Once more unto the Beach

On Thursday morning I finally registered for classes. I still don't know for certain that I will be able to take one because classes change without notice and the instructor has not responded to emails. But hopefully this schedule will work.

You may note that I have no class on Friday, and as it turns out, Landon, Kevin, Ahmed and Berthold were able to do the same. This means that every weekend is a three-day one, and allows much more time for travel.
A friend of Landon's (who turns out to be an avid Ultimate player) gave us a ride to the train station at 2315 Thursday night. We arrived at the train station with plenty of time to spare, which was fortunate because apparently retrieving record of tickets purchased online is more difficult than one might think, despite the fact that Landon had all the necessary paperwork. While we waited for the train we counted geckos we could see. Kevin got to 32.

I even caught this little guy

We boarded a train at 0200 Friday morning, bound for Palau Penang, which is about 183 km north-west of UTP. We arrived in Butterworth around 0600, and wandered around until we found a ferry to Penang. We crossed to the island just as the sun was coming up, and I got to see Venus for a bit before she gave way to the sun.
Georgetown, the main city on Penang, was founded as a base for the East India Trading Company, and its British heritage is still quite apparent. The architecture is a fascinating blend of East and West, with stately colonnades and elaborate Chinese temples side-by-side.

 We saw evidence of the wide range of faiths adhered to in Malaysia: Buddhist and Hindu temples, mosques, a catholic church and convent, and many establishments of Chinese Folk Religion. It is impressive to me that each religion can exist to that extent in such a small area.

We spent most of the morning just wandering around the city.

Photocred: Kevin

The Lighthouse at Fort Cornwallis, ETC's original installation.

At Cornwallis we saw the Google Trike driving slowly in circles.
Maybe we'll even show up on Street View!

A beautiful tropical beach in Georgetown

I thought it would be fun to walk down this alley.
We didn't get mugged, but we did meet an elderly woman watering her flowers.

After eating some incredible noodles from a street vendor, we found a bus to the far side of the island. We intended to stay in Batu Feringghi, but it turned out to be filled with tourists, so we went on to Teluk Bahang. Teluk Bahang was much smaller, and more of a fishing village than a tourist trap. We walked around town a bit and found place to stay.The beach was mostly deserted and the water felt amazing.

I found several large starfish in the flotsam left by high tide, but left them on the beach due to their unpleasant odor. I stepped on several things that weren't sand while swimming. One was either a fish or a ray, and it swam quickly away. The other was a sand dollar, and when I tried to pick it up with my toes I discovered that the living ones have spines around the edge that deliver a painful stab.
On our way back to our hostel we accidentally wandered through a Hindu festival called Monthly Life Liberation. I didn't really want to be liberated from my life just then, so after traipsing through some back yards we found our way back to the road. An ten-story, abandoned resort begged us to go exploring/climbing, but we decided that it would probably be wise to abstain.
We got up relatively early on Saturday to go adventuring in Teman Negara Palau Penang (National Park). We ate a quick breakfast of banana pancakes with honey and ice-cream (Yes, I was singing Jack Johnson for the rest of the day). Due to differing interests, the group split; Landon, Kevin and I headed to a lighthouse and Ahmed and Berthold went to a beach. The hike to the lighthouse was about 5 km on a rough path through the jungle and across beaches.

The sun was sweltering, and we were quite glad for the shade of the canopy. The last bit of path up to Muka Head was about a kilometer with 225 m vertical change. At one point we passed a group of guys hauling batteries up the steps. They had six or seven of the 2ft cubes which, judging from the effort necessary to move them, must have weighed around 250 pounds each.
I decided it would be a good idea to run up a section of the stairs, which was quite strenuous. I always forget what good exercise stairs provide. We were all drenched in sweat by the time we reached the top, and we were very thankful for the faucet with which we doused our heads. Hunger was beginning to pervade our thoughts, so we killed the fatted papaya for calories to carry on. The view from the top of the lighthouse was very nice, but the breeze was even more appreciated.

Sand, reef and clouds

We ran down the trail from the lighthouse, miraculously twisting no ankles, but my burned shoulders complained about my 20 pound pack rubbing against them. We swam for a bit at Monkey Beach and headed to Pantai Kerachut to meet Ahmed and Berthold. The trail crossed a stream several times as it meandered through the jungle, and when we found a spot with enough water to submerge ourselves, we did so.

We met Ahmed and Berthold about half-way across the island, they decided that banana pancakes were insufficient sustenance for an entire day of hiking, and were heading back to civilization to find food. We finally arrived at the beach around 1300, and spent an hour or so in the water. It was great to cool off after hiking about 13 km. Apparently the island is also a breeding ground for turtles, and we got to see a bunch of the little buggers.
I hadn't been very hungry since eating papya, but a snack of two pieces of bread and jelly reminded my brain of my stomach's existence. Apparently it did the same for Landon and Kevin, and around 1500 they headed back across the island for food and water. The beach looked as though it would provide a beautiful view of the sunset, so I opted to stick around until then and just walk back in the dark.
With a couple hours to kill before sunset I wandered along the shoreline, climbing rocks, sitting in trees and swimming, and taking pictures. 'Twas lovely.

