Money Beach (almost)

This last weekend we went to the smallest national park in Malaysia. It sits at the very end of the island and is quite beautiful. It is virgin jungle for the most part with some hiking trails cut through it. We decided to do a hike to Monkey Beach (so named because it is inhabited by monkeys - of course.) We had a great time. Once we got into the jungle there were quite a few monkeys. They followed us around and would get quite close to the kids. I am sure if we had given them food, they would have come right to us. Next time... Here is Aerin doing her best monkey impression with several of the monkeys playing behind her. The only bad thing with the monkeys is that you have to keep a lookout overhead - you never know when a monkey is going to decide to take a leak. Nothing quite like monkey rain...

The post is called "Monkey Beach (almost)" because we didn't actually make it to monkey beach :-) The kids were getting tired and hungry when we arrived at this beach so we decided to eat lunch and play here. It was a lot of fun. The kids and I swam and played on the rocks and Kirsten relaxed on the beach, read, and got eaten alive by mosquitos. She had 5 times as many bites as the rest of us put together! Next time we are definitely taking insect repellent... Lea had a blast here - she has started wearing a snorkel mask whenever she swims (I am trying to teach the kids to snorkel so we can go to some of the cool snorkeling spots together) And she loved being able to look under the water. She doesn't actually use the snorkel to breathe - she just puts her head under to look and then pulls it up to breathe normally. Very cute to watch though.

On the way to the beach we took a detour and did a canopy walk. They have a trail that goes through the trees about 40ft off the ground. It is ~400-500 yards long. The kids thought this was great fun, I am not quite sure how Kirsten felt about it. She doesn't like hights, especially when she is walking on a bridge that moves all over the place. It was really neat though.

Here Isabel is trying to get the big monkey in the tree to come down and play with her. The monkey was interested until he realized she didn't actually have any food in her hand, then he kind of snubbed her.

Here are our own little monkeys - we stopped for a water break (like every 10 minutes it seemed like) and they climbed into a tree. One thing about hiking in Penang - it is hot and humid. You start sweating as soon as you start walking and you don't stop until you get in the air-conditioned car. You get used to it after a while (right Kirsten?) I hope anyway!

This is the view out our kitchen window. Our big windows in the living room face out over the ocean, but our back windows face out over the city. This doesn't have anything to do with monkey beach, but the picture was in the same set and I thought it was a beautiful sunset!

Anyway, we are getting ready to leave for our next adventure. Tomorrow we head to Kuala Lumpur for 3 days. Wish us luck!