Fallopian Tubing

Monday 31st January

Having survived the onslaught of our bus journey we arrived in Luang Prabang to discover we wouldnt be able to check into our room until 12:00 and as it had just passed 05:30 it meant that we had a fair amount of time to kick about on the streets.

For some reason though the streets were already jammed with people ambling along the main road, apparently in anticipation of the daily Alms ceremony that would be taking place at around 07:30.

At precisely 07:30 an orange swarm of locusts decended upon the town in the form of hundreds of monks, bowls in hand, sweeping through the mass of tourists to collect their daily intake of sticky rice and bananas.

It looked like an audition for the latest Tango advert and we were half expecting them to double slap us as they sauntered passed or at the very least plant a big sloppy kiss on our unsuspecting faces.

I started to feel very sorry for them as they trotted past, not because they live a life of quiet reflective sollitude, but because the food that we had provided them had come directly from Tylers own hands, hands which to my knowledge had not been cleaned since we left Chang Mai.

I cant help but wonder if there was a sudden orange rush to talk to god on the big white telephone later that evening and perhaps there would be a few less monks for tomorrow mornings ritual.

When we finally managed to check into our room, having walked the street from top to bottom numerous times, we instantly fell into a deep sleep, which for me lasted all of 35 minutes until someone knocked on our door by accident.

I left Tyler and Pauline snoring heavily, ignoring the urge to accidently make loud noises or shake them uncontrolably, I grabbed my book and headed off to the river banks for some of my own quiet reflective sollitude.

Having had enough of being eaten by the local insects for a couple of hours, I finally caved in to the urge and headed back to our room to throw open the curtains, switch on the TV and jump on the bed.

I seem to have perfected the ability to look completely innocent and nonchalant in these situations but even I stuggled not to feel a little guilty when they both drearily dragged their arses out of bed, especially when I commandeered their warm space and instantly fell back to sleep.

The following day we headed out to the Kuang si waterfalls, an idealic multi tiered waterfall set in an area of natural beauty, replete with crystal clear water, carefully manacured landscapes and idiotic tourists narrowly avoiding death on rope swings and cliff diving.

The water was a little cooler than your average refrigerator but this did little to deter the mass of tourists from braving them in order to obtain their place in darwins annual stupidity awards.

As per usual Tyler took all of 3 seconds to jump in and was instantly transformed into a living popsicle, his skin taking on the natural hue of the surrounding waters to the point where it looked as though his red tshirt was levitating on its own.

Also as per usual he was bored within a few minutes and spent the next 10 trying to cooerce me into plunging off of one of the cliffs into the merky depths below, which I can assure you that only a fool would contemplate.

As it turns out I fall neatly into this catagory and whilst it took a little while to drum up the courage for that first leap, the remainder of our day was spent either jumping, swimming back to shore or climbing back up to the cliff to do it all again.

The following morning we jumped onboard yet another bus headed to Vang Vieng a place notorious for its party scene and tubing exploits, which obvioulsy meant that an 8 year old and his ancient parents would fit in seamlessly yet again.

We had booked a room in advance but when we arrived we were told it wasnt available which was a bit of a bummer, luckily though the guy had another guesthouse and 2 seconds later I was straddled onto the back of his moped whizzing through the dirt tracks of Vang Vieng to view the room.

After a cursory glance and a quick nod in his general direction he promptly shot off leaving me stranded on the porch without any luggage or in fact other family members.

A few minutes later a moped pulled around the corner, it seemed to have been driven by a large suitcase and two giant backpacks, however on closer inspecation there was a small Laos man buried within the depths.

God only knows how he managed to get there in one piece, but having seen this I started to have grave doubts about ever seeing my family again, which forced me to contemplate the unthinkable prospect of going out in town and enjoying the party scene.

Luckiy for my liver, a few minutes later yet another bike careered around the corner, this time driven by none other than Tyler, who for all intents and purposes appeared to be giving the hotel manager a saddle.

