With our last week in Ipoh approaching, we decided to take a few more side trips. One of them was to Pangkor Island.

Getting there turned out to be an adventure of its own.

Getting to Pangkor

The first bus from Ipoh to Lumut wasn’t until after 2 pm. We would have preferred an earlier departure, but had no choice. Our bus was almost an hour late, confirming that our Cameron Highlands experience was not an isolated incident. Buses in Malaysia seemed to operate on their own schedule.

Our main concern was making it to Lumut in time for the last ferry. Fortunately, despite the delay, we arrived with enough time to catch the 6 pm boat.

A ferry ticket cost 20 MYR per person and included the return journey. It was an open-ended return ticket, but we would need to redeem it before leaving the island.

While waiting for the ferry, we noticed that Lumut already felt different from Ipoh. The rhythm was slower, less hurried. Even waiting for the ferry was putting us into a relaxed island mood.

I made a quick run through the small market next to the ferry terminal, looking for something to take away for supper. I didn’t find anything suitable, but I did discover what seemed to be the market’s main commodity: dried fish.

The ferry ride was short, only about 30 minutes, and soon we found ourselves on Pangkor Island.

The first thing that greeted us as we walked down the pier was a colourful medley of fishing boats.

They looked strangely disjointed, as if somebody had put them together from whatever parts were available. It was a very different fishing scene from anything we had seen in the Philippines or Vietnam.

Arriving in Teluk Nipah

Our accommodation was on the other side of the island, in Teluk Nipah. Grab doesn’t operate on Pangkor, so our only option was a local “pink taxi.”

The taxi station near the ferry terminal was closed, but a sign listed the fare to Teluk Nipah at 18 MYR. Our driver quoted us 25 MYR, explaining that the usual shorter road was closed for repairs.

We loaded ourselves into the pink van, and I had a flashback to the Philippines. I suspected these vans came from roughly the same era as the old jeepneys we had ridden there.

It was a beat-up, rattling vehicle with very little comfort inside, but it got us where we needed to go.

The road was… interesting.

It was narrow and winding, climbing through sharp switchbacks in places, with almost no shoulders. We were quite happy when we finally arrived in Teluk Nipah.

I had been expecting something similar to the fishing villages where we had stayed in the Philippines. Teluk Nipah was the complete opposite.

It was a beach town catering primarily to Malaysian vacationers. The main street along the waterfront was packed with shops and stalls selling food and everything else you might need for a beach holiday. Numerous businesses offered water sports and other activities, and the sea in front of the town was swarming with boats and other watercraft.

The streets behind the waterfront were lined with guesthouses and homestays.

We arrived shortly before sunset, when the whole place was alive with activity.

After checking into our guesthouse, we went back to the main street in search of supper. As usual, we were looking for something that involved no rice, no noodles and no frying.

Eventually, we found a seafood restaurant and settled on a steamed whole sea bass and two bowls of vegetable soup. The bill was 66 MYR, about CAD 23.

After supper, it was already dark, so we decided to walk along the beach.

The daytime activity had disappeared. The beach was almost completely quiet, and the only sound was the gentle breaking of the waves.

As the waves receded, they left tiny fluorescent dots scattered across the dark sand, mimicking the starry sky.

It was magical.

We chased the twinkling dots all the way to the end of the beach, laughing like children.

It was a perfect ending to a tiring travel day.

Finding Our Kind of Beach

The next morning, after breakfast, we set out for a half day on the beach.

It was only 8 am, but the main street was already busy, and people were heading down to the beach.

We decided to press on.

The beach ended at a pile of large rocks, so we had to walk along the road for a short distance. About five minutes later, we found another path leading down to the shore.

This beach was much more to our liking, with a wider, cleaner strip of sand.

There were a few restaurants along the beach, although they were still closed at this early hour.

We continued walking and noticed some bright structures in the distance. At first, we thought it was a hotel or a children’s park.

When we got closer and climbed the stairs, we discovered that they were part of a temple which was called Lin Je Kong.

It was unlike any temple we had seen before.

A small bridge led from the temple toward the rocks beyond, and naturally, we decided to explore further.

Valery prefers rocky beaches to sandy ones, and I just go along.

After a little scrambling over the rocks, he found a shady spot we claimed as our own until lunchtime.

The water there was remarkably clean. We took turns going for long, refreshing swims and then rested in the shade with our Kindles — our version of a perfect beach day.

We could see all the watercraft darting across the sea in the distance, but our little corner was quiet.

Exactly how we like it.

Food and Entertainment, Pangkor Style

When we got hungry, we returned to one of the beach restaurants we had noticed earlier. Valery ordered fish curry, while I ordered crab curry.

That turned out to be a mistake.

I had expected crab meat in a curry sauce. Instead, I received several whole crabs, split in half.

While I was fighting with my crabs, we had an unexpected visitor.

A large bird with a huge beak — a hornbill — flew in and began foraging around the tables, completely unfazed by the people sitting nearby.

