Homecoming

14/7/2007 - 30/7/2007



After I finished my last post I spent the evening chatting to my new found friends - Julie and her brother (whose name I have, once again, forgotten), and we ended up watching a rather appallingly bad film about step dancing meeting street dancing. I've always been a sucker for all things dance, and have watched many a crappy dance/ice-skating film in my time, but this is the first one to be comparably bad to Honey. Afterwards, Julie's brother felt a musical moment coming on and got his

guitar out (I have so much admiration for anyone who can not only play an instrument well, they can actually be bothered to haul it round the world with them). It turns out he's one of those rare people who can do Johnny Cash songs justice - his voice was spot on. Later on they both decided to sing their favourite cowboy songs (from tapes their parents used to play them on long car journeys of their youth - it beats Joseph and the Waterbabies). Brilliant.

The following morning I felt I needed a change of scenery, and ostensibly needed to kill time cheaply in another city other than Kota Kinabulu. Actually, my main reason was that the DVD player in my guest house broke (from overuse?) and I decided that this was a sign that it was time to find a new hotel, with a new dvd player.

I spent most of the 7 hour bus journey to Sandakan feeling sick due to the insanely windy mountain roads, and tried to distract myself by listening to my (thankfully recharged, finally) mp3 player, and by staring at the scenery - sadly it was 99% palm groves (rather than native forests), divided up by mud-filled rivers (due to the resulting soil erosion). When the landscape depressed me too much, I glanced at the TV in utter disbelief - had they actually made a film out of Tekkon? The fight scenes were punctuated by "K.O., Natalie wins", so it looked rather like it. I was a bit baffled that they showed a film that violent, with scantily clad women doing martial arts (with very little support), during the day on public transport in an Islamic country.

Eventually I arrived in Sandakan, found a cheap hotel that actually had a TV and DVD player IN MY ROOM, located a cheap restaurant nearby, and then spent the next 3 days largely watching TV and reading books, for lack of anything else to do for free. The highlight was when I discovered that, not only did the hotel have most of my favourite cheesey dancing films, they also have the DVD of Cirque du Soleil's Drallion. I really must see them live one day. The lowlights were when my fucking cool velcro sandals finally gave up the ghost and broke beyond repair, necessitating spending the rest of the trip wearing either my heavy walking boots (they're not that comfortable this close to the equator) or my deeply impractical but very pretty beaded sandals, and watching my toenails slowly coming off (the ones that had blisters under them from Rinjani and Kinabalu).

By the time I had sat around on my arse and saved money for long enough to justify a couple of treats, I was thoroughly fed up of watching TV (although I might be able to muster enthusiasm again in time to catch up on Lost series 3 and 24 series 6 when I get home). I packed up my things to head off for 3 nights at Uncle Tan's Jungle Camp - a cheap backpacker's safari camp on the lushly forested Kinabatangan river.

The first stop on the way to the camp (after being breakfasted at the head office) was the Sepilok orang utan sanctuary, a place where orphaned and rescued orang utans are raised in semi-wild conditions in order to eventually return them to the wild. The good thing about visiting the sanctuary (as well as helping orang utans who wouldn't otherwise survive) is that you're virtually guatanteed orang utan sightings, something that is rare in the wild. Unfortunately you will be seeing them

with at least 100 other tourists (and their cameras - not that I can talk of course). I got there early, found a good spot from which I had an unobstructed view of the feeding platform, ignored my bladder's pleas to visit the toilet in favour of keeping my prime spot and not losing it to someone much taller than me, and watched the brightly coloured monkeys arses until the orang utans came swinging into view.

They really are the most odd looking creatures - I mean, for starters, they're ginga, and then, there's the ridiculously long arms, the contortionism and the Laurel and Hardy-esque head scratching. The behaviour of the monkeys changed remarkably once the orang utans appeared, they either scattered or became incredibly submissive, and if I didn't know better I'd swear one monkey was sucking the orang

utans' toes, and possibly other anatomical parts too (it was difficult to tell as the orang utan's back was to us, but it wasn't just my dirty mind, there was a lot of giggling from all directions, and several mothers could be heard tutting and shushing their children).

