendments on it. We bought an emergency doughnut and then cheated and got a taxi back to the hostel. I slept for about two hours while Mikey did some computer things, and then, feeling better after the doughnut's magical medicinal properties had kicked in, we went to collect my photos and have something to eat.

I'm really, really pleased with the pictures of the Whitsunday Islands. Mikey bought a couple of films and we stopped at a Chinese cafe for a quick snack, a sort of 5pm brunch. I had a very nice fresh mango juice. In the hostel we did a bit of laundry and watched the Bourne Supremacy while an English guy said things like "Television is a great window onto the... ...of a nation... ...so you can see with the psychology what they are feeding the nation... ...with how the words..." in the hope that we'd fill in the blanks with big, impressive words that made sense of his rubbish. He finished with "That's my reason for staying indoors all day."

I spent an hour putting my photos into their little packets and checked my email and now I'm off to sleep. The alarm clock is already set for early, so that we don't miss the bus again!