The Dark Museum Off

When I started travelling, I considered museums essential destinations. I'd always had a passing interest in ancient history, so the art museums of Florence, the National Archaeological Museum of Athens and the charmingly run-down Egyptian Museum in Cairo took me on a fascinating journey backwards through time.

I didn't visit many museums after that, at least not many mainstream ones, as curiosity led me to develop a taste for something more niche. Over the past 18 months, I've made a hobby of tracking down museums that are sometimes sinister, mostly morbid and definitely dark.

Island tale

We had a partly lovely time on Pulau Perhentian Kecil. I went snorkelling and swam in the sea for the first time in ages and magnificently failed to learn from my past experience of this exact island at the same time of the year as the parts of me that are still vampire-white and normally covered by clothes got painfully sunburned.

Thanks to our tiny, reclusive resort, we also got to enjoy/endure trekking across half the island or braving a bumpy water taxi any time we wanted to go anywhere and Jackie got to experience the on/off Wi-Fi annoyance that's plagued me for two years and might have led to a deeper mutual understanding. Now I just have to take her to Cambodia or Vietnam to experience the hassle of taxi drivers and street sellers and she'll never complain about my stress outbursts again.

I could present scattered photos of fond memories tarnished by sarcastic commentary, but instead I'll take the risk of posting a short story vaguely inspired by our tranquil island week, written in pain as I avoided sun, sea and surfaces while waves lapped outside our window, flying foxes tried to scavenge our biscuits and fluorescent fish flitted beneath the brilliant blue. It's a bit bleak.

Highlander IV: Not a Flower

After spending time in Baguio and Sagada recently, I was happy for another chance to enjoy cool air and pine fragrances when our route east from Kuala Lumpur to the Perhentian Islands was rudely interrupted by the Cameron Highlands.

This was one of my favourite stops in Malaysia the first time, and judging by the disproportionate number of Europeans hanging around here, I can only presume my blogs were successful in boosting its tourism profile. Coming back meant I was able to tick off the final outstanding item on the region's conveyor belt package tour itineraries by trekking deep into the forest to find the world's biggest flower that isn't even a flower and isn't the biggest of these even if it was, which it isn't.

Still, nice walk.

Hey ma look, it's me!

I was gathering together some photos of me from this blog recently after someone requested them, so I thought I'd share them with you. This is the most self-indulgent post I've ever made, even by this blog's usual Onanistic standards, but this chronological collection could at least be useful for nutrionists interested in charting my weight loss throughout my travels (apparently I got fat before I left Edinburgh and was a shrivelled wreck again by the time I got to Thailand - really? How did I not notice?)

Putting this together, I noticed that I really don't take that many photos of myself any more - like I don't feel the need to get in the frame as evidence that I actually visited a place (unless it seems funny). Either the novelty of having a camera was finally worn off, or I've become less vain over time. Says the guy who just spent a couple of hours compiling a blog post all about himself, consisting entirely of images of himself.

This is just photos of me that you've probably already seen (though some are from slightly different angles - exciting!) It might be me next to a thing, me doing a thing or me wearing a thing, but the subject is still me. Seriously, there are about 50 of them - this is the equivalent of my Facebook tagged images or something. If you're not interested in me, don't read more.

Macaques all, folks!

Bereaved macaque

One of the advantages of keeping up this travelling and OCD blogging well beyond most people's attention spans and memory capacities is that I can pass off re-contextualised pictures from older blogs as new material. Like one of those budget-saving episodes of American TV shows where the characters get trapped in a lift and reminisce about their antics back when they had funding.

My own funding situation should soon improve, so I'll be able to hire back the green screen technology, guest actors and CGI artists needed to keep up the sophisticated illusion that I'm travelling all over Asia, when in reality I never left Scotland. It probably would have been cheaper to actually go to these countries and do these things for real, now I think about it. But I can't eat that foreign muck.

