Lang Kawi

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After leaving Penang I boarded a 3 hour bus filled mostly with Malaysian locals to the island of Lang Kawi.

Before entering Lang Kawi (LK) I had spoken to a few friends about it who told me it was quiet and on the most part, a place to relax and not do very much. Upon arriving I sought out a cheap room in the Oriental Village in the mountains, far away from the main town. I thought that this would be ideal as it would provide a quiet place to study, whilst at the same time i could commute with the main town via moped.

The Oriental Village is in essence a small Malaysian zoo/amusement park, they have various attractions which range from cable car rides to stroking and feeding a small army of rabbits. The setting was picturesque, mountains dwarfed the village and there were streams which trickled around the village providing a constant ambience. The only downside was that at night when the village closed it became very hard to entertain myself, I found myself watching old tv shows recorded on my laptop and for the first time since i left England i gained inspiration to work out, mainly through boredom. After one night i became too lonely and moved on, early in the morning i rose and took the first cab i could find to Gecko Guesthouse.

No sooner than i walked into Gecko I was shocked to find that an old travelling companion had taken residence here, i met Joe in Thailand 4 years earlier and hadnt spoken to him since. It was obvious when i walked in that this hostel was completely different to the last, it was thriving with conversation and the dorms were full with tourists from around the world. Joe had already arranged a motorbike trip around the island with the rest of the hotel guests, as i was socially starved i decided to go despite the cost, and my tendency to fall off of mopeds.

We all walked to the rental place and I inspected my bike with the local Malaysian shop owner, the bike was trashed and he held up a diagram of a moped....on which he scribbled the locations of the damages. He might aswell have just drawn a big black line through the whole sheet, i couldnt find one spot that hadnt been damaged... this filled me with confidence that motorbike accidents on Lang Kawi were rare :S. Everybody paired up and a Swedish girl jumped on the back of my moped. I joked with her that we might crash, it seemed all in good banter and she seemed to find it funny. I usually try to avoid mopeds, mainly because I day dream alot and pay very little attention to the road, secondly I have a tendency to see every trip as a race.

We left the shop on five mopeds, each carried two people, 1 boy and 1 girl. Me and the Swedish girl were the second moped, we trailed Joe for little over five minutes before the day dreaming began. Seconds later we were on the floor and i had crashed. Joe had started to turn without indicators and because i was so close to him i had to slam on my breaks, the Swedish girl was laying on the floor screaming 'I CANT MOVE MY LEGS AHH'....I had been at the hostel under an hour and already i had broken the legs of a Swedish girl. My arm and leg was cut but they were just small grazes, I had little time to worry about my wounds before some passing tourists carried the screaming Swedish girl to a taxi. Her friend left with her and I was left with an echoing guilt. Despite this i continued on with the rest of the bike gang, mainly because by the time i had cleaned my wounds the taxi was long gone and also I did not want to do anything drastic as in a way i felt confined by the awkwardness of the situation.

We arrived at the waterfall and I got to know the remaining people a bit better, everyone seemed really cool although the waterfall wasnt very impressive. We spent the rest of the day driving to various private beaches around the island. Everyone drove at a much slower pace now for some reason....

I arrived back at the hostel at around 6pm after picking up a bottle of Absolut Vodka from the duty free store at an insane price of 7 pounds. I was relieved to find the Swedish girl at the hostel, she was in good spirits and did not blame me for the crash, although it was obviously my fault. She was on crutches and to rectify the situation i told her that she could share the vodka and we would drink away our injuries together.

Lang Kawi as an island is fairly boring, anyone travelling to Lang Kawi can expect 1 day of excitement when travelling around, the rest of the time can be filled with relaxing and socialising. The main reason why i enjoyed Lang Kawi profusely was because by chance my dorm was filled with an enjoyable mix of different characters from countries all over the world.

After 11 days most of the characters had left and Lang Kawi was revealed to me as a lifeless island, although i had a great time there I will not be returning. I left to Penang stayed one night and then hoped on a free ferry to Butterworth, after this I took a half a day long bus to Kota Bhuru where I am currently waiting to catch the morning train to Taman Negara....

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