Finally having once again contemplated trying to fake an ID for Tyler and go out partying, Pauline appeared on yet another bike and our party was once again complete.

I would hate to think how long this process would take for a larger group of people but the locals seemed more than happy to continue this all day and when you are staying in somewhere as classy as we were (£7 per night) that came as somewhat of a surprise.

Beofre arriving I had read that tubing is the main money spinner for the town, however it is also very dangerous, apparently so far this year two people have died and we are only in January.

So naturally the first thing we did upon arrival was find out how we could go about doing it ourselves to see what all the fuss was about.

Thats how we found ourselves on a tuk tuk at 09:00 the next morning, giant inflateable ring in hand, enroute to the start point of our rapid decent down the river.

Before you go accusing me of being a neglectful parent (a point which by now you have probably already gathered) I can assure you that the tubing aspect of this is quite safe, it is however the alcohol fuelled escapades on rope swings and zip lines that prove to be most peoples undoing.

Apparently there can be upto 500 tubes on the river on any given day and it gives you a deep appreciation of what it feels like to be a sperm, galantly fending off others through a series of complex paddling, pushing and distracting in order to be the first to reach your goal.

As you float down the river pubs on either bank will continually throw rings out to you in order to pull you into their domain and top up your inhebriated state to the point where shooting down a zip line into shallow water seems like a great idea.

Its not hard to see how there are so many accidents during the course of a year, practically everything is designed to knock you off in some way or another.

Firstly there is the water itself, a shimmering shade of dark brown which contains unknown quantaties of nasty organisms lying in wait for a fat arse to bite into, then there are the numerous bars plying you with all types of strange flourescent substances, finally there are the death defying (or in some cases not) swings that have been sensibly set up over sharp rocks and mostly shallow water.

Its a wonder how they get any repeat business at all, but I for one would be back in an instant, we had a great time and although we werent drinking we still got to watch as others risked their lives for our selfish enjoyment.

As it had been such a long time since we had been on a bus (2 days but this is a whistle stop tour of Laos after all) we are now headed to Veintiane possibly our final destination within Loas before shooting back to Bangkok to catch our flight on the 4th.

Zip-a-Dee-Doo-What?

Wednesday 26th January

As I write this we are sitting on a heavily oversubscribed night bus on our way to Lauang Prabang in Laos.
Initisally we had completely written off coming to Laos at all, however as soon as we booked onward tickets for our next destination, everyone that we spoke to told us what fools we had been to have missed out on it.

This basically left us with somewhat of a dilemma, do we stick to our original plans and have a leisurely stroll back through Thailand or do we hastily change everything and go to Laos.

Well you can already guess the answer and whilst I am sure it is going to be a great place, the 14 hours that we will have to spend cramped onto this metallic monstrosity will be a prioving time.

So with so many hours to kill I thought that I may as well crank up the notepad and reflect on the past week in Chang Mai.

As Chang Mai accomodation was considerably cheaper than Bangkok we decided to splash out a little and booked ourselves into a pretty decent hotel for 5 days, apparently this is termed to be "Flashpacking" but I dont care what they call it, it felt good!

There seems to be a trend forming whereby we spend a whole day travelling and then a whole day recovering and this was no different, I litterally didnt move from our room other than to restock the fridge from 7-11.

In fact it felt so good that the next day we decided to do pretty much the same thing, although we did manage to sneak out and book a tour for the following day so at least it felt as though we had accomplished something.

Unfortunately this meant that we all had to be up and ready to go by 08:00 a horrible prospect and one that proved to be incredibly difficult to meet, but somehow we all managed to drag our arses downstairs and meet our smiling tour guide.

We were off to spend a day at the Elephant Nature Park, a place that Lek (the owner) has built up over the years to house rescued elephants and provide a safe haven that is as close as possible to their natural habitat.
It was absolutely incredible being so close to these magnificant creatures, yet alone being able to feed and bathe them.

They were incredibly well looked after and whilst they had been trained to tolerate human interaction the elephants were definately in charge and allowed to roam free.

