Fairy Lights Up a Palm on Forest City Beach, Johor

This is the beach at Forest City, at the south-western tip of Johor, at six in the evening on the 19th of September. Someone had wrapped a coconut palm in fairy lights from the sand almost to the fronds, and they were already switched on, though the sky was still bright. Strings of bulbs and lanterns ran out from the tree over the sand, and a few people had set up folding chairs at the water's edge to wait out the evening.

The palm leans on three green poles that hold it upright. I put the 16-50 at its widest, 16mm, stood at the base and pointed straight up the trunk, so the coils of lights sweep up and narrow towards the crown, and the poles fan out like the frame of a tent. Low on the horizon, faint in the haze, is Singapore, on the other side of the Straits of Johor, close enough to see from a beach chair. f/5.6, 1/400, ISO 800, at 6:06 in the evening, finished later in darktable.

The next evening I was further along the strait in Johor Bahru, where the water went flat calm and gave me the tower reflections on the Danga Bay waterfront. The evening after that, on Tioman, it was the bougainvillea along the lane in Kampung Tekek. For another beach at day's end, have a look at sunset on Jomtien Beach in Pattaya.