At the Beach (Sunday 4:00 pm)
I finally made it to get into some writing now. We had a smooth journey to the island. Although the bus left KL late we arrived in Kuala Perlis early in the morning and got a ferry over to the island a few minutes later.
We couldn't check into our rooms, when we arrived at Charlie Motel. So we went for some breakfast, but they didn’t have much of the stuff, which was on the card - so no pancakes for Max and me. After we could store our luggage in one room we went out for some shopping. Since Langkawi is duty free place, beer is really cheap here, so we bought a pallet (some twenty-four cans) and drank it at the beach later.
We had fun at the beach building a fortress (we pretended beeing Dutch..) to defend the island against a Japanese submarine. We also got support form a Texan republican, but since he had left service at the army some years ago he wasn't of that much help. So the battle was lost although we captured one member of the Japanese Crew - the next day the submarine ws still at it's original place, but our fortress was destroyed...
In the evening we went for some decent food, we had to walk a little, because the main beach with many restaurants was a few minutes away. We had some quite good dinner at a place, which name I don't remember and visited the Reggae café afterwards. This is a really nice place spend the evening. The beer was only MYR4 and there is live music. Although the head of the Reggae band looked really stoned he managed to give a good show. My boys managed to get real happy, and I had some nice talk with an Australian girl form Melbourne, who is visiting Malaysia for a 3 months holiday.
We left the bar really late and had another beer at the front of our small "witch-house", so it wasn't that easy to get up this morning. The weather wasn’t that nice at the start - we had to go into the warm sea, to protect from the cold rain. But right now sun is back and I got to wear a shirt at the beach to protect my skin (which already got a small sunburn on Saturday).
We have a low tight right now, and the boys are having fun in the water. Guess I will join them in a minute, since they already made fun of me sitting at the beach and typing this text.

About Langkawi
Before 1986 Langkawi was a small undeveloped island, which had probably it's biggest income out of smuggling from Thailand, which is only half an hour away by boat. But t hen thne Malaysian government decided to make it into a duty free area and the development to create a mayor holiday resort started. An airport was given to the island, and some funds for investors to create attractions and hotels. Now not more than 20 years later the island IS one of Malaysia's major holiday resorts. A little more south than Phuket the island was more shielded by Indonesia, when the tsunami in 2004 hit the beaches in south east. So only a wave of about one meter height crashed into the island, and didn't do much damage. But still the locals say, they have less tourists after the tsunami.

At the Beach, again! (Monday 1:30pm)
We got late Check out for one of our rooms, so we don't have to worry about our belongings and have another relaxed afternoon at the beach.
Yesterday evening I got a long call from Lars. Since I hadn't heard anything from him for a while I was really happy. After dinner we went to the reggea café again, this time we even danced, but only for one song. Ok, the battery of my PDA is already overheated, and some flies bug me, so I will go for a last swim for today. Later we have to pay the shopping center a small visit and buy some duty free alcohol.

Airport Lounge (Sunday 5:05pm)
We made it to the airport in time, but flying Airasia is like flying Ryanair.. So our plane is late and will not arrive at the airport befor 17:45.. So we are delayed at least half an hour. No Problem for me, but Dirk has to prepare a few things in office later, so he is not that happy. Right now a Chinese soap opera with Malayan subtitles, which runs on the TV at the departure hall, bugs me.. Do the Malayan people even imagine how crazy some of their shows appear to someone from abroad? Anyway, I was told, that Indian TV is even worse. Ben and Dirk moved to the smoking zone of the airport right, which is nothing more than a pretty small separated room at the edge of the waiting hall.

Thx to our PPA Chairman for giving us a ride home from KLIA to PJ. On the way back home we made a short stop for some decent burgers, which we couldn't get on Langkawi.. Vive la Burger King..

This entry was posted by Jürgen Hösch on Tuesday, May 24. 2005 at 07:26. and is filed under Travel. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own blog.