Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Langkawi

After KL I grabbed a guide book & map for Thailand and jump on the first bus back up to Penang. After about six hours I arrived and stayed the night, getting a ticket for the early morning ferry to Langkawi. With not much sleep I arrived at Langkawi and had to cycle across the island to get to the budget accomodation, thankfully only 20km. Lately my sleep pattern has been a bit crazy, not helped by watching the Confederations Cup in the middle of the night. However when I arrived in Langkawi I made up for some sleep. I dozed off at 5pm woke up a couple of hours later considering dinner, but couldn't be bothered so went back to sleep and woke up the next day at noon, feeling much refreshed!

Langkawi is a curious mixture of fancy posh hotels and cheap duty free. There is only a handful of budget accomodations on the island, the majority is geared towards the high-end. Like the food, instead of fried rice, there is lobster thermidore on the menu, fresh from the dinnerside tank. A bit different from normal anwyay. I had some nice tomato soup with a hunk of fresh brown bread. Tasted very exotic!

I took a stroll down to Underwater World, a comparatively pricey aquarium, still I'll left them off as they had some penguins as well. After trying to take some photos of their fish and seahorses, I went back to the hostel and had a beer. The beer is only 3rm here! In fact in the shops a can of coke and a can of beer is the same price.

Another day I went for a cycle round the island, stopping off at a nice square for a spot to drink and then onto the crocodile farm. Luckily my timing was good and there was a small show starting in 5 minutes. This involved three guys dragging crocodiles about, sitting on them and sticking an arm in his mouth. Then there was somebody feeding the crocodiles. A big bucket of fish didn't last long, the trainer would throw 6 tied together and it would go straight down. A big fat one beside him pestered him for some more, and he got it as he was less than a couple of metres away.

The beaches and water aren't as nice as the islands on the east coast of Malaysia. Bit better after some heavy rain cleared the beach of stuff though. Strangely enough some of the Malaysian guys were watching Bo Selecta back at the hostel. I had a tuna salad makes a nice change from rice or noodles, I even found the olives edible!

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