3 Days ago
We spent most of the morning swimming on the beach when suddenly this huge storm hit, and I mean enormous. I thought we were hit by some pretty bad weather before, but this was extreme. We watched it drifting over the distant water, a smudge of dark grey, and eventually decided to get out of the water because it probably wasn't safe. About three minutes later it reached us.
This rain was torrential, accompanied by strong winds. We didn't have the forsight to leave the beach and find proper shelter, we were just under beach umbrellas, but after a couple of minutes we knew we had to get somewhere more sheltered, there wasn't even a gap of a second between the flash of lightning and the thunder. We ran to the beach cafe and waited there, drenched, for the storm to end, but it just carried on and on. The beach cafe extends along the beach on a raised platform, looking out to sea. While we were waiting there a sudden gust of wind shook the place and all the waiters hid behind the tables. that encouraged us.
In the end we ran back to our room, which was a little chalet with a view of the sea, but sheltered among the trees. We sat on the balcony watching the rain but then all eventually fell asleep.
That evening, when we had all woken up and dried off properly, we went to the night market at Kuah. A lot of it was quite ramshackle, or soley aimed at tourists, but it was great seeing the island outside of the resort. We saw the shops and Chloe bought a bag. I was adventurous and bought some hair clips... but they were NICE hairclips...
The currency here is RM, Ringgit Malasia, and the exchange rate is roughly 6.5 RMs per pound (there's no pound sign on this computer! I shouldn't be shocked, I am in Singapore), things here are incredibly cheap, as long as you don't go for the big souvenir shops.
2 Days ago
We wandered down from our resort, the Berjaya, to the Oriental Village; a tourist village basically made only of souvenir shops and other attractions, so we had a look around, Chloe bought some useless junk and dad bought a Langkawi hat, of which I am very jealous. Then we found some little fenced off areas full of rabbits, so we felt compelled to chase after them and torture them by picking them up and shrieking "Awwwwwhhhh" in their ears. Then we went on an elephant ride.Yes.
That's right.
An elephant ride.
It was 20 minutes through the rainforest and it was FANTASTIC, although reeeaally quite painful. We were sitting pretty much on the elephant's spine, and even though it was an amazing experience, I don't think I would do it again. The elephant had to carry the driver, my dad, my sister, AND me, and I really felt like it was struggling. It was fed often, but from what I saw, mostly on white bread. The driver also had a plastic stick with a metal hook on the end, and the elephant had three suspiciously round injuries on him, probably inflicted when he was misbehaving but it's so hard to be sure how well looked after the animals are. It just can't be the best life for an elephant, ferrying people around the same track hour after hour, day after day in the heat. Anyway, I hope I'm wrong about it. It was great, but it made me worry about animal welfare there.
So. Later. We... uhh... oh god what did we do?! Oh yes. Later we went on a walk with Dev. After a few hours of swimming, of course, we met up with a few people from the resort and a conservationalist who works with the resorts to find compromises to help the resorts to work with the surrounding nature, rather than try to mould it to their own requirements. This man is Dev. He took us (me, Chloe and about 8 other people from the resort) on a walk, just around the chalets, not leaving the grounds, and showed us how we were still completely in the rainforest, even if it felt like we were away from it, in civilisation. We saw geckos and flying lemurs (one baby one "lightening its load", it was really weird, they fold their tails forwards around themselves), monkeys and pygmy squirrels and lots and lots of bats. There are so many bats around that there are very few mosquitos; a sign of a well-balanced rainforest. It was a great tour and I learnt so much about the ecosystem, the sort of stuff I want to study for the rest of my life.
Yesterday
This could have been one of the best days of my life. We went for a boat tour through the mangrove swamps, again with Dev. there were only about 10 of us on the boat, we all talked together and got along really well, and we travelled through the mangroved seeing the most incredible things. We saw poisonous snakes and spiders, visited a bat cave, saw a monitor lizard swimming across the river, watched dingos hunt and monkeys climbing through the trees, saw eagles fishing and eventually reached the sea, where we looked across the water to Thailand, only 8 hours away by canoe.
