Last Days on Langkawi

We survived the night bus and found our hotel very easily. They let us check in at 5am and we were able to have a nap before setting off to explore Kuala Lumpur.  There's apparently been earthquakes in Christchurch but it can't be help.  Fortunately, I don't think our flight will be affected.  We just might have to brush up on our earthquake procedures :S

Dec 21 – Beach Ball

For a bit of a change this morning we went for breakfast at a different place. I had baked beans on toast, it was delicious, a nice change from eggs. After we went in search of a beach toy. We found a pretty cheap beach ball and headed to the beach. We went to our usual spot but the security guards caught on to us today so we were shafted to the beach. We lazed around, but it wasn't too hot out today as it was pretty cloudy which was good since we weren't in the shade. We went into the water and started playing with the beach ball. It was really fun until Beau stepped on a shell and cut his foot :( We headed back to the room so we could clean his foot out and then we went in the pool for a little bit. Afterwards we headed to find some lunch. We went to a different place that was serving Nasi Campur and tried a few different dishes. They had really good butter chicken and whatever else I ate. It was super cheap and super good. We looked into a bus ticket for the morning of the 23^rd and were told they were sold out. We couldn't believe it! They has said to just book a day in advance but here we were two days in advance and no tickets to be seen. We were able to procure a ticket for the night of the 22^nd. This wasn't ideal because we were going to be on a seated bus over night, not conducive to a good night's sleep. Gotta roll with it though. We had to talk to our guesthouse before booking the ticket because we had already paid for the 22^nd but the owner was very nice and gave us our money back. We picked up some beers and Popsicles as a consolation for the bus stress. We skyped Mom, Dad and Elaine in NZ for a bit. They seem as ready for Christmas as you can get without snow. We went out to the Duty Free shop again to check the price of liquor and some clothes. We were going to return to the place we had lunch but they didn't have their Nasi Campur out so we went further up to the place we ate on the first night. We had a yummy Indian meal. We were so full that we decided to forgo our usual dessert and settled for just coffee. It was a little sad to have to do that as it's our last night on Langkawi.

Dec 22

One thing I won't miss on Langkawi is the lumpy pillows at our guesthouse. I get such a kirk in the neck from them! We got ourselves all packed up, breakfasted and checked out by 12am. We grabbed a cab down to the Kuah ferry jetty where a ferry will take us to Kuala Perlis but not 7pm. We dropped our bags at the left luggage department and did some exploring of the ferry terminal and the grounds. There is a great big eagle statue next to the ferry terminal. Langkawi means something like eagle I think, hence the statue. Beau was being goofy, as usual, and I took some pictures of him. We discovered that the Langkawi Fair Mall, the largest mall on Langkawi (mockingly), was near by and spent the rest of the day wandering the mall. We thought we should pick up some clothes that are a little warmer than what we have so we both bought a pair of cheap jeans. We figure when we get tired of carrying them around we'll just ditch them. We also found a few stores selling diving masks. While we had lunch we did some research on the net and decided to buy masks for our Christmas present to ourselves. We are now the proud owners of scuba diving masks, now we need to go diving to test them out! We headed back to the ferry terminal and had a beer on a bench. We grabbed some dinner to go and loaded up onto the ferry. The seats on the ferry were a hodge podge of all different aeroplane seats. We arrived in Kuala Perlis about an hour later and walked the one block to the bus station. We had a short wait and boarded our bus. We were having trouble falling asleep, surprise, so we watched The Hangover 2. It was pretty funny. Would have been a little more perfect if we had actually spent sometime in Bangkok though. We attempted to sleep again and hopefully we'll suceed with a few Z's before arriving.

The Eagle Statue

Goofy demon Beau (the eagles wings are coming out of his head)

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.