When I'd taken enough photos I gave up my spot (but only after the nasty father and son standing behind me, discussing who to shove out of the way had left), located a toilet, watched a video on orang utan conservation (apparently they're the largest fully-arboreal mammals) and then located the minibus that took me to the Kinabatangan river where I caught the boat to Uncle Tan's.

Along the way, Tony (our guide) would slow the boat and point out animals hiding in the trees - long-tailed macaques (the McDonalds of the primate world - they're found everywhere it seems), proboscis monkeys (endemic to Borneo - a creature that when created it fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down - the female has a little, pointy snub nose, while the male has a long dangly nose that looks, frankly, like male genitalia), stork-billed kingfishers, Asian black hornbills (another odd looking creature with a horn on top of it's beak - thought to be to amplify their braying call), and big beautiful white birds that I thought at first were white herons (which I had already seen in NZ) but were in fact egrits. Apparently they're pretty common, and are seen everywhere, but they were nonetheless enchanting.

We eventually made it to the camp, despite being sidetracked repeatedly by wildlife, we settled into our open sided dorms (with wire mesh to keep the worst of the beasties out, and mosquito nets for the rest). I located a food tin to keep the mokeys and rats away from my biscuits, then we settled down to our introductory briefing (every single member of staff was introduced - all 15 of them, and they shook every single guest's hand - it took a while, but was all terribly polite, friendly and welcoming) and were let loose on the buffet dinner. It was bloody marvellous.

After dinner we were taken out on a night safari by John. Sadly he had only been a guide for 2 months (compared to Tony's 15 years), and it showed. He kept tracking the torch beam across the water and through the trees, but being too busy talking to the people at the front and telling them safari stories that he wouldn't notice if anything moved. He had similar problems holding the torch still when we were trying to take photographs. Nonetheless, we did manage to see various owls (I remember this one was a buffy fish owl), a baby python, a stork-bill kingfisher and a bearded pig.

After the safari we came back to the camp and I spent the evening socialising with Sheila and Laura (two med students on an elective in Sabah whom I'd met in Kota Kinabalu), Neil, Kit and Marion and James (assorted new-found friends). When everyone else crashed, James and I stayed up and tried to spot the various wild cats that frequently prowl the camp at night. We failed and gave up after an hour, deciding to crash as we were getting up at the arse-crack of dawn for another boat trip (believe me, I wasn't complaining).

I woke up after a deep sleep to discover just how badly I'd been bitten in the last 24 hours. I don't know why DEET and mosquito nets always seem to work for everyone else, but I still get bitten.

I grumbled my way over to the boat dock, put my life jacket on and tightened it with an irritated and itchy yank, still muttering under my breath, and then scowled at the early morning light that slowly burned through the dawn mist and glowered at the gnarled trees that were gradually revealing themselves along the banks of the Kinabatangan.

My foul mood didn't last particularly long - we saw an enormous saltwater crocodile on the bank of the river and I forgot to glare at the world in my excitement. After that Tony (our guide again, thank goodness) spotted a white-bellied sea eagle and a brahminy kite eagle.

Someone on our boat spotted a crested serpent eagle on the bank of the river (pictured). I don't know how they do it - Tony can quite easily spot a tiny bird in a tree from 100m away, while zooming at full speed down the river. I have to look for half a minute with the boat still and as close as it can get, with someone else siting right next to me and pointing before I spot something, and I can't see any detail without my camera and zoom lens. I suppose I should have brought my glasses travelling after all.

At one point we stopped to see proboscis monkeys in the canopy of a nearby tree, but they weren't so keen on us, so they jumped to the next tree - they really are capable of astonishingly long leaps.

We saw monitor lizards sunning themselves, stretched out on tree branches, we saw long-tailed macaques and egrits (as always), we saw the smaller blue-eared kingfisher, flocks of pacific swallows and the oriental pied hornbill. It really was incredible. Our hour-long boat safari ended up being 2 hours, because the wildlife was good and it was worth spending a bit longer out there, and by the time we got back for breakfast we were ravenous.

After breakfast the boys located a football and played a bit of 5-a-side. I felt like a bit of exercise, so I joined in. A word of advice for other females who used to play football. If you only played football for a year or two, it's best not to play your first game for 8 years with a bunch of blokes. After a half hour I bowed out (for the good of my team) went to get ready for the mid-morning trek, and said my goodbyes to James who had already been at the camp for 3 nights and was heading back to civilisation for a shower.

