July 31st
Malaysia – Kualar Lumpur -> Melacca

I was awoken from the strangest dream (something about Sting having an argument with one of the guys from slipknot about whose skin was smoother from using baby oil or something ridiculous like that). From there I spent half the morning playing Jeanne D’arc on PSP until it was time to go out , we were going out to our future hotel to drop our bags off and then off to Melacca (an area of Malaysia which has alot of history) via coach , dropped our bags off at the ‘Royal Bintang’ and then went to the coach station – where all of the coaches are privately owned and they all sell their tickets through ticket counters , of which there are fifty or so and then there are salesmen pestering you CONSTANTLY whilst you walk towards the ticket counter , my dad turned away about 8 or so salesmen trying to offer him cheap coach tickets before we got to an official ticket counter…

The coach had no suspension whatsoever , the wheels were pretty much welded straight onto the frame – this was obviously rather unsavoury considering our coach to Melacca was going to take 2 hours. 15 Minutes into the trip I started feeling sick , but thankfully somehow managed to fall asleep until we arrived.
We took a taxi to our hotel here , the Hotel Equatorial – a 4 star hotel apparently , although our room doesn’t really look that fancy if i’m honest (there isn’t even a dial to control air-con temperature)
We do get a nice view though..

We had lunch at a nearby mall , it was horribly mediocre – didn’t bother taking a picture.
After walking around Melacca some , I wasn’t sure whether to think we were in a developed area or a rural area… there were alot of old buildings around but at the same time parts were pretty well developed , supermalls with air conditioning and pristine tiles and all that , on the other hand not many of the restaurants here have heard of air-con.. or washing up liquid for that matter..
Heres a general panorama shot of what it looked like outdoors

We walked for a bit and then saw those bicycle rickshaw things riding along , they were nicely decorated with flowers and tinsel and lights and even had music on alot of them with loud speakers and such – these things were everywhere and would usually come in packs of 2 or 3 , with one blaring loud music and the others following close like some sort of fighter jet formation.

Id also like to point out 3 of the bike rickshaws with younger drivers had super beast speakers and were blaring out really loud bassy hardcore music – I’m going to try and upload a video of it here but im not sure if it’ll work or be a link or whatever since im pre-typing this on a laptop and not on wordpress.

video-0005

I will also upload a longer 2 minute video of the ride at some point but it’ll have to be afterwards since its 20mb.

The rickshaw dropped us off outside some sort of Malaysian history museum , which I quickly hurried my family through – it was about as entertaining as a trip to the grandparents (negative entertainment value). From there we decided to check out the castle where the british fought off the portugese and turned Malaysia into a british colony or something like that? It was a long walk up some stone steps but we eventually reached it , as usual for castles there was a nice view from the top

The castle itself wasn’t much like to look at , more of a fort actually than a castle as it was pretty small – that or half of it had been asploded or something at some point

After this we cooled off in the mall and had a drink by the fountain and then went to the church , to not check around as it was closed so we hung around outside where all the rickshaws hang out – this is where I filmed the video earlier.
I also bought 2 pairs of Nunchaku here , 1 foam padded practice set and one rather nice looking polished wood set.

From here we went to ‘jonker walk’ , essentially another Petalling street market sorta deal. It was standard marketty street sorta stuff , didn’t buy anything – brother managed to convince the parents to let him buy a wooden katana.
Dinner was at a supposedly famous place , Famosa chicken rice ball shop.
It was basically a ball of rice which had been boiled in chicken stock soup to give it a nice flavour , eating it with some actual chicken and some soya sauce was amazing , considering its just a… well.. a ball of rice… Yummy stuff.

Outside nearby was some sort of open karaoke thing on a stage going on , also a nice opportunity for another panorama picture..

On the walk home we saw some crazy Chinese guy – who is also famous apparently (can probably find him on youtube if you search ‘finger poke coconut’ or something to that effect) , he sells his own brand of muscle relief oil and was advertising it by doing what he does best..
According to my dad he holds the world record for… penetrating the most coconuts using one finger in 1 minute…
A long build up and then he went all kung fu on us , hopped onto two pots started yelling and jabbed the coconut 3 times with his forefinger and broke through , coconut water exploding out. He walked around with the coconut stuck onto his finger like some sort of oversized ring to show the audience and then called his two assistants who spent like a minute holding trying to get the coconut off from his finger.
He walked around again to show the audience his finger , swollen… near broken looking.. lumpy.. He poured his oil onto it and such. We stopped watching soon after because he was taking ages to do anything.

