Anyway after the drama I was happy to see Mr Sugar, my regular KL taxi driver waiting for me at gate 6.  How are you? How is your family? Great to see you sir! A reunion.. but not the last.

On Saturday Mr Chatterjee and his son Dishtanta arrived via Airasia from Kolkata.. along with excess luggage stuffed with product samples, plus a carton had arrived via DHL to our hotel. 

I was delighted to see them after more than two years. Another joyful reunion..

It was their first visit to Kuala Lumpur (Dishanta's first out of India) and they were wide-eyed and excited to see this very modern tropical city.  I suggested we have Sunday off and take Mr Sugar's city tour and see the city like a tourist. I have been to KL more times than I can remember but never been to the Batu Caves or seen the Royal Palace. 

Mr Chatterjee particularly liked the Batu caves because it is actually a major Hindu shrine, at the top of 272 steps and inside a huge cavern. Not many tourists here but lots of Indians on pilgrimage. Some barefoot, walking the stairs, some shave their heads and apply a layer of henna.. strange. We climbed the stairs in 35c heat and humidity with hundreds of monkeys playfully leaping around.. which I suppose is also strange behaviour. 

In the 27 months since I have been here, a couple of things have changed.. lots more street art in the old Chinatown area, and new buildings including the stupendous Merdeka 118 building, which dwarfs the other skyscrapers.. It's officially the second tallest building in the world. It can be seen from everywhere in KL..

Huge tower, Entrance to Batu caves and Mr Chatterjee with street art.

I was also happy to see Raul again and see his cute daughter - now two years older and twice as cute.

Most of the last week though has been spent holed up in Mr Chatterjee's room checking samples, calling suppliers, tweeking designs and negotiating. In the end I think we have placed orders for about three container loads of new products, some of which I'm very excited about - I think you will love what's coming.

Mr Chatterjee was upset. Beyond angry. A shipping company had stitched us up, here's what happened:

A container had been despatched to Mumbai docks, on the invoice and shipping documents you have to quote the total weight of the goods, the containers get weighed and if within 1000kg then no problem. Chatterjee had carefully checked all the paperwork and submitted everything in duplicate, some dipstick in that shipping office (the same one that is charging us) had made a typo and entered 240,000 kg instead of 24,000kg and the container was stopped for examination. The inspector didn't turn up for 4 days.. that's $200 per day rollover ferr, change of weight fee $600 plus a long list of other rubbish charges. $3,500. Of course Chatterjee complained a lot.. but the shipping company basically has us over a barrel, pay or the container stays portside racking up more charges by the day. Pure extortion, and massively unjust. Angry is not the word.

Now this is not an isolated incident. Everyday we are getting stitched up by unscrupulous middlemen, it's like an epidemic of dodgy practices.Tomas spends half his life arguing with agents, as does Toni in Spain and Bryant in the UK. It's very stressful, poor Tomas really is losing his hair over this. I'm sure those of you that import or export are experiencing this.. it's almost as if the mafia has taken over.  Tomas, Toni and Bryant tell me the same kind of stories. At the end of the day  the price of the products increase because of it adding to inflation.. Oftentimes it is dodgy agents, other times over zealous government officials determined to disrupt imports. It's a serious problem. I'm not sure what the answer is?

Sorry to rant..

The really good news is I managed to acquire a business visa for Coco (my wife) to visit Indonesia and also managed to secure one of the rare seats on a plane from Guangzhou to Denpasar Bali via KL.  

Lot's of things could go wrong.. allsorts of rumours about Chinese officials discouraging outside travel... but fingers crossed we could be having a reunion soon.

I'll keep you posted.