One Last Island Paradise

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I figured my trip is almost over, so why not spend my last few days on an island paradise. Welcome to Palau Pangkor, a beautiful island just of the north west coast of Malaysia. The island is only about 5km by 8km so it does not take much to explore the whole of the island. If you are looking for a place to party this would not be it, but if you are looking for a relaxing getaway for a few days this would be the place. I will admit that there is absolutley no nightlife on the island and that is exactly what I was looking for. You wake up early when the sun comes up and you go to sleep rather early because there is not really anything to do. I could not think of a more perfect way to spend my last days here in SEA. I relaxed on the beach all day and watched the sun go down over the ocean every night laying in a quite comfortable hammock.

My first day there a dog seemed to have adopted me as his new owner and he would follow me everywhere I went. It was quite funny. I named him Tito. Whenever I would go anywhere, if he was not following me, people would always ask where my dog was. He would sleep outside my bungalow at night and if I left in a taxi to go to town, when I came back he would usually be waiting outside my bungalow for me to get home. Whenever I walked down to the beach he would always come along. Even when I switched to a different bungalow in a different area, he followed me over to the new place. It is a bit of a feeling of home to have a dog again, so I truly enjoyed it.

My first and second days on the island were spent doing nothing, but hanging out at the beach. During my second day I met a dutch fellow who lives on mainland Malaysia and has a website all about Palau Pangkor. He told me of a deserted beach on the south west side of the island. Appearantly very few people know of it because there is no road to get there. You have to take a taxi into town and then walk about 3km south, from there you will eventually see a little path leading into the jungle. It is another kilometer or two through the jungle (you are crossing from the east side of the island to the west) from there and then you come out to a beautiful, deserted beach. This beach had the whitest sand I have ever seen. It is strange how most of the beaches on the island can all have yellow sand and the you find one little beach in the middle of nowhere with beautiful white sand and crystal clear water. Anyways, I went there with a german couple I met at my bungalow. We brought fresh fruit with us and grabbed a few coconuts along the way in the jungle. It felt a bit like the movie "the beach". You are walking through a dark jungle and you begin to hear sounds of the ocean. Then you see a bright light up ahead and you know that you are almost there. All of a sudden the jungle gives way and you come walking out into paradise. The beach would have been totally deserted if not for a couple of locals camping all the way on the other end of the beach. They seemed quite surprised to see us there and at one point came walking by and asked us how we knew about the beach. They said that they had never seen any foreigners on that beach before because people usually do not know about it.

(I must make a side comment here and that is that I enjoyed Malaysia much more my second time traveling through it. I do not think I was ready to appreciate the country upon first arrival in SEA. I would like to retract my previous journal entry statement about there being nothing nice about it. I would gladly visit there again and travel through it with an open mind.)

I decided to head back to KL after that with an english couple I met on Pangkor. We spent the last day just wandering around KL. I decided it would be a good time to load up on souvenirs for my friends and family, as well as myself. The problem with the end of a trip is that the adventure is over and it just becomes a waiting game. There is no more exploring to be done. No more cool things to do, all thats left is waiting for a flight and everybody who knows me knows how much I hate waiting for a flight. At this point I wish I could just skip ahead to arriving at the FLL airport and walking out to my girlfriend. My flight is not until 1am tonight. Then I have a nice 27 hour trip ahead of me. I guess that is all part of traveling. This will be my longest journey yet. When I flew over here I stopped in Japan for a couple of weeks and then fly into KL. I have not yet had to do this much traveling over one period of time and I am certainly not looking foward to it. The only good thing is that all of my layovers are short. One is 1 hour and 15 minutes the other is 1 hour and 45 minutes. So there is 24 actual flying hours. Oh yeah.

There are many mixed feeling coming to the end of a long trip. I am very excited about going home, I am especially excited to see Risa and my dogs again. It will also be nice to sleep in a big bed, in an air conditioned room, and to take a hot shower in the morning. On the other hand I do not want my trip to end. I feel that there is so much left unexplored here, so many things I have yet to do, and quite a lot of places where I feel that I did not get to spend enough time. I guess all good things must come to an end some point and yet this does not feel like the end. It is truly just the beginning as I am already looking to next year and the places I will be going then. Where will I go, what will I see. There is already a new adventure looming on the horizon and I await anxiously the time when I can embark on my next journey.

Until next time this is The Lazy Wanderer saying farewell and fair travels to all.

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