Back to the mall to get some drinks and fruits and then to the hotel where im typing this , not sure whats planned tomorrow but watching X-games on TV atm.

July 30th
Kualar Lumpur – 1 Utama Mall

In all honesty we really didn’t do a whole lot today…
A late wakeup in the morning followed by a taxi ride to 1 Utama Mall , the mall we had a quick look around with my uncle on our first night in KL. We walked around alot and browsed the shops , for the most part all we did today was clothes shopping – its all pretty cheap here so may as well.
Random things I noted was that there is a small rainforest area inside the mall (it kinda opens up into a small park area and then there is random rainforesty bit)

We also sampled alot of foods , I say we , I mean I did..
I tried a cinnabon, a red bean puff thing , some of my dads chewy bun thing , a doughnut – of which there were a ton of different crazy looking flavours and such…

Lunch was another Laksa , a curry laksa this time which wasn’t as bad as the asam laksa i had last time.

And for dinner was crispy noodles with pork , the drink was red bean with sago <3

And then.. yeah. Thats about it really. Pretty uneventful day.

July 29th
Kualar Lumpur – Central Market / Sungai Wang Mall / Petalling Street Market

In the morning we went to ‘Central Market’ , which can be described as the polar opposite of yesterdays Low Yat Plaza (IT mall) – this market was full of hand crafted stuff , paintings , statues , woven silk clothes and other literal crap.

Id say this picture sums it up pretty well..

The best thing about this place however was the fish spa – 5 RM (Bout £1) for 10 minutes , we decided to give it a go. There were 2 pools of water , one had larger fish and one had teeny tiny fish – both love feet.
I Went for the larger fish pool , I slowly lowered my bare feet into the water…
and quickly pulled them the fuck back out.
Dozens of fish swarmed my feet , nibbling away at dead skin cells. It was a new level of ticklish , a few dozen tiny wet fish wriggling around all around both of your feet.

Lunch was a rather mediocre sizzling chicken with crispy dumplings and egg noodles in sauce , its impressive that such a dark sauce could have so little flavour.

We journied back to Times Square mall , we thought instead of using the (really cheap) taxi’s we’d try and use the trains and monorail , both of which run overground – suspended above the streets and weave around buildings and such.
The trains here also have open fronts with a window , which allows for a rather awesome view that ive never experience before..

First Person Train Driver View!

In Times Square we just went to use the internet cafe again , after checking mail , facebook and blog (all of which had no comments/mail/notices =[ ) I checked for MP3 player reviews, the Creative Zen Mozaic is looking pretty good atm – cheap and cheery. I spent the rest of the hour time playing Demigod – which was pretty much WC3 DOTA or like a really slow Diablo game.
On the way out before we went to Sungai Wang plaza we got some buns from ‘Bread Story’ , a chain we also saw in Singapore – Chinese buns are awesome , usually sweet but can also be savoury and filled with all sorts of goodness , personal favourites are the Kaya filled buns and the ones with Meat Floss on.

At sungai wang we didn’t do a whole lot , just browsed around the shops and such , my dad was looking for some pirate DVD’s but we couldn’t find anywhere that sold them – when we came 5 years ago there were full shopfronts just selling pirate DVD’s blatently out in the open , now there were none..
Eventually my dad decided to actually ask one of the ‘legit’ DVD shops… at first he acted like he didn’t know what dad was talking about but after seeing my little brother he shiftily moved to the back of the store and opened a locked door to a back room…
Inside was a single round table with some chairs and 4 DVD binders filled with the latest films – they operate by you taking the cover out of the binder and putting it aside then afterwards they’ll get the films for you and put it in a sleeve , DVD’s here were 8 RM each but dad bought quite a few… like 26 or something.. so they gave him 6 free (Ended up spending around £25 on pirate films)

Final stop of the day after a homecooked meal by a relative was Petalling Street , sort of like Chinatown but nightime market edition. Rows upon rows of market stalls selling (Id like to point out that all of the following are fake designer stuff , eg rolex/Gucci/D&G… ) pens , handbags , jewlery , purses , shirts , suits , watches , games (Pokemon Lugia’s Ocean for the GBA anyone?). I bought a small clock for 10 RM (bartered down from 25 RM) and some shirts , was also tempted to buy a lazer pen , a pocket knife and a pocket blowtorch but decided against it.