Our walking guide, Leo took us out on a short trek to introduce us to some of the creepy crawlies that can be found in the forests of Borneo. He found us an example of the smallest species of frog in Asia (with 3 toes rather than the usual 4), a forest huntsman spider, two brown wood owls, a tractor millipeed and a red-legged millipeed (both very gross), a cotton bug (another oddity that looks like a white

ball of fluff, and then it jumps out of your hand), a brown rough skink, a leech - which he very obligingly put on his own arm in order to show us how to get them off. He offered the leech round so that we could have a go (the medics seemed to find my suggestion that sharing leeches might spread disease, amusing). I declined.

On the way back to the camp (after deciding that it was 12:05pm from the position of the sun and that we should turn around - it turns out that he was wrong, it was 12:10), Leo had a poke around under a rotting log and discovered a scorpion, unfortunately a spitting whip scorpion which landed a spray of venom right in Leo's eye. He wandered off with his eye watering (his small but spicy eye as he called it), hacked up some bamboo with his machete and used the sap as eye drops - I tried it afterwards - optrex has nothing on bamboo sap.

After another delicious lunch I braved a wash, which at Uncle Tan's consists of pouring muddy river water over yourself with a ladle and a bucket. I was dreading it, as the water really was pretty skanky, but apparently I was skankier, because I did feel suprisingly clean afterwards.

I wandered back to my dorm to locate my biscuit tin, only to be informed that a bunch of very clever macaques, who come along at 6:30 every morning when everyone goes on their dawn safaris, managed to unlock the door to our dorm and prise open the tin, making off with MY biscuits. Bastards.

I located the biscuits that the camp staff serve with tea and indulged in some comfort eating, while going through my photos in order to free up some memory card space for the next 2 days.
That's when my camera battery ran out.

I hadn't realised just how much I'd used it in the 36 hours since I'd last charged it. Sadly the camp generator only came on at sunset, so I had to go on the sunset boat trip sans camera. And I missed the bearded pig and her seven bum-fluffed piglets that wandered into camp, followed by a monitor lizard that decided to wallow in the gunge next to the kitchen waste pipe for a while.

Of course, the sunset trek was the best one so far (fucking sod's law), with proboscis monkeys everywhere, hanging nearby from vines in plain view in large family groups. Tony said that it was the best view that they'd had of the proboscis monkeys for two weeks.

The tick in my left eye came back.

We saw more hornbills, more swallows and egrits, another brahminy kite eagle, long tailed and pig-tailed macaques (the latter hang around in gangs with the long-tailed macaques, but are considerably shorter and stouter - the Phil Mitchell's of the primate world) and another saltwater croc. By the time we got back to camp I was twitching and was relieved to see that the power was on, and my battery was charging.

By the time we had pigged out on dinner, my battery was up and running again, and we set off on a night trek with Leo, who was under specific instructions from me to locate a scorpion (ideally one that didn't spit) and a tarantula for me, along with any other gross creepy crawlies and slithery things that he could find).

We didn't have to wait long - Leo located a Bornean Blue Tarantula for us - a fine specimen at 15cm long. The camp manager Lan was the first person to discover this spider - he initially decided it was an Indian Black Tarantula, sent it to a lab to verify and then was told that the Indian Black tarantula only occurs in India, and this was a species that no-one had identified before. It's only been officially in existence for a matter of months. Anyway, it's really, really big and I defy anyone to stand almost underneath one and not whimper for their Mums.

We carried on walking and Leo located a cricket frog (pictured) and a least narrow-mouthed frog, in between poking sticks in various likely scorpion habitats.

Eventually he hit the jackpot and located a Bornean Black scorpion hiding under the roots of a tree WITH HER BABIES, and proceeded to try to poke it out for the next 10 minutes as it got progressively more and more pissed off. One of the girls behind me tentatively attempted to clarify why exactly he felt that this was a good idea in an unusually high-pitched voice (I had a sinking feeling that it was all my fault), and Leo looked up and said with shining eyes "Because it's so BIG" in a tone of voice and manner usually only heard when discussing male attributes with female friends.

