Happy Birthday to me!

I had a little lie-in as I didn't do the river cruise, my legs still ached, but I won't show off again about that mere mountain I climbed. I couldn't have a shower either, as we were heading off on a jungle walk at ten, so there was no point cleaning before getting very sweaty again.

Breakfast included some peanut butter, a definite birthday treat, and six of us were sat at breakfast for an hour or so before those who did go on the cruise came back, which was when Clare said 'Happy Birthday', and of course the six went 'oh yeah'. Oh dear.

Yellow fisherman wellies were the height of fashion for the walk, in which we all posed for an obligatory photo before heading out to sweat in full kit. A few people were being eaten alive by mosquitoes as we walked, but I was fortunate enough to just have a lot of sweat dripping off me. As we walked around and sank into the mud on numerous occasions, we saw a few pretty butterflies and millipedes, but again no elephants, orang-utans, or crocodiles. It was good to have a look around though, even if I did spot a leech on my leg when the boots came off: I completely forgot Arkin's advice on how to remove them and simply yelped before pulling it off, causing a slow run of blood down my leg when its teeth departed. Luckily my wound looks just like a small scab, but one of the older lady's legs has a huge blister-like wound where they got her. Ouch!

I finally had a birthday shower after the walk, borrowing shampoo as I thought there might be little sachets like at the other places, there weren't. It was so hard to cool down that I had to stand beneath the fan and wait for myself to stop sweating.

I read a little of Bill Bryson's 'History Of Everything,' I will finish it one day, and watched as a Monitor Lizard ate some of the scraps in the garden before setting off to the second river cruise. We saw monkeys and birds, and a prawn and fish that had been caught by the local fishermen in their tin traps. We all had grimacing pictures with the traumatised prawn, then took it back to the camp where they'll feed it up.

I had three Tiger beers as it was my birthday, but one had to be bought by Kim as I didn't have enough money; the first two nearly sent me to sleep as I don't seem to have a high beer tolerance. We played Gin Rummy and Cheat, or rather I was shown how to play it as the Danish girls played 'Fisk!' The German wanted to play, but kept on altering the rules, when Kim contested them he said 'but these are the rules' and seemed adamant we had to play his way. The game did not last long. When we played again we made it clear to him we were going to play by our rules: he didn't get the joke. He's a bit strange, he's given up his job to travel, fair enough, but he's about 45 and always thinks he's right, even when it's blindingly obvious he isn't. He also has a silly tuft of hair under his lip that seems very strange. His first strike was saying how wonderful Zanzibar was - not for the person who got pulled into the road by a thief on his scooter it isn't. He also thought India was quiet, but he must have seen a very different part to me.

I was unfortunate enough to share my birthday night in a room with Miserable Moo and her friend, of course they'd gone to bed so I had to search for my stuff in the dark, but it was fine as I didn't want to wake them. No such luck for me in the morning when they got up for their cruise as my earplugs played down the sound, but Miserable Moo's thunderous thuds across the floorboards meant I felt the vibrations when they were getting up.