Thats it for today , oh – I also finished Star Ocean First Departure for the PSP last night :< only lasted 15 hours or so (I started it on the plane to Singapore) , Dont know what to play now…

July 28th
Kualar Lumpur – Times square shopping mall / Low Yat Plaza

Today was somewhere inbetween eventful and really uneventful , depending on how you look at it we sorta didn’t do much at all today…
A late start and a taxi ride to Times square shopping mall , a mall which was somewhat on the large side… And by that i mean…

It has 10 floors up , 1 basement level and then about 4 basement levels worth of car park. This place is gigantic. As usual for this holiday blog , the first ‘important’ point of order was the finding of food – thankfully most of the food was congregated on the ground , lower ground , 3rd and 10th floors…
We ended up going to a small cafe like restaurant called the lemongrass cafe or something like that , I ordered ‘asam Laksa’ , ‘Laksa’ is a Malaysian dish which is curry noodles with sardines and crunchy veg like onions/cucumber and some pineapple on the side , normal Laksa is known for being really spicy – I soon found out that ‘Asam’ meant spicy… I ordered the ‘Spicy’ spicy curry noodle dish. FML.

It will burn you.

It was too hot to be enjoyable , which was a shame. And all the stuff i ate afterwards had a generic ‘lava’ taste to it. Whilst eating lunch we noticed a thundering sound every now and then , our seats rumbled a little… we were on the 3rd floor inside a giant shopping mall and being rumbled through the building…
It turned out..

That apparently inside the same 10 floor shopping mall was a semi large theme-park , complete with rollercoaster with a loop in (also a drop ride, spinny machine , vomit inducer… and other family favourites). The shopping mall actually had a main area and then this side area , with a different theme on each floor , eg. Computer and electronics floor , womens clothing , mens clothing , toys , gifts for girlfriends, etc etc.

On the 9th floor there was also the iCafe , another huge cyber cafe with LAN gaming and such , really nice computers and kitted with 22″ widescreen monitor , speakers and lots of games. Whilst uploading the blog posts and such (god my website can be so slow when it comes to uploading) I got to listen to music over the shop speakers and then what I assume was WC3 (dota) , Counter strike Source , L4D and some other asian FPS which looks like CSS that i keep seeing , my brother spent the hour playing Plants VS Zombies.

Did some shopping , bought a gift for some cute girl I know , some shorts , a pair of trainers (for £6! Ive bought shirts here that were more expensive).

We took a break after walking around the mall for some 5 hours or so , I had a Kiwi Katamari (or it may have been Kalamity or something hell if I know) which was really nice , shaved ice with some sauce and kiwi fruit pieces..

Afterwards we went to Lao Yut Plaza , a 6 floor shopping mall which is renowned for being exclusively electronics. The floors were divided into Cafes and generic , Mobiles , Games , PC parts , PC accessories , Laptops , And hypermarts (which is basically everything in 3 shops for people who don’t like to shop around)

Imagine this^

But on this scale

Relentless technology and mobiles and cameras and PSP’s and computer bits…
You can actually find every PC part and accessory in this shop for cheaper than you’d be able to find anywhere else , its impressive and makes me wish I had enough money to buy more stuff.
After shopping around a bit I bought a PSP Memory Stick 8GB for £20 , which sounds pretty good but tbh I never really checked the prices online to see how much they are.
Am also looking at buying a new mp3 player (Saw a Creative Zen for around 400 RM (£73) or a Creative Mosaic for around 270 RM(£50) ) but I would rather like to visit another cyber cafe and check some reviews before I spend , Im also pretty tempted to buy a steelmat or one of those razer mousemats , they were 50 RM (£9) in the hypermart but im not sure if thats a good deal or not , they are pretty smooth and I don’t know what my desk is going to be like at my house in Leamington next year.

After shopping we went across the road to Yaki Yaki , a Japanese BBQ buffet restaurant.

Basically… they give you a big BBQ in a pot , then you can get whatever meats you want from the buffet – the meats have all been marinated and such and theres salmon , beef , chicken… and side stuff as well like corn , satay , mushrooms ,peppers…
But then theres the other cooked food , seafood dishes with crab , prawns… some rice and noodle dishes..

