After a highly successful afternoon near Padawan yesterday, we headed out today, on a prettily pink and hazy morning, in the opposite direction.

Destinations are still a bit iffy at the moment, as they recover from long months of paralysis, so it's a bit unpredictable what's accessible and what's not. Still, we scored a number of hits.

Last year, on our first set of day trips after quarantine, we attempted to get to Golden Beach, but were thwarted by a closed gate. A little digging around on the internet revealed, however, that people do go to Pantai Trombol, aka Golden Beach. They just don't use the gate.

What you do is head for Trombol. There's a road that runs parallel to the beach, and towards its eastern end, there's a rough track, perpendicular to the road, that takes you down to the sea. I've seen videos of people driving that track, but the entrance is currently blocked off to cars (and actually we'd have hesitated to take our little hire car down there anyway), so we parked a little further down the road, and walked. (Further east again, there's a communications tower, and from the beach end, it looked as though there was some sort of track there too, but I can't vouch for that.)

Our track was delightful, full of birdsong on the way out, and cicadas on the way back.




Before you hit the beach, fire away liberally with your insect repellent, because there are sand flies, and they don't stay on the sand...

But it's a great place to walk. Sunny, breezy, and full of interest:


















I was a bit horrified to see this article, written just a few days ago. When we were at Golden Beach, there were a couple of guys on motorbikes, apparently doing some seafood-collecting. A little later, there was a small group, who were just walking the beach like us. No cars on the sand whatsoever... Best to go during the week, and early, I'd say. What you lose through the unoccupied stalls you definitely gain with the peace and quiet.

Not far from Golden Beach is the Jubilee Arch of Rambungan. It's a remnant of a grandiose project that never came to fruition, or as this article acidly puts it, "a reminder of a big failure on the part of the federal government".

Folly or not, I think it has a certain something:




We headed for Telaga Air after this. It was a hive of activity for quite sad reasons that day, preparing for a press conference on the two unfortunate maritime accidents that have taken place here recently.


We grabbed a quick lunch, and rounded off with one of those famous shakes, coconut and gula apong this time...



Ohhh, you've got to love days out by the sea...