Christmas Eve

John loves to fish. That warm queasy feeling you get when you are sitting overheated, bored stiff, mosquito bit and sweaty in a creaky boat in the middle of some godforsaken watering hole is something he just lives for. I do not share his enthusiasm. This is part of the reason I had so many sons - I needed someone to fish with my husband.

Christmas Eve, we absolutely had to be back by 7. As part of our Island Experience on the First Resort, we had to commit to the Gala Dinner. This cost $385RM per person, 1/2 price for Andrew. It was an extravaganza we were not going to miss. But before that...well! We had all day! So John booked a fishing trip. Sadly, the price went up considerably with the 5th person, so I offered to stay back, lie in a hammock on the beach and read. They headed out in a rickety boat, and I settled in. Aaaahhhh.

They returned at noon. Fishermen get up early, and a 4-hour schtick is over in no time. They were famished, and so we decided to head out to the mainland and find a hawker stall where we could pay less than $200RM for lunch. When we arrived at the dock, we told the Resort Guy that we were looking for a nice little place to go, close by, where we could get some lunch and do a little souvenir shopping. He told the cabbie to take us to Kuah. We had no idea where this was, and were ill-equipped - as in no map - but we trusted the guy and piled in.

This cabbie had minimal understanding of English. As in not one word. He rocketed past the airport, spooled around a traffic circle, got on some freeway, and took off. We had no idea where he was going. We sat there for a little while - we had, after all, told an English speaking guy what we wanted to do. 10 minutes or so into the ride, John turned to me and said..."Where the hell are we going?" Naturally I had no idea. So we tried to ask our guy. We talked, he turned around, smiled, laughed, and said stuff like "Americans" and "Tomorrow" and "Kuah." We made him pull over and pull out a map. We pointed, he smiled ("Americans") and took off again. Finally John said something like "No pay!" and the guy screeched to a halt in front of a tacky shopping mall, charged us $36RM and left us for dead.

We went into the mall and had a crappy overpriced lunch. We strolled around a bit, determined to get our money's worth, and finally left empty handed. We hailed a cab back to the dock ($36RM) and arrived in time to watch the 5:30 boat leave...we had a half hour to wait. We sat in the bar and talked to a couple of Kiwis who had spent the last 10 years or so circling the globe in their yacht, knew everything about everything, had precious little affection for our president and were not loathe to point any of that stuff out. They were a riot. We were back in time for dinner...but the dinner is another blog post...

(The exchange rate is $3.35RM is $1.00US. Kiwis are New Zealanders...)

What Me? Afraid of Heights?

When at the top of falls, roughly 400 meters above sea level, we saw in the distance the World Famous Langkawi Cable Car. It was not far from where we were, and the cable stretched far above the falls. We decided we would take a gander on up the next day...

We tried to get out early, we did. But a night on the beach and a huge breakfast makes for sluggish travelers and we did not get to the dock until about 11. A $36 cab ride got us to the Cable Car around noon. The line was 2 hours long. We almost scrubbed the whole idea - who wants to wait in the hot sun for that long, anyway? But we decided to hang in there seeing as we had nothing else planned. Andrew and Matt decided to take a half hour elephant ride through the jungle while we waited. They enjoyed it...it was a time killer plus the elephant had a big ol' turd hanging off his tail that kept Matt entertained the whole time. Luckily he did not have a camera with him or I may have had a photo documenting something I never wanted to hear about in the first place...

We waited pretty close to 2 hours, with tickets that cost $35 to buy but $50 to replace if lost (yeah - explain THAT one...), climbed onto the car and headed up. We were about halfway - maybe 500 meters up and suspended over the treetops, and two of us, who shall be nameless, admitted to an as-yet-unrealized fear of heights. While I prefer not to name names, I will say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and one should not be fooled by ostensible bravado...My favorite part of the trek up was the emergency procedures, though....There was a locked box with a hammer attached. The note on the box said "In case of emergency, break glass." I have no idea what could have possibly been inside.

The view from the top of the mountain was incredible. We took pictures, which did not do it justice. We were 710 meters above sea level, which I have a vague idea of the conversion, English speaking, but can say from a visceral point of view is pretty damn high. We got to the highest point by climbing some steps (but not as many as the day before...although I did hear the not-so-faint cursing of an Indian guy whose words I did not understand but whose message was loud and clear...) and crossing a bridge that swayed, almost imperceptibly but not quite, in the wind.

We got down just in time to go horseback riding before the $36 ride back to the resort for another expensive dinner. We left content, with a photo of Andrew and Matt on the elephant that cost $20 and I can't find now, and we were back in time for happy hour....

Free Waterfalls, You Say?

While at the Last Resort, we happened upon a book that told of waterfalls on the main island that were beautiful, with rocks slick and soft enough to slide down, and, best of all, free. After a gigantic (and free) breakfast at the First Resort, we caught the next (free) ferry and headed out. This was the first and last cheap day we had on Langkawi....

We caught a cab to the falls at the dock. One thing we learned about the cabs in Malaysia was that no matter where we were going, when we asked the cabbie the fare, he would look up, consider the distance, mutter to himself, and announce "RM $36." Every. Single. Time. We agreed on the price, climbed aboard, and headed to the falls.