Theres a teppanyaki chef on hand to teppan- any stuff you have..
Theres a satay grill with a chef who constantly makes satay (chicken , beef , mussel , eel , squid..)
Theres a counter where you can select fish and they’ll steam or fry it for you…

Theres a cart which deals in deep fried Japanese food , like tempura and spring rolls and such…
Theres a sushi counter where they’ll make any special sushi you want , and then there is a bunch of ready made sushi for you to eat straight away…

Theres fresh fruits available and ice cream..

(I tried some dragonfruit <the pink and white ones on the left> , pretty okay but nothing too special)

Theres also cakes , biscuits , jelly and puddings available..
And finally there is a counter full of drinks machines with lots of juice AND you can walk up to the bar and select some of the cocktails there and he’ll make one for you (alcoholic cocktails and beer included) and its all inclusive of the price.
The price however is pretty steep , and by that I mean its about £9 per head – for an eat and drink as much as you like for however long you like BBQ buffet including seafood.

We ate until we came close to throwing up , semi-related…
Apparently in the girls toilet they had toilets which had two holes , one for pee and one for poop?
Im not entirely sure as I heard from mum and then little brother went to take picture , but… weird…

And semi-related to that , The place im staying in at the moment belongs to a girl around 20 who is in university… Now if I was the daughter of a rich person and was told to pick a shower head…

..Id probably go with this one too.
Semi-gross : it had a small curly hair stuck on the bit that sprays out water…

July 27th
Kualar Lumpur
Summary : Sushi buffet and then a walk around Mid-Valley shopping mall

Today was actually pretty uneventful , in the morning went to see one of the cousins and my uncle – did nothing there really , saw my dad’s condo which he bought a few years out (its currently being rented out to some med students apparently , has a small swimming pool and such – no air con because my dad is a scrooge landlord. poor students. )
After waiting around doing jack shit for about 4 hours in the morning we went to Mid-valley , we had a lovely lunch at ‘Sushi King’ – one of those conveyer belt sushi places where the plates come around and you just grab whatever sushi takes your fancy.

The main advantage of doing it in Malaysia at this place is that its way cheaper , eating at ‘Yo Sushi!’ in UK… plates of different colour range from £2 to around £6 , as such you can eat about 5 plates before going broke – we’ll say you had £20 to spend.
Sushi King on the other hand , the plates ranged from 2 RM to 6 RM , an equivalent 30p – £1.20… im sure you can see where im going with this…

We racked up the plates , the total bill for 5 of us came to about 100 RM total , there was also a little promotion where it was BOGOF for the first 5 sushi plates so saved… like.. 10 RM there (£2).
The rest of the day for the most part was just roaming the supermall looking at things to buy , buying some clothes (got a few shirts and some shorts – pretty cheap here , good quality stuff for about £3 – £5 each or something).
Also , fish reflexology seems to be all the rage here…

Not sure exactly how it works but you put your footsies into the fishies and then the fishies eats your footsies… or something.
Also had a lovely ice cream – after eight flavoured.
We then went to a supermarket to buy fruits , there were some food stalls outside (as there are everywhere in Malaysia) we got to try Kaya Balls – which were yummy , kinda like american waffle mix but with a small dollop of pandan sauce inside.
The supermarkets here seem to work slightly different than they do in the UK , fresh fish and things are just.. there…

Wouldnt happen in the UK, all the animal activist assholes would probably come in and break them free or something , RSPCA stuff etc.
Another seafood restaurant for dinner , they also like to have fish tanks for you to be able to choose your fish or just so that they can have the fish fresh (tastes better) , inside one of the tanks were these peculiar guys…

They look… intresting…
Dinner was nice , but not as good as the expensive place yesterday – the main drawback about a good meal is that all subsequent meals don’t taste as good :/
Back to the flat and then nothing much happening really , will probably go to bed soon…

We returned to our hotel room and had a shower , ate some mangoes and malaysian cakes and then it was time to start getting ready to go – packed our bags and checked out and then headed to Langkawi airport. Nothing much to report there , check-in and everything went fine , had ‘Nasi goreng angung’ which was some form of spicy chicken rice with egg combination – was damn spicy. Also had some of my mum’s nasi goreng which was nice.
As a side note , there were alot of ninja’s at the airport in langkawi , I sneakily managed to photograph a few , see if you can spot them

