With the cost-reduction “thou shallst take holidays” edict still in effect and having just been in the UK for a lovely wedding, it seemed like a good idea to go somewhere far, far away for the subsequent Christmas weeks - but where? Well, the island of Borneo looked interesting, and being about 5 times the size of the UK and shared by 3 countries (Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia) it gave some scope for exploring, so I booked a cheap flight which routed me via Moscow.

The alarm went a 4 a.m. and I got to the airport only to find a flight delay of 30 minutes, which worried me, as my connection in Moscow was just an hour, and I was more worried when I was refused entry at the gate. Despite the e-mail confirmation that I would not need a Russian visa (learn, Stacey), it turned out I did. I was delighted as this meant it was now Lufthansa’s problem to get me to Asia on time. The ground staff was a little taken back as it was the first time they had bumped a passenger who was happy about it. But Lufthansa rose to the occasion and I was soon on my way again, this time via Munich. As I approached the gate I was refused entry again and had to go back to the counter, but this time it was good news as I was handed a business class upgraded for the 11 hour flight. Happy Ian.

Arriving in Asia, I teamed up with a good friend and our first major point of call was Brunei. The guide books are a bit sketchy about “attractions” in Brunei – we quickly did all the sites in the capital Bandar Seri Begawan; the mosque, boat trip around stilt village and the Royal Regalia Museum, where the coronation display answers the question “what do you give the sultan who has everything” – a huge beer mug (from UK) and a golden miniature oil rig stand out. With nothing else to do, we hired a car to visit two real highlights for me, the billion US$ white elephants that the Brunei finance minster (by chance the Sultans son) built while in office (at a time the $ was worth something).

The first is the Empire Complex, which cost US$1.1 billion - an amazing conglomeration of hotel, country club, cinema and golf course of epic proportions – beautifully maintained it would work in Las Vegas, but is simply too big and opulent for such a small country. The second at the other end of the maintenance scale is the haunting Juradong Playground Park – an amusement park with formerly world class rides. After being built, the principle of free admission for the people meant there was no money coming in to maintain anything and as the rides decayed they were simply closed. Now it is like walking through a bad Scooby-Doo cartoon, with beautiful decorations crumbling to the ground, ghostly roller-coasters and eerie, empty water-ride plunge pools, which I am sure once delighted screaming guests. The silence in the park was deafening.

From there we headed to Malaysia to explore the eastern part of the Island of Borneo, known as Sabah. The flight with Brunei Royal Airlines was interesting, as we taxied out the PA system broadcast a rather long prayer asking Allah to bless the flight, which seemed to work just fine and we arrived safely at the surprisingly modern Kota Kinabalu Airport. The town had a lot to offer, modern shops and a huge food market where fishermen hawk their catch. You simply select the nicest looking fare, sit down, have a drink, and by then your seafood selection has been grilled and served on a plastic plate complete with steamed rice. I gorged myself on monster shrimps – some of the best I have ever eaten.

The next morning we were up early to continue our route to the impressive Mount Kinabalu peak, Kinabalu National Park and the associated botanical garden. Now call me old fashioned, but a botanical garden for me is a big glass constriction (à la Kew Gardens), here it is a simply a sign painted on a gate and you walk further in to the jungle. After seeing some orchids and a really rare blooming raffesia we then traipsed up the canopy walk in 35°c heat, which necessitated a subsequent cooling dip in the adjacent waterfall pool - brilliantly refreshing. From there we drove the 200kms over somewhat paved roads to the Sepilok Mountain Lodge, where we arrived at dusk and were greeted by a lovely welcoming committee of 40,000,000 mosquitoes.

We headed off to visit the Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation center, a not uncontroversial body that collects orphaned and stray orangutans, tags and tattoos them to prepare them for a life back in the jungle. After the usual propaganda video, we watched a feeding – normally about 8 of these rather languid creatures turn up, but naturally on our watch only 3 arrived – my theory was that the rest were recovering from hangovers from a boozy Christmas Eve party the night before.

