Ahhh the Beach

We've just been chilling on the beach the past few days.  It's been awesome.  We've gotten a little pink but no burns, just need to be more vigilant about reapplying the sun screen!

Dec 15 – Puala Langkawi

Upon arrival in Hat Yai we quickly got off the train and went to the ticket booth where we were able to purchase “standee” tickets for the same train we were on that was continuing through Malaysia. The first two cars disengaged from the rest and they were the only ones to go on. We got on the train and asked a young Australian couple if we could sit with them, by this time all the beds had been folded back into seats so there was room for twice as many people. Our Thai exit customs and Malaysian entrance customs went off without a hitch. We arrived in Alor Setar around noon. We didn't realize what a small train station we were getting off at and were a little confused at first. A German couple had gotten off the train too so we pooled our resources, talked to some locals and got a cab to the ferry terminal to take us to Pulau Langkawi. We made the 1:30 ferry just in time, it would have sucked to wait around for the next one at 3pm. We got a taxi once we were off the ferry to Pantai Cenang, a beach town. We were dropped off at a guesthouse which turned out to be full along with the other 6 guesthouses we tried. We finally found a room for the astronomical price of 70 Ringgit, or $23.33. We weren't quite prepared for those kind of prices. We took the room and decided we'd look around for something cheaper for tomorrow. We walked to the Cenang strip trying to find another room. Cenang is essentially a road that runs parallel to the ocean with buildings on either side so you can't actually see the water. We had only marginal luck finding another room but we figured some might be available tomorrow and the guesthouses just didn't know yet. I did something silly though and wore my new flip flops for all this traipsing around town and ended up with blisters on my toes. Silly me. After we ate and I changed shoes we walked the opposite direction down the road and Beau found a $100 American. Lucky us!! We were still a little hungry since, besides what we had earlier, breakfast and lunch had consisted of crackers. We went to a little Indian/Malaysian restaurant, a pretty common combo here. The Malaysians have very different eating habits, they use their hands to eat everything. So the just pick up a handful of fried rice and shove it in their mouth. Not the most elegant way to eat, I think I'll stick to a fork. It was nice to sleep in a real bed.

Dec 16 – To the Beach

We had a lovely sleep in our overpriced room. We knew we couldn't keep paying this much so we set off for breakfast and a new room. Fortunately we struck gold and the first place we checked had a room coming available as did the second places. We got some breakfast and headed back in hopes the people had checked out, they hadn't yet but the lady let us have a quick peek at the room. It was good enough, no hot water though or internet. It does have A/C, is about 25 ringgit cheaper and has a pool. We told her we'd take it so we packed up our goods and checked out of our other hotel. The room still needed to be cleaned but we were able to leave our bags in the room and headed to the beach. The beach is fully lined with hotels but we found a little break between buildings we could walk down. The beach is beautiful with gorgeous white sandy beaches. We sat on the sand for a bit then had to go swimming since it was so hot. The water is very warm here. We were outside of some sort of resort that had a bunch of empty beach chairs in the shade of palm trees. So we snag two since no one was using them. Down the beach it looked like a building had caught fire. There were huge plumes of smoke and we heard sirens. They did get it put out. After sitting in the shade a bit and going for another swim we were hungry for some lunch. We walked down the beach and found a reasonably priced restaurant. After eating we continued our walk of the beach to see what else there was. Mostly it was hotels and water-sport places trying to rent out jet-skis. We asked about diving at one of these and the guy said 300 ringgit, or $100. Seems high but I think it's because there is only one diving area and it's a 30km boat ride away. We were feeling a little crisp so we headed back in and went to our pool for a little bit. We got cleaned up and realized we both had caught a wee bit too much sun. We were both a little pink in the face and else where. We headed out for dinner. Most food is some sort of fried rice dish, nasi goreng. I'm started to get a little tired of rice. We saw the building that had caught fire, it was a short building on the road that housed all sorts of different shops. One of the shops caught fire somehow but I don't think it spread to the other ones, although they will have suffered smoke damage. After dinner we went to another restaurant to use their internet and had coffee and dessert to go with. Many places don't sell beer, probably due to the high Muslim population, so we settled for ice cream, not a bad trade off.

Smoke for the fire

Some islands seen from the beach

The mountains in the background have a big cable car.