Christmas Island

I have to say that in spite of all the decorations and making Ian crazy with the Nutcracker on repeat in the weeks and days leading up to Christmas, that hot weather at the holidays is just plain weird. I kept trying to reassure myself of the novelty of it all and how I couldn't wait to rub it in to everyone back home that I'd been for a nice long swim in my pool on Christmas day, but the festive feeling was, until the very last minute, lacking entirely. Fortunately, there's nothing like a bottle of white wine at 11:30am and a few gifts to kick things into gear and suddenly it was Christmas.

I get ahead of myself. Taking advantage of Ian's family visit we set off for Pangkor. Pangkor is a small island about halfway between KL & Penang, and despite having heard fairly positive things about it, I was withholding judgement as to how it would rate as a beach destination particularly given its location in the high-traffic and murky waters of the Straits of Malacca.

We arrived well after dark and the first thing that struck me (aside from the carnation pink people-carrier taxis that are driven with wild abandon over the hills and around the curves of the island interior) was a genuinely alarming lack of Chinese people. Now, we've been in Malaysia for exactly 14 months and that is long enough to learn that, where there are Chinese there is beer and no Chinese people = no beer. This would certainly be a sorry way to start off a trip to the beach.

My suspicions were confirmed when there was only one place in the entire village with beer and I do not exaggerate when I say that every, single white person in town was there. Normally, I would avoid this type of place like the plague but it was agreed all-round that after a 6 hour journey involving a long car ride, noisy ferry and high-speed suspension-less taxi ride that the availability of beer trumped all. We had a thoroughly mediocre meal, enjoyed a few ice cold Tigers, took a quick turn about the town, called it a night and prayed for sunshine the following day.

Our prayers were answered, we awoke to a lovely sunny day and afraid that it might end at any moment grabbed our gear and set out for the beach. In a moment of blind excitement we foolishly attempted to cut off a corner of the walk by cutting through a patch of jungle rather than follow the road. We were instantly swarmed, and I mean swarmed, by mosquitoes and quickly came upon a troop of cheeky macaques, we promptly abandoned the trek, located the beach and made for the lovely, clear warm water letting the salt assuage our recently acquired battle scars.


Although limited in cultural exploits, Pangkor does have more to offer in terms of wildlife than macaques and mosquitoes and (with the aid of our fancy new camera lens) we saw our first hornbills in the wild. I'm sure we were also surrounded by any number of poisonous deadly snakes and the sea bed was riddled with exceptionally large slimy sea slugs and spikey sea urchins.

We returned to KL to commence our holiday celebrations. Ian did (finally) get me that beautiful porcelain Chinese lamp - and even condescended to spend an extra $30 on the lampshade. We had a delicious dinner of rosemary encrusted pork loin with with mustard cream sauce, braised leeks and mashed potato - it had nothing on Grandma's prime rib, but it certainly did the trick. Boxing Day we went to Trader's for drinks where (as usual) the service was terrible and the drinks overpriced, but the view is unbeatable.