Pangkor Hotels
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Quality time on the beach
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Pangkor is about a 4 hour bus ride and a 30 minute ferry from the Cameron Highlands. The island is pretty popular with Malays due to its proximity to KL. It is not as popular with backpackers, who tend to hit the islands off the east coast of Malaysia, but the weather on the east coast was rainy, so I headed to sunny Pangkor instead.
I stayed on a small beach called Teluk Nipah. It's probably the best beach on the island and has a small number of restaurants and guesthouses. The beach was pretty quiet, but there was enough going on to keep things interesting. My guesthouse was a 2 minute walk from the beach and at night I could hear the waves from my room. 2 small islands are located not far off the mainland and made for a nice view. The beach had little shacks offering kayaks, snorkeling gear, jet skis, and boat rides. The charcoal grilled corn on the cob sold at stalls along the beach road was a delicious snack. Big horn-billed birds flew over the beach and among the trees. Monkeys scampered along the power lines and occasionally stole food to eat from the vendors below which always got a laugh from people walking by. 10 minutes away by auto was Pangkor Town, the only area that is even remotely busy, but even it was small and laid-back.
I rented a scooter and circumnavigated the entire island in less than an hour. As I drove around on my scooter I came across a large crowd of people in the middle of the street. There were drums playing and a small float moving down the road, so I stopped to check it out. It turns out my visit to Pangkor happened to coincide with an Indian holiday, so most of the other visitors on the island were of Indian descent, although they tended to stay on different beaches than I did. The festival associated with the Indian holiday was utterly bizarre. Marching down the road I saw a bare-chested guy with about 30 large metal hooks embedded in his back. Attached to each hook was a rope. The ropes were held by another guy following the one with the hooks in his back. Occasionally the guy with the hooks would pull hard against the ropes like a horse pulling a cart, which really pulled the skin on his back. I didn't see too much blood, so at least the hooks had been inserted skillfully! The guy with the hooks had a tranced-out crazy look on his face...I'm pretty sure he was on something. Sometimes the guy also did some sort of dance to the drums being played around him. To top it off, he was smoking what appeared to be a cigar, but I'm not positive. Following the guy was a small float with a shrine to some deity. I noticed a couple of other "hooked up" guys as well...some of them actually pulling the floats along. Most of the Indians seemed amazed by the display too...they were taking as many photos as I was. I came across several processions like that as I drove around the island...weird stuff. I never found out the meaning behind the festivities.
Back at the relative normalcy of my beach, I rented a kayak and paddled out to one of the nearby islands. The sea was calm so it wasn't too hard. The beach on the island was gravelly, so I paddled to another beach on the mainland that was only accessible by boat and I ended up with a sandy private beach. The other days I just chilled on the main beach and soaked up the sun. Sometimes it rained in the early morning, but the skies typically cleared by 10 am. Although it was still high season, there weren't too many tourists staying on the same beach as me. Pangkor was a quiet and peaceful place to relax for a few days. Next I'm stopping over in Singapore for one more night before flying to Hong Kong!
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