It’s a terribly morbid thing to say, but one of the most fascinating aspects of the internet is how quickly news of a disaster develops. I have often sat on my computer, refreshing the Beeb, the Guardian, Times and co, just watching how a story unfolds. The Meredith Kercher story is one like that – it struck a chord with me, as I know many girls like her: on exchanges to Italy, at a university like Leeds, and soforth. She also came from a Croydon suburb not too far from where I live. I still keep tuned on that story and hope that the truth will eventually come out about how she was murdered. It all seems like a dreadful mess at the moment. Very sad. Another one was that awful shooting at that university in Virginia – Virginia Tech? I was online just as that story broke, and grew steadily more appalled as the death toll kept rising. Again, I empathised – many of the victims were at university on a campus pretty similar to Nottingham’s.

I think (not a particularly original thought, I realise!) that one particularly important facet of the Internet is its ability to shrink the world. News seems more immediate and somehow strikes me more sharply when I’ve read of it online. It’s a ghoulish admission, but after the Virginia Tech shooting I searched on Facebook for some of the victims. Just seeing that they had profiles (I didn’t, couldn’t actually look at their profiles – I could just see that they existed) brought them somehow closer to me – these people were just normal people, who checked their Facebook and wrote on walls and procrastinated endlessly (‘I’ll just check my Facebook one more time before I write this essay…’) and had friends who I might one day know. It’s a ghoulish, morbid admission, I know, but true nonetheless, and I bet I’m not the only one who did it.

This afternoon, I’ve been catching up on the news in a long Internet binge (as is my intermittent habit out here), keeping an eye on how the story of the Burmese cyclone is unfolding. That story feels close to home, because it happened in South East Asia, not too far from where I was a month ago. I feel desperately sorry for the victims – in the time I’ve been online the death toll has grown from 10,000 to 15,000 and I expect it will rise further – and wish I could do something to help. As many journalists have written, it’s a measure of the severity of the disaster that Burma’s accepting outside aid. Thank goodness it is.

The real point of this post, my meanderings aside, is to say that Sam and I are fine and completely unaffected. There’ve been a few storms in Malaysia, but nothing out of the ordinary for this time of year. Indeed, logging onto the Internet this afternoon was the first I’d heard of it and I should think that Sam’s still in the dark. We’re currently in Taman Negara, the Malaysian jungle, and he has trekked out to spend the night in a hide with a few friends we met out here. I am far more wussy than he, and drew the line at a 6-mile hike yesterday. 6 miles doesn’t sound a lot, but when it’s up and down-hill in the jungle, it can get to be quite of a scramble and took us (and we’re both fairly fit) four and a half hours. With my ankle not 100% recovered (although totally fine for normal walking), I thought it might be wise to sit this one out. Not a great idea to get marooned in the jungle with a bum ankle! Plus, any excuse to surf the BBC unashamedly all afternoon and catch up on e-mails.

That aside, we’re staying in the most delightful hostel which I am now rather reluctant to leave. Our chalet rather reminds me of a Wendy house, woven in bamboo. Everything’s on rather a miniature scale. The Lonely Planet (aka the Bible) says it makes you feel like a ‘budget princess’ – well, I’m not sure about Sam, but that sounds about right to me. It is bliss. Towels AND soap supplied! Fleecy blankets on the bed without me having to bat an eyelash! Mosquito nets on some kind of efficient pulley system! Delightful owners, who bring us mosquito coils every night! Heaven.

Tomorrow we’re leaving to get the overnight train to Singapore. So I’m going to get an early night, just me and my book, and brace myself for the night train.