Tyler was in his element in the water with them and where most people would be intimidated by being around something so large he wasted no time jumping in and getting up close and personal.

Later on one of the elephants kissed him on the cheek as if to say thank you for the shower....

Sorry for the interuption but I thought that it would be interesting to give you a bit of an update on the bus journey thus far.

We seem to have aquired an additional random who has squatted in the space between our seats, we will affectionatly refer to him going forward as Aisle Guy.

Anyway Aisle Guy was looking at my packet of crisps longingly so I thought I would do the honourable thing and open them and offer him one as perhaps he had never tried Thai crisps before.

That was the last I saw of them, he snatched them from my hand looked up with a complete lack of comprehension and then proceeded to devour the contents as if he had never had food yet alone Mr Spiky BBQ crispy potato snacks.

To compensate for this obvious misdemenour he then proceeded to jab me continaully in the ribs with his elbow whilst at the same time trying to manouver his head onto my cushion and comandeer my arm rest.

What ensued was an almighty battle of wits as each of us tried in vain to forcefully remove the others limbs from various parts of the chair.

Luckily just as we were about to reach the levels of strangle holds and full nelsons the coach stopped for a loo break and that was the last I ever saw of little Aisle Guy, I would like to think that my prowess of the armchair had sent him running but if I am being realistic it was probably just his stop.

I have now well and truly given up on the prospect of sleep and I am reduced instead to watching the children sat behind Pauline and Tyler sneeze on their heads and pour the contents of their crisps over their seats.

So with this in mind I may as well continue with the story at hand as the chance of normality on this journey seems a distant fantasy.

The following day in Chang Mai we decided to throw caution to the wind and have yet another duvet day, we seem to be getting better and better at these but its always good to get some practice in.

As we had been unbelieveably lazy for much of our stay we decided to try to compensate by booking an adrenelin day which had 4 activities guarenteed to make us feel energetic again.

Firstly we went on a zip wire course through the jungles of northern Thailand which was totally awsome, the guides taught you how to hang upside down and trust in the wire which, having seen Thailands health and safety in practice, was a little daughnting to say the least.

The longest line was about 500 meters across a raging river and I figured what the hell, if you are gonna die you may as well make it somewhere beautiful, any birds that happened to be passing at that moment in time will be having nighmares for weeks.

From their vantage point it must have been quite disconcerting to think that something as unaerodynamic as me could somehow grasp the principals of flight.

Not only that but they could do so with their legs akimbo, without flapping any part of their anatomy, whilst maintaining a crazy dememnted look in their eyes and screaming like a lunatic.

We somehow all managed to survive without even the slightest injury so not content we headed to our next activity, an elephant trek through the jungle.

To be honest after the Elephant sactuary none of us were looking forward to the prospect of getting on an elephant, especially as we had seen how cruelly their Mahouts treat them, but it was included in the day and you never know, it could be nice.

Nope, we sould have gone with our initial insticnts as all of us detested the journey and wanted to get off as soon as possible.

The mahouts carried large sticks with sharp metal points in order to coherce the elephants in the right direction and wouldnt even allow them the opportunity to stop and graze without tugging on their ears or prodding them.

Its incredible how a single day at a sanctury can alter your perspective on these things, however both Pauline and I agreed that we would never do anything like this again and hope that these elephant manage to find a better home soon.

After this we were to go white water rafting down the same river we had zipped over earlier in the day, only there was an added adrenelin activity to complete before we could get over to the rafts.

We were taken down to the rivers edge by an ancient old guy who was wheezing his way down the path where he showed us how we would be getting across.

Hastily errected above the river was a cage on a line that the man now shoved Tyler and Pauline into.
Before they could ask any questions he released a catch and they shot off into the adjacent river bank, almost losing tylers arms in the process as he had been told to grasp the rope which didnt move.

Those that remained then had the opportunity to watch the man cough up a lung as he struggled to pull the enclosure back across the river so that he could herd the next unfortunate victim into the cage of misery.

