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SHIIIIIT !!!!!!
Bev trying to ignore Barry's screams for help We loved having the freedom that comes with a car and on our days zooming around Langkawi we managed to see most of the island. We decided that because we’d missed out on the suspension bridge on our visit to the mountain that we’d go back when the weather looked better. We were very lucky to get a day that was cloud free and although it meant Barry had to take a second heart stopping ride on the cable car he forced himself to do it and it turned out to be one of the best days that we had on Langkawi.
We’d heard about a trip that involves a visit to another island close by where you can swim in “The Lake of the pregnant maiden”, apparently if you sip from the lake you get pregnant, who the hell would want to do that? It was lovely to swim in but drinking it after hordes of tourists have done god knows what in it is a different matter!!! We were happy to have a nice cooling swim before getting back on our boat to visit another island where we relaxed on the beach and watched as Russian tourists used
Thats HIGH!!!!
Suspension bridge gives panoramic views of Langkawi the glorious surroundings for their photo shoots……frolicking in the waves in a thong and not much else while the domestic tourists dressed head to foot in swathes of fabric looked on bemused. Next on the itinerary was a trip to the mangroves to feed the eagles, the word ‘Langkawi’ translates to Brown Eagle and we saw loads of them on this particular part of our trip. The captain stopped the boat in a wide open part of the mangroves and threw handfuls of chicken meat overboard, the next thing you know we are surrounded by eagles diving and swooping for the meat, grabbing it up in their massive talons and flying off to a distant tree to munch on their catch, it was an amazing thing to witness but not really doing any favours to the eagles, if this carries on for too long the young will lose their instinct to hunt and will purely rely on tourists feeding them.
Even though we loved our nights drinking at Zackry’s cheap bar, we also felt the need to get out and about and mix with the locals, not an easy task in a place where drinking alcohol is a relatively
Cable Cars, Langkawi
Crossing from one peak to the other hidden activity and the locals don’t actually drink, in actual fact there is no breathalyser test in Langkawi. Should you be stopped while driving they can‘t accuse you of drinking because of your faith, weird huh, but Niamh reckons it will be coming soon. It was on one of these nights we took a chance and popped our heads into the Shamrock Irish bar very close to Zackry’s. (We didn’t drink and drive by the way as the Shamrock was in stumbling distance of our room). Although we didn’t really mix with the locals we met a few ex-pats and had a good few nights chatting to them and the owner of the Shamrock, Steve. Steve along with his Malay wife Debbie run two Irish bars on Langkawi where Steve is also the head chef, he used to be a chef on the QE2 and we can vouch for his culinary skills. If you remember in a previous blog we said that the second thing we’d been yearning for was a Shepherds Pie with chips, well we can scratch off number 2 on that list now, Steve’s was one of the best we’ve ever tasted and after two months of
Height of Suspense
It moves around quite a bit in the breeze eating noodles and rice almost every night it was a very welcome taste to our palates. Barry had a great chat to a guy he met in the Shamrock, he was on the island for a weekend break from his job in KL, turns out he does exactly the same as Barry, but for Shell oil as a contractor and earns £480 a day, needless to say they have swapped e-mails and I begged him for a job (on Barry’s behalf of course). We also got talking to another couple of ex-pats from Manchester and it turned out that they knew a couple that we know from Goa…..small world!!
As our stay on Langkawi came to an end we said goodbye to the friends we’d made and prepared for our trip to Borneo with a stopover on Penang to sample some of Malaysia’s best eats, you can get foods from all over the country in this one place, concentrated around street stalls and food halls we tried a lot of things that we’d read about and both came to the same conclusion, Malaysian food is…. well… a bit bland, not tasteless, just kind of lifeless, you could easily be
blindfolded and try three different dishes but swear it was the same one!! Armed with this new found knowledge we switched our eating to the Indian based street café just around the corner from the hotel where we binged on roti canai, chicken tandoori and other spicy delights, mmmmm!!
Penang was granted UNESCO World Heritage Site status at the same time as Melaka where we had started our trip, it’s a great place if you like buildings showing western colonial history, at times you could believe you were in any number of European cities with British, French and Portuguese architecture dotted around the city walks. There are two things they will tell you not to miss during your visit, Penang Hill and Kek Lok Si temple, both are on the same city bus route and cost 6 ringits return (£1.10 for the two of us) Penang Hill is accessible by a funicular railway built by the British before they left the island, at the top there is a small community with a Hindu temple and a Mosque and a couple of hotels serving afternoon tea. The view of the city from the top is great but it’s the
Cable cars and coastline, Langkawi
Don't look down if you have a height phobia ride on the funicular that gets the real thumbs up, the locals as well as the tourists use the train to get up and down the hill with their heavy loads of groceries, they jump off at opportune moments and disappear along tracks towards their small stilted houses that seem to sit precariously on the hillside. Perched atop of another section of hill sits Kek Lok Si Temple, a massive complex of pagodas and shrines. You first have to meander through a million and one market stalls to get to the actual temple but its well worth the hassle and the tiring climb when you reach the colourful entrance. As temples go this one is very impressive and will be even more so when the construction of an enormous statue of Guan Yin Bodhisattva is completed, the statue will stand at 120 feet tall and will be the tallest of its kind in the world.
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Chris and Les
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Your grins were so wide when.......................
You eventually got that shepherds pie and chips. It looks as if you are having a great time. We really enjoy reading your blogs. When are you coming back to old Blighty? xx