Anyway, better get on with fabricating a tenuous segue to introduce these old monkey photos. Hey, do you remember when I was in those other Asian countries where they had macaques roaming around all over the place? What was all that about? I'd love to go back and revisit some of those adven... oh dear, the lift seems to have broken down. Well, we might as well pass the time remembering some of those kerrazy monkeys and their wacky antics. Do you remember... remember... remember... (Overlay warbling sound effect)

Literally everything I spent last year

In 2011 I visited eight countries and spent GBP 9,421.37

(average £785.11/month)

Is that a lot? An achievement in thriftiness? I'm not sure, and I don't really care either way. I'm still earning more than I'm spending and I can't put a price on the freedom my freelance career gives me (not because it's priceless, I'm just rubbish with numbers).

I expect 2012 to be similar in terms of aimless wandering, but it'll probably be more expensive now that I've left South East Asia. But there are other parts of the world where living is cheap, and that I haven't been to yet. Those two criteria are enough to put South America on the I'll-think-about-it list for 2012 - but not before I've been through the more expensive South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand on my slightly illogical odyssey.

That said, now I've added up and taken a look at these figures for the first time, it turns out some of these Asian countries really weren't as cheap as I was giving them credit for.

So Niah and yet so far

What a rubbish drawing - I came all this way to see that? I appreciate the artist was working with haematite on the unforgiving medium of cave wall, but it can't even be excused as cryptic modern art as they reckon it's around 1,200 years old. 1,200? I was drawing better people than that when I was just four.

Unless these were painted by aliens and represent their true, gangly proportions? I don't even have to Google it to know that screwball theory definitely exists. Why give real humans any credit when you can heap praise on non-existent ancient astronauts who succeeded in developing technology to transport them several thousand light years across space, but couldn't invent creosote?

The Niah caves were excellent really. So nice, I almost forgave a rubbish tour company for not getting in touch with me after I made my reservation to see the more impressive Mulu caves (website background image), meaning I couldn't end up going. But it wouldn't be my blog without some element of failure.

Well, that about wraps it up for Brunei

That's about all I have to show for my holiday in Brunei, which lasted two hours and twenty-eight minutes so is at least better than I managed in Cambodia. It's only thanks to Borneo's slightly silly borders that I needed to pass through this country at all on my epic cross-country/cross-island bus journey between two bits of Malaysia.

At 11 hours, the Borneo Express from from Kota Kinabalu to Miri wasn't the longest bus journey I've ever taken - that tedious honour probably belongs to several low-budget school trips from North West England to Germany, which must have been at least 18 hours, and the overnight/overday bus I took from Bangkok to Krabi Town during floods, which was similar.

But this is the first trip I've taken where I've picked up practically one passport stamp per hour.

He's changed

A few months ago, I might have settled for that Basic Dorm and risked suffering the snores and nocturnal telephone calls of 15 people. But my budget backpacking days are behind me, and I was happy to splash an extra 43 pence on air conditioned Superiority. Ooh, la-de-da - who does he think he is? He's changed.

Bignose strikes again

I debated whether to go to Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary on my last day in Sandakan, because I was about to spend a couple of annoying days on buses and could have really used the time to catch up on work.

Then I realised that hanging around with massive-conked monkeys would be the best thing it's possible to do on any day ever. This turned out to be the best day I had in Borneo by far, and for once my photos weren't a let-down.

The only problem I can see resulting from this is that the regular, non-snouted monkeys I used to enjoy hanging out with aren't really going to do it for me any more. It'd be like playing Spellbound Dizzy on an 8-bit ZX Spectrum emulator when you grew up with the superior 16-bit Amiga 500 version. Substitute this analogy for two comparative game consoles produced after 1990 if that's easier for you.

Curious orang

As far as I can gather from my total lack of research compensated by a surplus of reactionary imagination - so correct me if I'm wrong - the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre is a place where celebrity orangutans can overcome their addictions to various substances through a strict diet of bananas, which are dispensed twice daily in humiliating rituals that the braying public is invited to attend.

Some people might think it's cruel to parade these troubled apes in this manner, but they've got to learn. Here are some lousy photos.

Borne-no

Borneo looks pretty nice.

I'm sure there's supposed to be some wildlife here though...?

An accidental day out

Bus conductors are the bane of my life, and when today's joker failed to drop me off anywhere near the stop I'd asked for (Green Connection Aquarium, where I was hoping to have a childish day out again again again again again again), I decided I'd try to make the best of the situation by investigating whatever there was in wherever I'd ended up.

