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Last night’s seventh episode was the episode I’ve been dying to tell you about for the past four months! It was the one I got to see when I hotfooted it across the seas to watch the filming of the show. Right this moment I feel almost as if I’m far away in Malaysia again yet so close to you too.

If you looked closely during the Immunity Challenge that happened in the water - the beach that it linked up to that you couldn’t see in the shot and the bit of sand to your right hand side (looking towards the water) - that was me, sitting there, with my ear and eyes flapping like a hooligan.

I arrived on the island where the challenge happened by speedboat - if you remember Mark swept me off my flipflops, into a pole and onto land - and we were met by crew types everywhere. Everyone was bustling round a set-up of camera’s and monitors which were set up on the middle of the small beach, covered from the sun by a marquee type thing.

As I’ve mentioned previously, the way the filming of the show works is that there’s a Swedish crew called Strix who work together with the crews of all the different countries who film Survivor in the same location.

So Strix provides the challenges and big camera equipment like cranes etc as well as a crew that films with the crews from different country’s and then each country goes off by itself to put everything together. I think Strix was in Malaysia for a total of about five months working on different versions.

While Survivor SA was being filmed there were two other country’s filming at the same time but they’re not around during the filming of each others stuff obviously.

On the morning of the Immunity Challenge South Africa was the first to film the scene.  The wooden structure for the challenge was all set up in the water and looked so organized and rooted it seemed it had been there for days. It was just after 8:30 in the morning and I had a moment of queeze thinking about the poor soles who had to get up to make sure it looked the way it did.

The different crew types (all very slanned ie slurpily tanned) did things like dive (dove? diving?) in and out of the water - some carried equipment across to the challenge in a rubby dingy.

There were also about two snorkler types in the water getting their water filming equipment ready and under the marquee camera people tested their film and the director Donald Clarke chatted to different people about what he was after for the scene etc.

In between all this Mark took off his shirt and sweatily (just enough, not too much) wondered around chatting to everyone before shirting-up to boat across to the structure. I sat down on the sand in a position I thought would give me maximum sightage and chatted to a cameraman who was on the crew of getting all the tribal footage on each of the tribes islands.

I asked about whether he wanted to stab himself in the eye seeing their conversations for 12 hours a day and he chuckled but didn’t give me answer. Actually thinking back now I was amazed at how much he seemed to be enjoying the torture.

About twenty or so minutes passed and then next thing, suddenly there they were ... each tribe hovering like wildlife on two different boats. The beach was in an alcove shape and each tribe came in around the jutting rocks from different sides giving the feeling they’d crept in they were so quiet. I hadn’t anticipated the fact that there wouldn’t be any music and was very struck by how strange it seemed without it.

From were I was sitting I couldn’t see their faces in proper detail but trust me when I tell you that as they all got off the boat and I got a sniff of each of their bodies and attitudes I knew without a doubt every one of them were Pigs and had an excellent chuckle thinking of you thinking so too.

Not quite as happy as me though was someone who turned out to be Amanda. Each tribe was all set on either side of the challenge, ready to begin and Amanda kept dropping down onto her haunches type thing. There was a semi-fiasco around the challenge then one of the crew helped her off it, she climbed into the dingy, collapsed in it, got sailed across to the beach and ended up lying comatose on the sand next to me.

Needless to say I was thrilled and stared at her as madly as possible to work out whether she was acting or for real - with no sympathy natch - while a medic brought her water and gave her an injection. I can’t remember exactly what it was but it was some kind of booster type thing. They asked her if she was okay to continue, she said yes and then got taken back to the challenge where she weakly managed to survive.

Once the challenge and cries of victory were over things got very quiet again as the Survivors climbed back into their boats that suddenly appeared to fetch them again. While they went off in different directions, another boat arrived with tribal crew - so the camerapeople who follow them on the islands.

They’d done the nightshift and were swapping with another group who climbed into the boat and went sailing off after their respective tribes. While all this was happening the Norwegian crew arrived with their long-haired "I'm Mr Lurrrve" host and the South African crew packed up and headed off back to their basecamp.

