In the morning we
headed out onto the main street and bought some snacks and lunch
ingredients from a convenience store for our day out at Penang
National Park today. Then Kate took us to her pancake guy, off whom
we bought a bunch of the lovely brown sugar and crushed-peanut
pancakes, before we moved over to the fresh fruit juice guys, off
whom we got some pineapple and orange juices in plastic bags. Kate
and Zoe then went back into the little convenience store to get a few
more snacks, emerging just as the bus arrived. The back of the bus
was kinda full, so we took seats at the front – bad move. The front
of the bus soon got extremely full and we all had to stand up to let
old folks sit down, and were soon crushed up and swaying around as
the bus made its way through George Town. In time, however, the
passengers thinned out and we managed to get seats.
The bus terminated
at the park, so we disembarked with some other tourists – the only
other people left on board – and walked up to the entrance, where
we signed in, and discovered that, disappointingly, the canopy
walkway was closed. Heading into the park we quickly saw some
long-tailed macaques – not our favourite animals – and then some
langurs. A bit further on, we saw a small family of macaques
approaching us on the path. After our experience in Khao Sok, Kate
and the girls were understandably nervous at having monkeys so close,
but they very nonchalantly walked past us with barely a glance in our
direction.
Not long after we
emerged onto a long white-sand beach. Up ahead, I spotted a small
monitor, and further down the beach we came across a much larger one
lying flat out on the sand, soaking up heat from above and below.
Shortly after we got back into the forest I noticed a flying lizard
on a tree beside the path. Now I'm not at all proud of this, but as
we're all (Sarah excluded) so desperate to see a flying lizard fly, I
took the desperate measure of picking up a stick and getting the
lizard so agitated that it eventually leapt off the tree and glided
down to an adjacent trunk. Hooray!
Soon after that, we
reached our destination – the ominously named Monkey Beach. We
looked around for any sign of marauding macaques but the beach, which
was lined with a series of little shelters that had apparently once
been basic restaurants, looked quiet, so we dumped our bags, stripped
off and went in for a swim. It was extremely hazy today – the
result of the fires currently burning in Sumatra – and although
this seemed to keep the heat down, it didn't do anything about the
humidity, and we were incredibly sweaty, which made a swim most
welcome, even if the water temperature was, as always, far too high
to make it properly refreshing.
Kate was first out
of the water and as she stood by the shelter where we had left our
bags she was approached by a female macaque. I got out and scared it
off and then set about making lunch (good old tuna and cucumber
sandwiches) as the female was joined by a male – the pair sitting
in a nearby tree and watching my every move. They eventually got
bored and moved off down the beach, where they climbed up on a bench
and began rummaging around in the bags of a guy out for a swim. I
chased them off again, but they were soon back watching us eat our
lunch. All the while, more and more monkeys were arriving, and by the
time we had finished eating there must have been more than 30 monkeys
around the beach. After lunch, I walked over to photograph a group
sitting on top of a shed. As I got close, I heard a noise just to my
left, looked down and saw a large male macaque, teeth bared, glaring
up at me. A hiss to my right revealed another large male a few feet
away, also in full bared-tooth glare mode. I slowly backed away a
little and then ran at them, making a few hisses of my own and
watched with some satisfaction as they scampered away.
By now, boats had
started to pull up at the beach, disgorging guides and tourists. A
Muslim couple arrived just beside us, her in full burka, and their
guide set about cooking them up a big seafood meal. Our initial plan
had been to continue on up the hill to where an old lighthouse is
situated, but we chatted to one of the guides who said that the main
reason to walk up there is the view, of which there would be none
today thanks to the haze, so we packed up and headed back towards the
park entrance. After a while, a light rain began to fall, mingling
unnoticed with the buckets of perspiration that were already soaking
our clothing. By now we had run out of water, and had lost so much to
our external cooling system that we were starting to get a bit
dehydrated. So, we were elated when we finally arrived at the park
entrance, walking quickly to the nearest kiosk and buying a big
bottle of cold water, which didn't even last until the bus stop.
When we got back to
the hotel we all had a shower and changed out of our skanky clothes,
before heading out to the Monalisa Cafe and then to the funny little
Indian restaurant that Sarah and I had bought our naans from last
night. We ordered three naans, which were delicious, and a chicken
curry, which wasn't, before moving on to Ho Ping for rice noodles,
beer and pork buns, and then finally to Kate's lotus ball cart..
No comments:
Post a Comment