Day 7 - KL to Port Dickson and outskirts of Malacca - Sat 2 Mar

Day 7 - KL to Port Dickson and outskirts of Malacca - Sat 2 Mar
“…and so it begins….” has become each new day’s mantra. Fully loaded, quietly excited departure south towards Melaka. Heat has been steadily rising - yesterday 34 degrees, day before 33, day before 32. Noticed very few places to pull off road for camps - mostly fenced plantations, gated residences and temples or wide drainage ditches. Lunch at Port Dickson, past a lighthouse and on edge of a National Park, where we watched a man digging clams, monitor lizards, and monkeys watching us. 

Kickapoo Joy Juice

Watching us watching them

Followed coast down, crowded with one-woman food stalls, shop-front businesses and residential; stopped at petrol station for water for tanks. With so much rubbish on roadways, beside houses and in drains, we won’t trust waterways to fill up - looks like can only purchase potable water by litre from shops or filling a container from reverse osmosis machines. Kids on scooters ride between parents without helmets.

Found first campsite - Sunset Bistro Camp on beach approaching Malacca, under tall she-oak type trees. Breeze from ocean ensured no anxiety over sleeping without air-conditioning! With all the kite, beach-ball and food stalls, quad bike and pony hire places; it looks like it will become lively towards dark.  

Mums on the beach

Stalls on the beach

Girls on beach

Boys on the beach

Very fit 71yr old retired Chinese man stopped to talk. He was an ex agronomist from palm oil plantation, happy we had noticed legume planting in between rows for nitrogen to replace excessive fertiliser use. Ate at nearby Bistro - chicken skewers (without the advertised pineapple) and chicken and apple salad (without chicken or apple)!!  

Sunset over bay

Sunset Bistro Camp

Redder....

Final glorious burst

Fantastic gold and red sunset in bay. Between the shore stalls, people on beach, cars idling by, and walker-talkers strolling past, the town never slept... we reckoned when the first Muslim calls drifted out from the loudspeakers at dawn that they must be shift dwellers cos half of them are always awake!