Hello from Langkawi,

 

Been a bit of a hectic start, hence no posts for a while.


So, our 2nd day in KL, we spent the afternoon picking up our Thai visa (nice and easy to obtain and means we don't have to do any visa runs as without picking up one here, we would only get a 14 day visa for free on arrival). We walked about 8km in 30 degree heat and decided it was definitly time for our first nice cold beer. After 2 half pints we were tipsy enough to set off on the long walk home to the hostel!



 

View from the bar.

 

We decided to leave KL a day early as we had covered the city and its main features on our walks about town and we were ready for something different. We had to get up and out at 7am to get to the bus station, where we got a 5 and a half hour coach to Penang, further north of KL. This was our first attempt at carrying our HUGE bags in the heat and the below picture is the results of completing the task!!

 

When we arrived in Penang we got a bus through the town to Love Lane (previosuly the red light district), where all the hostels can be found. We stayed at Reggae Hostel, which is super westernised. We have now figured that all the places with Reggae in the title (and there are lots of them) are full of western backpackers meaning not so much culture and not so much allowance for our tiny budget!! Lesson Learned! The dorms (below) had little squares that you crawled into and thats where you slept! The top bunk was about 7 feet off the ground. It was cool but we realised we're not yet ready to be seperated (thank god!)

 



 

Chinese New Year insence sticks on the street.

 

We spent the day walking pretty much every inch of the town looking for some food and soon realised that we had seen everything there was to see! There was a beach but it was far away and didnt exactly have fabulous reviews other than 5 star resorts. We had booked 4 nights in this hostel but we weren't exactly in love with it and our expectations of Penang didn't exactly live up. Lessons learned - only book one night somewhere, if at all and have no expectations of anywhere!! 

We had also read that Penang was a very popular/good place to celebrate Chinese New Year but the only evidence of this that we saw was decorated houses with lanterns and insence sticks like the above!

 

 

 

Street stalls where we ate Pork noodles ( a Malay staple) and fresh fruit juice for 1.50pounds. Again, Penang is supposed to be the foodie haven of Malaysia but we must have missed the secret!

 

So after one night on Penang Island, we decided to leave early again and head to Langkawi which is just what we were after, finally! We got a 3 hour ferry over, which was so easy, the put a film on inside, downstairs which is where everyone sat and Kate managed not to get seasick (score) and we both slept most of the way after 3 hours sleep the night before due to our impromtu departure from Penang. We hadn't booked any accommodation and ended up at this cute new guesthouse on the outskirts of the touristy bit of Langkawi which is surrounded but locals houses and countryside- cows, chickens, lots of cats and kittens and geese (it chased us with our backpacks on, not cool considering we defo cannot run with them on!)

 

 

Kate's breakfast, onion roti (pancake) with Indian dips and a mango lassi. Malaysian food has a lot of Indian influence.

 



 

The beeeeaaach :)

 

Nice big jellyfish!

 

This beach cafeteria do THE best drink ever. Crushed fresh coconut with ice and a few choc sprinkles for good measure. Lu's dream and 1pound!

 

The beach runs the complete stretch of the busy part of town so as it gets to dusk lots of people start to gather on there. Theres lots of cool beach bars (mostly reggae!!) along the beach front but lots of people buy beers from the supermarket and drink them on the sand (our cheaper option).

 

 

 We're staying here for another couple of nights and then we will hopefully be heading to Koh Lipe, Thailand, by ferry, which is a small island about 30km from here. Its supposed to be beautiful and less touristy than some of the other islands so we're hoping to find some cheap enough accomodation.

 

Lots of love, Lu & Kate

xxx