Conveniently, as if to balance out the yin-yang of this annoying day, the Kota Kinabalu Wetland Centre was inexplicably offering free entry today. So while you could have had some of out-of-focus photos of me fondling stingrays, here are some out-of-focus photos of birds and crustaceans instead.

Cruise for a conk

Not my photo.
We'll get to my disappointing photos in a minute

Borneo might be best known for its orangutans, but it's also home to a more hilarious primate that I felt it was more pressing to see first - the big-nosed, preggers-bellied proboscis monkey.

Like the solitary tarsier, I feel affinity with this distant evolutionary cousin, as we're both blighted by enormous hooters. Though these monkeys also have humongous bellies, while I seem to be wasting away.

Monkeys can generally be relied on to be funny, so add a massive conk and you've got a winner in the comedy animal stakes. But if you feel a pang of guilt when guffawing at these sideshow freaks in places like Singapore Zoo, you can go down the responsible tourism route and see them hanging out in their native habitat on a cruise down Klias River.

The element of surprise

As I took that photo from the optimistically-named observation tower on Bukit Bendera ('observation tower' is Malay for 'small car park with view'), I had a brief, pleasant, nostalgic feeling that took me back to childhood.

I knew Kota Kinabalu was on the coast, but I hadn't expected to sea the see from here, and it made me realise that I really don't get as excited about the big blue wet thing as I used to.

Mm, that's nice

After a slightly downbeat post summing up my disappointing experiences in the Philippines, you might wonder what I'm doing out here if I'm intent on not appreciating Asia or enjoying myself.

Sometimes I wonder that too, but then I look back at my amateur, blurry, overcast photos of the ace things I've seen so far, and then check out professional, idealised, Photoshopped images of what's to come, and I feel like I'm not completely wasting my time.

Here are some of my favourite natural sights I've seen in Asia so far. The quality of the photos won't be enough to make you go 'WOW!' or 'oh my god, how does that exist on the same planet that brought us Preston, Lancashire?'

But hopefully they'll be enough to make you go 'mm, that's nice.'

Do first impressions count?

Day one in most countries I visit is usually pretty disappointing/frustrating as I'm forced to deal with over-zealous airport security, incompetent bus drivers and sleazy taxi drivers to get to my accommodation, hoping I don't have to share it with pests (bed bugs or English people).

Sometimes I get rained on as well (the fact that you're even reading this anthology blog means the weather here hasn't improved, or I'd have some tedious travel photos to show you instead).

These first days may be quasi-traumatic on occasion, but they're at least useful for setting the bar extremely low so that I'm easily impressed when/if things go right. And sometimes, they give an accurate indication of what I can expect during my time there.

Well, that about wraps it up for Peninsular Malaysia

Check out how much stuff I did in Malaysia! And I haven't even been to the Borneo bits yet.

I wanted to finish on a deliberate anticlimax by recounting my trip to Subang Jaya to experience Malaysia' tallest pencil (formerly the world's, but it doesn't even have that going for it any more). But after walking around the city for hours and discovering that no one who lives there even knows about its existence, I left empty hearted.

Luckily, I went to Johor Bahru next, the gateway to Singapore, which turned out to be an even more effective anticlimax. As well as a reminder that, if somewhere is generally ignored by tourists and is objectively of no interest whatsoever (it doesn't even have any oversized stationery, that's how crap it is!), this should be taken as a hint rather than a challenge.

A good read

One of the benefits of not having 24-hour internet access - apart from meaning I subject you people to slightly fewer pointless blogs each month (it'll take more than that to stop me) - is that I spend less time at the computer and more time elsewhere.

Although I still invariably end up wasting the precious gift of life, at least I'm wasting it offline and getting lots of reading done.

Dave 2031

What will become of me?

Right now, I'm happy enough visiting new places and writing about brain injury claims and Berlin city breaks for a living (those are just two random, recent examples - I'm not paid to write endlessly about brain injury claims and Berlin city breaks, and never are the two combined). But will that still be the case six months from now? Or in a year? Or 20 years down the line in the space-age sci-fi future dystopia of 2031, when I'm 45?

Do I really want to end up like Graham?