I believe that the most exciting holiday memories are in the near-misses; the things that go wrong, the things that challenge you and the things that scare you.
Providing you survive them, of course.
Our recent trip to Borneo could easily have ended with tales of an unplanned – and unwanted – swim in a crocodile-infested river, a missed connecting flight and a monkey bite.
Not regrettably, it didn’t.
They were only almosts, and they are the stories that have headlined the chats we’ve had with friends and family as we’ve reminisced.
Like a series of unfortunate events unfolding with gentle humour in a montage on an insurance ad on TV, we collected little offbeat experiences from the moment we landed in Kuala Lumpur before our flight to Sabah.
Kuala Lumpur International Airport is commonly a layover airport.
The airport itself is a tourist attraction, so I shouldn’t have underestimated its size.
We took our time wandering around on our three-hour stop, leisurely eating breakfast, and buying a toothbrush for the one son who inevitably forgot to pack his.
When we made for our gate, we found ourselves disoriented when routes seemed to only be sign-posted half the way, leaving us clueless at dead ends.
It was festival season in Malaysia and the crowds were thick.
Just four stations servicing a line of hundreds of commuters waiting to fill out their visitor cards, we opted to battle with the patchy wi-fi on our phones, fumbling and mildly panicked as the clock ticked closer to our departure time.
Then we discovered we had to catch a bus to a different terminal and joined the crowds already waiting for buses.
In the next terminal we were just as confused, so we asked the staff, who looked at our tickets, frowned and said, “It’s too late,” but rushed us up to security just in case we could still make it (we still didn’t know how far away we were from our gate).
At this point, I’d accepted that I was probably up for another 500 bucks to book four new domestic flights to get us from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu.
Nonetheless, we ran through the airport like a hopeless romantic trying to reach the love of their life before they boarded a plane and it became too late to profess their undying love in dramatic Hollywood fashion.
We bounded onto a travelator and transformed into backpack-carrying Temu versions of Usain Bolt and his suitors, almost catapulting ourselves into nosedives as it spat us out with speedy force at the other end.
Chariots of Fire played in my head when my eldest called out, “Mum, your neck pillow,” and I turned to see it laying on the ground 20 metres behind us.
I made a split second decision to retrieve it, despite our predicament.
Then, there it was.
Our gate. Still open.
Still filtering much calmer passengers than us through.
Because there were still 10 minutes ‘til departure.
We slowed to a walk, wiped the sweat from our brows and tried to regulate our breathing so we didn’t look, and sound, like overreacting idiots.
And we giggled as our adrenaline levels recoiled.
A few days later, my youngest got too close for a macaque’s liking while it was sitting on a fence rail.
It rushed threateningly toward him, and as though we couldn’t have just uppercut a little monkey back into the direction he came from (not that I condone that), we shrieked like schoolchildren, turned our backs and ran away.
We’d had our rabies shots, but those teeth still looked long, yellow and menacing, and capable of tearing rather large chunks of flesh from areas that may have important veins and arteries running through them.
We were within a river lodge that couldn’t be reached by road, with a canopy of trees so thick surrounding it that a helicopter wouldn’t be able to land within cooey.
The last night of our trip came.
We were on the home straight without incident.
We took a bus to a small village on the coast of Sandakan to board a boat in search of fireflies.
The village looked like the South-East Asia I remembered from my off-the-beaten-path backpacking days in my early 20s.
Chickens missing half their feathers pecked at rubbish on the heavily littered streets, buildings were falling down, dirty-faced children in faded and torn clothing swarmed around, politely asking if tourists had anything for them.
We boarded rickety, lopsided boats and headed down a mango tree-bordered tributary toward the Sulu Sea.
A couple of minutes into our commute, scarily close to the village, a large saltwater crocodile waded past our low-sided vessel.
We reached the mouth of the river and another passenger called out to the only English-speaking guide, who was in the boat next to us, to alert him to the water rising around our feet.
When a usually very chilled-out Malaysian guide shows concern, you know there is something to truly be worried about.
There we were, bobbing in the Sulu Sea, sidling our boat up against another, holding the two together with outstretched arms above the murky water, while two passengers relieved our boat of their weight and climbed into the other.
Apparently we’d been overloaded.
That was the South-East Asia I remembered.
We watched the sun set and headed back into the dark tributary in search of fireflies.
When we found some, the captains cut their engines and switched off their handheld flashlights.
Moonlight only and eerie silence, bar the sound of water lapping gently against the hull.
I already felt like we were sitting ducks for hungry circling crocodiles when, all of a sudden, I heard the disconcerting sound of a bucket scraping along the floor of the boat.
Our captain was bucketing water out.
The fireflies were lovely and all, but you couldn’t have gotten me back to terra firma quick enough.
It was the most scared I’d been the entire trip.
I had even started warning other passengers older than myself, mum-style, urging them to pull their arms back as they’d extended limbs over the boat’s sides to point at fireflies.
I’ve been on the Adelaide River’s jumping crocodile tour. I’m not sure if anyone else there had been, but they’d clearly forgotten what they should’ve learned from that if they had.
Thankfully, we all survived to tell the (scaled) tale.
And, the next day?
We even mastered wayfinding in the wilderness of Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
We’ll take that as a win.
Hardings, 1. Adversities, 0.