After arriving at Kualar Lumpur airport (after playing lots of Star Ocean PSP on the hour or so plane journey) we met one of my uncles (term used loosely as i dont really know who he is but i call him uncle) , he is – to be blunt – rich as furk.
He took us back to his apartment(s) where we’re going to be staying whilst in Kualar Lumpur.
The apartment is 3 floors and has is nicely decorated , air-con in every room , shiny tiles/doors/everything… the only real downside is that because we’re staying in one of the apartments which isnt exclusively his – the room me and my brother are staying in is a big girly purple room , it has princess drapes near the bed D:

Another noteworthy ‘feature’ of the room (if you want to call it that) are the 5 (FIVE!) puppies living in one of the rooms , apparently they’re chihuaha’s but I personally dont know shit about dogs so i cant comment. At one point somebody decided to open the glass door seperating the dogs from the lounge and one of them jumped over the safety fence thing and ran around the room for about 3 minutes sniffing and licking everyone.

Some genius then decided to try and open the gate slightly to get the loose one back inside – they all burst out , like a dam of puppies had just been opened , saliva and hair and barks flooded the room.

So hyperactive they appear as ghostly blurs in most of the pictures i tried to take…
Dinner was at a localish place called La La Chang Seafood restaurant or something to that effect , la la’s are like baby mussels fyi.
We had lots to eat , a large fried fish , king prawns , fried veg , chicken , sea cucumber , la la’s , and some seafood soupy stuff.
Didnt really take any pictures because it was all relatives at the table and i didn’t want them to think I was a total weirdo , managed to sneak a picture of all the mussel’s I ate though.

After this , uncle took us to this gigantic shopping mall filled with every shop ever , despite being full I was drooling by the time we finished walking around – we were only walking through quickly – so many food shops! cakes , ice cream , beard papa , cinnabon ,some other crazy looking asian pretzely place.. Hope we go back there some time , could easily have dinner just eating all of the snack foods. Heres a picture of the giganticness..

Walked around and checked out the shops abit , ended up buying a nice blue Langkawi shirt featuring the eagle we saw the other day. Explored the duty free shop next , pretty huge and lots of sweets and things we hadn’t seen before – we bought ‘Ferrero Garden’ , apparently in asia they have different flavour ferrero rochers here, this is a picture i took much earlier at the airport in KL but we didnt buy it then because stuff bought in the airport is mad expensive.

The flavours inside are Pistachio , Strawberry , Lemon , almond and coconut. They’re all awesome.

After this , we went to Isham Spa – we had been booked for an ‘expensive’ (by malaysian costs that is) spa session (about £50 for us , which i hear is barely enough for anything here – my aunt claims a back massage is £35 in the UK)

Beautiful view near the spa

View from the Spa

Our experience began with some still lemonade in the lobby , me and my brother were then taken to a private room – where we were asked to get changed into what could only be described as an adult nappy…
They gave us a cloth thing and then a small package – which when ripped open was disposable panties (yes. panties , as in the female version , complete with slightly frilly band)
I got into them and walked out , covering myself with the cloth – the masseuse asked us to lay on the bed face down. We then got a full body massage – first feet , then legs , then thighs , back , shoulders… She then turned us over and did stomach , chest , legs and arms. (this occured over like an hour btw).
She also massaged my ass some , and at one point she saddled over my back for a bit to give me a back massage , she also pulled my hairs out for a bit and tried to pull my fingers apart.
Im pretty sure she started off quite gently and then half-way through realised that i remind her of one of her ex-boyfriends (which she hates) or something because she started being pretty rough and tried kneading me like dough.
After this was the body scrub and wrap , she steals the cloth cover from us – im now laying on the massage bed in half see-through disposable panties. She poured some hot really rough stuff over me (apparently rice and some other stuff).
She scrubs. Alot. To the extent where im pretty sure 2 layers of my skin were removed in the process , she gets out some bannana leaves and puts them over me , i feel like some sort of food – baking hot and sandwiched between bed and leaves with a yellow rough paste over my body. She left us for 15 minutes , assumedly to cook – the heat made me incredibly uncomfortable and itchy – probably the longest 15 minutes of my life , and more like a form of torture than a treatment i’d pay for.

