Travelling Hopefully - Joseph Conrad and David Attenborough Memorial Edition

I didn't get to go to Temburong.  That's Brunei's official, national park protected jungle as opposed to the regular sort of jungle that's still hanging around because no one has cut it down yet.  Unfortunately nobody seemed to be going there and as a consequence neither were the tours.  This meant that any wildlife I saw would be within spitting distance of the capital.

First up were cats.  The water village is practically sinking into the river under the combined weight of assorted moggies.  Oh yes and the combined weight of assorted cat shit.
"Wait a minute," I hear you cry. "Don't cats bury their waste?"
Yes, in theory however in the water village cats have the choice of digging in concrete, wood or water.  It's fair to say that none of these are optimal.  You need to watch where you walk in the water village, partly so you don't fall in the water but partly also so you don't slip in cat shit, lose your footing, bang your head on a plank, swallow your tongue, go into convulsions and then fall into the water.

So far so cats.  To see anything more I needed to take a trip up river into the heart of darkness where an overweight and over rated American actor is worshipped as a god by an elephant killing African tribe and Harrison Ford earns meal money prior to appearing in Star Wars.  Incidentally how clever was Ford to get himself killed off in the remake of Star Wars?  At least he won't have to appear in the remake of The Empire Strikes Back.

But back to my trip upriver which actually bore no resemblance to Heart of Darkness and only resembled Apocalypse Now in the amount of rain that fell.  It rained so much the boatman asked if I wanted to turn back but every time I tried to say yes my mouth filled with water so on we went.

We puttered soggily past the city, turned into a creek (Presto! I'm a creek!) and then stopped.  I spat the rainwater out of my mouth for long enough to ask why.
"Crocodile," was the response.  I stared hard at the patch of mud indicated and eventually it took pity on me, detatched itself from the rest of the mud and slid into the water.  It wasn't a huge crocodile, if Steve Irwin had thrown himself on it he would have inflicted serious internal damage, but it wasn't inconsequential either.  It was also a five minute walk and a brief paddle from where I had dinner the previous night.

Travelling upstream really did conjure up visions of Heart of Darkness, if you could overlook the plastic bottles floating down the creek and the fact that the mangroves and jungle only extended a few feet before running into the backyards of some of Bandar's swisher suburbs.  One yard extended right down to the creek bank with only a few trees dotting the place.  The owner was fishing in the creek.  In the trees were a group of proboscis monkeys including a dominant male, bulbous nose prominently on display.  If proboscis monkeys could go to the movies Gerard Depardieu would be a sex symbol all over again.

While we were watching the monkeys the home owner caught a fish.  It was a decent sized one too.  So in addition to monkeys I saw a fish.  Did David Attenborough really get paid for this?  Easiest job ever.  We continued our journey and saw a white crane.  Well I can't back up that identification but given the rarity of albino bats I think I'm safe in saying it was a bird.  With a crocodile, proboscis monkeys, a fish and what was, on balance of probabilities, a bird under our belts we turned around and went home.  Along the way we saw a very fine house with monkeys literally climbing the walls.  I hope the owner had locked his windows.