We moved on to the Kinabatangan River to the Proboscis Lodge, so remote it is only reachable by boat. Luckily, the mosquitoes from Sepilok had phoned ahead to let their brethren know were coming and far bigger welcoming committee was waiting, but we took to the river and did 3 boat expeditions (dusk, night and dawn) as well as a jungle trek. I had for foregone the leech socks for sale at reception, so the trek was interesting as it gave me the chance to come face-to-face (well, face-to-thigh) with a number of tiger leeches, which were luckily spotted and removed before they did any serious sucking. Perched on the end of a leaf, they reacted aggressively to body heat stretching out with an urgent desperation. These harmless, but revolting creatures, don’t frighten me per se, but let’s just say I was wearing 2 pairs of tight underpants that day expressly to prevent and unwarranted sucking in the control zone.

On the boat expeditions, the amount of wildlife our local guides could spot in the dense foliage was incredible and we witnessed a plethora of animal life including pigmy elephants, monkeys, orangutans, snakes, crocodiles, monitor lizards and numerous birds. The highlights had to be watching 2 proboscis monkey families showing off to each other across a river tributary and a kingfisher at night that froze in our light beams and allowed us to come literally within touching distance – the colour kingfisher blue has new meaning for me after that encounter.

We then headed off for our final port of call, Sandakan, stopping off on the way at the Gomantong Cave to witness the locals harvest birds’ nests at insane heights on flimsy ladders, whist breathing the ammoniac stench of bat guano and having their (and our) feet overrun by cockroaches. Sandakan was a jumping-off point for Turtle Island. The point here was obviously to see turtles laying their eggs at night. They can come ashore anytime from 8pm to 5am, so an overnight stay and a lot of patience is called for. There are only 22 rooms (with primitive, shared facilities) on the island, so invariably there are about 50 visitors, who cluster around a frightened animal when she finally makes it on shore and digs a hole. We saw 2 turtles, the first one made it in at about 9:30pm, but she was a nervous first timer (she was not tagged) and only laid 14 eggs, so we waited for the 11:15pm showing, where an old hack turned up and dumped 87 golf-ball sized eggs. Then the hatchling from a previous laying were released and I strategically stood close to the water - the absolute highlight was when the water washed two of them next to me, which necessitated a serious climb over my foot and toes. I suddenly felt very close to these tiny creatures and wish them well on their long journey to become a responsible adult (chances of making it < 5% – about the same as mine, I reflected on the long journey home.)

Reaching your 80th birthday is something to celebrate. So when the Leading Hotels of the World reached that magic number, they celebrated by offering (a limited number) of hotel rooms for $19.28 (having been founded in 1928).

But how to distribute the rooms? Well, to show how far the company has come, why not use that new-fangled Internet-thingie to run a sweepstake? But actually you need to plan such a Web event and after a first, completely abortive attempt where the Website crashed horribly, a second attempt two weeks later had me again sitting at my PC, hitting the refresh key as the sweep of second hand moved to the top of the hour. This time the site actually came live and I hit the “send” button within the first minute, hoping for a result.

To my astonishment, three days later, an e-mail arrived confirming that I had been allocated two nights in my choice hotel, the sumptuous 5-star Bauer Hotel in Venice. So I wasted no time getting on-line booked “free” flights which weren’t exactly free (they didn’t include the tax, suitcase, fuel surcharge, check in charge and credit card fee), to “Venice Treviso” airport that isn’t exactly near Venice. Still we were set for a luxurious and relatively inexpensive weekend.

I have sort of visited Venice vicariously via James Bond films and the over-the-top Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. There we went on a fake gondola ride, while it rained from a fake ceiling and subsequently strolled along a fake St. Marks square - now I wanted to do all this for real (except for the rain). I wanted to walk over the real Rialto Bridge and some of the other 408 bridges that connect the 117 islands and 150 canals that make up this unique city.

