One of the things we wanted to do while on the island of Penang was to check out the National Park. Although not a large park, a rather decent sized area has been preserved on the northwest corner of the island. We had heard reports of hiking trails through the forest, wildlife, beautiful quiet beaches, and plenty of beautiful sea scenery. The park lived up to our expectations, as we found plenty of that on a nice hike we took.
Later, we took the road around the back of the island to get back to our hotel in Georgetown, and along the way we visited an awesome "Butterfly Farm" tucked into a small valley, which turned out to be an amazing treat chock full of gorgeous flowers, interesting wildlife and a million beautiful butterflies and a highlight of the trip! |
Penang National Park
We cruised out fairly early in the morning. Driving from Georgetown out to the National Park is quite the transition; starting in the simultaneously new and old city, the road passes several sections that alternate between stretches of tourist hotels and infrastructure and sandy beaches before ending at a fishing port found next to an abandoned resort that used to be an Intercontinental Resort. It's quite a mix of modern and natural. Along the way is the community of Batu Ferringhi, which is probably ground zero for Penang's "island paradise" offerings. Numerous high rise apartment buildings and condotels dot the surrounding hillsides.
There are several good hiking trails in Penang National Park, but to get to the cool places, many of them require a bit of a hike in. One of the most popular is to a place called "Monkey Beach", which is a semi-remote beach that is only accessible by foot or boat. The hike out to the beach was 3 or 4 kilometers one way, so instead of going out to that beach, we settled for stopping at a different beach along the way. This beach, known as USM Beach, is home to a research station from a local university, and although it wasn't as pristine or remote as "Monkey Beach", we had the beach to ourselves. This proved great because we saw at least a couple of dozen people making the trek to Monkey Beach, so even though there was a university research station in the background, it was quiet and deserted and we basically had the whole USM beach to ourselves.
We hung out for an hour or two, splitting time between the warm, robin's egg blue sea and the warm sand. At one point we watched a monkey hanging out eating a pineapple for a while. It was a far cry from a February day back home in Colorado! After a while of being lazy we decided to head out, and hiked back down the trail to the parking lot. The weather was absolutely perfect, in the low 90's with a perfect cooling sea breeze.
Butterfly Farm
After finishing up at the National Park, we headed south. Penang Island is dominated by a central range of mountains, the Bukit Bendera, and because the east side of that range is home to most of Penang's modern development and cities, the west side is still fairly wild. We wanted to see a bit of this while we were on the island, so this made a perfect opportunity to do so. Looking at the map, we saw a nice loop road of places to go see along the way back to our hotel, so we set off to have a nice west side adventure.
Our first stop wasn't too far down the road, at the Penang Butterfly Farm. This is a neat facility. Now known as "Entopia", it is a large indoor oasis, home to thousands of butterflies, and plenty of other interesting wildlife. It's quite beautiful, with a myriad of ferns and plants growing everywhere, babbling brooks running through the grounds, and butterflies flying everywhere. We spent a long time just wandering through slowly, stopping to see as many of the butterflies as possible. So many of them are completely unafraid of humans, and some even had no problem landing on us. |
Three beautiful butterflies, and a cocoon about to open up and reveal another butterfly.
In addition to the gardens and the butterflies, the Farm also has a great array of other animals, including a whole building of creepy crawlies, including spiders, millipedes, scorpions, several reptiles and amphibians, and even some birds! We managed to time our visit just right and ended up catching a great show put on by the staff that introduced us (a crowd of about 20 people) to several really neat animals. FIrst up was a gecko with some incredible grip that I got to hold, followed up by a millipede display (they are actually quite docile and non-threatening, unlike their dickhole cousins, centipedes) and followed up with a display of several impressive "stick bugs" and other bizarre insects. The enthusiastic staff made it a great event, and we were super happy to have caught it!
Penang's West Coast
Our first stop was the "Telok Bahang" dam and reservoir, a rather pretty lake set in a jungle valley. One of those interesting places where if you look one direction it looks like you are far in the mountains, but you turn around and it's an ocean. Continuing on, the road start climbed into the hills, past a handful of durian and tropical fruit farms, before we topped out on a small pass. On the downslope of this pass, we stopped at a small stream that supposedly has a nice waterfall on it during rainy season, but for our dry season visit it was nothing more than boulders and a tiny trickle of water.
Back to the road, we kept dropping, all the way down to the coastal plain on the western side of the island. Over here it's quite a bit different. There are small communities of native Malay people throughout, including original villages along the mangroves and coasts of the western shore, as well as typical modern Malaysian towns like you'd see all over the country. We drove through several small towns before finding our highway, which then took us back over the mountains to the east and down into the city on the eastern side of the island. We stopped for pictures at the top but it was so hazy that it was washing all the photographs out! Once back over the top it was just a handful of minutes in traffic and before we knew it we were back in our hotel!
All photos copyright Kit Davidson unless otherwise noted.