Yes, last week was a jolly one indeed. A bit sad because all of Vanessas family returned to Australia to continue their work and studies, but they got sent off with a big meal. It was all quite random though because our mate Brendan and his Frenchie girlfriend finally turned up here in KL. They been on a climbing holiday in Thailand, and stopped by on their way back home. Brendan was the chap who took us to South Africa and drove us all around, and I was kind of hoping to show them around asia a bit, but they seemed to do alright on their own. They stopped on the mattress in our gaff and we got to indulge in copious amounts of beer and recounting old tales, as well as catch up on 2 years worth of Bristol gossip, as well as visiting some of our local watering holes around the corner (footnote: these are actually semi hooker bars it would seem, or GRO bars - which stands for Guest Relations Officer a very fancy term for an Escort or a Taxi Girl), which was all jolly good fun.
On the Thursday we all got a day off (public holiday, don't know what religion but great all the same) and Jess booked a whole bunch of us to go white water rafting down the Kampar river (in the state of Perak just north of here, where I did that location shoot and took all those jolly nice photos a few months ago). So off we trooped. Small problem was that Brendan and I had been up drinking on the hammocks all night - as in quite literally all night as we had a lot of fat to chew. The first realisation of quite how much we had been rambling on was when the morning prayers started drifting out of the local mosque (a very clear indicator that it is 5am sharp). Small issue was we were supposed to be waking up a 6am, so kind of buggered my oppotunity to go to bed in a rather large way - obviously Vanessa was smart enough to hit the hay at a fairly respectable hour, what with her being much brainier than me (not brainy enough to be nowhere near me, but that is just one of those things for which I am truly grateful). Er where was I?. Oh yes, very pissed on a hammock and about to get up and go spelunking, shoot down a flying fox, climb up some rocky stuff and then get very wet on a raft ploughing down a very fast river. Lucky I wasn't hungover, as I was simply too drunk for that. I only got some photos here, but will provide other ones when Julian gives me his camera to plunder.
You may note here that these photos are of us in a raft, however the raft is not in the water. Well that was the very safe and fun ride we took to the river (note the photo with the 2 rafts that have just been unloaded from the ultra safe lorry, and the ultra safe well maintained bridge we went over, add to this multiple very safe potholes on a winding jungle road with a marvellously safe 3 metre ditch on one side and super safe low hanging branches and you get some idea about quite how brilliantly safe that trip was. Crash helmets were not just incase you crack your head on a submerged rock, no siree bob).
The caves we went into were amazing, but stank of fruitbat shit (apparently fruit bats are the key pollenators of the Durian tree - the worlds most unpleasant smelling fruit - which explains why their poo is so maloderous). At one point we turned all our torches off to see quite how dark dark can be, but there I was with all these colours and shapes and stuff flashing in front of my eyes, I thought to myself "this cave isn't that dark" then I remembered I was still a bit drunk and hadn't been to sleep for over 35 hours and had just exerted myself a lot by climbing through a cave. I'd say it was a sobering thought, but it actually wasn't
Miraculously I managed to not die due to being drunk in a pitch black cave with precipices all around and little bits of old rope to haul myself up with, nor did I drunkenly drown in a rainforest river, I did kind of bang my elbow a bit and got a nasty knock, but that was OK cos the booze was a marvellous analgesic. Vanessa had a nasty injury when we barrelled into a big set of rapids, got totally submerged and then popped up minus our boatman (isn't he supposed to be the professional rafter?) who unfortunately smashed into Vanessa on his way out and nearly broke her elbow. But she's ok now, just ruined the day for her a little bit.
Apart from that it was all very good fun.
The hangover that evening wasn't.
ps: I know it's not big and it's not clever, but I tell you one thing, it is bloody interesting and there s no finer way to sober up than being dumped at high speed into fast moving freezing cold river rapids, whooo, that is one serious wakeup call, they should try and use it on coma patients
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