I met a group of Malays playing volleyball (two on two, no net, no bounds, no rules) and joined them. After the game disintegrated, I chilled on the beach and talked to one of the guys. His name was Solau, and lives a couple of hours from Palau Penang and works in a semi-conductor factory. Apparently he camps on this beach often because of the excellent fishing it offers. When asked why I wanted to come to Malaysia, I told him that it seemed like a very interesting combination of cultures, and I was wanted to learn about it. This began a discussion of how our cultures differ and some of the positive and negative sides of each. I was told that I should definitely learn Malay because it is 'such an easy language' and given a brief lesson in it.
While we were talking some people farther up the beach started shouting and waving at us. I had left my backpack about ten feet behind me and while I wasn't watching some monkeys were taking stuff from it. As we chased them into the woods I noticed that one was carrying my camera case in its mouth. The monkeys vanished into the trees, and I assumed that my camera had gone with them. To my relief however, I found it behind a rock under some branches.
Having stuff stolen by monkeys is quite the rookie mistake, and Solau agreed when I said that I still had a lot to learn about living in Malaysia. When I told him that I was planning to hike back through the jungle, alone, after dark, he said that was not a good idea. I would probably not have any problems, but the possibility of encountering muggers made it safer to just sleep there on the beach.
I thought I should probably inform the rest of my group that I would not be returning for the night, but I had no cell service. Out on the pier I could occasionally get enough of a connection to make a garbled fifteen second call. After about 30 minutes of trying to call whenever I had service, I finally confirmed that I had communicated successfully.
I found a tree from which to watch the sunset. It was fair but, due to cloud cover, did not live up to the area's sobriquet "The Bay of Glowing Amber."

I sat on some rocks out on a point watching the waves, and as it got darker I started to notice that the breaking waves were still quite visible. Upon closer inspection I found that it was bioluminescence, with millions of tiny organisms illuminating any movement in the water. I could see schools of small fish darting about below the surface, as well as some which appeared to be quite large. Wading was stupendous and even the sand near the water was saturated with the tiny lights; every step kindled an ephemeral aura around my feet.
I did my best to photograph it, but with the limited capabilities of my camera, the results were rather disappointing.

I was torn between sleeping in the sand or out on the pier, but mosquitoes tipped the scales in favor of sleeping on the hard wood. While I was watching fish below me and the moon above a Swiss guy came and joined me on the jetty. He had been staying on at this beach for the past ten days, reading, lying on the beach, bumming food off locals and drinking rum when the food ran out. He was forty-three, used to work as an economist but retired about five years ago. We chatted for about two hours about shootings, gun laws, educational standard, economic policy, and the like.
After he left I once again attempted to sleep, and had almost succeeded when, around midnight, the group of Malays I had been hanging out with came out to the pier to fish. They shared with me some chips, and though I couldn't identify the flavor, they were delicious and I was grateful. I talked with them until 0130, when I left to try to sleep in the sand instead. I had no sheets or even a towel to sleep on, but the sand was quite comfortable. A strong breeze kept away the insects, but was also rather chilling.
I slept little.
The clouds cleared some around 0600 Sunday morning, and I got up and walked around looking at the stars for a while. It is a very different sky here, and most of my friends were not visible, so I made some new ones. At 0630 it was still quite dark, but I decided to start walking back.
The jungle was eerily silent in the predawn darkness, and the canopy completely blocked any light from the stars. I had a headlamp with me so I could see well enough to keep from tripping over roots, but anything beyond my circle of light was invisible. At one point I gained a relatively large companion who moved parallel to my path through the bushes just out of my sight. After a few minutes it went its way and left me to myself. Birds and insects started to make noise as dawn approached, and by the time I emerged from the jungle it was nearly light enough to see.
This was fortunate because my headlamp started to flicker and die just as I reached the beach.
I found some rocks to sit on to watch the sunrise and read my Bible.

A floating village

I contacted Landon and found out that the rest of the group had returned to Georgetown for the night, so I would have to rendezvous with them there. I wandered through Teluk Bahang collecting food from various street vendors. My breakfast consisted of three pieces of delicious flatbread (RM2) curry sauce and sugar to dip it in (RM1) and eight bananas (RM2).
It was exquisite.

My enjoyment may have been influenced by the fact that in the last 36 hours, I had eaten a pancake with ice cream, one third of a papaya two pieces of bread and a few chips.
I bought some 'preserved mango' so that I would have change to pay for a bus and a snack for the ride. It turned out to be pickled, and not pleasing at all to my palate. It was one of the few foods I have encountered thus far in Malaysia that I did not enjoy. I put it in my backpack to share with the others.
I met Kevin and Landon at a Police station in Georgetown. It was near to the hostel they had stayed in and served as an excellent landmark. I opted to go rinse off some of the sand that clung to me from my night on the beach, and they pointed me in the direction of the hostel. I saw lots of people in one street so I ignored Landon's excellent directions and went into a massively crowded street market. I shoved my way through the dense mass of humanity, scavenging some delicious food along the way. I found a roseapple, which looked like a pear crossed with a flower of some sort, and tasted like a combination of apple and starfruit. I also found some interesting soybean biscuits and samosa-like fried things with curried chicken inside. I passed innumerable other delicacies, varying in appeal of both appearance and odor, but did not have the abdominal real-estate or money to partake.
The train ride back to Batu Gajah was long, but we passed some most interesting scenery. We tried to put all five of us into one taxi to get back to UTP, but the driver would not allow it, even though I volunteered to take the trunk.