Not in a million years did I think when I woke up this morning that I would spend the afternoon in the company of wild monkeys. Malaysia is full of surprises.
We hired a scooter this morning, and howie being howie walked into the office and said 'we want the fastest one you've got'. Me being me, I asked howie to take it on a test drive first to get used to it. He came back up the road pushing the scooter and concealing a bloody graze on his arm and a scuffed foot. What went on during that test drive remains between howie, the scooter and the road.
We headed off to get petrol, and to fill up the scooter cost about a quid, amazing considering we didn't even use half of it. Then we headed out on the open road, with howie singing 'born to be wild', wearing a shiny red scooter helmet with a peak. We drove up to pantai kok, a gorgeous beach with turquoise water. Couldn't resist a bit of paddling. The temperature was probably the hottest so far, it must have been up in the high 30s, so when we arrived at the bottom of the big hill we had to climb to get to the seven pools, we were a little bit taken aback. The seven pools are rock pools formed by a mountain stream which feeds into a waterfall. It would be worth the climb, but it was a long, steep one. When we got there, however, it was beautiful and a worthy reward for the long sticky climb up. The stream was very fast flowing and ran through all the rock pools until it got to almost a sheer edge where it cascaded down the mountain as a waterfall. Howie had forgotten his trunks so swam in pants, which was very fetching as they were white... I had the foresight to bring my bikini so we spent a good while splashing about in the rock pools. Eventually, we were the only ones there and that was when the wild monkeys came out to play. They were very friendly and let howie take some amazing close up pictures. When we got to the bottom of the steps, howie had a coconut to drink and the monkeys loved that too... The lady serving us had a coconut cut up and ready but didn't realise she was being watched by a stealthy ape. He ran up while she wasn't looking and whipped half the coconut away, running off into the jungle.
We headed back home on the scooter and went out for a lovely dinner at a Thai restaurant. Howie had a lovely green curry and I had spring rolls and rice. We finished it off with a black rice pudding with coconut and brown sugar sauce. Completely delicious.
Tomorrow we leave langkawi and fly to kuala lumpur, where we connect to our Sydney flight... Next stop: oz.