Even though I had witnessed its initial departure, nothing had prepared me for just how fast this thing shot off into the ether and in the time it had taken me to grab my camera, smash my elbow and cut my foot we were on the other side.

Once all of us had made it to the other side relatively unscathed we proceeded to be suited up in life preservers and hard hats and pushed into a raft that had had its hay day back in the 70s.

We had been told to listen to the instructor carefully as his instructions could have a dramatic effect on our life expectancy, however what they didnt mention was that he didnt speak english that well.

From my position at the front I heard muffled noises that seemed to indicate that I was doing something wrong or muffled noises that seemed to indicate I should stop doing something but that was about it.

I fell arse over tit at the first rapid and went hurtling into the back of the boat much to Paulines pleasure as she had been filming it at the time.

Still somehow we managed to survive all the way to the end and then it was on to the final activity of the day, the bamboo rafts.

I am not sure how, what we were presented with, can exactly qualify for rafts, in fact I am amazed that the word submerged was not in there somewhere as practically every square inch of the "vessel" was under a few inches of water.

Still, we diligently jumped aboard and proceeded to drag along the bottom of the river at speeds similar to the stationary algae that had formed on every surface.

After it became blindingly apparent that we wouldnt be getting anywhere fast, we decided to get out and push the boat all of the way down the river, not exactly an "as described" activity but by the end of it my heart was pumping extremely quickly regardless.

Right, I am going to try to flick something at the annoying kids heads to amuse myself for the next 8 hours, I have a feeling that another duvet day beckons tomorrow.

If you love her take her home

Friday 21st January

We arranged to meet our friend Dave Gary in Bangkok as he was on a business trip, so we booked ourselves onto a "VIP" bus from Krabi and braced ourselves for the 15 hour journey from hell.

It was one of the nicest buses that we have ever been on and although you didnt get flat beds, the seats reclined a fair way back providing loads of room.

Tyler had also comondered the front row so we wouldnt wake up with anyone elses heads dangerously close to our groins as they tried in vain to make their seats recline further than gravity allows.

As there are three of us one always has to sit next to a random and this time it was Paulines turn once again (in truth its practically always been her turn as she doesnt like playing computer games so I become Mr popular on these trips).

Unfortunately for this random Pauline actually managed to get some sleep this time which meant that her head was cradled on his shoulder most of the night and her dribble was oozing down the front of his new comedy T-shirt.

Upon arrival in Bangkok we discovered that we were unable to book additional nights in the hostel so we would need to come up with an alternative destination to meet Dave.

5 Minutes of internet surfing later and on a whim I had booked 2 "deluxe" rooms at Joes Palace in Pattaya town, most famous for its multitude of go go bars and other unsavory sites.

However I had been assured that the tide had turned and whilst this was definately still a major part of its attraction for certain tourists, it was fast becoming a family friendly resort.

We met Dave at Bangkok airport sporting a variety of welcome signs ranging from "David Hasselhoff" to "Al Koholic", however after an hour of receiving increasingly weirder looks from passers by we gave up and put it away.

Literally 2 minutes later he walks around the corner briming like a cheshire cat completely clueless as to where the hell he is going to be spending the next few days and trusting us imppecably (ha ha ha).

Joe's Palace was definately not on the same par as the Shangri-La which is Daves normal abode when travelling in these parts, however he took it all in his stride and didnt even bat an eyelid when they informed us that we would be sharing a bathroom.

Unfortunately for him this meant that he got to listen to Pauline and I being ill for most of the night after picking up some random bug en route.

Driving into Pattaya we saw a fantastic sign for a lawyer specialising in foreign visas for Thai ladies, it had the tag line "If you love her take her home" which put a smile on all of our faces!

Pattaya itself was pretty filthy in general so we decided to head out to coral island to get away from the mainstream and have a little R & R time.

