Malaysia, day ten: Pangkor Island
It wasn’t a good start.
Dad, who hadn’t felt too well the day before, was now much worse. He’d had no sleep, having spent most of the night, in his words: “with some part of me hanging over the toilet.”
He wasn’t going to make the trip. Neither was mum, who didn’t want to leave him.
The rest of us were in a complete mess ever-so-slightly bleary-eyed at 8am, having passed out got to bed some time after 3am rather late, following an endless supply of jugs and jugs a few glasses of Tiger beer and, for one of us, the infamous Flaming Lamborghini.
Our driver was late.
At 9am, we set off on the “three to four hour journey" to Pangkor Island. Which took five hours. Rather bumpy ones.
At the port of Lumut, we ate an unsatisfying lunch at a little Malay restaurant, which had a filthy hole-in-the-ground toilet that swirled out half of its contents when you flushed, in an unappetizing manner.
Where we were blatantly charged double for our unsatisfying lunch, courtesy of backpacks and pale skin.
We spent 20 sweaty minutes at the jetty, edging our way through a chattering, jostling crowd of Chinese people who were out enjoying their New Year’s holiday… only to find when it came to getting on the ferry that we’d miraculously ended up at the very back of the queue again.
The ferry had plastic seats, Chinese karaoke on the TV, and flies.
We arrived on Pangkor Island and took one of the characteristic pink taxi vans with yellow roofs to Coral Bay Resort, where we checked in, changed and headed straight for the beach.
(When I say “straight” – we might have taken a detour via one of the little shops and bought two crates of Tiger beer, which we might have unloaded into the fridges in our room, and we might also have bought a few more single cans, fresh from the shop’s fridge, to take with us down to the beach...)
It was 3pm.
And then, at 3.02pm (that’s 7.02am UK time on Tuesday, in case you were wondering), there we were.
The ocean.
Sun, sand, sea, swimming, splashing, slurping, swigging, sipping and sunset.
After a long morning, a fantastic afternoon.
Its a nice day here today, blue sky, mild but I still envy you that beach - but not the toilets!