We were dropped at the base of a hill with a hawker stall, a convenience store, a stand where we could buy a cheesy, overpriced towel, and a flight of steps the likes of which I have never seen. We bought our towel and some water and headed up. After 15 minutes or so, John commented positively on the distance - as in "Hoo boy. Don't have to stairmaster today! Hyuk hyuk." After 30 minutes or so, he likened the distance to climbing to the top of the Washington Monument. 15 or so minutes after that, all I could hear was the faint cursing of a man who did not want to climb one more step.

At the top, we considered where to leave our stuff. We found a nice deserted spot under some trees, wondered why no-one else had picked it, reveled in our good fortune, and headed to the water. We looked up just in time to see monkeys stealing our cheesy overpriced towel and water bottles. We started yelling to scare them away, raced up, chased them off, found a non-deserted spot, and headed back to the falls. I daresay we are in a couple local photo albums....

We had a fabulous day at the falls. We made friends with some Scandanavian college students and egged each other along all day. The water was warm, the company was good, and we had more fun than, well, a barrel of monkeys...

The First Resort

After our harrowing night at the Last Resort, we called Mufasa to take us to Port Langasuka to catch our ferry to Rebok Island. We laughed about how we had island fever, which prompted us to leave Singapore and go to....another island.


If we had tried, we could not have found two more different places. The Last Resort was a lot like camping, but without clean water and the warm, companionable glow of a campfire. The Rebok Island Resort was another matter altogether. We were picked up at the dock in a golf cart by a guy who probably apologized for one thing or another about 9,000 times. They carried our stuff and gave us cool towels and fruit juice at the check-in point. There was cheesy disco tech Christmas music playing over the intercom, which we grew to hate over the next 5 days, although we kind of wanted to buy the CD when we left...


The first thing they established with us was the transportation rules to and from the island. The ferry ran pretty much willy-nilly between the hours of 7:30am and 7pm. After the 7pm ferry, the cost each way was $150 Malaysian ringets (about $47). This was an obvious ploy to have guests eat an expensive dinner at the resort. At first, this really ticked us off! But on Day One, after we made sure the boys could not pay the passage back to the mainland, we went to bed giddy with the knowledge that we could hold them captive while we slept! HAH! We were just sorry we had not thought of moving to a deserted island off the coast of Malaysia when they were teens.....

The Last Resort

All Expats want out of their respective countries at Christmas. It comes with the territory. We decided that the perfect place to go for us this year was Langkawi Beach, Malaysia. The beaches are fabulous, the weather is warm and dry. It is just right. When John sat down to make the reservations, though, he hit a snag. It was September...months before Christmas...but things were booking fast. The cheapest way to fly was to leave on December 20 and return on December 26. The big bummer was that December 20 had no accommodations available that were even remotely affordable. We booked it anyway, and figured December 20 would work itself out.

In November (and my kids say I am a worrier) I decided to figure out that December 20th thing. Phil and I had pretty good luck with the guest house experience in Cambodia, so we put our heads together and decided that we would do that again. After all, we would only be there for 12 hours or so, and all we needed was a place to stay until the next morning when we could get on the Island resort where we had booked the rest of the week.

We settled on the Zachary Guest House. Zachary had one compelling feature - it was available.

We caught a cab at the airport and headed to Zachary's. The cab driver, Mufasa, was a peach. He took one look at the place, gave us his number, and told us to call him any time - he could be there to pick us up inside 10 minutes. We assured him we were fine. But we took the number. We found our way down a dirt road to the check in area...the guy in charge shooed away the lizards, found the keys, and showed us to our rooms. Phil's room was first...he kicked off his shoes, threw himself on the bed, and declared he could stay in this place all week. Matt and Andrew's room came next. Andrew took off his shoes, sat down on the bed, and decided one night would be fine. Matt rooted around in his bag, found a shirt he wouldn't mind burning later, wrapped it around the pillow, and asked us how the hell he was supposed to sleep standing up. John and I had deluxe accommodations, as in a big bed, a little bit of space, and two fans that blew full force. Also we were right next door to the bathroom.

In the morning, Matt was, not so surprisingly, up early. Maybe it was the chickens, maybe it was the monkeys, maybe he is just an early riser. One never knows. He came into our room and declared that in the kitchen area there was one couple who were already up. The woman looked ok...a few tattoos and a bit of road dust, perhaps, but pleasant and friendly. The man was sitting at the computer clad only in a 'banana hammock.' For those of you unfamiliar with Matt's brand of unvarnished vernacular, a banana hammock is a G-string. He was ready to call Mufasa.

We headed out back to the kitchen, and met the Tattooed Lady and the Banana Man. They were actually delightful. They had a little girl who was maybe 2. My feeling is a warm bath and a little time for the swelling to go down on her mosquito bites and she would have been just cute as a button. They showed us where to make coffee, and ushered us out to the pool area where we could enjoy a little early morning sunshine and our cuppa kopi instant.

We hung around there most of the morning. We made a couple friends, drank our cuppas, and waited for Andrew and Phil to wake up. We headed out just before noon to the resort where we had booked the rest of the week. We joked about ol' Zachary's the whole holiday, tho. We even gave it a new name...For us, it was The Last Resort....The pictures just barely do it justice...

Oh yeah - Matt is not actually jumping into the pool. I did a little Photoshopping. Some things are impossible to resist...