By Jonathan Kent BBC reporter, Malaysia

Crowds poured in for the opening

For Jean Paul Sartre hell was other people.

For me it's Ikea.

It gives me the jitters.

Too many hours on too many weekends spent sitting in traffic jams on the North Circular queuing to get into Ikea's Brent Park store back in London.

Once inside one simply swaps automotive gridlock for the human kind; a bumbling, jostling, bemused mass of people ogling kitchen after sofa after bathroom after bedroom ensemble.

I can only look at so much birch-veneered medium density fibreboard before I want to scream.

Popular appeal

Malaysians on the other hand seem to be unable to get enough of the stuff.

The Swedish furniture giant recently staged a massive clear-out of its old Kuala Lumpur store before moving to new premises.

The sale was supposed to last a month, but after two weeks the event was over, the store had been picked clean - there was nothing left to sell.

Now Ikea has opened its new Kuala Lumpur store, and at almost 36,000 square meters it is the largest in Asia and four times the size of the old one.

Chaos

To be on the safe side, I drove over an hour ahead of its opening to the public.

The queue at the checkout was long

My sense of d�j� vu was compounded not just by the inevitable traffic jams - people had even parked on the inside lane of the nearby highway - but by the sight that greeted me when I arrived.

Malaysia's new Ikea is right next to an aircraft-hanger sized branch of the British supermarket chain Tesco, just as it is in Brent Park in London.

It's as if a little piece of Wembley landed right here in the tropics.

It took the crowds gathered outside almost an hour to filter through the whole store and start to arrive at the 26 checkouts.

It is a two-and-a-half kilometre stroll past 7,000 items.

It contains four complete home layouts and 54 room sets. By the time I left, the store was full.

Profitable

No wonder Joseph Lau, General Manager and franchise shareholder, is excited.

He expects this one outlet to be turning over more than US$130m a year by 2008.

So there's a big future here. That's why we need a big store to make sure we touch all Malaysians' lives Joseph Lau General Manager

"It's a big population, four million here in the Klang Valley [the greater Kuala Lumpur area], we have only touched a small part of KL," he says.

"So there's a big future here. That's why we need a big store to make sure we touch all Malaysians' lives."

The potential of the Asian market is clearly not lost on Ikea's international chairman Hans-G�ran Stennert.

"Asia obviously has very fast developing economies and we want to be on board to strengthen and build up our third leg to stand on," he tells me, sounding like a man about to design a new kitchen stool.

"We're well established in Europe, we have quite a number of stores in North America but we also want to expand our business in the growing economies of Asia."

New tastes

I'm intrigued to know why Malaysians have been apparently so easily won over by Swedish furniture.

After all, in Europe Ikea sells first and foremost on price, the deciding factor being that Ikea tries to bring good design principles to budget products.

I like the design. It's modern. It says something different from what were used to K Subramaniam shopper

Here in Malaysia its products undercut other Western imports, but aren't particularly cheap when compared to local furniture.

I tend to think that the perception that Western design is more sophisticated than local styles has rather more to do with Ikea's ability to attract Malaysians.

Indeed young people are here in droves, or more particularly in couples, or with young children.

They're all loading up their trolleys. "It's very modern and colourful and beautiful," reckons Mohamad Ishak of the furniture.

He's in his twenties and is here with his partner.

"We can equip our whole house with it," he says.

"And be very proud," adds his other half.

"I like the design. It's modern. It says something different from what were used to," says K Subramaniam, another young professional, also here with his wife.

Compulsive

Indeed, when I get home - and saw what I have spent - I remember why Ikea really gives me fear.

I reckon it's impossible to get out of the place without parting with at least US$40.

No wonder Joseph Lau is so excited about Ikea's future in this part of the world.

There are almost 25 million Malaysians and a good proportion of them are going to be as happily parted from their cash as I appear to have been.