‘It’s 100 metres.’

‘So how long will that take?’

‘The man says it takes twenty minutes.’

‘Twenty minutes? Even I,’ I scoff, ‘can manage to walk 100 metres in twenty minutes.’ And with that I fling open the car door.

Immediately I am knocked backwards by the wave of humidity. I groan and pull myself up. I am not dressed for sweating. I am wearing the last item of clothing left in my bag that isn’t dirty, sweat soaked or caked in sand. It is a pretty, strapless silk dress I bought for £2 in India. It’s elasticated around the bust and the sweat has already started to gather in the folds (of the dress – I’m not that fat) and I haven’t even started moving yet. I groan some more as we set off on the walk to the waterfall – or the mountainfall as Lula calls them.

We approach what looks to be a concrete wall. No, I blink, it’s just the road. It veers upwards like a granite cliff. Ok, so now I get the twenty minutes. My own child outwalks me. She is 3. I growl and curse and sweat my way along the path, muttering between clenched teeth that it had better be bloody Vic Falls after this.

The view that greets us is astonishing. Litter cakes the ground in all directions, frothy, stagnant water gathers in pools at our feet and a little bit of a water falls over a rock a few feet above us.

‘I can’t believe I climbed that bloody hill, in this dress – for that.’ I wave my hand at the dribble above us. ‘I cannot believe it.’ I stamp off back the way we came, whilst John and Alula start leaping over rocks determined to find some grace in the situation.

I don’t get very far before I have to stop. My sunglasses are fogging up – – and there is now more water pouring down my cleavage than over the waterfall.

Sometimes, sometimes, I think I would sell my body parts for air con.

Even as I think it I hear Al Gore yelling at me about climate change but seriously, obviously he’s never climbed a waterfall in a silk dress in Malaysia.

‘Watch out.’

‘Seriously, slow down.’

‘Brake!’

Luckily the woman hears my screams and flips herself like a fish on a griddle, thus avoiding being nutted on the head by the tip of the canoe John has steered straight at her.

‘Dude, did you not hear me yell?’

John says something about the current. About it being unexpected. Because currents in a sea are generally not to be expected. I am too embarrassed to look the woman who would have been Kirsty McColl in the eye. I just mutter sorry, sorry, sorry and watch as John scampers like a mountain goat over the rocks and disappears.

After our canoe ride in India where I earned the moniker canoes with dolphins we thought it might be a good idea to take a boat out again. Well John did. I made up excuses as to why I couldn’t canoe. A sprained knee. No sunhat. Alula on my lap. Maybe I have a sixth sense.

We ended up in a two man canoe with just one paddle. (Me wearing John’s hat.) John valiantly battled the waves to steer us towards a deserted island whilst Alula and I pointed out things of interest – water, waves, rocks. The lack of dolphins.

The island wasn’t deserted as it turns out. There were two dozen Malays attempting to snorkel in three inches of shallow water, half were women in burquinis. Obviously no one told them to heed the English man who doesn’t listen to his wife. I wasn’t sure what on earth they were trying to see in the three inches of water. There were no fish. There was no coral and it wasn’t like one could snorkel perv what with all that lycra in the way.

‘Can we go now?’ I shout to John, still mortified by the near-miss. The Malays are beginning to surface. I’m the only one in a bikini so there’s much more of interest to see on land than under the water. And Alula is screaming about ants as is her wont.

We climb back on board and John paddles us back to the mainland. I trail my hands in the water.

‘Shall I help?’ I ask, making a paddling motion.

‘Yeah that’s really helpful,’ John replies.

‘Well, you know me. Helpful, helpful, helpful.’