Venice’s uniqueness became more apparent a few days before we left, amongst the various e-mails from Ryanair reiterating the ludicrous restrictions on their flights, there was a BBC news alert that had the title “Boats strike as Venice hit by serious flooding” with a lovely video of people wading thigh high through St. Marks Square and huge queues as people waited for water taxis. I rushed out to get buy a pair of wellington boots, but being a cheap-skate-Kimbell I was unwilling to pay the ridiculous prices for a pair of waders - so thinking back to the BBC video I bought a roll of 10 bin bags and set of orange canning jar gaskets to hold them in place to act as temporary overshoes. But I was going come hell or (more appropriately) high water.

After the flight and a bus ride, the city emerged out of the darkness and we took the now non-striking bus-boat the 12 stops to St. Marks square and the simply gorgeous Hotel Bauer, which just oozed elegance from every crevice. We entered, passing occasional tables swathed in ostrich leather and decorated with Murano glass objet d’art to a reception dripping with Carrara marble and smiling staff. The room too lived up to expectations; my only qualm was that the grape-sized crystals on the toilet paper dispenser didn’t quite match the one on the end of the toilet brush.

We had a quick tour of the area (there was no flooding as the water had subsided, but the after effects such as a raised walkways were still to be seen). The hotels location was ideal, facing the Grand Canal, a stone’s throw from St. Marks Square and surrounded by shops such as Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo and Valentino. The city is fascinating and the differences between Venice and a normal city became apparent with every step. There seemed to be an incident somewhere the emergency services were on their way. A blue police boat sped past, followed by a red fire engine boat (basically 4 men and a water canon) - everything in the city has to be done by boat, deliveries, post, rubbish collection etc, but everything seem to run smoothly.

The next morning we were up early to enjoy a hearty breakfast buffet (surprisingly, included in the $19.28 room charge) with a striking view over to the seemingly familiar, bulky form of the Chiesa di Santa Maria. The breakfast too was superb with the most perfect and fluffiest scrambled eggs I have ever eaten. From there it was off the St. Mark’s square for a visit to Gothic fantasy of the Plazzo Ducale, the Doge’s Palace. Dating back to the 9th century it was the political and administrative heart of Venice until 1797 when the French stuck their oar in, in the form of a Napoleonic invasion and stole the best works of art (typical).

From there we went up the Campanila tower (there is a lift) and round the amazing golden frescos of the Basilica di San Marco. The rest of the time was just spent meandering the alley and over the bridges that connect the various parts of the city, such as the slightly grubby Rialto bridge surrounded by a myriad of markets and stalls making for excellent shopping opportunities. Although tempted by some beautiful glass sculptures, the high price (€3,000 and up) turned out to be an inhibitive hurdle.

We visited several acclaimed galleries, the modern art gallery (Ca’ Pasero) was supposed to be a highlight, but paled in to insignificance compared to the smaller, but exquisite, Peggy Guggenheim collection. OK, I may be biased as we stumbled on two of my absolute favourite Magritte paintings were in the collection, namely the Empire of Light (a house at midday and midnight simultaneously) and the Voice of Space (three silver orbs hovering above a landscape). These, along with a couple of spectacular Dalis and an interesting boy on a horse sculpture, meant I literally had to be dragged out. Interestingly Peggy’s garden held a few trees, the first real greenery we had seen anywhere in the city. I imagine roots would just hit sea water or destroy a building’s supporting structure making a garden a huge engineering project and thus only an option for the ultra rich.

It was hard checking out, giving up the brass key to our lovely room, but tempered a bit by the cheapness of it. We took the bus-boat in glorious sunshine back to the Piazzale Roma. It had been a great trip, and an ideal time of the year to visit - according to the receptionist there were only “few” tourists - it must be unbearable in summer with the heat, stench and thousands more tourists. I will take back great memories and stronger calves thanks to the steps on those lovely bridges of Venice.