Orange Pipes and Pink Unicorns

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The staff member at the resort who told us how to get to our paradise beach also said that if we kept going the same track would take us over to the other side of the island. So off we set. We pass the path down to the beach and the track then gets a lot narrower. There seem to be lots of other tracks leading off the main one, and after a while we can’t tell which is which. We're now in thick jungle and not entirely sure where we are, and Issy's starting to express some reservations. I ask her what she thinks is the worst thing that could happen. She says getting eaten alive by monkeys, but I think that dying of starvation would be worse, because it would be slower. We then spend the next several minutes debating the merits of these two possibilities, before deciding it might be better if we instead spent our time trying to find a way out of here and thus make the whole issue moot.

We see some small wooden signs hanging off some of the trees, but they've only got numbers and arrows on them which isn't too helpful. Having ignored signs with arrows pointing to numbers one to eight, we decide to follow the track that leads to number nine. We wonder what number nine is. We walk around in a long circle and end up back where we started. Whatever number nine was it must have been either very small, very well camouflaged, or stolen by monkeys. We hope we haven’t missed some major wonder of nature. The main track peters out completely so we back track to the beach.

Issy says we should ask the man who sells the coconuts for directions. I remind her again that real explorers don’t ask, but I'm struggling to come up with any better ideas. Our question is met with hysterical laughter from coconut man and his family. We've got no idea why they think this is so funny, but we're now starting to feel very nervous.

A young German man who's sitting with coconut man leads us along to the end of the beach, and we follow him as he wades through a river, to what he tells us is the start of the track that we're looking for. Huh? All we can see in front of us are rocks and thick jungle. I know explorers are supposed to find things for themselves, but it must help if they know when they’ve found them. I’m pretty sure Edmund Hillary knew when he’d reached the top of Mount Everest, and Neil Armstrong knew when he’d reached the moon. This isn't even vaguely recognisable as a track. German man tells us that after about five minutes walking we'll come across an orange pipe, which we then need to follow all the way to the other side of the island. We're now fairly sure that he must have recently ingested some form of hallucinogenic substance; we’re about as likely to come across an orange pipe out here as a pink unicorn, but we’re here now so we decide to persist. It's probably not helping that we’re both wearing thongs.

We scramble up over some rocks. There, that wasn't so hard. But wait, if we want to keep going we need to balance our way along a pole across a narrow ravine. It feels like we’re in an Indiana Jones movie. We decide to pass on the pole, and instead scramble down the ravine and back up the other side on our hands and knees. There’s still no sign of any orange pipes, but we press on. The track seems to be becoming slightly more recognisable as such, and after a few more minutes we spot a thick orange pipe emerging out of the ground in front of us. It’s a miracle.

We follow the track deeper into the jungle. There’s no shortage of wildlife out here - monkeys who sound suspiciously like they’re laughing at us, giant ants that look like they could gnaw our feet off, and a couple of large monitor lizards. The track leads us up over the ridge, and we eventually emerge onto a road which leads us down to a beach.

The beach is apparently known as Redang Long Beach, and seems to be where most of the island's resorts other than ours are located. There do indeed seem to be lots of resorts here, but not overly many people. The beach is nice, but the whole place feels a bit dead. Most of the people seem to be asleep, either on hammocks or in small huts on the beach. We stop for lunch at a small beachside cafe. We're not overly keen on going back the way we came, so we walk along the beach in search of alternative transport. Our boat driver introduces himself as Ijoy. He tells us that he went to university in London where he studied business. I think that driving a small boat at a remote resort might be just a slight underutilisation of his prestigious university qualification, but as long as he's happy.... We ask him why there are so few people here. He says that the marketing people stop advertising the island when the monsoon's approaching, so nobody comes, even though the weather's still perfectly fine.

The sea in front of our resort has been invaded by algae and the water that was crystal clear yesterday is now a reddish brown colour. I want to go for a swim, but the water doesn’t look too inviting any more so I head for the pool instead. I think this might have been a wise decision. The Google machine tells me that lots of people have died over the years from “paralytic shellfish poisoning” caused by eating shellfish from waters affected by algal blooms, which are sometimes referred to as red tides. I think we might be steering clear of shellfish for the rest of the time we’re here.

We fall asleep on sunlounges on the beach. We have dinner and then retreat back to the sunlounges, where we drink Baileys as we watch the moon come up. Issy says that she's in heaven.

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