I know it’s hard to feel bad for me right now but I just can’t catch a break with some things! First, the rain follows me from London to Detroit, then from Detroit to Singapore, and bloody now from Singapore to Langkawi! What the funk? Granted it didn’t ruin anything in the first two places (despite my complaints at the time, I think it actually made the Detroit apple picking more fun), but Langkawi was different. My prospects for enjoying this part of the trip were looking seriously grim as so much of what I had planned was dependent on good weather. I was not happy. 

Apparently though, I WAS meant to enjoy my time in Langkawi. After about 3 hours of solid rain, the sky started clearing and eventually the sun came out :) By this point I’d got my bearings and had the lay of the land so I headed to my first beach of the island, Chenang. Beautiful doesn’t do it justice. I made a strange discovery while I was there too. All over the place, there were these elaborate patterns on the sand constructed of what looked like fish eggs. There were so many of them all along the beach and they were all completely different, different patterns, different sizes, different everything but one thing they all had in common was a small hole in the sand somewhere in the pattern. These things were seriously impressive, if a person had made them, they’d be worthy of an exhibition. So there I was, walking around, being careful not to step on any of them and trying to figure out what the hell they were, when all of a sudden, I see movement out of the corner of my eye. Damn, too slow. I keep looking for a while and eventually, I see something really small next to one of the holes, but wait, it’s moving! It’s a tiny little crab! It turns out that these cute tiny crabs had been rolling little balls of sand and fashioning them into elaborate displays around their homes, probably in an attempt to attract females (what other reason do males ever have for doing anything?) 

Later on the beach, while I was walking around looking at prices for things, I realised that everyone was not exaggerating when they told me Singapore is twice as expensive as Malaysia. Really good meals were going for as little as £2. And on the first day, for £160, I managed to arrange a day at Langkawi Canopy Adventures (zip-lining through the rainforest canopy, as well as climbing it, balancing on it and abseiling down it), half an hour of jet-skiing on a 1500cc jet ski, an amazing 6 hour, lunch inclusive, mangrove tour (which basically involved going into a series of caves that the sea feeds into and seeing bats, eagles and crocodiles in their respective natural habitats, feeding exotic fish in the sea, feeding stingray (the thought of which initially creeped me out), chilling out on a beautiful beach and swimming in secluded waters), AND a whole day scuba diving and snorkeling an hour off the coast of Langkawi. Week in Langkawi sorted! I even managed to arrange a few other cool things on the cheap but I’ll let the pictures do the talking for those.

Tuesday morning, I was all set for Langkawi Canopy Adventures, I woke up extra early, had eaten breakfast and had left more than enough time to get there. Or so I thought. It seems that free Malaysian tourists maps are not always produced the high (or even adequate) standards that one might expect. Clearly marked as Langkawi Canopy Adventures on the map, I’d have thought that the place I asked my taxi driver to go would have got me where I needed to be. Instead I ended up at the top of some mountain (Gunung Raya, fact fans) and was out both 100 ringets and an hour of my time for the round trip. I don’t need to tell you I ended up missing the Canopy Adventures people when I actually got to the right place, but thankfully, they graciously offered to let me do what I missed that morning on Friday instead. Minor crisis somewhat averted, I started thinking about what I was going to do with my day instead. I decided to start with the jet skiing and then to head off toward the Langkawi cable car and nearby Telaga Tujah waterfall (apparently the nicest waterfall of the four major ones on the island). None of them disappointed, though the waterfall was the highlight. It was dazzling and swimming in the pools at the bottom was very fun. The only downside was that I kept thinking about those amoebas from freshwater lakes that go up through your nose and eat your brain (thanks Jill!) Hopefully I’m amoeba free. 

More unexpected delights were had on Wednesday. The mangrove tour was exceptional and it helped that I actually learned what a mangrove is! (An inland saltwater area where vegetation uniquely suited to both salt and fresh water environments can grow). This mangrove (as I understand all of them are – the one on Pulau Ubin in Singapore was very similar but much smaller), was a cross between a river and a swamp, a lot like the Everglades in Miami or the Okavango Delta in Botswana but the water in this mangrove was a lot deeper than either of those other places. Just riding through the mangrove and spotting animals on the jet boat was fun enough (the river was pretty wide in places and the boat picked up some serious speed for fun on the bumpy waves, especially later when we got to sea!) but we did so many other things on the tour as well. It was also nice that everyone else in the group was so friendly and talkative. I saw a bunch of cool stuff like the swimming, long tailed macaques (seriously not good for my dreams, I’ve got enough monkey problems as it is) and the deadly shore pit viper, and did cool things like hand feed a stingray, avoid guano in a bat cave and swim at an incredible, secluded beach on the border of Malaysia and Thailand (it was so secluded that we were the only ones there). Later, after the tour ended, I swam at an even more secluded beach (so secluded that I was the only one there!) It was postcard perfect and I can’t imagine a more faultless beach, well actually, now that I say that, there were some troublesome monkeys around… They almost walked off with the stuff I left on the beach but I (just about) managed to swim back in time and see them off before they did any real damage. I didn’t leave any energy for that swim back though, I had to use up all my reserves getting to the beach and was exhausted when I did. If those monkeys had wanted a fight I wouldn’t have been in a state to give them one.

I’m not even sure where to begin with how good scuba diving was (I must be beginning to grate with my use of superlatives in this post but there really aren’t enough for the things I’ve seen here. I’m gonna have to start making up words like Jill!) For a planet that’s over 70% water, there’s a lot of awesomeness out there that most people just don’t ever see. I always knew it was there but seeing it with my own eyes was just something else. Upon arrival at Pulau Payar (the main dive island), an hour after we’d left, the only other solo diver and I hopped onto a small boat with our divemaster to get to the dive site. I had butterflies in my stomach on the ride over and the choppy water didn’t help. This was going to be my first real dive and there was definitely some trepidation as we were gearing up on the way to the dive site. It got worse when we were about to make that first leap into the water and it didn’t get much better when I was actually on the surface. After we started to descend though, all of my worries just drifted away and everything felt right, it felt like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. It’s difficult to explain but I just felt so at peace with myself down there, I’ve always felt comfortable in the water but this was something else, something I haven’t experienced before, not even on my training dives.

I absolutely loved it, every second. I would have lost count if I was trying to keep track of how many different species of fish I saw, I realised after about 10 seconds that that would have been a losing battle. The types of coral too, the only type I recognised was the brain coral but there were dozens or maybe hundreds of different kinds there. There were all these shoals of fish going past too and when I concentrated on them I’d spot hundreds of smaller fish swimming around and between the bigger ones, it was very cool. As were the huge, super camouflaged grouper fish we saw, we even saw a bunch of fish from Finding Nemo! There were loads of Nemos (or clown fish) and anemone around, we also saw plenty of the type of fish that Gil was and I think Dory too. None of the fish seemed to mind us being down there at all, they were swimming right up to us, going through the gaps between our arms and our diving equipment, it was like we weren’t even there. The water was really nice and warm too, I could have stayed down there for ages and completely lost track of time. I was later told that the first dive lasted 40 minutes and the second, 50. Both were to around 20 metres.

I’ve run out of space to tell you about Langkawi Canopy Adventures (Jill’s imposed a 1500 word limit per post – which I’ve already exceeded). Needless to say, flying through the rainforest canopy, high above the ground was incredible. And it doesn’t matter how many harnesses you’re in or how much gear you have on, there is something very disconcerting about being told to lean back when you’re at the top of a 30 metre tree and already have your heels hanging over the edge!

Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur couldn’t possibly live up to Langkawi, and there was so much I didn’t even have the chance to tell you!