Eventually he managed to get the incensed scorpion out of the hole and came over to me with it. Now is probably the time to admit that I had asked him to locate a scorpion as I wanted a photo of one crawling around on my arm. I hadn't, at the time, counted on a big, wrathful, hairy momma scorpion that had been woken up by a stick being repeatedly poked at her babies, I'd been hoping for a nice, pleasantly sleepy scorpion (of course, as it turns out, scorpions are nocturnal, and are rarely pleasant).

For the second time that night I whimpered as I gingerly held out my arm and Leo plonked it unceremoniously on my hand, at which point it ran up my arm while Leo yelled for me not to let it get to my shoulder and then yelled that I was doing it all wrong, grabbed for the scorpion, put it back on my hand and then tried and failed to show me how to stop it and get it onto my other hand before it got near my shoulder, at which point his rather obvious panic would rub off on me again. After several attempts and removing the scorpion from my shoulder repeatedly I eventually got the hang of it, and had the scorpion going from one arm to the other smoothly while poor Laura tried to work out how to use my camera while shrieking with fear (I kept telling her that she had to come closer to get a decent night-time shot with no flash - she should have been thankful that I don't have a macro lens).

It turns out that the reason Leo kept panicking whenever the scorpion got near my shoulder was that it needs flesh in front of it, perpendicular to the length of its body, to grab with its pincers and then sink the sting on its tail into. Rather like my neck. The livid scorpion was repeatedly going for my jugular it would seem. Leo said that he'd never seen a scorpion so obviously enraged. He then told us about the time a Bornean Black scorpion stung him and he spent 24 hours screaming through fever dreams as his body fought to get rid of the venom.

I do feel that he might have mentioned some of this to me beforehand.

On the way back to the camp we spotted the Bornean Blue tarantula again, but this time it was guarding its nest and babies from a dogtoothed cat snake that was waiting to pounce at any wrong move. We waited for about 10 minutes, but neither moved an inch, so we got bored of the stalemate and went back to the camp.

We crashed fairly quickly as it's exhausting watching animals foraging, looking after their young, mating and generally going about their daily business.

I awoke at the crack of dawn, after another astoundingly heavy sleep, and Sheila, Laura and

I decided to get up early on the offchance that there would be space on the boats for another morning safari (you're only supposed to have one). There wasn't but they arranged for another boat to go out to take all the people that were supposed to be in bed out to watch the animals of the Kinabatangan greet the dawn in their own ways. As with most of the guided trips so far, this was supposed to take one hour, but ended up taking two as we were all having so much fun, including the guides. The fact that they're so enthusiastic about their jobs, even after years of doing it is one of the reasons that I would (and have) recommend (ed) Uncle Tan's to anyone.

I found myself feeling oddly calm and at home on the river, while paradoxically excitement bubbled inside me as I wondered what we'd see next - lesser fish eagles and white-bellied eagles (pictured), oriental pied hornbills and wrinkled hornbills, the oriental darter, a.k.a. the snake bird (no it doesn't eat snakes - I asked and got laughed at - it has a long bendy neck that looks a bit like a snake), more long-tailed macaques, proboscis monkeys and egrits (pictured) and another saltwater crocodile, as it turns out. The sun shone on us for the whole journey, to the extent that I was worried that I might be burning at 7am.

We made our way back to camp for breakfast and then I said goodbye to most of my friends, as I was staying on for an extra day. After stalking yet another monitor lizard around the camp with my camera and examining the plethora of new mosquito bites on various inexplicable parts of my anatomy, I

decided to go for a morning walk alone along one of the trails (it's perfectly safe Mum, the trees are marked with different colours for different trails, and I had a whistle, as well as my foghorn voice in case I got lost).

I walked to the nearby lakes and saw otters, another oriental darter/snake bird (pictured) and egrits. I sat beneath a tree and just watched the birds circling overhead in the blazing head of midday, before eventually dragging myself back to camp for lunch.

Along the way I stumbled through a spiders web, and was picking bits of web out of my hair when I felt, at the same instant as I saw out of the corner of my eye, a black and yellow crawly, icky thing in my hair. I threw it (an orb-weaving spider as it turns out, pictured) to the ground, hopped from foot to foot for a while and resisted the temptation to shriek, until I felt something large on my shoulder and discovered a rather large, armour-plated tractor millipeed crawling across my bare shoulder. At that point I think I did squeal a bit.

