Rent a lunchbox

The posts are a bit behind as our world really has been turned upside down since arriving in Vietnam, Andrea will illustrate that with another post. I'm here to talk about the day we hired a car and roamed around the island of Langkawi.

The island is about the same size as the Isle of White so it really doesn't take that long to get around the island. We hired the box of a car from the grocery shop up the road, don't ask me what make it was 'cause i've never heard of it before...all i can tell you is that it was a lunchbox of a car. I mean really, i could of made a better car out of a Lego set, it's only saving grace was the fact that it had air conditioning and an engine. The first place we headed was the petrol station as it had none, you've gotta pay here before you put the petrol in which is a bit strange, we filled the tank up with 30 ringits worth of fuel...that's less than £5 in real money! We then headed east to the capital of the island, Kuah. It's just barely a town, but it is the only place on the island where there is shopping centers, doctors, chemists and any infrastructure based stuff. We wanted the shopping center but drove straight past and hit a security checkpoint, and then again as we had to turn around. It was actually a customs check for the cars coming of the ferries from Thailand, we managed to blag it by being the dumb westerners :) The shops weren't that good, but saying that Andrea found a dress and I found a postcard. We then headed north to have a look at these two 5 star resorts and see what the beaches offered there, it was pretty quite and posh at the resorts, and to be honest you could of been in a resort anywhere in the world as it was pretty impersonal. We stayed a while, took a photo of a hermit crab walking on my hand and then left for the Langawi cable car. On the way there, we had to stop to let a giant monitor lizard cross the road, Andrea was most impressed.

The cable car place was pretty amazing, the base of the it was almost like one of those factory shopping outlets except that it had a petting zoo, elephant rides, an oriental lake, oh and a cable car. Now Andrea really doesn't like heights, but she'd committed herself to the cable car before she saw it thinking it wouldn't be too bad. I'm not that great with heights but living on the 9th floor of a flat for 6 months has kinda stopped the dizzy feeling you get. However, this brought it all back. After getting in and it started to go up, Andrea could see the elephant rides, and the complex below. After a while though she started looked at the journey to come and had to stop gripping the side rail so tight as her hands kept hurting. The viewing point at the top was fantastic, you could see the whole island, the mainland and even Thailand in the distance to the north. The funny thing was, was that at the top there was adverts saying "Stressed? Then have a reflexology foot massage here". There indeed was a place at the top for a massage. Andrea couldn't appreciate the views or even the foot massage place, she was just worried about the journey back but it wasn't as bad as going up...she survived at any rate.

Leaving there we had one last thing to do before the sun went down and that was go to the north western part of the island to get a peek at this cascading waterfall. Unfortunately, for us it was guarded by a pack of small monkeys. The big male came up and sat on a rock on the path leading up to the waterfall, i took his photo. The flash went off which he didn't like. When it came to us getting passed the bit where he was standing, he leaned forward, growled and made it look like he was gonna jump at me. We backed off a little, then he went back to scratching his bits. So we tried again to get past and he did the same, then him and his whole gang started to appear on the side of the path so we backed away and they followed us back to the start of the path. I could tell you all that they were rabid and had blood dripping from their mouths, but it was just some little monkeys gone bad. :)

After that it was back to the hotel to watch the sunset on the beach, and then we went to a seafood restaurant and had grilled lobster for tea 'cause it was cheap. double yum!