Monkeys!

As promised - proboscis monkeys, plus Brunei's famous water village. Massive thanks to TC and Grace from Good Miles Brunei for making our stay so amazing!




Interesting facts about Kampung Ayer: the village has been there since the 1400s, when Spanish explorers (Magellan and co) first sailed in to Brunei for a lookabout. At its peak it housed over 30 000 people; now it has about 18 000. And while you would think it gets washed away every couple of years by a freak typhoon or something -  it's flourished particularly because Brunei isn't affected by those sorts of calamities.

Interesting facts about proboscis monkeys: the recognisably flabby nose is not, as you might imagine, a symbol of fertility, or masculinity. Even if monkeys understood jokes about the correlation between noses and other organs, they'd probably be too busy flinging their own poo about to really care. As it happens, the large nose is there because the large nostrils help regulate body temperature, keeping the furry orange critters cool even during Brunei's hottest days. But speaking of penises - we've been reliably informed that due to alpha male proboscis monkeys hogging all the chicks in a sexy monkey harem, the smaller males maintain a raging erection 24/7, just on the offchance they land an opportunity to charge in and bang one of the females while the alpha male has his back turned (possibly to regulate his body temperture).

Never forget these are our closest DNA cousins, people.