Hike to Monkey Beach

Feeling adventurous and ready to get outdoors and do some hiking, we packed up our kids and water bottles last Saturday and headed to the Penang National Park.  We chose a trail heading out to Monkey Beach, a popular site to see these animals and to do some swimming.  This would not have been possible without our friends' generosity in letting us borrow a hiking backpack for Rachel.  Even so, her 41 pounds turned out to be a pretty good workout for Adam!

The trail turned out to be pretty adventurous, and it took us about an hour and a half to hike to our destination. We all had fun exploring the trail and often got to climb over big rocks and lift ourselves down with ropes.  Periodically, there were concrete or wooden bridges, at one point, we found a wooden swing that we just had to try out, and Mark had to stop and examine the huge ants!  The only damper to our adventure was my son's fear that we were lost, though we assurred him many times that we weren't. 

When we finally arrived at our destination, Mark stopped crying and jumped right in the water, but then it was Rachel's turn to start screaming, as we saw monkeys from afar.  (My daughter's fear of monkeys initiated from a previous bad experience; see "Monkey attack" post.)  The monkeys here never bothered us at all, but Rachel screamed nonetheless until we were safely in the water.  We spent the next half hour cooling off in the ocean, playing in the waves, and looking for shells.  There were lots of small crabs skittering back and forth along the rocks, and it was fun to watch them.  When we got out, Abigail spotted a jellyfish, but thankfully, no one got stung.

We had arranged for a boat to take us back, which was a quick and windy five-minute ride.  Upon returning to our car, we all were starving, as we had purposely avoided bringing food in order to keep the monkeys away.  All in all, this was a great treking experience, and definetely one we'll do again soon!