Next was a shower , to get rid of all the crap she just put onto our skin , a flower bath followed – a small bath on stones with sharp hard leaves and flower petals on.
We returned to the room and they laid us down again in our towels and began giving the facial – a massage and then some hot paste , then she wiped it off.. then she put it on again , then she wiped it off again… then she put it on again , then she wiped it off again…
After this she put some… bandage stuff on my face? kinda like that stuff they use to make plaster molds , she put it over my face and then painted my face with what i presume was some face liquid/glue – i felt like i was becoming part of a paper mache project.
She left it on and then gave a complimentry foot massage, can’t really nay-say anything which has ‘complementary’ and ‘massage’ in the name.
That was it then , the full package – we returned to the lobby for herbal tea and a cake and went off to dinner next door at supposedly the best Japanese restaurant in all of Malaysia.

Dinner was at the Unkaizan restaurant , we sat down at one of those really low tables with a pillow underneath us to kneel on. The food which was brought out was all really impressive , grilled foods came out on tiny charcoal BBQ pots and such , I had a mixed sushi with cold udon set (cold noodles are apparently all the rage in Japan – weirdos)
Here are some food shots , you can see grilled salmon ,unagi (eel) and some prawn tempura in the background – the wooden lids are covering boiled rice

everyone else’s food

My food

After dinner I thought i’d try a traditional Japanese desert , ‘Dango’ – i dont really know what it is other than that it has flour in , is BBQ’d and is served with a sweetish sauce.
It wasnt particuarly great tasting but it was an intresting experience.

We bought some fruits from a store on the way home , we’ve been eating alot of Mangosteen’s lately (shown on right) , my dad likes durian (left) which smells terrible and is squishy – i think last time i tried eating it i almost threw up due to the smell , it doesent actually taste that bad but smelling it at the same time as eating it will make most people gag.

Thats it for today , we’re flying back to Kualar Lumpur tomorrow so probably wont have much time to do stuff tomorrow.

July 24th
Langkawi Island
Summary : Steve swims with the fishes for a few hours

8am wakeup – oh. my. god.
We waited in the lobby for a while until the pickup bus came , it took us the docks, where we were directed to a ship , which took us to a large floating platform a little bit out at sea by the beach on another island – the boat trip alone took about an hour (apparently Langkawi has 99 islands surrounding the main island).
The floating platform was filled with people , diving equipment and a healthy amount of snorkels , masks and flippers. We grabbed ourselves a table to put our stuff and then got changed into our swimming gear

The water was pretty clear here , and a lovely shade of blue-green , there were a ton of fish in the water here , ranging from small to (according to my mum anyway , one the size of my 13 yr old brother). There were a few that were 2ft long or so at least anyway.
They asked us to wear these floaty lifejacket things to snorkel with – which is good for snorkelling i guess but they itch and.. well.. suck. I took mine off fairly sharpish. Taking the floatyjacket also has the major advantage of allowing you to dive down , paired with some flippers – you can pretty much swim with the fishes or dive down to explore the coral reefs. By diving down i got to touch an anemone (the wavy glowy thing that nemo lives in) , they are kinda sticky – or like they try to eat your hand as you put your fingers through it.

Speaking of eating.. There was a buffet lunch on the floating platform , not that anyone would want seconds – the food was terrible , how anyone manages to make fried rice taste bad is beyond me. However the buffet was good for taking some small bread rolls…

These fish apparently LOVE bread , we had seen some people sitting on the side of the boat throwing bread in to hordes of fishes so I thought i’d try it for myself. I swam in a bit and took out a piece of bread from my pocket..
I quickly let go of it when a tornado of fish formed around me , a few biting my fingers (they give sort of a nasty nip , not too painful but a sharp pinch which usually occurs when you don’t expect it). Being me , I decided to throw some bread next to my mum who was nearby and snorkelling , she screamed , loudly – not that i can blame her , the bread attracts a ton of fish , enough to totally obscure your vision and allow you to touch a bunch just by waving your hand around in the water.
Spent a good few hours swimming around in the water , diving down and chasing the larger fish and explorng the corals. I also managed to get some good photos of me underwater – there was an underwater tunnel which could be accessed from the platform so i got my brother to go down there with the camera whilst i dived down outside for some poses – unfortunately on the good camera which doesent upload to the website without some resizing (WordPress is not a fan of trying to resize 3k x 2k pictures into thumbnail pictures) so those photos will have to wait until another time.

