HORNBILLS AND MOLD - ISLAND OF PANGKOR

We took a turbo-jet from Kuala Lumpur's 2nd (smaller) airport to the island of Pangkor.  It's completely covered in dense jungle.  On the north end of the island is a tiny airstrip and our resort just beyond.

Below is a view of the Malaysian peninsula from the air.

Our airplane seen from the inside of the "airport".

The guy that picked us up at the airport was border-line rude.  He had a sign with the name of the resort we were going to.  When we said that we were supposed to go to the resort, he snapped "Show me your voucher so I can check".  Then when we got to the resort, the lady at the counter announced, "You came too early, our check-out time is noon"  We had arrived at 11.  She seemed totally flummoxed as to what to do to us.  For some reason, rather than asking if we'd mind waiting for a room, she found room 366 - the bat cave.  First, our key didn't work properly.  But worse, the room stunk of mold.  They managed to fix the deal with the key, and we, stupidly didn't demand another room in the beginning.  We really thought that running the air conditioning would clean the place out.  No.  It made it worse.  The next morning (now) we demanded another room - we were up trying to decide how to avoid Legionnaire's Disease.  Opening the door meant mosquitos and macaques.  We turned of the air con ran a fan and chanced the pests.  We are waiting for another room.  If it smells the same - oh well - we tried.

Once we were settled - we went to the beach.  Our joke last night was - if you let a place in the jungle run down enough - the local inhabitants begin to take over.  While we were sitting on the beach, the monitor lizard seen below, walked up to the small boy, decided he wasn't tasty enough, and walked across the sand.

For a short while in the afternoon we had WiFi.  It stopped working in the evening (hence this later post).  Here's Charlie below, catching up with things.

We sat on the beach most of the afternoon.  Here's some scenes from the shore.

After we got dressed for dinner (not as fancy as it sounds) we walked out of the bat cave and there in a tree was a hornbill.

It turns out that at 7:30 in the morning and 6:30 at night they put bread out for these birds.  The birds, in turn, hang around all day waiting for hand outs.  We didn't notice them yesterday - but, good grief, they're all over.

Above is the stand and the food (mostly bread) left out for the birds.

Tropics-Charlie before dinner.

Before dinner, we took a walk on the beach.  We noticed when we went swimming, amazing patterns in the sand made from tiny sand balls.  Suddenly we remembered a nature special about these little sand crabs that spend their time rolling up balls of sand as they dig their holes and leaving them outside.  This place has zillions of these creatures.

If you look carefully, in the center of the center groove, is the sand sculpture crab responsible for the design above.