Category Archives: Malaysia

Penang National Park, Malaysia 

Backpacking, Flashpacking, Hiking, Malaysia, Travel, , , ,

7/20 – So, here we are at the northern end of Penang Island to do a week’s trekking in Penang National Park.   

 

Mind you manners here please – no lewd kissing! 

 Admission to the park is free, and there are several trail routes to choose – to the University Research Center, Monkey Beach, the Lighthouse, Turtle Beach and the Canopy Walk.  Unfortunately, the Canopy Walk is closed for renovation.  Our first destination is the University Research Center.

 

This trek hugged the coastline, with different views of the water (Straits of Malacca), always on our right.

   
 

Parts of the trail were relatively flat and easy to navigate, while other parts involved some climbing and scrabbling over rocks, big roots and downed trees. 

    
 
The weather was HOT, and we sweated buckets even walking in the shade of the jungle. Very pretty tree trunks here.

    
Here are the same “temple-eating” trees (Ficus strangulosa) that we encountered at Angkor Wat in Thailand.  Looks like they also eat bridges!

 

There are several buildings and a pier at the Research Center.  It was a nice place to stop and eat our lunch before retracing our path back home.

    
 
7/21 – The next day we hiked farther along the seaside trail to see Monkey Beach.  As promised, there were monkeys here, long-tailed macaques of the agressive variety. 

    
  

We were sitting on a bench and talking to some Malaysian students and a couple from Switzerland, when a monkey jumped down and grabbed Jim’s backpack!  Luckily, his reflexes were quick, and he was able to snatch it back.  The monkey stayed on the ledge, looking a little disgruntled.

   

The beach was pretty, and we met another group of Malaysian students who had all just graduated from university.  They are all engineers!

   

7/23 – Today we hiked up the mountain toward Turtle Beach.  The terrain was steep, and it was dark under the canopy, but still very hot.  

     
There was a waterfall, and a dirt path used by water buffalo to haul logs out of the jungle.  

   
 
 
These roots look a little snake-like, don’t you think?  I examined them carefully before stepping on them!  

We hiked up to the Canopy Walk, which looked like it was intact, but was roped off so it could not be used. 

 
We’ll have to come back another year to walk the Canopy!

Teluk Bahang and Batu Feringghi, Malaysia

Flashpacking, Malaysia, Travel, ,

7/19 – Teluk Bahang turns out to be such a small town that it doesn’t have an ATM!  As our hotel only takes cash (Malaysian ringgits, approximately 4 to the dollar), our first order of business was to get back on the 101 bus and go back to the bigger town of Batu Feringghi for some money.   There is a Hard Rock Cafe there!

 
Lots of touristy stuff, right on the beach.  

   
The mixture of cultures is evident here, with Danish / Pakistani restaurants, and Arabic / Lebonese restaurants in addition to the Chinese, Malay and Indian varieties.

   
Most important, there was a 7Eleven with an ATM!  We had some yummy Malay lunch (don’t ask me what it was called, we just pointed at things that looked good), then, flush with ringgits, got on the bus to return to our town.

Teluk Bahan is a one-street town.  Motorbikes are the prevalent mode of transport.  I continue to cringe, as I have throughout Asia, at families all sharing one motorbike, especially those who ride without helmets.  I’ve even seen a mother driving one-handed with an infant cradled in the other arm and a toddler between her knees! 

    
It also unnerves me when the driver wears a helmet, but the passengers don’t! 

  

We found a great little restaurant for our breakfast of roti canai – very thin dough fried then folded over with a scrambled egg and cheese in the middle, served with curry sauce.  Coffee is very good here too – they ask if you would like milk, but assume that you want sugar – way sweeter than is good for me! 

   
We walked by a drainage ditch and got a shock – a huge lizard swimming slowly toward us through the shallow water!  These are water monitors, very common here.  Sort of alligator-like, with a long, flicking, serpent tongue. This one is about eight feet long, maybe more with that long tail.  Wikipedia says they are carnivorous – hope they can’t get out of the ditch!  We saw this one in the evening:

    
 

Here’s another one we saw in the morning:

    
 
Tomorrow, the park!  

Bangkok, Thailand to Penang, Malaysia

Backpacking, Flashpacking, Malaysia, Thailand, Travel, , , ,

7/18 – We took the sky train and the underground metro across town to get us to Bangkok’s main train station at Hua Lumphong in time to board our mid-afternoon train.

 

The reminder posted in the station’s restroom, which tickles me every time I see it!  We’ve encountered similar reminders throughout Asia.

 Jim had booked our tickets a week in advance to assure we would get an air conditioned car and lower berths on the 22 hour sleeper ride. 

   

We will miss Thailand!

On board, we met an American expat named Tom, who’s lived here for eight years.  He said he moved to Thailand because Miami was too cold!  

After a tasty dinner in the dining car and a peaceful night’s sleep on the rocking train, we arrived at the Malaysian border by mid-morning, and we all got off for our exit and entry stamps.  We don’t need a visa for Malaysia, and can stay for up to 90 days.

The train ride ended on the mainland in Butterworth, where we caught a ferry across the Straits of Malacca to the island of Penang. 

   

Georgetown is the big city here, full of shiny buildings and big shopping malls.  We are not staying in Georgetown, however, so as soon as we got off the ferry we boarded the 101 bus, which we rode for an hour and a half to the little town of Teluk Bahang, home of Penang National Park.  

  

We are staying at the Amal Inn for the next week, very convenient for exploring the jungles of Malaysia’s top nature park.   

 
Malaysia has Chinese, Indian and Malay cultures living in harmony, with three different styles of food and religion.  Today we heard the Muslim call to prayer for the first time since we left Turkey.  The town is small, but the park is huge!  The western alphabet is used here, and many of the signs are repeated in English, so we should be able to navigate easily here.  We’ve been told that Malay food is great!  Tomorrow we will explore.