Baking on the bus
We woke up at around 9am today, it was nice and cool. That was, until we opened the dorm door and got assaulted by the hot and humid air. We knew today would be challenging, because we’re going to be exploring the Penang National Park, and if it’s this hot during the morning, it’s not gonna get any better. Before we left the hostel, we booked a bus to our next location, which is to be the nearby Cameron Highlands…very Malaysian!
We found a nice bakery, The Mugshot Café, to have breakfast at, not too far from our hostel. I had a cream cheese and smoked salmon bagel…this combination is a divine treat for breakfast. Once we were full up, we hung around for a bit, and then nipped across the road to wait for the bus. Google Maps is fantastic if there are scheduled bus routes (except China), as it’ll tell you which bus and where to catch it. Once we were on the bus, we were bound for the Penang National Park. The bus journey itself took around an hour and a half, and in the baking heat, staying alive was no small feat
Jungle run
As soon as we arrived, we were already sapped of our energy. I swear, whenever it comes to a physically exhausting activity, we also start at midday, during the hottest period…guaranteed. To regain our strength, we had food as soon as we stepped off of the bus. It was right across the road, and there won’t be any food in the jungle (I can’t be bothered to eat a poisonous mushroom), so it was as good a place as any. Once we’d refuelled, we made our way to the Penang park entrance and proceeded into the wild. For more info on the Penang National Park, check this website out.
5 minutes into our trek, we’re walking on the beach, and we see a couple of huge water monitors. These are basically smaller versions (but still quite large) of komodo dragons, they look really cool. It’s like walking with dinosaurs. Once we’d traversed the beach, we headed inland and began our jungle trek. It was very hot and humid, we were both dripping to no end, and there was nothing but the sound of cicadas and the odd monkey. It made a proper Jungle Book atmosphere. The trek was quite enjoyable, and we saw a huge stream of ants going across the path, it looked like they were moving their colony…they fascinate me! Our end destination was Turtle Beach.
Turtle Beach
The trek through the Penang National Park was a few kilometres, it doesn’t seem long, but when you’re going up, down, and around, and sweating your nuts off, it definitely seems long. At certain parts, the path got pretty steep and muddy, but as expert trekkers (I like to think), it was no sweat for us (except bucket loads of sweat). Whenever we have a trek or a hike, we always (now and the future) compare it to Hua Shan, this will forever be the benchmark of mountains for me. For more info on our Hua Shan hike, check it out here.
We made it onto Turtle Beach, we were the only ones here; it was very peaceful and idyllic. The pair of us took our shoes off and walked down the beach towards the turtle sanctuary. There wasn’t too much to see here except a couple of turtles in tanks, some very cute baby turtles swimming around, and a small museum about turtles. It’s about as much as we could have hoped for on a small beach on the far side of the Penang National Park.
Returning to base
We headed back the same way, through the jungle. There was an option of a boat ride back to the town, but there are a couple of reasons why we turned it down. Number 1, because it costs money, and number 2, because we wanted to be in the jungle again…but mostly number 1 haha. Like a lot of other times, it didn’t seem to take half as long on the way back to town. I also noticed that the ants had disappeared, I think they had moved house. Mat and I always end up having really good conversations, our main topic today was video games in our pasts, pretty good.
Once we were back in the town, we caught the bus back to George Town. This time, it took about an hour, and there was a lot of commuters on the bus. I was asleep for most of it, so I didn’t have any qualms about who sat next to me. When we got off the bus, we took a quick look around Chinatown, but most things were closed at this point in the evening. We did, however, find a Chinese restaurant on our own street in which we had a pretty delicious meal. After we’d chowed down on our food, we returned to the hostel, and called it a day.
Jolly good show Joe!