"Quick", shouted Bluey to anyone within earshot, "grab that friggin snake so we can identify it. Jonesie has been bitten on his friggin arm." Too late. The startled snake had already slithered away into the dense jungle surrounding our camp.

Minutes seemed to pass before Bluey and my other mates returned to where I was sitting stiffly against the towering Danum tree, almost oblivious to the near panic going on around me.

"Lie down quietly and don’t worry," says Bluey trying to sound reassuring. "We’ve been through our snake-bite training a hundred times, so we know what to do until the chopper arrives to fly you back to Jesselton. Hopefully it will get here with the antidote within 30 minutes or you’re a gonner mate." I was not impressed.

"Give me the tornique," shouts Bluey to another soldier. By now he had appointed himself chief surgeon. "Let’s tie it firmly around his upper arm, then get me a clean razor-blade from the medical kit."

I was sweating buckets as Bluey held my right hand, looking at the two blood-spotted puncture wounds just above my wrist. "This is going to hurt a bit," he says, "but we’ll look after you. O.K mate?"

"We were instructed to make two small cuts, one through each of the puncture wounds and running up your arm. Right? Try to relax Jonesie and I’ll make the first cut," he added.

I watched in horror as Bluey jabbed the razor-blade into my arm and made a quick, short downward movement with his strong, though shaking hand. There was little pain. Just a sharp stinging sensation similar to the tattooists needle when he imprinted "Made in England" on the same arm last year.

Sweat poured from under his slouch hat, dripping onto my now prone body. "That didn’t hurt a bit did it," says Bluey trying to re-assure himself. "Now let’s get on with the other one".

"Strike a friggin light," shouts Bluey, jumping back in amazement as a fountain of pulsing blood spurted high into the air. "Looks like I friggin nicked you a bit too deep that time mate. Sorry."

That did it. My semi-comatose brain began to race. In milli-seconds my life passed before me.

I recalled sailing the world as a cabin boy before my 15th birthday. Of later saying goodbye to my loving parents and big sister Barbara as I set off again from my home in the West Country of England, Australia bound.

Shortly after docking in Sydney, I recalled stumbling down the gangway dragging my one battered suitcase, first stepping onto Australian soil at Woolloomooloo. How my heart pounded as I looked for Mr Smithers, the man from the Big Brother Movement who was going to meet me and help find me a job as trainee jackaroo on a cattle station outback of no-where. An event destined never to happen.

My snakebite induced flashback recalled enlisting instead in the Australian Regular Army. I liked the look of the jungle-green uniform, the thick-soled shiny black leather boots and slouch hats worn by "Diggers" as they cruised around downtown Sydney looking for Sheilahs. The uniform seemed to work wonders for them. Why not for me too, I reasoned?

I remembered recruit training in near freezing temperatures at Wagga-Wagga in southern New South Wales, then onto the Jungle Training Center at Canungra, buried deep in the humid jungle and rain forest topography of Central Queensland.

I remembered how I suffered weeks of sleep deprivation before I could fall into a deep slumber on a ground-sheet, unprotected from the many real and imagined poisonous snakes slithering, spiders crawling, massive bull-ants jumping and leaches……leaching?

I recounted sailing aboard a small flat-bottomed army landing craft through the calm, crystal clear waters of the Great Barrier Reef, phosphorous sparking off the water when day turned into night. Then further north into the not so calm South China Sea, stopping briefly for supplies in Port Moresby, New Guinea.

After a few days "rest" in Singapore, which was not really a rest for us young endorphin-overloaded adventurers from the south, we continued our journey toward the island State of Sabah, North Borneo.

Landing in Jessleton, we were transported in an old World War 2 truck through banana and rubber plantations to a remote army barracks where we underwent further training in jungle warfare, and acclimatization.

It was 1962. I was 17. A wide-eyed, excited English lad about to join little more than a handful of Australian and British soldiers whose task was to fight off the Chinese hordes.

They were expected to flow in their millions down through Vietnam, Malaysia, across New Guinea and finally into the vastness of Northern Australia. Once there, they would settle and establish a new Chinese colony.

I guess we were successful because Northern Australia remains today as Australian as ever. I even got a medal, apparently as evidence that I had "done my bit" to save Australia.

But I digress. Here was I, maybe 100 miles from the nearest hospital, lying on a crudely made stretcher of bamboo with my mates fussing around me.

"What a fascinating way to die," I remember thinking before the windows into my brain closed and I drifted slowly into a deep coma…………..

"Mr. Jones…Mr. Jones. Wake up! We will be landing shortly. Put the seatback up and fasten your seatbelt please" said the attractive kebaye-clad flight attendant.

Body still sweating, heart still pounding. My confused brain took a few moments to adjust after 30 hours in planes and airports en-route from Vancouver.

No longer lying near death in a tiny jungle clearing, I was aboard one of Malaysia Airlines B747-400’s, in the luxury of Golden Club Class. In just a few minutes our plane would be landing at Kuala Lumpur’s spectacular new international airport.

What's more, tomorrow I will fly over the South China Sea to the city of Kota Kinabalu, capital of Sabah, Borneo.

Once known as Jessleton, this small town that suffered near total destruction in W.W.2 is now a bustling city and gateway to the thriving Adventure and Eco-tourism industry in East Malaysia

After an absence of thirty-eight years I would be returning as a travel writer to where this story began, but no more for me the life of a 17-year-old "Digger" accustomed to "sleeping rough."

As a guest of Tourism Malaysia and Malaysia Airlines, I was looking forward to touring much of this exciting country in style. Little did I know I would find few luxuries on Pulau Tiga, the now infamous island featured in the hit TV show, "Survivor."

My Malaysia adventure was about to begin……….

                   For further information, please visit Tourism Malaysia's website