After my close and unintentional encounters with nature, I felt that I badly needed to calm down, so clearly a large lunch and a session in the nearest hammock with a book and Deep Forest (it seemed appropriate) on my mp3 player was called for, interrupted only by a brief photo shoot with a flying, colour changing lizard that one of the guides found on a random wander.

Eventually I felt I had calmed down enough to go and raid the biscuit tin again. I was wandering back to my dorm, munching on my last biscuit when I caught a blur of fur hurtling towards me at great speed out of the corner of my eye. I didn't even have time to resolve the blur into the shape of a long-tailed macaque before it had flown past me, deftly teefing my biscuit straight out of my hand without even touching me on the way, and it had landed under the dorm and was eating MY biscuit with a look of insolent defiance (am I anthropomorphising now?) under my hut. I was still staring in open-mouthed disbelief at the gap between my thumb and forefinger when I became aware that the entire campsite full of people that I hadn't yet met were pissing themselves laughing at me. Although a couple of them had seen the monkey coming, sadly none of them had had their cameras to hand. The upside to losing your biscuit (AGAIN) to an upstart primate is that it gives you instant fame. Integrating myself with the new group was quite easy after that point as everyone knew who I was. I made friends with a group of people from Denmark, a group from Sweden, an American family (all of whose names I've forgotten), and a lovely Dutch couple (both teachers too) - Katleen and Ben.

At sunset I headed out for another sunset boat trip (again, I wasn't supposed to have a second one, but everyone seemed quite happy to shift up so that the girl who had lost her biscuit to a simian could squeeze on, especially since the guides all new I was nuts about my camera and had missed out on taking photographs on the sunset boat trip the day before). Thank fuck they did - we saw more Proboscis monkeys, Silver Leafed monkeys (the ones that have a silhouette like one of Beckham's more bizarre haircuts) and, at last, an orang utan.

Lan, the camp manager saw it first and pulled his boat in. The rest of the boats followed and word was passed around quietly that there was an orang utan in the trees. We caught glimpses of it as it moved around, foraging for fruit before it made it's nest and went to bed. It disappeared from view from the bank, so Lan decided to take us on a trek through the jungle, beating a path as we went along, as quietly as possible, through grasses and shrubs twice our height. We reached the trees where we had seen him, and were just about giving up all hope when Lan came back from a wander and led us off to a nearby clump of trees, telling us to be as quick and quiet as possible. It turns out I'm pretty good

at running (read hurdling) quietly through jungles. Every time the orang utan moved from tree to tree, we stayed with it. It looked directly at me and Martin, my orang utan photography buddy, repeatedly (we had the biggest, most interesting cameras I think) until it became so fed up of our collective presence that it started throwing fruit, then whole branches at us, and then doing several carefully aimed turds in our general direction. We took this to mean that it wanted us to bugger off now, so we obliged. Oddly enough, although it looked directly at Martin and myself several times, it never aimed at us. Maybe it was because it didn't perceive us to be as big a threat as the larger group of people.

Or perhaps it was ginger sympathy. Who knows.

As we walked back to the boats Lan told us some useless facts about orang utans - unsurprisingly the one that eclipsed the rest and the only one that I retained was that orang-utans are the only other apes to engage in oral sex (this throws a whole new light on the inter-primate orgy at the Sepilok orang utan sanctuary - possibly the simians are the orang utans bitches after all), although when I asked, I was disappointed to hear that it's only the males who get it.

After an experience that left us all buzzing and chatting excitedly, the guides apologised for our having missed out on a boat cruise, as we had spent most of the time in the forest, tracking the orang utan, and they promised us an extra boat trip in the morning to make up for it (my second extra morning cruise, to make up for the afternoon cruise that I wasn't supposed to be on anyway). There were snorts of disbelief from all directions, as I don't think anyone regretted the decision to head into the jungle, but we didn't argue!

I had spent quite some time debating over whether to go on another night cruise or trek for my last night in the camp, but because I had spent quite some time socialising with Tony and Lan, two of the longest serving members of staff, they quietly told me that there was a wedding that evening between two of their friends in a village downriver, and did I want to come? Of course I bloody did. I just had to keep it quiet from my other friends at the camp sadly.

