Tuesday 12th July
With us all getting used to our annual Austrian trip and despite travelling further afield being inevitable eventually, I still never thought I would be recording my first thoughts of our latest pre-season build up on a train travelling through southern Malaysia after spending a few days in the quite extraordinary Singapore City.
For me and many of those who have travelled from the UK, including much of the squad of course, this is very much virgin territory. And if the remainder of the journey through Malaysia and China proves equally as interesting and entertaining as our first destination it is definitely going to be something to remember.
Friends and expat Gooners Biggles and Hat have kindly been our guides so far in a city where the good things in life such as food, drink and sunshine very much go hand-in-hand with the contrasting architecture of the colonial buildings and skyscrapers of the fast-developing business sector.
Yet Kuala Lumpur they tell me is completely different so I look forward to our arrival with eager anticipation.
Tonight sees an open training session before tomorrow's first game of the tour and the chance to meet up with some of the many Gooners in this part of the world. Our plans of course surround this as well as the kind of activities any normal tourist would be undertaking in a country and city never visited before.
For now however, I am going to enjoy our train journey and all the bumps, rattles and shakes that go with it!
FrankCopyright 2013 The Arsenal Football Club plc. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source 13 Jul 2011