And then suddenly it was Saturday, the day I was to leave Borneo. It's hard to believe that the time flew by so quickly. I have had a marvellous time in Malaysia. And to think I was planning to do nothing more exciting than sit on a beach and read a load of books. It turned out quite differently: a phenomenal trip, a reminder of how much fun it is to be an independent traveller.

So that morning I chatted with Lucy the homestay owner, I chatted with the German who had malaria (he came back from hospital that day), I had lunch with a Canadian girl who shall be known as Jenga Queen - we had a face-off during breakfast with a travel set that Lucy has lying around, which was pretty challenging on a less than level plastic tablecloth I'll tell you - and then I packed my bags. Luckily my rucksack was reasonably empty on the way here. Not so now, after all the shopping I've done in KK!

Then it was time to catch a taxi to the airport, a plane to KL (observing the huge smoke clouds floating over from Indonesia's rampant forest fires), and another plane to Melbourne (sat next to an interesting half-Aussie HK Chinese guy called Jim). And finally I was back on the ground, freezing my tits off waiting for the 6.30am shuttle bus to take me back into the city. Home.

Impressions of Melbourne post-Malaysia: cold! A pleasant fresh breeze kept me nice and cool for the walk home from Spencer Street bus station. The air seems clearer here, or at least less thick. I think there are sound physics arguments as to why that might be, but I'm not sure what they are.

So I dumped my bags, and then began the process of falling into my old routines. I spent time with Fiona & Kate in my house, we went to Vic Markets (where, I am sorry to say, I bought yet more clothes! Well, it was a beanie to combat the sudden cold I was feeling around my head; funnily enough I didn't see any for sale in KK), and we generally chatted & drank tea.

That afternoon I went with Fiona to the nearby house of a Brazilian friend of hers and we enjoyed a churrasco, that extremely tasty Brazilian-style barbecue where the meat is coated in chunky salt crystals and then briefly presented to the fire before being whipped off and served. Yum! It was great to hear Fiona talking Portuguese (she lived in Brazil for a year) but I have to say I got a bit of a headache trying to do the same, because it's been a while.

Later that day, I was walking along in the evening light when I saw a movement on the pavement in front of me. My jungle-trained eyes immediately recognised a monitor lizard! Imagine that! A scary looking reptile on the streets of Melbourne! But then I realised that in fact it was an agglomeration of soggy leaves that had been momentarily brought to life by a gust of wind. It'll take some time to readjust to city living, methinks.

The rest of the week was taken up with catching up with people I haven't seen for a whole three weeks or more: dinner with Nea on Monday, dinner with Rainnie on Tuesday, dinner with Rob on Wednesday, coffee with Stuart on Thursday, drinks with Jeremy (and Fiona) at another Brazilian party on Friday, drinks with Kara & Matai and friends on Saturday, coffee with David on Sunday afternoon, and dinner with Claire (and Rainnie) on Sunday night.

It was wonderful to see Rainnie again. So much had happened for both of us in the three weeks since we had last met up. Obviously I had all my Malaysian experiences to recount, but Rainnie had been to Sydney with Claire and to Coffs Harbour for her mum's birthday, plus a host of news from Melbourne. The meal at the Lincoln Hotel (how good is their chick pea dal?!) wasn't long enough, so we had to go for coffee at the University Cafe, where we caught up with our Serbian waiter friend.

Friday night's party was an experience too. It was pissing with rain (apparently the weather was much worse while I was away - ooh, shame!) but we managed to gerry-rig a marquee in the garden with a sheet of tarpaulin and clothes pegs. There were two types of people there: nerdy Anglo Aussies; and insane Brazilians. In true South American style, the party didn't really get started until after midnight, when the caipirinhas began to flow.

An hour or two later, there was a spontaneous gathering in the kitchen, with two or three guys grabbing kitchen implements and beating out samba rhythms while other Brazilians joined in for singing and dancing. This was amazing in itself. But what blew me away was that they kept at it for the next hour & a half! I didn't think it was possible for so many people to know the words to so many songs (particularly after my own recent a capella experiences in the jungle), but they did it with panache. I even managed to join in on one or two, as well as learn a basic samba step with the aid of a half-Japanese half-Italian Brazilian girl called Nina.

I left the party at five in the morning and walked home south along Lygon, past the big cemetery in a gentle drizzle which my beanie effectively blocked. I was happy to have witnessed the calling-up of the spirit of Brazil in urban Australia. Viva Brasil!

And Saturday night's shenanigans were cool too. I walked in my house in the early evening from the shops, and found Kara & Matai with Matai's brother Shasta (yes, hippie parents, what can you do) who is over from NZ at the moment drinking beer in the living room. Naturally I joined them, and since I had no other plans I spent the rest of the evening with them. We met up with a couple of Kara's girlfriends and drove to Yelza, a funky Melbourne-style bar off Smith Street.

Yelza is nothing to look at from the outside - in fact it's a bit of a turn-off to peek through the curtains and see the musty front bar - and I resent the deliberate policy of keeping a queue of pepole waiting outside the front door. But once you're in you can see why people bother: the garden bar is closed in with a glass roof, the big tree in the middle is bedecked with fairy lights and the ambient lighting combines with the ambient music to create a most pleasant environment for drinking & laughing.

After a few drinks there, and some time for Kara's foot to recover from being squashed under the pointy heel of an immense girl who managed to trip over her own feet and land on Kara's, we went over the road to A Bar Called Barry, where they were playing cheesy disco music so we danced cheesily on the stage for a few hours. Back home we had a toast fest and then turned in at 5am.