Some members of staff took groups out that evening, and once the camp had emptied, the rest of them, including Lan and Tony, got dressed up into clothes that weren't covered in mud. I, being a mucky pup, couldn't manage that, so I went for my least muddy clothes, and then had to change my top, as my wide strapped, no-cleavage, sensible vest top was deemed "too sexy". I found a clean, long-sleeved, baggy, shapeless tunic, confirmed that the village was Muslim, and that there would be no rice wine there (thank fuck after previous run-ins with the stuff).

As a result, when we got in the boat and Tony hauled in the vast majority of the supply of beer from the entire campsite, I was a little surprised. The first round of cans were passed around, and I said cheers to everyone in Malay (it was my latest word, but now I've forgotten it). The guys behind me mimed clinking and explained that they didn't drink. I said that I was surprised that there were only 2 Muslims that worked at the camp, but they laughed and said that they were all Muslims. I turned to Lan and looked confused and Lan leaned towards me, just as I was taking a sip, and said "I'll tell you why we drink beer Cat, it's because we're fucking bad Muslims".

I sprayed my beer over the crocodiles.

We arrived at the wedding too late for the ceremony and live music, but we did get there in time for the obligatory karaoke section of the evening. Thankfully they didn't have any western music, so I didn't make an arse of myself, but divided my time between sneaking down to the boat dock for a cheeky beer with the boys from the camp, taking photographs of the happy couple and being dragged to the dancefloor by the guys from the camp, and an uncle of the bride. I'd already decided that if my sensible vest top was deemed "too sexy", then the way I normally dance would be tantamount to doing a striptease on the dancefloor, so I tried to imitate the dance moves of other people on the dancefloor. I'm not very good at Malay dancing, as it turns out, but it was a giggle trying.

Eventually we headed home, thankfully with the tee-totaller Muslims steering, and crashed out far too late considering we would, once again, be getting up at the crack of dawn.

The following morning, on our final boat safari, we saw a whole bunch of animals that I was far too tired and slightly hung-over to appreciate, including (apparently) black squirrels, blue-throated bee-catchers, common sandpipers, Kukals, Dollar birds and more crocodiles, monkeys and another oriental pied hornbill (pictured). I couldn't tell you what any of the first 5 on that list looked like, and I half suspect the guides and other guests were making it all up (they were adamant that they weren't).

Thankfully breakfast back at the camp brought me back to life, so much so that I decided to join in the football again before I left the camp for the last time. Once again I was the weakest link on the pitch, but this time I didn't suck nearly as much. I managed a decent header, I had a couple of shots on goal that passed within mere inches, rather than yards, of the goal, and I managed to get the ball off Lan, who's played footie every morning for the last 11 years. I was quite pleased actually.

I threw my belongings (the ones that hadn't been stolen by monkeys) into my bag, said my goodbyes and we left the camp to make the long journey back to the head office just outside Sandakan, where I gobbled down some food and left quickly as I'd been thinking of nothing but showers with clean, running hot and cold water for the last 3 hours and couldn't wait any longer.

On the bus into town I came across this method of transporting food in unperishable form. The live chicken was sharing a small plastic bag with, amongst other things, a pineapple and a coconut.

I spent one more night in Sandakan, where I tried and failed to locate a bookshop that had a copy of Harry Potter (it was 23rd July by now - I had barely thought about the book while I was in the jungle, but now that I was back in Sandakan and bored, I was suddenly aware that most of my friends had probably finished it by now). The highlight of my day there was watching Flight Plan - it was actually surprisingly good.

Eventually, the clock ticked to 5pm on 23rd and I boarded the plane to Kuala Lumpur, watching the clock the whole way and wondering if I would make it into the city centre before the bookshop in KLCC shut at 10pm. The answer was no, and I was forced to spend another night twitching while everyone else found out what happened to Harry and you-know-who, except me.

The following day I got up early, located a copy of the Deathly Hallows (hallelujah!) and made my way to the other side of Malaysia in order to spend the next 4 days lying on a beach on the Perhentian islands.

Yes, they had fine white sand beaches lined with palm trees, yes the food was very nice, yes there was good snorkelling and yes the people were friendly, but once I had read the last page of Harry Potter, I found myself utterly bored again, and desperate to go home (which I'm told I will find ironic in a few days when the buzz of being home wears off and I wish I was travelling again). I'm not very good at sitting still and doing nothing, and became more and more fed up as time went on (which was rather unfortunate, as a friend of mine, Mike, had come to join me for the last few days). My foul mood was not helped by my having the dodgiest tummy I've had on the entire trip.

