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crowd.
    The night ends at a strange little bar down by the docks. We throw back more than a few drinks and reminisce about our misadventure into the jungle. I spin around on my stool to catch sight of one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever laid eyes on. She’s alone at a corner table. I may be in love. Gupta sidles up beside me at the bar and leans into my ear. “Josh. That’s a man.”
    My introduction into the pervasive “ladyboy” culture is a harsh one. Incidentally, here’s a bit of rock-solid travel advice: when getting hammered in a bar in Southeast Asia, make sure to kick the tires a little before you drive off the lot. As we spill out of the bar, I’m still in disbelief about the transvestite, but at least Gupta has finally earned his paycheck. Back at the hotel I head to my room and collapse. I smell like Chinese incense and American cigarettes and drift off to fitful dreams about spiders and cross-dressers.
    The next morning we decide to enlist the help of a few local investigative groups that have a head start on researching the recent Bigfoot sightings. Eric has called and arranged for them to meet us at our hotel. I emerge from the elevator bleary-eyed and take in our eclectic recruits. Perched on a couch are three very attractive young women dressed all in black. They sit silently alongside an older man named “Uncle” who sports a mesh tank top and bright camo pants. Together the four of them make up a paranormal group called The Seekers and boast a Malaysian television show by the same name. Uncle jumps up and comes at me fast, vigorously shaking my hand and excitedly launching into news of another recent Bigfoot sighting. His authority is mitigated slightly by the fact that I can see his nipples. The Seekers girls don’t appear to speak English and seem a little glazed over. As best I can tell, the premise of The Seekers show is that Uncle cavorts around in the dark with three submissive Malaysian girls twenty years his junior, looking for ghosts. I have no idea how he pulled off this arrangement, but the man is clearly a genius. Despite the sideshow quality of their group, Uncle has great local connections and will be a huge asset with logistics.
    Nearby, a rather serious-looking collection of people mill about the front door. They’re clearly identifiable as a group since they’re all sporting matching shirts that read “SPI.” “SPI” stands for “Singapore Paranormal Investigators,” and while they may lack some of The Seekers’ presentational flash, they seem infinitely more scientific. Rounding out this circus is Jan McGirk, a Californian reporter writing for the UK newspaper the Independent . This haphazard consortium is starting to feel like the cast of a Michael Crichton novel, and I’m hoping to get through the afternoon without being party to an act of international espionage or a dinosaur rampage.
    After exchanging hellos and comparing notes, we all pile into our respective cars and motor out of Johor Bahru in convoy. Our destination is the rain forest of Kota Tinggi, a few hours from the city. Here, several large footprints were recently discovered and have been attributed to Bigfoot by the local press. A few hours of driving and we arrive on the outskirts of Kota Tinggi, where we park our cars just beyond a haphazard cluster of tin shacks and lean-tos. As we open our doors, a troop of monkeys scampers into the dense foliage along the side of the road.
    Our first priority is to examine prints that were reported upriver, and for this we need a boat. A ragged collection of skiffs sits along a half-submerged dock, and we begin a lengthy haggling session with a few local fishermen. The Seekers girls, Uncle, and the SPI gang prove useless at negotiation, even though they’re the ones who speak the language. We manage to talk the fisherman down from an astronomical starting price to something more appropriate, considering half of the boats are missing engines and most are