Category: hiking and mountaineering

To Penang peninsula in Malaysia and encountering the nasty monkey (January 2026)

Our luxurious bus brought us on the Penang peninsula which was a pretty touristic and crowded place.
But we found a very nice accommodation: Tony’s guesthouse. It was such a nice and calm place with a big community kitchen, eating table and everything. There were very interesting guests and the atmosphere was just nice.
Especially meeting somebody of the rainbow family gave us a nice and interesting perspective on life and the balancing and struggling between planning and just flowing and positive vibes.
And there were a whole lot of graffiti arts at the whole place.
Of course we went to the beach on which some interesting things got stuck …
… or constructed.
And the famous cat beach, a medical station and temporary accommodation for cats which helps them a lot.
About ten cats per visitor.
In the canals there were a lot and very big monitor lizards.
But we sticked to the mango, sticky rice with coconut sauce.
The other day, we went to the monkey beach.
A touristic, but still beautiful place.
With a lot of monkeys who looked kind of nice and innocent like always …
… until they attack you to steal your food, drinks or whatever. One grabbed me on my leg which let me to improve my defensive strategy: louder yelling, rising and waving the arms, and walking towards them until they back off.
We visited a beautiful botanical garden.
Had our feet cleaned.
And almost got stuck in the children slides.
On the way to a hike, the door of the bus broke down and we helped our thankful driver to repair it and were able to continue our ride.
The hike was interesting and nice and it felt very good to have some exercise-like movement again.
The locals stayed mostly at the artificial swimming ponds in the river and we tried the hiking paths.
And met a beautiful lizard.
And found a pretty much broken viewpoint structure from which we had a good overview of the small town. Here is our hike on komoot with many more photos.

Into the biggest national park of Malaysia, Taman Negara (January 2026)

We went with the minivan from Kuala Lumpur to the long tail boat and then further up the river into the biggest national park of Malaysia: Taman Negara.
The ride with the boat took quite a while and it was nice to observe the shore, the jungle and how the driver had to put quite some effort to find the deepest paths through the river to not touch the ground.
The restaurants at the heart of the tourist area were mostly on floating platforms.
On the search for the best french fries.
Our accommodation was very nice but the geckos did not enjoy their stay so much. At least not the ones getting trapped in the fuse box.
Jungle explorers.
In the junge.
We found a lot of interesting stuff, sounds, and animals.
Some suckers were not our friends.
One evening, we went to an observation post and waited and observed for a hour in the hopes of seeing some jungle elephants …
… but didn’t see any.
On a guided night tour we saw a lot of interesting animals. These are sleeping birds.
Techno party scorpion.
Our guide showed us a photo of the biggest flooding that took place in Taman Negara in 2014 and was about 75 meters high.
To go into the national park, we had to take a boat to cross the river.
Dumbfuckery all the time!
Meeting other travelers.
The jungle rollercoasters …
… and highways.
My favorites: the big trees.
Some up to 80 meters high.
Some leaning over.

To the tropical beach on Marina and Pangkor Island in Malaysia (December 2025)

We took two busses from the Cameron Highlands to the coast.
The first one was very comfortable and the second an older line bus. The driver delivered packages as well 😁
As always, we took the cheapest apartment we could find. This one was nice and had a nice view.
No hot plate, but we managed to buy a gas canister and pot for our camping stove so that we could cook from time to time on our balcony 🍳
The view was very beautiful and several times we spotted a pretty big waran. We called her Clementine 🐊
It was beautiful at night as well. The whole apartment complex was almost abandoned for most of our time there. So we had the pool just for us 🌌
We found a nice restaurant and had very good dinners there 🥳
Tom and I had some fish 🐟
And on the small Marina Island, which seemed to be an artificial Resort Island, was this: the funtasiland!
The most neon place we have ever seen! The sand for the kids to play in was neon pink and blue as well 🤣
One day we went into the small town of Lumut. Very much deserted in the off season 😁
With nice graffiti pictures …
… and robots 🤖
In an Chinese temple we put some wishes on the wishes tree 🙏🏼
Another day we went to Pangkor Island. A customs free island where you can mostly buy sweets and fish. No alcohol or cigarettes 😁
They had a whole lot of scooters on that island. New and old 😳
A mosque in the ocean 🌊
A gang of goose that went rogue and had to get caught 🤣
And we went to this magnificent tropical beach 🏝️
It was very beautiful ❤️
Hammock, …
…
… this nice blend of jungle, sand, and ocean …
…
… and some animals to discover. There was a wild boar as well 🐗
And this nasty monkey who wanted to steal some stuff from us. But we fought him back ☮️
After some hours at that magnificent beach, we started our way back to civilization ✨
At first, the jungle trails was like the ones we already took before 😀
But the trail developed into a very rough one. The photo doesn’t do it justice. The path was marked by small pieces of barrier tape wrapped around trees. But sometimes big trees had fallen covering the tape and blocking the trail. So we spent a lot of time searching for markings, going around the fallen trees, breaking our way through the plants who had taken over the path, and sliding down muddy slopes. It was adventurous and in the end it took us almost three hours to walk almost three kilometers!
Here is our tour on Komoot 🌿
But we made it in time so that we could head to the last ferry going back to Marina Island 🥳
On our way to the ferry we came across another nice beach ⛱️
And at home we treated Racki’s and Tom’s wounds from leeches. For some reason the leeches did not suck on me. Maybe the mosquitos already had taken all my blood 😳
And in the jungle there were all the saw, and blade cutter noises 🤯🤪