Run, FatBoy, Run

Monday 3rd January

Happy new year everyone!!

Sorry for the lack of updates, we have been in Borneo with our friends Kath & Adam and their kids Tom & Ben for the past few weeks and as such we treated it like a bit of a holiday.

Borneo itself is great, it's far more European in nature than anywhere else we have been, yet still manages to retain it's heritage and culture by a thin thread.

We stayed in the centre of Kota Kinabalu which is a pretty nondescript town in itself, however it provides a great hub for the nearby islands and rainforest that surround the area.

As Adam had been working a fair bit within Borneo he has built up a lot of great friends and we were fortunate enough to be included into this circle.

Dale, his colleague was a diving instructor and during a 5 minute conversation at his house Pauline and I suddenly found ourselves enrolled onto a diving course that was taking place on Christmas eve to boxing day.

Sunny, one of Dales protegee's, was teaching the course and had us sat around a table on Christmas eve learning the various ways in which diving can kill or maim you.

The following day we got to put our newly formulated fears into practice by attempting various ways of underwater suicide including ripping your mask off and removing your air supply.

During the initial dives you are split between two emotions, the fear that you are going to kill yourself by doing something stupid and the fear that something else in the sea is going to do the job for you.

By some miracle we managed to survive and were then taken on a couple of test dives that allowed you a brief glimpse at why so many people are intent to risk their lives doing it.

It's an incredible experience to emerge yourself in an alien environment that feels so completely foreign, but one that I can very highly recommend.

We even received our very own certified diver cards which means we can attempt to kill ourselves worldwide!

The day after the course Dale had arranged for us to head down to Sandakan and sail down the Kinabatangan river in search of the elusive Pygmy elephants that migrate through the area.

So the 7 of us joined Dale and his Mum Yvonne and headed out to the depths of the forest for a couple of days.

Our guide picked us up at about 1pm and at precisely 1:01 it started to absolutely piss it down.
Luckily Pauline had the foresight to buy us all disposable ponchos for the trip so the 9 of us looked like a cargo ship for industrial sized blue condoms as we traversed the bends and turns of the raging river.

As we sailed down the river Pauline spotted the trees moving and upon closer inspection there was an adult male orang-utan within spitting distance of the bank watching us intently as if it had never seen a boat full of giant blue garden gnomes before.

We stared at each other trying to work out exactly who was the strangest looking creature before it eventually got bored and moved on.

This brief pause in our trip gave me the opportunity to hone my photography skills and out of the 200 pictures I took of the primate 198 of them were of a stick and 2 were of the sky.

If you squint really hard and cross your eyes you can just make out one of it's toenails in the distance, however this could well be another stick.

As we continued our journey we located a group of proboscis nosed monkeys jumping like maniacs between the trees, obviously overly excited to see the durex barge drifting into town.

This time I was prepared and instantly shot hundreds of pictures in their general direction, culminating in some very close up, heavily blurred photos of tails and yet more sticks.


By this stage the rain seemed to be centred directly above our boat and at one stage it seemed that there was more water aboard the vessel than beneath it.

We were just about giving up hope when our guide spotted something off in the distance and quickly headed towards the bank.

At this juncture I should point out that our guide could easily spot an ingrowing hair on an ants arse from over a mile away, his eyes were absolutely incredible.

I bet he was the 'Where's Wally' king at his school and was probably really good at hide and seek but unfortunately I neither had the opportunity or the inclination to confirm either of these speculations.

Anyway to get back on with the blog, we pulled over to the bank and lo and behold there they were, approximately 20 native Pygmy elephants going about there merry way.

To call these creatures "Pygmy" is a tad misleading and akin to calling Andre the Giant titch or implying that basketball players are vertically challenged.

Ok they may be smaller than their African cousins but they still towered above me and seeing them in their native environment was both humbling, terrifying and awe inspiring at the same time.

The guide allowed us to get off the boat and we leapt at the chance to get a closer look at them as they grazed casually and generally minded their own business.

Camouflaged in our giant blue condoms and day glow orange life preservers we seamlessly merged into the dense jungle background.


Amazingly somehow one of them spotted us, let off a harrowing roar and charged towards us at breakneck speeds.

It was around this point that I noted four interesting facts:

1. I am definitely not as brave as I had originally thought I was

2. When wearing a giant blue condom and day glow luminous life preserver it is nigh on impossible to look manly in any way.

3. I can in fact run pretty damn quickly when needed, much to Tyler's shock as I face planted him into the mud whilst making good my escape.

4. Elephants sometimes only take a couple of steps into a charge and then stop, making those people that run away like little sissy girls look a lot like, well, little sissy girls.

So as everyone stood around laughing at me I plucked up the courage to get back onto shore and try once again to get closer to these fantastic creatures.

I had just succeeded in drumming up the courage to stand where I had been originally when the same bloody elephant, intent on seeing a fat man run, charged again.

Well this time there was no stopping me, I assumed the persona of Daly Thompson and courageously knocked over people and vaulted over others as I sprinted towards salvation.

As it turns out salvation ultimately meant launching Pauline head first into the boat directly at the somewhat horrified kids who by this stage definitely needed a change of underwear.

It's one thing to have an angered elephant charging at you but to have Pauline charge is a much scarier thing altogether and one that I am sure will scar them for life.

Still it was a small price to pay to save the live of my loved one.

Well at least it would have been if it had not been for the fact that the poxy elephant had once again only charged a couple of bloody steps before stopping, whilst I had just run the one minute mile, in 30 seconds.

Everyone else, it seems, had pretty much stood their ground and as a result had the perfect viewpoint to bare witness to my amazing feats of speed and strength.

It was whilst recovering at the helm of the boat, looking more sweaty than a chilean miners inflatable sex aid, that the guide kindly offered to take the women and children down the river a little whilst we walked along with the herd.

I figured it was probably just his polite way of ensuring I didn't cause any more damage to his boat by hurling other members of our party at it and I took it as my queue to risk my life yet again.

Thankfully, other than a few menacing grunts and roars, the herd kept their distance and allowed me to regain both my composure and giant blue condom (which had inadvertently been ripped off mid sprint) before heading back to the boat to make our way back.

The following day we sailed up to one of the estuaries in the hope of watching the proboscis nosed monkeys jumping across the river, unfortunately we didn't manage to see any on this occasion but saw plenty of other wildlife including several birds of prey and what I had deemed to be a very large lizard that was about a meter in length.

I say this as a couple of days later we headed out to sapi island where monitor lizards bigger than me casually wonder around the barbecue area attempting to pick up morsels.

We managed to see so much in the time we had and Kath & Adam were the consummate hosts who we are indebted to for making it such a fantastic journey.

Everyone we were introduced to went out of their way to ensure that we had a great time and I thank you all, it was truly humbling.

As we were leaving on our way to Singapore I headed into the toilets at the airport and something caught my attention.

By now I had gotten used to the overwhelming stench and turd encrusted toilet seats so they barely registered, however emblazoned on the wall in front of my urinal was a single, monumental piece of graffiti brilliance.

In giant neon letters someone had taken the time to proclaim that "Alex likes Lama's" and it struck me that there could only be two possibilities as to the origin of this fine piece of literary magic.

Either Alex's friends had wanted to 'out' this bizarre relationship in public or Alex himself was so proud of his newly found affection to these great animals that he had deemed the best way to announce his exciting news was to scrawl it permanently onto the wall of the Kota Kinabalu mens toilets.

Whoever did it I would like to thank them as it brightened up my day!