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Published: February 9th 2009
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The beach
Steps from our door We caught the ferry from Penang to Langkawi at 8.30am, the journey was a bit rough and the boat seemed to have been overloaded on one side and tilted to the left for the whole two and a half hours! lots of sick bags were used, although thankfully not by us!
Grateful to be back on dry land we got our map out and started to plan our route, I had thought the island was pretty small and so we should walk from Kuah, the ferry port town, to Pantai Cenang, the beach area where our hostel was. Paul asked how much a teksi would be and at 24 ringgitts we realised it was quite a long journey, about 17km later I was very thankful we hadn't walked especially as it was at least 30 degrees and our backpacks have seemingly got even heavier than when we left Perth, although maybe it only seems that way.
Our hostel was actually a beach chalet, or so it had advertised itself, it was very basic but it was literally 1 minute from the beach and right next door to a nice restaurant and bar, oh did we mention langkawi is a duty free
Beach bar
This became our local zone?! The only down point here was getting an atm as they could only really be found in the ferry port town, kuah. We did find one atm on our side of the island but it seemed to be permantly out of service, luckily we had withdrawn enough for our stay I don't know how people coped for longer periods of time there must have been a lot of cash loaded tourists!
In the five days we were here we spent most of our time on the gorgeous beach looking out at the postcard view of nearby islands and eating good food and drinking cocktails in Oasis, our local, and occasionally having a swim in the lovely warm andaman sea.
We paid a visit to Laman Padi, an outdoor museum about rice growing in the region, where you could climb some stairs to look out over some miniature rice padi's which apparently populated by water buffalo but we didn't see any.
One evening we walked to the other end of the beach area and had dinner at a traditional malaysian restaurant. I had Beef Rendang which i was assured was not very spicy, however i was lied to, it was
very hot but it was lovely and if it hadn't been so far from our hostel we would have eaten there perhaps every night!
On our last day we went Island hopping, we were picked up at 9am at our hotel and taken to the islands jetty. Our boat held ten people of which we were the only non-locals. The first island had a fresh water lake in the centre which was known for catfish foot massages?!! we were also confused, but apparently if you sit with your feet in the lake catfish will swim round them and massage your feet. We sat down amongst the crowds of people and saw one catfish which swam towards a girl sitting near us but she freaked out and started screaming and pulled her feet out so the fish swam away again and i realised i would probably do the same if it came near me so we headed back to the pick up point. All around the boat docking area there were loads of little monkeys just wandering around trying to steal food. We saw one tickling another one! you could walk right up to them if you wanted but you have
to be careful as they carry rabies so we didn't get too close.
On our beach stop island there were more monkeys who were even braver and would go right up to the tables of the cafe and steal peoples food and drink! we saw one drinking out of a juice can and another munching on some stolen pringles!
The highlight of the trip though was the eagle feeding, we stopped in a cove area with some other boats and food was chucked in the water and soon enough hoards of eagles were swooping down to eat. It was an incredible sight.
Yesterday we took the ferry to the mainland to get the train to Kuala Lumpur where we are now. We had booked an over night train which took 11 hours and later found out for a little more we could have taken a 40 minute flight! oh well live and learn we're here now...
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dad/george
non-member comment
I thought you liked CATS !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Woose we are in the grips of an extreme FLURRY All say Hello shame about the itnternet connection will get the requested address's sent in jig time when I get your mum to deal with it dad/george