From my previous post, you will know that beaches have featured large in my life. I was very disappointed when we went to Pangkor Island and first went to Penang to see that the beaches on the Strait of Malacca are polluted and not very inviting. It seemed that, to enjoy being on a beach here, one needed to go to a resort where the staff clean the beach in front of the hotel every morning. We are not really resort people, however, and besides we live in Malaysia now and can’t always behave like tourists. It was with great excitement then that we found this beach (see pic). It is on the Strait but, as you can see, the sand is clean and white. There is some rubbish in the parking area adjacent to the beach but none on the sand and very little in the sea. What a pleasure to lie on our towels under our newly acquired umbrella (huge plastic thing usually seen outside street restaurants in the city!) and not to see another soul. The water was too warm to be refreshing but coming out wet into the slight breeze was as cool as one is going to get here. We had our picnic lunch and read our books and dozed away last Sunday afternoon. We came home with sand on our feet and hung our beach towels and togs out to dry just as if we’d been to Raglan!