Alarm bells should have started going when we rounded the corner of the ferry port to be confronted by a vessel absolutely teeming with tourists to the point where it was a miracle it was still afloat.

Luckily it set off just as we got there so we managed to blag a prime location on the next potential death trap and chilled out on deck for the 45 minute trip across to the island.

It turns out that 10 million other people had had the same idea as us and the beach was the busiest I have ever seen with ever square centimeter of sand housing an umbrella or a Russian in tight speedos.

We went for a bit of a trek but quickly decided that this was not going to be the tropical paradise that we had hoped for and headed home.

From there we headed back through to Bangkok and introduced Dave to the delights of Khao San Road, where you can get a Degree from Oxford, a watch from Switzerland and an STD from Eastern Europe all within a 1 mile stretch.

As this was Dave's first time here we decided to introduce him to the wonders of Thai massage on the promise that this would help him to unwind before his flight in the morning.

At one stage he almost killed his masseuse as she was trying to get to a particularly stubborn knot on his back, he flung back his shoulders and launched her blindly into the street behind, much to our amusement.

Admittedly he looked a lot less healthy walking away from the place than he did when we entered but it was an experience he wont soon forget and after a week or so the bruising will probably subside :-)

The next day Dave was headed out to Singapore and we were all jumping onto the train through to Chang Mai, Dave it was great to see you buddy, you are a legend and hopefully we will bump into you again at some point on this trip!

You, Me & Phi Phi

Thursday 13th January

People say that Phuket is full of dirty old men so for me it was just like a salmon returning to its spawning ground.

However in all honesty it was nowhere near as seedy as I had been told, OK there were the odd spattering of morbidly obese pensioners cradling nubile teenage thai girls but other than that it was pretty family friendly.

We decided to go on a tour of James Bond island, so called as it was one of the locations used in "The man with the golden gun".

Not having seen the film left me at a bit of a disadvantage, but I am fairly certain that unless James Bond was fighting the evil souvenir touts or mass of russian tourists then things have probably changed a little since the film was made.

Its sad to think that this once lovely desert island has been beseiged by people selling fake sharks teeth to people wearing speedo's and flip flops, this should act as a good incentve never to use your house as a film location.

That is unless you want Alexander Nevsky and his band of merry men to flatten your rose garden whilst they are trying their utmost to simulate a particular scene, on the bright side though you could make a fortune selling them tat.

After this we jumped back onto the boat and pulled alongside another island where the crew let everyone jump off the side into the oil laden, mud incrusted waters below.

Obviously Tyler was the first one in as usual, he was already swimming back onboard for another go before the captian even finished his safety sentence.

Around Phuket shouts of "your size, your size, we have your size, eminate from every market stool that you pass.

Up until that moment I had'nt really considered myself to be that much larger than average, but the way that they shout it out makes you think that you are some freak of nature.

They say it with such conviction that upon hearing the news you will instantly run into their fine establishment and snap up every moomoo and sports bra that your sleder frame can squeeze into.

If I had any doubts about my body shape they were well and truly highlighted upon arrival at phi phi island.

It seems that there are just two types of people there, the ultra fit 20 something models or the locals, so obviously we all fitted in seamlessly.

To make myself feel better I would sunbathe next to the best looking people I could find in order to make it look as though the had exceptionally low standards.

An added bonus of this was the fact that I could partially block out the sun with my mono man moob, leaving ecliptical tan marks on their highly defined six packs.

The day after we arrived we went snorkelling with the reef sharks and as usual I erred on the side of caution by allowing both Pauline and Tyler to go first in order to 'test the waters' as it were.

After all you can never be too careful and between them they have 8 limbs compared to my meagre 4.

Fortunately it seems that on this occasion the sharks had already had their fix of tourist tofu so the whole family went unscathed.

We did get to see 4 or 5 black tipped reef sharks which was cool, the largest of which was about 5 foot, but our attempts to get close to it were thwarted every time.

In reflection the site of of us in swimwear is enough to frighten off the most hardened mammal so I cant say that I am surprised.