At around 4pm we had to head back , back on the boat , back on the bus and back to the hotel – where im typing this right now. I dont have much else to say but its only 7pm so some stuff could still happen i guess.
I think ive managed to get a bit of a sunburn on my shoulders also ,I hope it isnt but it certainly looks that way.
During the night , walked around the hotel for a bit and ended up eating food at the hotel again , I had a beef teppanyaki with satay on the side , family friends ordered steamboat.
After eating my teppanyaki and a bowl of rice , their food was just starting to arrive – naturally i helped myself to their food as well , and ordered some more satay (twice infact.)
After eating we played abit of pool and then went back to the room to relax , played some PSP and such and before I knew it , it was midnight. Went to sleep…

We then bought tickets for the cable car , 30 RM each – or £6.

Hooooooly shit this place is high up , 2 viewing points were up way high at the top of the mountains , we landed on the first one and had a look around – you could pretty much see the whole island from here , we’d see the rest of the island a little later..

The other viewing point was another cable car away , across a giant gap between the mountains , the worlds only single something suspension bridge could be seen in the distance.

We travelled over to the other mountain via another scenic cable car , the second mountain point had 2 paths , we decided to take the bottom path first – a 5-10 minute walk through a forest path led us to the suspension bridge , a large curved bridge with small gaps between the panels on the bridge – allowing you to see the trees below as you walk across…

The bridge actually sways in the wind slightly , making it scary as fuck. Im not great with heights , so obviously 700m up in the mountains or whatever on a swaying suspension bridge was somewhat of an ordeal.

We then went back to where the path split , the walk back to the mountain point was pretty exhausting since on the way to the bridge it was all downhill stairs – so this time it was all uphill.
The other path lead up more stairs and to the upper levels of the mountain point , we grabed a drink (and an ice cream =D ) and checked the view…

We then took the cable car down the mountain , and to lunch – which wasnt anything special , to the extent where i can’t remember what i had at all.

Sad as we are , we then journied in the car to the ‘Andaman Hotel’ , the poshest and most expensive hotel on the island , it was in the middle of nowehere – up in the mountains and surrounded by forest. The hotel itself however was pretty amazing looking , it looked like a japanese shogun temple or something , we sighted some monkeys in the trees as we walked to the beach…

After our swim we went to dinner , fried rice and some sort of beef stuff and satay on the side- pretty nice i guess , particuarly the chicken satay.

After dinner we found the ‘cyber cafe’ , a small shack with 5 computers , a funny smell , a mosquito buzzing around inside and a ‘no-shoes’ rule enforced at the door before you can enter.

I was worried the no-shoes rule was a clever ploy for them to steal our shoes and then sell them but thankfully they were left intact. The cyber cafe had some old pc’s… very old… the giant grey desktop PC’s which i thought became obsolete about 5 years ago – they featured a cd-rom drive and a floppy disk drive and 1 USB port. The PC’s were so slow they would freeze slightly every time you switched to another firefox tab , nonetheless i somehow managed to update my blog for the first time this holiday , including all the pictures i wanted to put up. It was home and bed after this as we had an early wake next morning.

22nd July
Langkawi Island
Summary : Tummyache is the least of Steve’s worries when we arrive at ‘Langkawis largest mall’ , he then almost loses his phone after making fun of his brother for losing his and then goes to see a giant eagle and a night market.

Had a pretty rough night’s sleep , stomach ache overnight made me wake up a few times , 2am , 4am.. 8am….
Woke up at 10ish to my phone alarm , parents called shortly after and we headed to ‘Langkawi Fair’ , Langkawis largest mall , or so it claimed.

The ride took around 60 minutes , it was pretty much across island (our hotel is on west coast , Langkawi fair is on east coast near the dock). We entered the mall and was… shocked… to say the least.
Turns out Langkawis largest mall consists of about 20 shops and a food court of about 6 small shack things , 3 of which were open – the food looked… unheigenic.. for lack of better describing word.
Met some family friends or something or other and walked around some , went for lunch at McDonalds – how boring , but the food court was a potential flint to my potentially explosive bowels.
McD’s here is actually somewhat expensive compared to the other foods here , still cheaper than McD’s at home (big mac on its own is £1.20 or so , meal is £1.50) , i got a Big Mac meal with coke and then a ‘Spicy chicken McDeluxe’ which was basically a McChicken Sandwich but with chilli’s in. They also do KFC style chicken , Oreo McFlurrys and some form of Chicken Curry thing – oh and they also do Bannana Pie’s.

Went around the supermarket there and got some drinks for the fridge at the hotel, dad got a knife for cutting fruit and we also got some ‘Red Bean Potong’ which was like Ice lollies with a frozen shaft of red beans in the middle. Went outside , still raining. We then walked to Eagle Square , about 10 minutes away , I could describe what it looked like , but why bother when 2 pictures will suffice.

