Day 109. Tanah Rata, Malaysia. The mackem and the fork.

Now here's a thing that'll teach me not to be so judgemental in future; the mackem - Phil, turned out to be a top bloke.

Being an organised kind of a chap, he'd spent a good part of the morning poring over maps and guidebooks to plan himself an interesting hike. And the Smiths, not wishing to sully their day with anything as mundane as research, decided to tag along.

An enjoyable and eventful walk it was too. Zig-zagging up one of the large hills overlooking Tanah Rata until we reached a lookout at almost 1900 metres where Wend served an improvised lunch of dried peas, Bombay mix and pitted prunes (tastes better than it sounds folks - honest).

Descending the other side of the hill we came to a bamboozling fork where one track suddenly became two. Much scratching of heads until Phil opted to take the right-hand track.

"Hey, if I've chosen the wrong one, you're not going to write anything derogatory about people from Sunderland are you?"

As if.

Of course, given a 50/50 chance of success, a mackem will inevitably blow it, so we ended up heading into thick, perilous jungle until someone of superior intelligence (a geordie) managed to beat a heroic track back to civilisation.

Shared a few beers in the evening to show there were no hard feelings and Phil whetted our appetites for a trip to South America with tales of his adventures in Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Equador.