Weeks 16 and 17 have finally crawled by and as we sit at Langkawi Airport (with lots of lovely time to spare), it's time to write farewell to Langkawi. A mere couple of weeks ago it was a red letter day and after two and a half years, in the cheapest country in the world, I finally hit the hairdresser. An hour and 20 minutes later (and about 10 euros if you can believe it), I left a new woman. Obviously my hair was in dire need of a cut... but I must admit the lovely Finnish hairdresser snipped off a tad more than I'd been planning on... obviously talking too much and not paying enough attention (me - not her). But still - felt very glam, even after the humidity hit my 'do', and we went for our near final lunch at Anis on the Beach. Ahhhh... so good - but they've increased our favoured customer servings again and I literally did not need dinner. A cup of coffee was it until breakfast on Friday. Friday (2nd Sept) saw a long walk on the beach - been missing a few lately as the tides have been against us. This morning it was low at 8.15 am which was perfect and we felt we deserved a Roti brekkie afterwards. We've also reached favoured customer status there too. We tried to buy a bag of curry sauce to take home... tried very hard in fact - but they just charged us for brekkie and gave us the curry bag gratis.... awwww - the Malaysians are lovely people. Saturday it was finally movie day. As in, they finally had something worth watching - we hoofed it to "The Secret Life of Pets". It had us laughing out loud from the very first - just a feel good movie - good for adults and big kids as well as actual kids. Weather wise, our final couple of days in Langkawi have been sunshine-normal - 36 degrees (feels like 41), but the last couple of weeks have generally been monsoonal. Persisting down. With short breaks for raining hard and even shorter breaks for drizzle. An awful lot of beach walks got canned for lack of interest and we put some concerted effort into watching all the movies we've been recording off the Pay TV. The weather is not just affecting the humidity (query - if it's pouring torrential rain, is the humidity level 100% or can it be higher... 500%? 1000%?) The weather has also affected our breakfasts. We are in papaya withdrawal as the end of the season has well and truly arrived. We're down to pineapples, bananas and mangoes. And we're not sure how much longer the mangoes will be around - the price has tripled over the last 3 weeks or so. By the end of Week 16 we were in fear of growing webbed feet and even more mildew than usual (don't laugh... everything gets mouldy here. It is not the land to wear leather shoes... have handbags... clothes... sunglass cases... nuffin'!) We waited for a break in the sloshing and headed into Kuah for another movie. Pickings were slim but we went for Pete's Dragon with Robert Redford - seriously fun movie - really enjoyed it. Aside from the fun-loving movies we've seen this week, we are looking forward to seeing grown up movies again when we're on the plane to Dubai - grown up as in without the ubiquitous censorship that occurs on Malaysian tv... we've seen movies where whole scenes have just disappeared and arguments are completely silent as they've cut all the naughty words out altogether. Our lip reading has come ahead in leaps and bounds mind you. One of our all time favourite movies was on the other night, Four Weddings and a Funeral. Pretty sure the first 10 minutes of posh sounding "F" words was completely silent. Nanny State gone bonkers. Right. Will put hobby horse back in the stable. For a change, at the dawn of Week 17... it was raining. Took the brolly and managed a long walk on Cenang Beach - blessed with a paved path for the length of the beach - very civilised. Did some more travel planning and had our final (sigh....) lunch at Anis. Watched the rain. Turned up the telly to (not) hear the swear words over the roar of the rain. Worked on our lip reading a bit more. Friday was our final night market visit and we ended up saying fond farewell to all our suppliers - fish & chip man, potato samosa man, satay-lady, fruit-lady, burger-family. Due to the rain, many of the stalls didn't bother turning up. Which was a shame as it actually didn't rain all afternoon and evening and the market was packed with people just like us with cabin fever. Ah well. As you can see not a lot of excitement around. So it was with surprise when we emailed the owners and said what time are you coming in next Friday night, we'll pick you up... and they said oh, we're arriving 24 hours earlier. Sigh. It is in fact rocket surgery it would seem. In any event, we like to give people space upon their return home and really didn't want to hang about until 10 am Saturday morning. So we thought a snappy trip to the airport and we'll have a chat with the nice folks at Malaysia Airlines and change our flight. Turned out that was a bit harder than planned because the internet was down at the airport. (Seriously?) So the Malaysian/Firefly counter couldn't help us and gave us the number of the call centre. We ended up at the information counter monopolising the switchboard phone for half an hour but got there in the end. We booked way back in May on the basis of an email saying the owners were coming in on Friday night, the 16th. The fare we bought then was so cheap as to be unbelievable... and that was precisely the cost of bringing forward our flight by 24 hours, unbelievable. In the end we found a flight on Thursday night that was only expensive - not exorbitant - so we made an executive decision and took that (since making unilateral decisions about changing dates seems to be OK these days). Thank heavens we had a roti brekkie, even tried a new joint near home who were hugely entertained by my Malaysian speaking skills. At least we were fortified for the flight changing experience. The positive is that now we have 3 nights in KL and 2 full days for getting out and about and exploring. Or lazing by the pool, doing very little and being guests instead of managers for a while! The last few days have passed in a blur of packing (Oh my god... who bought all this stuff and has doubled the amount of luggage since we arrived?! Oh... that's right... us. Darn). We've also been hugely busy with one final lawn cut and giving the villa a good clean. Which given the open plan nature of the house is about as much fun as dusting, sweeping and mopping your back yard. Highlights of the housework? Finding a large lump of dust? or something? down the back of the bed between the headboard and the mattress. Of course I had to get really close and give it a poke before I realised it was a very small, very dead bat. Thoroughly washed that hand I can tell you. Brrr.... All this bringing the outside in is really beyond a joke here. Crapping little geckos, I'm talking to you. And then we got to today, final Langkawi day, and what's this? At lunchtime we received an email from our B&B (who really should be chuffed we're staying 3 nights instead of only 1). Mixup they say? Can't accommodate you tonight they say? Room will be available tomorrow morning at 9 am and don't worry... we've booked you another joint just down the road. Ah well... The last hotel we booked in KL burned down. I suppose this is definitely an improvement of sorts. Well here we are. 17 weeks down and sitting in Langkawi airport watching the weather change in front of us. Storms are predicted late this evening and the sky is turning bruise-yellow-gray as we watch. Our owners plane is due in in 5 minutes time and after a short turn-around, we'll be heading out on it very soon. Bring on KL/Dubai/Ireland - Let the games begin anew!