Yesterday I left the Perhentian islands, caught a boat back to the mainland and then found a couple to share a taxi to the nearest train station with. Ina and Las were lovely, friendly people from Kazakhstan - Ina spoke heavily accented English, but Las could only just about follow what we were saying, but couldn't really contribute in English. Apparently neither of them had heard of Borat, and therefore had no opinion on the film (oh come on, like you wouldn't have been tempted to ask).

Sadly when we got to the train station there were no tickets left, so I said my goodbyes to Ina and Las (who went off to find the nearest McDonalds - I tried not to judge them) and located an overnight bus to KL instead, sadly at a bus station rimmed with open sewers and with factory chimneys nearby. It did not smell of roses.

I'm now in Kuala Lumpur to finish off my blog (which has been hampered by an adorable small boy called Alif-Sem who caught sight of the photos I was putting on my blog this morning before he went to school, and came back this afternoon to gape at the particularly gross ones and ask me lots of questions, largely in mime as his English is limited, about how many eyes spiders have and how many toes frogs have, to look at all the photos on my entire blog, and to correct my spelling - apparently there's no hyphen in orang utan) before I head to Singapore tomorrow morning for my flight home. Unless something out of the ordinary happens on the flight home tomorrow (i.e. other than the usual banal conversations with neighbours, crappy flight food and array of films to pass the time), this is probably going to be my last posting. I haven't sorted out the photos from the last few days yet (there aren't many - I lacked the enthusiasm to get my camera out). I'll add them to this posting at a later date.

It feels strange to be coming to the end of my travels and coming home after sich a long time away.

I'm going to miss being a normal height in a crowd, but not an abnormal weight. I'm going to miss being a celebrity everywhere I go, and people running out of buildings to wave and yell "Hello" at me, but I won't miss being told "I love you" by complete strangers on the street, or people I've just met (I feel it makes a mockery of my love life, or lack thereof). I'm going to miss the cheap, beautifully flavoured food, but I shan't miss rice, and I can't wait to be able to cook for myself again. I'm going to miss the fleeting connections I've made with the strangers whose paths I've crossed, and who've allowed me into their lives, their homes and their families, albeit briefly, but I won't miss being on the other side of the world from the people that I love the most (except obviously for Maz), and I can't wait to see everyone again (see previous bracket). I'm going to miss hawkers and touts everywhere saying "Aaah, Eeengleeesh - lovely jubbly/Rodney you plonker/Beckham, Beckham/Manchester United. I'm going to miss haggling through smiles for everything I buy, the stifling heat and humidity, the exercise I actually have the time to get regularly, my tan (as it inevitably fades and I revert to being pale and interesting), strangers being eager to talk to me (I'm unlikely to get that back in London) and the excitement of being in an alien land where nothing makes sense every time I cross a border.

On the other hand I won't miss carrying my whole life on my back, watching every penny, being constantly bitten by mosquitos, sandflies, bedbugs and God only knows what else, cockroaches running across my feet as I cross the street at night, and appearing in my room out of the blue, making me wonder how long they've been there, and how close to me they've come.

I can't wait to see everyone again and to catch up on their lives. It will be a relief to see other people who knew my brother regularly, and who know who he was and what he meant to us all. I can't wait to sit in the pub til closing time getting sozzled on wine, to have an income and be based in one place, to not have to pack up my belongings every other day and carry them from place to place, to be able to dress and dance as I wish, not as is appropriate, to lie in candlelit baths with a nice glass of wine and copious quantities of chocolate and to listen to music without rationing the remaining battery time on my mp3 player. I can't wait to be back in the country where summer means the precipitation is no longer frozen, where burgh is pronounced borough and where nobody says lovely jubbly, no matter what hawkers the world over think.

I'm coming home.

I dedicate this blog to my big brother Steve, who had the grace to tell me in no uncertain terms in his last few days that he expected me to continue my travels, and without whose blessing I doubt I would have done.

There truly is no-one, in this world or the next, who I enjoyed swapping past travel stories and discussing possible future trips with, more than Steve.