Langkawi, Malaysia

Dec 27- Finding a new Guesthouse! in Langkawi
So we got up this morning to go look for a new guesthouse at about 8:30 in the morning. We started wandering around but then decided that it was a bit too early for normal people to be up in the morning without eating and found this Indian food place that serves one of our newly found favorite breakfasts, roti. Roti is delicious. It is a dough stretched paper thin (the guy making it often looks like he's making pizza) and then folded, allowed to rise a bit, and cooked with oil on a flat grill. Its loosely similar to a pancake, only its full of eggs or chicken or lamb and comes with delicious dipping sauces (red and yellow... I think tomato and some kind of curry, not really sure). After eating an egg and onion roti and a chicken roti, we walked around and find a guesthouse for half the price we'd paid the previous night and happily found our way to the beach. After about 45 minutes of beach time we packed up our bags and switched hotels. After all this strenuous work, we decided it was again time for some beach relaxation, only this time with a beer in hand. Eventually we decided that it was time for a shower and some dinner and found ourselves at the same Indian food place for dinner (it was delicious and cheap, the latter hard to find on resort-oriented Langkawi). With our bellies bursting, we decided we needed to relax by the beach again with a beer and before too long were tired and called it a day.

Dec 28- Exploring Langkawi
Today we got up and rented a motobike and headed towards the port city of Kuah on Pulau Langkawi to buy our onward ferry tickets. About 45 minutes after leaving Pentai Cenang (where we were staying, the nicest beach of the island) we had our tickets in hand. After some lunch in Kuah (half the price as food near the beach) we headed out on a tour of the island via moto. First we tried to go to the bat caves, but they were along a river, and the boat tour was really expensive so that plan was vetoed. Next we went to a waterfall that was pretty cool, but we'd seen a lot of waterfalls and didn't spend too much time there. Our third stop was at a beautiful beach that was pretty much deserted, which was cool. We were even stopped halfway along the beach by a 4 seasons hotel security guard, who informed us that the rest was private beach. Wanting to make the most of our day, we didn't spend much time at this beach (it takes a lot of time to travel to each of these destinations, like 20-30 minutes in between each destination). Our next stop was at a black sand beach, where the the sand on the beach is actually black (caused by excess tourmaline and ilmenite, in case anyone wanted to know). Its really pretty awesome (although not a beach for lounging). Apparently the local legend is that the black sand is the result of a war between the ocean and land kingdoms long ago, where the land people burned huge bonfires on the beach to make the ocean kingdom think there were thousands of land soldiers waiting for them on the beach. This turned out to be key in the land kingdom's victory but at the cost of staining the sand black forever. After checking out the black sand we decided we wanted to head over to this place with "7 pools" where you can slide down into them. We slid down the river along the rocks, and carefully halted at the fence, where the river turned into a waterfall. Unfortunately, as we started walking down (it was a long climb up some stairs to get there) it started pouring rain on us and we got absolutely soaked. We took refuge for a while and eventually made our way back to our motorbike (where someone had thoughtfully turned our helmets over so they weren't giant cups during the rain). The moto home was long and cold, but Steph saw two amazing malaysian Rhinoceros Hornbill (click here to see how cool it is) as they flew by!! Phil missed it because he was driving :-(. Eventually we made it back to our hotel where a shower and much needed nap awaited us (we were exhausted). After a brief outing for some dinner, we called it a night.

Dec 29- Goodbye Langkawi, Hello Georgetown
Today we slept in and briefly went back to the beach for a picture, but since it was cloudy, we didn't stay long. After a quick shower and some packing, we checked out of our hotel and grabbed a taxi to the port. It turns out that today there was a detour on the road we wanted to take and ended up getting on the ferry only 5 minutes before it left (after of course freaking out in the customs security line). It was a fairly uneventful 3 hour boat ride to Georgetown (although I was watching a pretty neat subtitled movie about Thai boxing. Tons of intrigue, crime, death, marriage, violence, the whole works). Once we got to Georgetown, we promptly told the taxi driver the name of a guesthouse which turned out to be completely full. Steph and I were getting ready for another long guesthouse searching session, but were stopped by this guy on a moto who told us of a guesthouse around the corner with rooms. So we go and check in at this place and were quite happy because it was only $7.33 for the room. While we were sitting in this room this guy (in a towel, just got out of the shower) hears our American accents and asks us where we're from. We learn that he is from Brooklyn and this quickly turns into about an hour or more conversation with this guy. Apparently he is a "traveling monk" who has had quite the last 10 years of monk hood. He started in California, but basically got the boot from his monastery there (because he was white) and left with only his robe and alms bucket. He ended up homeless and chilled with the hippies in Berkeley for a while before someone gave him money for a one way ticket to Thailand to hopefully switch from Novice monk to fully ordained. Once he landed in Thailand, the senior monk at this temple offered to be his mentor but wanted sexual favors in exchange. Since that wasn't really a good deal, Brother Mark left that temple immediately and eventually found a good place in the mountains to become fully ordained. After that he's been traveling around staying in temples for the most part (apparently as a monk you usually get 1-2 weeks free per temple, that's a lot of traveling in this part of the world). Anyways, a long conversation later, we were starving and went in search of some food and eventually went to bed.

wanna see more pictures of our adventures on Langkawi? click here