Following Phi Phi we headed out to Krabi for a couple of days before getting the bus up to Bangkok.

We decided to book a fishing trip and staked that nights dinner choice for the person who caught the biggest fish.

I hate to say it but Tyler was a natural, he caught about 15 fish but was somewhat distraught when they refused to throw them back into the water and instead threw them on the boat so he could watch them flail around gasping for air.

In order to smooth over the situation I explained to him that "if we were fish both me and your mum would be eaten whilst you would have been chucked back overboard as you are too small and wimpy", however in hindsight I am not sure this helped the situation.

The long and the short of it is that Tyler won hands down and we all got to dine in the culinary perfection that is Burger King! Yipee.

Universally Singapoor

Friday 7th January

I seem to be getting worse and worse at updating this blog, there just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day, that and the fact that I am habitually lazy.

Well Singapore came and went and we are now in Phuket (apparently pronounced poo kit which sounds like a medicinal constipation remedy) so I figured I had better get something down in writing again.

After picking up our luggage we made our way across to the MTR and headed towards jookoon, a place that insults two ethnic groups in one foul swoop. We headed to china town and our ultimate destination for the evening the Fragrance Hotel-Saffire.

Our window had a great view over the splitters at Fragrance Hotel-Sunflower enabling us to stick our noses up at them.

The Fragrance Hotel-Sapphire was so posh that you could even rent rooms out by the hour, which I assume means that once you have spent 60 minutes in here you are so overwhelmed that you need to leave and go back to your boring lives.

I would love to say that we immersed ourselves in culture and obtained a good insight into the plight of the average Singaporean, however the sad truth of the matter is that we did the two major tourist attractions and then headed out.

The first day was spent at the Singapore zoo, one of the best in the world, and it was great to see a place that actually gives the animals room to breath and run about.

We had brought a dual ticket which incorporated the night safari, a complex adjacent to the main zoo that provides a tram journey around the park to witness the animals during their most animated hours.

In true smith form we were lucky enough to have been sat in a carriage with an Indian tourettes family who proceeded to shout out random words for 40 minutes non stop.

I even did my best 'Darren angry face' at them but it seems that this was something that they were accustomed too and just shouted "giraffe" back at me loudly.

Prior to this we had been to watch the animals of the night show, during which the host had asked for a volunteer to get up on stage and hold the 15ft reticulated python that they had just pulled out from under a seat.

After my fantastic hair cut in china I seem to have built up some resistance to public humiliation so I jumped at the opportunity, however I hadn't really heard the announcement correctly before leaping from my seat.

What they had actually requested was a 'macho man from the audience' and what they actually ended up with was me, rotund lard arse boy!

So after some ritual humiliation whereby they got me to strike some of the lamest muscle man poses ever witnessed by a mostly non english speaking audience, I finally got the opportunity to be strangled by a giant amphibian.

On the way out of the auditorium some kid kept on punching me in the back and when I turned round his dad simply said "he just really wanted to meet macho man".

I wouldn't mind but it really hurt, they seem to breed very strong three year olds here!

The following day we headed out to Sentosa island to go to universal studios, not to be confused with universal studios in the US which I believe is a theme park that has working attractions.

Basically everything we went to go on was in various stages of breaking down, broken, unfinished or unstarted, even the rapids were going to close because of "in-climate weather conditions"

That's right you wouldn't want people to get wet when they are on the rapids now would you!

I have never really understood these rides, you line up for about three hours to get wet, then right at the last minute everyone in the queue buys a bloody poncho to stop them getting wet.

You see their faces getting off the thing, "look at me, I haven't got a drop of water on me but you have a wet arse, ha ha", seriously it makes no sense to me whatsoever.

At least that's my excuse being the only one on our ride who squelched for the remainder of the day.

Anyway, that was pretty much Singapore, it's clean, it seems nice and I am sure there is loads and loads to do there, but we were too busy having names of animals yelled at us and queuing for broken rides to notice.

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!