It's easy to tell when we are into the home stretch of an extra long housesit (and 4 months in Langkawi definitely counts as extra long). Basically blogs go from 1 every few days... to once a week and now, finally to once every couple of weeks. In a little over 2 weeks time we'll be on the move again and heading to KL/Dubai and Ireland. In the meantime however we still sound like a dating website... We enjoy long walks on the beach every day, cocktails at sunset, good movies and eating out. Also - Good Sense of Humour! We've had two lots of beach house Air BnB guests since our last entry. The Italian foursome left on the 18th and we currently have a pair of English friends staying for 3 nights prior to flying back to the UK on Friday. Getting their fill of fun in the tropical heat and sun. We have become regulars at our little beach restaurant (Anis - down on Tanjung Rhu beach). Been there at least 3 times in the last two weeks and at lunch today we probably overate... because every dish that we now order regularly (and in Malaysian!) comes out twice as large as it originally was. At the same price. There are things we won't miss... the bugs, the heat, the incessant sweating and humidity. But there is one, major, planet killing thing we will miss about Langkawi... "The Cheap". The cheap what you might say?... The cheap everything! we would reply. In particular our cheap weekly massages, petrol, lunches, night markets, booze... And of course the free coconuts. It was a stormy couple of days and the wet season is really kicking in. Yesterday alone 15 coconuts crashed to the ground. Needless to say we are careful walking around the property! We use about one per week to grate over our breakfast fruit so regularly find victims to give our excess to. Last week we took a dozen to the ladies at the massage joint and they were well received. A bit like taking a bunch of flowers. That on the other hand is harder than you'd think. Once in a while our fruit and vege shop has flowers. Only on Mondays, only chrysanthemums and only half dead. Simply not worth wasting money on. We do wonder if the Chinese community all put flowers on the graves on Sunday and grave robbers are selling them on the cheap to the vege shop on Mondays... But where are the original purchasers getting the fresh ones from??? Anyway - we enjoyed fresh flowers constantly in Amsterdam... we take our pleasures where we find them. For instance, one of our favourite places to eat on the island is in fact an Indian joint that does phenomenal vegetarian food! Looking back over the last 2 weeks it turns out we've eaten there 3 times. Including last Thursday when there was finally a movie worth seeing at the cinema. We missed out on Bourne and the latest Star Trek so it's been a dry movie spell - therefore we were hugely excited when the Jason Statham movie "Mechanic: Resurrection" was not only advertised, but also released in Langkawi. Phenomenal action movie - not a life changer but a good watch (and an excuse for Indian for dinner). Have seen another excellent movie on Fox on the pay tv - came out last year and grossed $630 million on a budget of $108 million - can't believe we hadn't seen it. Anyway - Matt Damon in "The Martian" - well worth a look. We'd just finished watching it on Monday night just gone when we had an email letting us know we had Air BnB guests arriving sometime on Tuesday (but no details of time!) So we set the alarm for 6.30 am (hoping desperately they weren't coming in on the 8.30 am flight) and made up the guest house in a mere 1.5 hours (a new record). Fortunately the two friends from the UK were arriving on the 3 pm flight. So had heaps of time to do the downstairs cleaning in the big Villa and part of the lawns too. But way too much hard work for one day. Apparently housework never killed anyone, but we don't like taking the risk. The friends have been having a grand time and done lots of exploring with a mangrove tour and an island hopping jaunt - but we were a bit afraid the wheels were going to come off when there was a big spider in the beach house on Night 1. Luckily I never got round to mentioning there was a very cute little green tree snake on their front door step earlier in the day. All the days of rain have made the wildlife "friendly" shall we say and keen to come into the dry zones. We only have one more feasible week for any more guests... and who knows if we'll get another short notice visit - quite exciting anyway and keeps us busy. At the completely opposite end of the "last minute spectrum", it's a while away and things can always change (that's the only thing that's guaranteed). But we're starting to plan a trip downunder for April 2017. We are going to fly out of Helsinki, Finland, via HK and Brisbane to Sydney. One of the reasons for flying out of Helsinki? It's proximity to St Petersburg, Russia which has been on the list for a long while and is very do-able from Helsinki as we can take a ferry and not need a Russian visa as long as our stay is 72 hours or less. Perfect. Whilst in the vicinity we plan on 2-3 days each in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. So we've had fun over the last few days dreaming, researching and planning. Imagine we'll be heading north again to Europe by June/July 2017 - suspect Sydney and Australia will be far too expensive to countenance for long. As it is the bank account and credit cards are shaking in their shoes as we look ahead to Ireland - but we love it there, so little else matters.