Later that night it was time for Tribal Council that got postponed for about two and a half hours ‘cos it wouldn’t stop raining. Eventually at about 10pm the rain let up a bit and I went off to watch the Tribal Council. No-one could watch things from inside the actual set - there's nowhere to sit on it where you can't be seen by the Survivors so instead I sat just behind the trees that Mark had his back to and watched on a monitor.

You always hear Survivors saying Tribal Councils go on for hours as opposed to the couple of minutes we see and they’re not lying. The whole procedure must have gone for at least two hours. The crew set everything up before Bajau arrived, they came trouping in silently and then sat looking around them saying nothing for about ten to fifteen minutes while the crew finished off the final touches.

It was the first time I could see them as close-up so it was a perfect set-up to try to work out who loathed who while being impressed by their clean faces. You know how they always look so glowing at Tribal Council – it really is how they all look, as if they’re oddly clean from being so dirty. It's a very strange thing.

Tribal Council began, they opened their mouths and that’s when my eye-rolling began. I promise you the moment Lisa started to speak I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I had no proper perspective on what she’d been up to before and seeing her so vapidly pleased about her laziness fried my brain.

I scrutinised all of them and tried to be as quiet as possible in between heaving big guffaws. The moment I spotted Hein I knew he’d be a problem with all his big hair and ultimate provider body. I got irritated with Angela when she went on about how it’s all about morals blah blah and agreed with Grant’s take on things that it’s a game that needed to be played like one.

I thought Mandla looked impressively strong and centred in all ways and I saw Lorette’s need to slap Lisa and felt her pain - Lorette's, not Lisa's obviously.

While all this was happening, there was a Swedish crew member who was calling out instructions about something film-wise just to the left of me which was trippy ‘cos of how we can’t ever hear such things.

After all Marks questions (about forty-five minutes to an hour I'd say), the voting started and each Survivor went to vote in silence, which made things more breathtaking almost as each of them returned and stared ahead, with no noise to fill the backstabbings.

Mark read out the votes, Lisa got zapped and looked even more shiny and proud of herself than when she was being badmouthed. Then Mark snuffed her torch and she disappeared into thin air.

Someone - I don’t know who - was waiting for her in a very hidden spot behind the trees and took her off back to the crew headquarters. There was someone else (with long blonde hair) waiting for the rest of the tribe who escorted them back to their island.

They took a while to leave though - I don’t know exactly what they were doing but I left first, leaving between trees so they couldn’t see anything and then headed off down the long dusty path that the crew used to get back to civilization.

And that was it! As you can see I managed to get some very good clues about the Bajau crowd up close but had no sense of what Iban was about nor who was in it  - except for Amanda who looked exactly the same collapsed up close as she does on TV.

I wanted to take pics for you but of course I wasn’t allowed to with everything being so top secret. I do have some pics to share though - they’re not of the exact islands things happened on but they’re of the surrounding areas and I thought you’d enjoy seeing them to get a sense of what the whole area feels like. Here they are:

Mersing:


Mersing is a fishing village on the mainland of Malaysia where I stayed for two nights before heading off the Survivor islands. Despite being a small town, the place has loads going for it most specifically:

1. Kickbutt sunsets.
2. Hot mornings and evenings and rainy (but warm) afternoons.
3. Free wifi at hotels you'd never think would have it.


4. Two main streets.
5. The most excellent flipflops in the widest variety I've ever seen in my life. Each pair costs about R10 and all the shops keep different ones. Some have flowers, others have butterflies, others are bright colours - you could literally have one of every pair and never get bored. Mersing basically inspired me to start a hobby of collecting flipflops and made me realise that Cape Town's choices suck.

Tioman:

The island of Tioman is off the coast of Mersing and very much round-about the islands the Survivors are on. The only diffs is that it's bigger and has five stop-off points on one side, each with bungalows you can stay at.

Basically it's a Survivor island with people who've stayed and survived and now make it possible for people to holiday in what they've built. The best thing about it (besides it feeling like being on a different planet) is that it's not touristy at all - everything is as it should be and the prices are a steal (R15 for a full meal with a glass of watermelon juice).

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