En route to Langkawi from the Cameron Highlands we took a day or so out to stay at Penang, unfortunately the only thing we really wanted to see was the Furnicular railway up Penang Hill, however after a couple of interestibng bus journeys with the locals to get there we discovered it was closed! Typical! We spent the rest of the day wandering around the town, really not that interesting, although we did come across a beach blanket babylon restaurant, for those who know what I'm talking about! Anyway the next day we got a very random ferry to Langkawi. It was pretty uncomfortable and took longer than was expected but we finally arrived at the island 3 hours later. we grabbed a taxi to our hostel (Zackrys) on Pantai Tengah. Stewart a guy from Birmingham who happened to visit the island 18 months ago and decided to stay showed us around the fairly basic but homely hostel. They had a really great policy that everything was on a trust basis, which meant there were fridges around the different areas of the hostel containing many drinks including beer for 2.50 malaysian money (40pence) we certainly enjoyed (especially Chris). Spent the afternoon on the beach before getting rained on then that night we went out with the guys from the hostel to the sunbar for a night of drinking (and trying to get Chris to dance, they didn't succeed). Here we happened to bump in to Jed from the Cameron Highlands so we sat chatting to him and the peeps he was with as some of the people from our hostel were a little dull! The next day we thought we were back in England it rained all day!! Pretty much every part of the hostel was flooded, some people had to vacate their room after everything got ruined by the water, luckily our room was ok, however you did have to swim to the entrance which did appear to have a few friendly snakes having a swim! We just spent most of the day watching films with the others until it eventually relented so we had the chance to take a walk to Pantai Cenang the other beach and enjoy a glass of wine (my first in 2 months, it was so nice not to have beer) in the sunset bar before having an earlyish night (the grand prix on in the living room really didn't do it for us)! the next day weather was fab so spent the day at the beach, had a bit of drama at sea as the current was quite stong and dragged me under whilst at the same time whipping off my bikini top without me realising so i gave some of the other tourists a bit more than they bargained for! Chris like the gentleman just stood their laughing and did not proceed to help cover me up!!!! other than that the day went smoothly without any more drama. That night we enjoyed dinner at a local restaurant although was a little freaked out by the very obvious ladyboy serving us (just getting us preparded for Thailand i suppose). The next day and a bit we hired a scooter Chris rode although i had a little go which was quite fun. We did some sightseeing, went to the oriental village the home of the Langkawi cable car. The cable car was fab, even chris bless him went up although i did not hear a peep out of him going up or down, (he was a tad apprehensive, lets say) when we got to the top he left me to wander to the viewing deck whilst he sat firmly at the top not going near any edges. On the way down with chris looking quite pale a guy in the car with us decided to tell chris not to worry as if it broke we would be dead anyway so no worries, this didn't go down too well and luckily we made it back to ground safely. We then headed to Telaga Tujuh waterfalls and Langkawi waterfalls for a swim before heading back and going out for dinner with some of the guys from the hostel. the next morning we took the bike to a beach up north, soon as we arrived it started to rain! it didn't last too long thankfully so we enjoyed a bit of time there before heading back to give the bike back at lunch time. Spent the rest of the afternoon at the local beach. That evening we went for a curry as Chris was craving a lads night out to a curry house ( i couldnt quite give him everything he wanted but the curry was good so he was happy). Spent the evening sitting in the hostel with the owner and the others staying at the hostel and having a drink. The next day we headed off to start the next part of the trip in Thailand.