Langkawi is the island of opportunity being, for a reason we never discovered, a duty free island. As such it has become a bit of a weekend spot for locals and of course on the route for travellers. It's a bit bigger than Pangkor is, so that was good for a bit more variety in restaurants and a few bars here as well.

The ferry over from Penang was a little rough and as such Laura developed a bit of travel sickness. A great time do develop travel sickness...whilst travelling all over Asia... This was not helped b the movie being shown graphically showing a group of cavers drown one by one. The only worse choice we could think of would have been Titanic. (Competition for the worst movies to watch whilst feeling sea sick on a boat starts now)

The weather was mixed during our stay. On our first day we were caught out in a downpour so heavy it was reminiscent of our first day in Delhi. Luckily we weren't stuck on an open rickshaw so we dived into an Old English Teashop which wasn't the worst place to be stuck. :) We explored all that the shops of Langkawi had to offer which was...not much actually. A bit on the touristy side, so shell key rings, garish shirts, lots of Bob Marley esque attire, and inflatable beach balls and lilos. Of course we bought loads, some of you might be very lucky at Christmas!!

We managed to get on the beach for a couple of days and did get some sun but also quite a few clouds as well. Despite this the days were very hot and Laura tried to cool off in the sea but made a very hasty retreat after getting into conversation with a Swiss girl who told me about the plentiful jellyfish! We met a couple from our guesthouse who are from Canada and are planning a similar route through Thailand. We spent the day with them after being rained off the beach and they have a card game version of Monopoly so that gave us a welcome break from Uno. And it also gave us some new players for The President so we spent a couple of evenings with some duty free drink and various card games. Tori is also a swimming teacher which is a strange coincidence and Sean now has someone to talk to about football and sports (and someone who is actually interested as well!) so Tyler and him have both had many, many long conversations which to Tori and me all sound the same but at least they are happy!

We didn't explore much further than the beach and the duty free shop but we enjoyed Langkawi. The weather could have been better and the sea wasn't much so we decided to move on to Thailand a bit earlier than planned. We are hoping for some more good beaches and a bit of culture as we have had a very lazy trip through Malaysia and it seems strange to be moving on to Thailand and another new country so soon. We have a bit of planning to do as we need to renew our visas after only 15 days and we need to do some planning for Christmas and New Years so even though we are now barreling through the countries we still have a lot to look forward to...