From the port of Satun in Thailand, we caught a 2 hour ferry to the Island of Langkawi off the north west coast of Malaysia. On the boat over we aquired 2more more English friends Dave and Kiki who after arriving shared a 20min taxi ride over to to the west side of the island which is apparantly where the cheapest accommodation is. It didn't take long to find a place, we actually found a large 4bed detached bungalow with a huge balcony and pool for only £2 a night each!! At this point it was dinner time so we all headed out for dinner and beers and were more than happy to find out that Langkawi is tax free so we were quids in with the alcohol here!

The following day was the most important day of the year... MY BIRTHDAY!!! I woke up to two small muffins with a match burning out of each one, a card from Laura and two ticket's to the Malaysian Grand Prix which was on the following weekend... as you can imagine i was over the moon, it was then down for a full English for breakfast! We actually didn't do a lot in the day other than relax on the beach and play in the pool, it was at night where we decided to celebrate. By this point we had met up with another English friend we met on the boat over called Ben, and Kiki and Dave had aqumilated 2 more friends from around the pool so we were now 7 strong! We gathered in our bungalow around 8pm with 3 litres of vodka and comenced with the drinking card games until all the drink was gone... by this point the birthday boy was struggling and at about 1am when the others decided to stumble to a bar, the oldies retired to the room! The following day was pretty much a wright off... that day was a recovery day spent around the pool to escape the heat... thats one thing that you notice straight the way is the intence heat, it feels so much hotter here than Thailand so its a blessing to have a pool right outside our door!

The next day Me, Lau and Ben decided to hire a car to explore the island and to drive to the highest cable car ride in South East Asia which is on the north west tip of Langkawi. We signed up for this car and were driven to pick it up, when we got there and saw the car it looked a right old nail... it looked like night rider, only older, s***tier and it looked like it had been painted with black imulsion... oh and it had no power steering! It was mid afternoon wen we got to the cable car and headed up to the first level... and it was bloody high! All three of us on the way up were holding on to the sides as it went up very steeply to around 600m above sea level, but once there you could see the whole island! It was then on from there for a further 150m up to the highest viewpont and to the suspended steel bridge walk... the bridge is a arch shaped footbridge suspended inbetween two mountain peaks 750m up and when on the bridge the wind howls through making the bridge shake and move... it made even my bum hole twitch a bit so you can imagine what Laura was like! So after a few pictures and a bit of time enjoying the cooler air up in the clouds we decended and headed back to the bungalow for dinner. As we still had the car the next day we set out around the island to various sights i.e waterfalls and beaches, it was a really good day and we spent a fair bit of time on a black beach on the north side of the island, it sounds obvious but the sand on the beach was actually black and we were the only ones on there so it was nice to chill out for a few hours on there. The car had to be back by mid afternoon so we decided to head back, via a few other tourist spots and lookout points. After another day of relaxing on the beach it was time to head off to Penang, the next island down the west coast of Malaysia, so me, Lau, Kiki and Dave caught the afternoon ferry stright over to Georgetown in Penang. x