Langkawi is a large group of islands just off the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia, now, in order to get to the west coast we had to take a bus. the journey was just under 8 hours so we decided that we would take a night bus, sleep through the trip and arrive at the jetty to langkwi early in the morning feeling refreshed and rested. This wasn't exactly how it played out. firstly there had been a mix up of communication and our group got split on to 2 separate buses; us Besut boys on one bus, the others on the other bus. secondly we found out (at the time when our bus was scheduled to leave) that we were at the wrong bus stop, and were supposed to be 19 miles away on the other side of Kota Bahru. in a mad panic we hailed a taxi and hurried off. luckily the bus company we were traveling with were truly terrible, and were running an hour late, which for us was good news. when the bus set off we encountered problem number 3. when we first got onto the bus from the stuffy heat of a city center, the air con was like a blessing, lovely, cool and refreshing. however 5 minutes later the bus started to feel a little nippy, another 5 minutes later goosebumps started popping up as we started to get really cold. by the end of the first half hour i though my nipples were going to tear through my t-shirt. the worst part of all was that Dale and Dan managed to sleep through this almost instantly, leaving me to sit awake for 8 hours while trying to think of ways to avoid needing the toilet.
But we had arrived, and a quick hour-long ferry later and we were on Langkawi.
I think it would be fair to say that arriving on the island at 6:30am had a bit of an impact on our body clocks. it would also be fair to say that even though it was October and monsoon season had technically stared, the rain was a little bit of a disappointment. As we took a cab from the ferry terminal to our accommodation the heavens emptied onto our heads, which sucks if you're in a leaky Malay taxi. As with the buses, our group of seven was split into us 3 boys, and the other 4, each at different locations, we were at a little joint called the rainbow lodge, who ended up charging us a total of 60rm between us for 3 nights at the end (that's like £12) and the others at a place called the Pantai Tengah Beach Inn, who charged the four of them a total of just over 400rm of 3 nights. I was pretty proud of my bargain hunting abilities, especially as their place was basically the same size as ours.
we then went on a wonder to explore the stuff near to our place while we trekked over to the other house. one rather worrying discovery we made is that the sewrs of Langkawi are inhabited by giant lizards.
Anyway after getting lost and having to get directions from a seemingly lovely lady (who it just so happens was a man dressed as a women who had the worlds deepest voice) we got a taxi to the other place. we waited a rather large storm there for a few hours, just hanging out and chatting, before we headed out to the town to search for some good food and shopping places.
Me, James and Dale hen headed to h beach for a quick dip in the sea. this quickly ended up as me and James getting smashed around by waves as Dale laughed from the shore. we decided to end our beach trip with quick stop for coffee at a swanky looking beachside cafe called 'sugar'. the coffee wasn't that good, and that would have been fin if the woman hadn't then charged us 40rm for the drinks (in pounds that's not even a tenner but considering you can normally get three coffees for about 5rm, it was a bloody rip off.
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| First time I've ever been bruised by the sea |
We then headed back to James' for the night.
Now, for the sake of maintaining the image that this is a year of voluntary work in another country and not just a year long holiday (it isn't a year long holiday, seriously) I won't go into the details of what we did in the evenings on Langkawi. Suffice to say that that there is no alcohol available at our projects, but there was alcohol on Langkawi and we were all above the legal drinking age. The end.
Day Two
The second day on Langkawi was a lot less eventful and much easier to sum up.
we spent a good portion of the day at the beach, the weather wasn't that good, but when you're going swimming getting wet is kinda the point so it didn't matter.
After that me, Dale and James went for a wonder around a market and found some rally cool women's pantaloons, but we're very modern young men and a little bit of crossdressing is no crime so we bought some and had a "pantaloon party". we also went to a budget spa and had a foot fish treatment thingy, which tickled like mad.
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| They were more interested in eating my leg hairs then the skin on my feet |
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| The pantaloon party: looks worse than it was |
Day Three
on the third day our group split up Me, Dan, Helena and Alex all decided to go on a snorkeling trip, while Callum, Dale and James hired some mopeds and explored the main island a little.
Snorkeling was great. I would love it if i was able to post a load of pictures that look like scenes from finding nemo, but the camera quality for the snorkeling trip was not good at all. suffice to say that it was a great time and I saw loads of cool stuff. The only downside was the ferryman's decision to play a "best of Pitbull" CD for the entire boat trip. That sucked.
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| The boat ride to the Reef, drowning out the Pittbull |
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| Think that is Alex, hard to tell |
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| That could be anyone, I dunno |
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| A rare and hideous species of ginger jellyfish appears to have surfaced |
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| On a side note, check out how much more ginger Malaysia has turned me |
After the snorkeling we went back to our hotels, had a brief horizontal life-pause (nap sounds too childish for me), and then went out for the night.
Day Four
On the fourth day the 7 of us all went out on a boat trip up the river through loads of mangrove forests and caves. It was actually really cool, the monkeys here were much more sociable than the ones around our school, we also got a pretty good look at some eagles feeding and went to a stingray farm. Did you know you could farm stingrays? I didn't, it was pretty cool.
About half way through the river tour the rain, which had been pretty mild all day started to gradually get heavier and heavier until we out on a boat in the middle of a lake in a storm so bad that we would have been dryer if we didn't have a boat. As adventurous young people we didn't particularly mind this, however we were sharing our boat with a Portuguese family who's 7- 10 year old child looked miserable beyond words so we decided to head back. To be fair we only missed out on a small waterfall and beach.
We got back around 6, recovered from the cold, had brief power naps, ate some food, and then headed out for the last night on Langkawi.
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| Monkey Madness |
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| More Monkey Madness |
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| Gang Hang at the lake-side |
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| H-Dawg and A-Dizzle told me to take dramatic looking photos of them....posers |
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| Moody Monkey Madness |
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| I'd like to tell you that this was a rained monkey, who sits on this board and narrates the information to tourists. I can't though. He was angry and mean and stole a lady's bag of nuts |
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| Alfred. Meet me at the batcave! |
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| me and dale discovered that our faces are not windproof |
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| stingray farm, which produces......I dunno, stingray milk? |
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| pretty things |
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| still sort of pretty things |
Fifth day
On the last day on the island we all got up pretty early and checked out of our accommodation and paid up, by English standards it was quite cheap for 4 nights. We then went out on a final day trip of "Island Hopping" this basically involved a small boat taking us between 3 different islands over he course of about 4 hours. we went to a lake on an island, went to see some eagles feeding, and finally stopped at a nice little beach for a lovely swim. all in all i was a greatt time day and a nice way to end our trip to Langkawi.
we go a ferry back to Kuala Perlis around 6, and caught our nightbus back home at 8:30. we got home at about 3am, and spent the next 2 days lazing around and recovering from nightbus-lag.
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| You can't really see it, I'm crap at photography. That's the closest to a dramatic sunset over Langkawi as I have. Sorry |
byeee
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