Our final destination on the Malaysian whirlwind tour was the beachside resort town of Teluk Nippah, on the small island of Puala Pangkor. Teluk Nippah is on the west side of the island, facing out into the Indian Ocean. The beach is along a protected bay, so the surf is pretty tame, and it's just a nice place to relax for a couple days.

Our hotel was a cute little place called the "Hornbill Inn." This is a view of the front of the hotel. In the foreground you can see one of the hundreds of loud and unpleasant motorbikes that idiots rip across the island at all hours of the night and day on.

Here is Peter sitting in our room. It was a really charming room with, fortunately, a private bathroom. It also had a TV that only got HBO. Very odd.

There are two types of rooms at the Hornbill, hill-facing and beach-facing. Ours was hill-facing. The center of Pangkor island is a large (and strangely noisey) untamed jungle. Hornbills (the hotel's namesake) flock out of the jungle in abundance and roost all over the town. Monkeys also come out of the jungle. More about that later.

This is the beach-facing direction. One of the many food stalls is also visible in this picture, along with the people who attend it. Often they seemed more content to sit in chairs near the stalls than to actually attempt to sell anything. I think they knew all the taxi drivers, because the taxi drivers often stopped at the food stalls and sat around chatting with the vendors.

This is the beach of Teluk Nippah. The sea was green and pleasantly warm.

Behind Peter's head in this picture is a small jungle island. We rented a kayak and rowed out to the island and spent a little time on a small beach there. We were able to see some pretty neat sea life right off the beach--coral, crabs, and the like. Into the island was another wild jungle. Jungles are surprisingly loud... it sounds like life and death struggle is taking place constantly.

Unfortunately, this was still a third world country in places, as we were reminded by this unpleasant river-o-garbage near the beach. There were plenty of trash cans available, but some people apparently don't like to throw trash in them.

While we were walking along the road we came upon this fellow--a millipede that was at least eight inches long. Maybe he was the one making all that noise in the jungle.

Our moment of humor at Teluk Nippah came when we went to the mini-mart to buy some snacks, and picked up a can of the delightfully-named Sarsi cola. Sarsi cola--there's an epidemic in every can.

Our final story from Teluk Nippah occurred on the last day of our trip. In the morning, we visited the beach for one final swim in the sea before we had to take the ferry back to Lumut. We spent maybe an hour playing around on the beach and in the sea when we saw a family of monkeys start dropping from the trees onto the beach behind us. We watched the monkeys for a while as they started sifting through small piles of garbage further up the beach. The monkeys actually unscrewed bottles, drank the contents, then screwed the caps back on and tossed them aside. After maybe ten minutes or so, they started to drift back into the jungle.

Soon after, an Australian family starts walking up the beach towards our position. We start walking back towards them, greet them, and tell them there's a family of monkeys further up the beach. While we are in these relative positions, something happens...

The largest monkey (not very large, but clearly a male) starts charging up the beach, apparently straight towards the little boy who is standing near his mother. We're confused for a while, but he keeps coming at us. Peter steps towards the boy to block the monkey's path towards him, and monkey veers to the right and starts heading directly towards the mother. Everyone is a bit paralyzed in place and really confused why the monkey is coming this close to a group of humans. Up the beach a bit, the monkeys are starting to come back down towards the beach. This time there are around 10-15 of them. The male monkey runs up to the mother and tears the shopping bag out of her hand, then bolts for the water. Peter runs after the monkey, and he drops the bag, spilling out its contents into the water. The monkey grabs a loaf of bread from the contents and then heads back up the beach towards the group of monkeys. Peter runs at the monkey, to take back the loaf of bread apparently (he really wasn't thinking about it), and yells at the monkey. In response, the monkey growls and hisses at Peter. By this time, the monkeys are outnumbering the humans, and looking a bit mean, so we gather up the Australians' things from the water and retreat back down the beach.

For the record, Peter no longer wants to own a monkey.

That was our journey to Teluk Nippah! We took the ferry back to Lumut, then took a bus back to Kuala Lumpur. We stayed one more night at a hotel near the airport, which had a fabulous dinner buffet (lamb chops with mint sauce being one of the signature dishes) for around $8 a piece, and then caught our plane to Hong Kong the next morning.