Monkey Beach in the National Park of Panang

Took an hour bus ride out of Georgetown to go to the National Park which is on the north coast of Penang Island. While waiting for the bus, I ran into my Basque friend Cristobal, and he was heading the same way, along with another amigo from Spain. So we had a chance to catch up a bit while trying to get out of town. There was a lot of traffic and it seemed to take forever to get into the countryside but eventually we did, leaving the high rises and fancy beachfront condos behind.

The national park has free admission, and I went in alone, because the two Spaniards needed to find a room to leave their gear in. Took a great hourlong walk on a jungle trail, over wooden bridges, past monkeys, huge lizards (one was up to 6 feet long), and I made it to 'Monkey Beach' which was about two sweaty miles away. Just loved being out in it again, pouring sweat, getting in the water when I got to the beach, marveling at the huge trees, vines, animals on the path.

At the beach there was a little scene with some boats, locals, westerners enjoying the sand and sea. I hung for about an hour or leas, then headed back, wanting to make sure I made it well before dark. It turned out to be a good move as a tremendous thunder storm blew in shortly after I made it back to the covered bus stop. I was wet anyway from having swum and sweated, more clammy than wet, actually, and it turned out to be a bit of a drag because the bus ride back was in a freezingly air-conditioned coach, and the traffic was hideous. We crawled and I froze; it was all I could do to keep myself in the bus, I was so impatient and shivering. But there was really nothing to do but suck it up as I was too far away to walk it in, and a taxi would be stuck in the same mess. Turns out that the traffic jam was due to a national holiday tomorrow, just one of those things. But I was really ungrounded by the ordeal.

Now that I'm fed and showered I can look back and not have the great day be spoiled by a miserable ninety minutes in a freezing bus. It would have been much worse if I had been drenched, so I can be grateful for that. Most memorable moment was coming upon a six foot monitor lizard in the path. Fortunately he was running away from me, because if he wasn't, I'd have been running away from him. HUGE!