South-East Asia

Pulau Langkawi was our last Malaysian station on the way back to Thailand. The weather forecast we read promised rain for a couple of days in a row; we were not discouraged by that and went anyway, and had pretty heavy rain for two days. Langkawi visitors are welcomed by a giant and somewhat kitschy eagle in the islands main port. Apart from that symbol, Langkawi is famous for being a duty free haven, with alcohol and clothes being the cheapest in Malaysia, though in practice, the only real cheap thing we found there was beer for half a dollar the can.

In terms of nature, the island cannot compete with other places we have seen before. The beaches are mainly located in and not outside the villages, the waters are not too clean, and the forest is less tropical than one would expect.

On the other hand, there is pretty much to see here. The crocodile farm with its feeding show and some 4 meter long "dinosaurs" is pretty impressive, especially the moment the trainer puts his arm into the crocs mouth. Also, the snake farm is pretty creepy, and it's a good thing we saw the pictures of snakebites and read about which mean things crawl through the jungle only after we already left the more wild Laos and Cambodia. A 6-meter King Cobra rising up to a full 2 meters in height just in front of you isn't anything I would like to see anywhere except with a one centimeter glass wall between me and the snake.

A visit to the local agricultural park growing exotic fruits brought us a free degustation of about 12 seasonal tasties such as Pomela, Rambutan, Jackfruit, Lychee, Mangosteen, and, worst of all for the rotten taste and smell, Durian, though you can also kill someone by hitting him on the head with that Morningstar-like fruit.

A short day trip by boat took us to some local islands with extremely impudent monkeys - as Vera took out a fruit of a plastic bag to feed them, she got attacked by four or five monkeys which simply ripped apart the plastic back and grabbed what they could - luckily, our valuables were stored elsewhere. Nice to see was the eagle spotting point where you can spot about 60-80 eagles flying over the water, though catching them on a picture is tricky without professional equipment.