We then spent a few minutes looking off the pier into the water , spotting Jellyfish and a few carp or something , some local crab chilling on a rock enjoying the.. uh… whatever crabs enjoy.
I was feeling pretty crabby myself at this point , thirtysomething degrees and humid , mild stomachache and that feeling you get when you’re not sure if you’re thirsty or not…

We went into the dock centre place , where the boats come and depart from on the island, which reminds me , the picture of the toilet i took the other day? Go back to that for a second and see if you spot anything wrong other than that the toilet isnt there.
Spot it? Theres a hosepipe instead of tissue paper.
Malaysians charge you for using the toilets (which are filthy) and then motherfucking charge you for tissue paper as well! Purchasing power wise this basically means you have to pay 60p just to attempt at taking a shit , if you get lucky there will be a normal toilet with a seat , if not – get squattin’
The squat toilets also feature something rather contrasting to a U-bend , its a giant pipe which goes all the way down – my brother somehow managed to drop his (semi-expensive) phone down the toilet. Idiot.

View from outside the dock centre was rather nice , shame about the weather.

Parents went outside to try and book the snorkelling trip which will be happening on Friday now (afaik). Malaysia is basically racist , locals get a lower price than foreigners. Knowing this , my dad tried booking the trip and telling the people that we’re all Malaysian citizens (we arent. at all.).
“yeah yeah , is all fine, just take your IC detail lah”
Malaysians all carry a special form of ID , an IC card – kinda like the British National Insurance (NI) Card i guess?
That plan spoiled then , no discount for us.
We went back to the Langkawi Fair (the shitty mall) and checked a booking agent there as well – at this point , unbeknown to me – i dropped my mobile in the shop.
Went downstairs afterwards and decided to get an ice cream , went into McDonalds again to get an Oreo McFlurry – at this point , i realised i had lost my phone. fuuuuuuuuu~ Panic ensued.
Thankfully i guess the ol’ Warwick student brain kicked in and i realised i must have lost it in that booking agent shop – i ran back and found it square underneath the chair , just as well they didnt find it because the bastards would have kept it for sure (dont think they had ANY business that day other than our walking in – and then walking out because they were too expensive)

We then walked to the night market , which was ages away (like 25-35 mins walk or something ridiculous). Unfortunately i completely forgot to take any pictures here :<
The market stretched on down an entire road , shops were 50% food/snacks/juice and 50% everything else. I tried lots of weird foods which I hadn’t even heard of before , including fried and battered Jackfruit , some sort of weird mini-pancake thing with kaya , some sort of folded sweet taco like thing with nuts in , a sweet-savoury omlette style thing , and probably one or two other things I can’t remember , the variety of food there was amazing though – I could have easily just eaten dinner there by walking up and down and sampling the snacks.

We came back to the hotel after this and after using the toilet (equipped with a toilet bowl and some tissue paper) , we went out to explore our hotel a bit. The swimming pool seems pretty large , goes under and bridge and has a waterfall (shame about the rain) , the beachfront also looked very nice (shame about the rain) – we also spotted a woman running towards the sea in a bikini , it looked like she took off her clothes as she approached the water to go skinny dipping (shame about the darkness).

Dinner was at the hotel , we had the steamboat – im sure ive mentioned it before on this blog somewhere , its basically a cauldron of boiling soup and you add your own raw food to the pot and then when its cooked you take it out and eat it – add your own sauce to it and whatnot , the soup then becomes rather tasty as the meal goes on due to all the flavours of the meat/fish/seafood/noodles and so on.
A young girl came to the table and began doing what can only be described as a magic ritual of some kind , she would come with 4 bowls and set them down on the table at specific points… then come back to the table a few minutes later with 4 plates and set them face down… then 4 smaller bowls… then 4 cups… then 4 sauce dishes…. 3 plates… 3 teaspoons… 4 chopsticks… 4 soup spoons…. All the while shuffling the upside down plates and bowls slightly around on the table as if there was money or a dice under them or something.

Since when does steamboat require so many different bowls and plates :S

A platter of raw food was then presented to our table , fish , crab , prawns , noodles , beg , eggs , tofu and so on – quite an impressive amount – way too much for us to finish , all for 20 RM (an equivalent £4).

Thats it for today , Hope my stomachache is gone by tomorrow =(