Pangkor Island

Pangkor is a working island first and a holiday one second: the villages on the east side are built around fishing, with jetties, boatyards and open racks and yards where anchovies are boiled and dried in quantity, which gives that side of the island its smell and much of its income. The beaches are on the west - Pasir Bogak, Teluk Nipah, Coral Bay - with the sand and the sunsets, backed by hills of forest with hornbills and a lot of macaques. Kota Belanda, a small Dutch fort built in 1670 to control the tin trade, sits ruined near Teluk Gedung with a boulder carved with a tiger and the initials of the Dutch East India Company beside it. The island was declared duty-free in 2020. Transport is by rented motorbike or the pink minibus taxis.

History

Pangkor was long a refuge for fishermen, merchants and pirates; in the 17th century the Dutch built a fort here to control the Perak tin trade, and in 1874 the Pangkor Treaty was signed here between the British and a claimant to the Perak throne (Wikipedia, Pangkor Island).

What you'll find

• Anchovy drying yards - the fishing industry that runs the east side.
• West-coast beaches - Pasir Bogak, Teluk Nipah and Coral Bay for the sunsets.
• Kota Belanda - the 1670 Dutch fort ruin and the carved tiger boulder.
• Hornbills and macaques - both common, the macaques aggressively so.

When to go

All year; drier December to March. Two days.

Before you go

The water is Malacca Strait silty, not east-coast clear. Macaques at Teluk Nipah snatch food and bags. Weekends and school holidays are busy and the beaches litter up.

Nearby

Lumut is the ferry port; Pangkor Laut is a separate private island.

Key facts