Cliff Lowther / ROXCOOL Blog - WWW.ROXCOOL.CO.UK: Blog No.8 - We had Joy We had Fun We had...a great day!

The Beautiful 'secret' beach Mr Chung recommended

Families and friends, hello!

Today was a day of pure holiday fun which kicked off at 8:30am, quite a sleep in for us Challengers. We were served an interesting breakfast by Mr. Chung, which consisted of ‘heart starter’ coffee, weird sausages, sweet toast and scrambled eggs. After this we moved on to planning for the next few days; organising buses back to Kuala Lumpur, food arrangements for the day and checking up on the budget. This occupied us for a while when it was suddenly time to eat again and it was decided that ‘street food’ was the best option.

We set off in groups, in the heat and sunshine to see what Pangkor Island had to offer. Casey was immediately excited by a stall of sizzling crabs. However these turned out to be not so enjoyable, for Lucy at least who, accepting Casey’s wise words of “You can eat all of it!” almost cracked a tooth on the shell. We moved on and enjoyed a nice spot in a cafe by the beach eating the old favourites; rice and chicken, as well as some tasty sting ray. We sat for a while, enjoying the shade and nearby crash of waves but the pull of fresh coconut water was too great and we moved on again. We bought a coconut and some funky floaty rings for the beach and headed back to the resort.

The Coast line looking towards Pangkor Town

Earlier today, Mr. Chung had told us of a magical, secluded piece of beach, which could be reached only after a short drive and a solid trek through some intense jungle and that mosquitoes and leeches were ‘part of package’. We geared up for the hike, liberally applied DEET and sunscreen, laced up our boots and gathered beach mats. Just as we headed out to load up the van, Mr. Chung suddenly had the realisation that the van was all the way down at the jetty! While we waited for Cliff and Mr. Chung to fetch our ride, a few of us excitedly collected our freshly washed clothes which were oh-so beautifully clean! The van arrived in good time and we set off on the crazy, bumpy, happy ride to the jungle.

Shallow water and a coral bed not the best for messing around in the water

Happy Challengers...Time to have fun!

Large Woodlouse type creatures on the rocks

We tumbled out, walked through someone’s back garden and entered the jungle in what we thought would be a hard slog, battled against leeches and mosquitoes. Turns out, the 15 minute stroll had nothing on us trekkers! It seemed it was no time before we saw blue skies and white sand. It was beautiful; peaceful, empty, secluded and sunny. Very quickly we were in the water, hoping for a relaxing wallow, however, the sea cucumbers and spiky rocks and Coral made this difficult, and needless to say we all came away with a few scratches and scrapes. The next few hours were spent laying in the sun, swimming in the sea, climbing trees, collecting shells, playing on rocks, drawing in the sand and eating snacks – the honey almonds were especially tasty.

Life's a Beach!

Henry provided entertainment and amusement for us all with his antics in the sea when he encountered a particularly rare type of sea creature (Ed. only those in the know will know what we are talking about ;-)). As the day drew nearer to its end, we packed up and headed back to our pick up point. The car ride back was rather more hair raising than on the way there, but we all survived and even made a stop to view Malaysia’s own miniature wall of China as well as a turtle pond and what I would claim to be the world’s largest fish – truly, it was huge, bigger than me! As we arrived home, a storm set in though it was all thunder and lightning with not much rain. Casey and Cliff were invited to dinner with Mr. Chung, so the rest of us were left to look after ourselves (Ed. C’mon guys you’re making me feel guilty...it was going to be street food in small groups anyway!!!! J). Again we broke into groups and searched for restaurants along the shore of Pangkor. Lucy had a close encounter with a chilli but all was well otherwise. Back in my resort room of four girls, we found ourselves with ice cream and giggles. This was only made worse by the return of Casey and Cliff which resulted in Besa’s foot in the ice cream and a re-telling of Casey’s crab misfortune at dinner as well as the news of Cliff finding a leech on his bum (Ed. I think it was a bit of a false alarm folks lol).