We ate lunch on a floating restaurant/fish farm, and saw coral fish and red snappers, several different type of ray and a horseshoe crab, it's quite an odd-looking creature but it's old as the dinosaurs.
When we got back it was still early afternoon and we, of course, went for a swim. We went for a drink at a cafe down the beach called the Seashell Beach Cafe, which has a pirate flag flying outside, so of course I would love it, and the most beautiful view of the sea I have ever seen. I can't describe it properly here so you'll have to wait for the photos. Me and Chloe swum there and back along the beach while Mum and Dad chose instead to wade across the stream separating the Berjaya from the other resort containing the cafe. That stream would prevent us from reaching there later.
As it got dark I went for another walk around the grounds with Mum and Dad, trying to mimic Dev's technique for spotting wildlife and we saw quite a lot; the two best things were what I think was a pygmy squirrel... in fact I can check right now with google.... It seems it was NOT a pygmy squirrel. It was the size of a smallish monkey with a face a bit like a lemur, quite big eyes, and it was brownish-red with a long tail. If anyone can help me out with identifying it that would be really appreciated. The other great thing we saw was a flying lemur. Yes, yes we'd seen them many times before but this time was special because after we had watched it for about a minute, it flew right above our heads. All four of its paws, plus its tail are joined together to make the "wings" with is really just one big stretchy bit of skin all around it. Weird but beautiful.
Later on, when it was properly dark, we tried to get back to the Seashell cafe, but in the pitch darkness we didn't dare cross the stream. Oh how i wish we'd taken a torch, it looked like there was a real party going on there. We were stopped by a bit of water and weed and the fear of crocodiles, even though they wouldn't swim that far down to the sea.
It's 1:32am right now and I am TIRED but...
Today:
We went back to the Oriental village and up the cable car to the top of the Island. We could see everything up there; the different resorts and beaches surrounded by the constant and complete canopy of trees. It was mind boggling to think that every little burst of green was an individual tree rather than just part of this huge green blanket lying across the island.
We looked around Langkawi with binoculars from the observation deck, and then walked across the suspension bridge. At then end was a flight of stairs, and I remembered a walk that Dev had advised, so we walked from the top station to the mid-station through the rainforest, being deafened by cicadas and avoiding spider webs. I got quite nervous when I begun to suspect that I had got the directions wrong, but it was definitely a walk worth doing. In the end I was right, we were meant take the left turning, and I'm really quite glad that I got that right. If not, I may not have been here writing this...
Actually I would have been, they were labelled paths, it wasn't like we were trekking through the undergrowth with machetes.
Guess what we did later? That's right! We went swimming. I am now officially sunburnt and am feeling the effects as my skin starts to itch. Damn UV light allergy. Luckily we're on our way to the winter in NZ.
We went straight from the beach to the airport, so i arrived there still in my bikini. Good idea? No. I am luckily now changed into dry clothes.
So I'm at Singapore airport now, waiting for my flight to Auckland. The rest of the family are asleep, apart from Chris who is still in England, but It's 1:40am and I'm still here. I really need to get some sleep so that I can stay awake for the flight tomorrow and therefore hopefully avoid jetlag. Yeah right, I wish.
I think this is probably long enough now, well done anyone that has read the whole thing. I think I'm going to try and get some sleep now. It's not very likely that I'll manage that though, seeing as how I'm in the middle of a still-bustling airport. I guess I could just go to swimming pool... or one of the cinemas... oh dear, poor me there's just too much choice.
I really AM missing you all, I had a really good conversation with Becky and Cecily earlier, but it just made me realise how MUCH I miss you. And it's lots.
Love
Holly
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
P.S. arghhh the sound of the TVs combined with the video games and loudspeaker and people playing projector-on-floor-magic-computer football and random people shouting and various different songs from various different shops is DEFINITELY going to stop me from sleeping. Oh and now Chloe's up and wants to play video games. Hurrah...?
NEW ZEALAND TOMORROW :D
