Day 49: Langkawi

Mood: Not what it ought to be
Music:  Moby - Wait for me

I recall the overnight train being much bumpier than the last one and this led to a rather bad night sleep. We were woken at 6am when the train made a scheduled stop and from here I decided to play on my ds instead of trying to fight for another few moments of sleep.

The sunrise revealed paddy fields broken with outcrops of palm trees. This was the first real countryside of Malaysia that we'd seen, other than the forest and palm plantations between KL and Melaka. It was quite surreal and rather beautiful in the early morning light. Sadly the windows of the train were too micky to take any decent photos through.

At Arau we left the train and hopped in a taxi to take is down to the ferry terminal at Kuala Perlis. From here we boarded a small passenger ferry to be taken to Langkawi. The sea was almost dead calm and in just over an hour we were on land again trying to find something for breakfast.

A 25 minute taxi ride was all that remained to take us to the Sheraton Beach Resort here on Langkawi. I had a few issues while checking in but I'll not go into that quite yet as they still might resolve the outstanding problems. While waiting to check in I did see some exotic birds and a small troupe of monkeys in the trees behind reception. Photos of them to follow.

The afternoon was split between an hour spent sailing around the coast in a Laser, being sat on a sun lounger reading my book and dipping into the pool to sit by the bar and drink cocktails. It is the latter that Rolf is pictured doing today.

In the evening we watched the sun go down while wondering along the sea front and sipping a quiet beer at the bar, followed by a meal in their spice restaurant (a fusion of Indian, Thai, Malay and Singapore style dishes). The soup I had as a starter would have killed most people with it's aggressive spiciness and even I had to give up after eating most of the solids therein. It was the kind of think that would have Phil sweating from just looking at on the menu! (apologies to those who don't get this reference).

At that point I'll leave you for the day