I had read that hornbill feeding was one of the attractions in Teluk Nipah, at a place very close to our guesthouse every evening at 6:30.

After our unplanned lunchtime encounter, we decided to see the attraction for ourselves.

After watching for a short while, we left. We were not impressed. Compared with our unexpected lunchtime encounter, this one was decidedly underwhelming.

It was rustic, but we had a view of the water and a pleasant sea breeze as the sun went down. We chose a sea bass, which they grilled for us in banana leaves, along with a couple of vegetable dishes.

Both the food and the atmosphere were better than the night before.

Our Secret Beach Had Other Plans

We only had two nights in Pangkor.

Our return bus from Lumut was at 5:40 pm, so we decided to have another quiet morning in our secret spot.

This time we arrived earlier because we already knew exactly where we were going. I went for a very long swim first, then came back to our little rocky corner.

Before going into the water, Valery noticed a long-tailed macaque sitting on a branch above our heads. We could hear several others fighting somewhere in the canopy above.

We had spread some of our things over a few branches to dry. As Valery went into the water, a macaque jumped onto the low branch where our things were hanging and tried to grab my swimsuit. I chased it away.

Valery came back.

“You need a stick,” he told me.

He found a sturdy one and handed it to me before returning to the water.

The first few minutes were quiet. As I started to settle down, two macaques jumped onto the branch near our things. While I was chasing them away, a large male appeared on the same branch, barely a metre away from me.

I tried to chase him away with my new “weapon.” Instead of leaving, he bared his teeth and tried to grab my stick.

That was when I started to panic and began calling for Valery.

Suddenly, a medium-sized dog came up the rocky beach and stopped beside me.

“Good,” I thought. “He’ll scare the macaques away.”

The male jumped from the tree onto the rocks. When the dog moved toward him, the macaque charged. He attacked with his teeth and claws so fiercely that the dog turned and ran away with his tail between his legs.

The male leisurely returned to the same low branch in front of me and bared his teeth again.

And then more macaques started coming down.

First a couple.

Then five.

Then more than a dozen.

I quickly packed everything I could reach into my backpack, but some of our things were on another branch that I couldn’t get to. Macaques were swarming me, trying to get at our belongings. I waved my stick around, but they mostly ignored it, encouraged by their leader, who continued to bare his teeth and make threatening movements.

I kept calling for Valery.

Then suddenly somebody grabbed my hair. It was a macaque in the branches above me.

At that point, I completely panicked.

And then Valery appeared, running out of the jungle, clad only in his swimming shorts, without his glasses, but armed with a stick and a rock.

He had heard me calling and realized that swimming back to shore would take too long, so he came out of the water farther down the beach and ran through the jungle. He started throwing rocks toward the macaques.

They retreated a little, but they didn’t leave. We decided it was time to relocate. We quickly gathered whatever we could and left our little paradise to the macaques.

The monkey leader had won.

The Race for the Bus

Soon it was time to start our journey back to Ipoh.

Our bus from Lumut was at 5:40 pm. There were ferries at 3:30 and 5:00, but we thought the later ferry was cutting it too close. So we planned to take the 3:30 ferry and have an early dinner in Lumut.

We arrived at the ferry terminal in our usual pink taxi around 3 pm — and discovered an unpleasant surprise. The 3:30 ferry was sold out. The only tickets available were for the 5:00 ferry.

With a 30-minute crossing, that left us uncomfortably close to our bus departure, but we had no choice.

We grabbed a quick early supper near the ferry terminal and boarded the ferry. Thankfully, the ride was smooth and the ferry arrived on time.

We were among the first people to disembark and immediately sprinted toward the bus station.

Our bus was already there, with only six minutes to spare.

We climbed aboard and sighed with relief.

As it turned out, we needn’t have worried quite so much. In what seemed to be becoming a Malaysian bus tradition, our bus didn’t actually leave for another twenty minutes.

But at least we were on it.

After a long bus ride and a Grab from the station, we were home before 9 pm.

It had been quite a day. First the monkey battle, then the ferry woes.

Now we could finally take a shower and relax.

Or so we thought.

One Last Surprise

There was no water. I went to investigate.

The toilets at the gym still had water, so the building hadn’t lost its supply. Puzzled, I returned to our floor and started looking around the utility rooms.

Eventually I found a small utility closet. Inside, every apartment had its own dedicated pipe and sealed water meter.

Every apartment except ours.

There was no meter, and two pipes were simply not connected. Our water had been disconnected while we were away.

I called the owner.

He had forgotten to pay the water bill.

He paid it the next morning, but our water wasn’t restored until after 5 pm. Fortunately, we could get water at the gym bathroom during the day, but it wasn’t exactly the relaxing end to a tiring journey that we had imagined.

After all the adventures of Pangkor, Ipoh gave us one last surprise: no water.

But our Perak adventures were not over yet, and our next stop was the historic town of Taiping.