We much we prefer staying in the smaller towns and villages, the larger centres hold less and less appeal these days. We find people in the smaller areas so friendly and they seem as interested in us as we are in them so it is a cool exchange. In this country due to British occupation (Penang only obtained independence from the British Empire in 1957) English is fluently spoken by most so it is easy to communicate with all generations. We had some lovely chats. Folk here most interested in the cost of things in Canada, taxes politics and the big one how cold is it and how do we go to work if there is snow everywhere. They think its funny we have never seen their common fruits and veg and don’t know how to eat curry and rice with our hands. The kids here also delightful so smiley and keen to speak english. This gang of friends tore around on their bikes in the cool of the evening and always stopped to say “hello aunty” “hello uncle” to us and take a picture! Teluk Bahang- Beautiful . Never heard of it until we got here. 🙂
We wanted to be as close to the national park as possible, and there it is, a forested swell of hills overlooking The Andaman Sea we found a hotel in town – The reviews were not great, disgruntled guests had various complaints including the worst insult possible here, the hotel was haunted. People here seem very in tune with spirits and have many rituals to placate them, feed and entertain them. In other words keep them happy the last thing you want is a renegade ghost in your hotel scaring away your guests. Most of the reviews had come from Malay patrons so we felt maybe we could deal with the ghosts.
It was in the location we wanted and seemed the only option the rooms looked good in the photos and it was only $18 per night couldn’t turn it down? Book it up Lance said… so I did. Turned out to be a great place. True the staff were very surly at first – but they warmed up after us repeatedly saying good morning and smiling at them! They probably thought we were super weird but we cracked a grin out of them and by day 5 they were quite chatty. The cemetery under our window was quiet at night and if we were visited by restless spirits they didn’t wake us. It was our cheapest hotel to date and turned out to be very pleasant.
On Monday night there was a good sized street market and every morning we went to the food court for brekkie about $6 for both of us.
Entrance to the National park is free you must sign in – if you don’t come out they will come and look for you !!- nice to know. It was not such a difficult trek, a few spots of slippy clambering and some steep sections. The killer was the humidity crzy high and steamy, no air was moving. We took it slow took us about 2 hours to get to Keracut Beach fabulous sounds of the jungle along the way and we saw some some lovely birds – but sadly no dusky leaf monkeys, we were so hoping to see them. They are supposedly extremely shy. We searched but had no luck.
A meromictic lake there are only 19 of them in the world and one is here at Keracut Beach. It is rare because the salt and fresh water never mix creating 2 very different eco systems one on top of the other.
Keracut Beach or Turtle Beach hard to reach but worth the sweaty trek. The cleanest stretch of sand we’ve seen so far. The sand was like glass beads or small crystals, that heat up in the sun. Perfect for hatching turtle eggs. Another reason the turtles love this area is the ploliferation of jelly fish, their favourite food. We saw many in the waters. This is a very dangerous beach for swimming, rip tides and a strong undertow plus those jellies – it was sooo tempting to dip after being so hot but of course we resisted.
At one end of the beach is a small turtle conservation hut – the rangers work at night watching where the momma turtles dig their nests and then in the morning they go and dig them up and re bury them in a safer spot and where they can be protected better when they hatch.
We arranged with the park ranger for boat to pick us up from Keracut Beach and take us around the penisular to Monkey beach. It was a short ride but we saw a pair of grey sea eagles a monitor lizard basking on the rocks and a monkey coming down to find crabs. all to quick for my camera!!
Monkey beach was a nice place to relax we could swim here but still were told look for jelly fish – so quick dips were all we managed – not the ideal swimming beach. pretty tho and good drinking coconuts – gotta love that.
P.S. would you believe it after a jaunt into the busy town away form our little village who should coming swinging across the road – but 7 or more dusky leaf monkeys complete with babies (not shy at all!!) We were amazed how exciting to see them and how funny that they should be in town and not in the forest where we had searched for them. PPS this is not my photo (look at that cute golden baby xxxx) my photos are below hehe not quite national geographic quality!!!
Super excited to return to Kuala Lumpur and then fly on to Borneo for the trekking part of our trip.