It might be hard for some of you to understand, but we were beginning to tire with all the beaches and hot weather and suddenly here we were in Malaysia and our first stop was a beach. We were on the island of Langkawi. Nothing actually drew us to the island, it just happened to be on our way to Penang. Langkawi is a duty free zone which did not mean much to me until we walked into this large duty free shop and it was like walking into the best duty free shop you've ever seen at any airport. It was fantastic! Both Amie and I wandered the aisles with our mouths open and soon our shopping basket was quite heavy. The shelves were full of all my favorite sweets from back home (Ireland, not Oregon), with a row of Cadbury's chocolate and Mars bars galore.

Unfortunately, we had not gone to an ATM at the ferry port and there were none in town so the only money we had was the leftover Thai baht which I changed to Malaysian ringgit and it only amounted to just under $20, minus the taxi fare ($5) and we didn't have a whole load left. "We can use VISA" I argued, but Amie had come to her senses and reasoned that we could only buy as much chocolate as we could eat in the next half hour since it would surely melt. That was bad enough but she also insisted that we could only buy beer that we could drink in the next 2 days as it would not be cold and we would end up lugging it around for days, maybe even weeks, before we had another room with a fridge in it. It's a conspiracy I tell you! But I made the best of it I could and grabbed a few chocolate bars and put in a sample of beers (at 35 cents a can I would be crazy not to!) in the basket and even with Amie's items it still came to less than $10. We were so pleased with ourselves that we stopped at a bar on the way home for happy hour. I know that I talk about beer a lot, but rest assured it's mostly talk, I am Irish after all and I have to talk my share if not actually drink it. Yes, I like a beer or two but that's all I need and I'm good to go. But if there are any big drinkers out there, then Langkawi is the place for you. Maybe we could hold our next company picnic here.

I'm sure you all heard about the earthquake near Sumatra a few nights ago and how there was an evacuation order for the coastal areas of Langkawi. We slept right through it and only heard about it the next morning when checking into a beachfront bungalow that had suddenly become vacant, hmm, I wonder why? The next day we had planned on swimming but put it off until the afternoon but a storm started brewing and the sea got quite rough so we decided to give it a miss. We weren't all that pushed anyway even though the beach was quite nice and we had it mostly to ourselves.

The sea was still rough the next day but unfortunately we had planned to take the ferry to Penang and were not going to allow a few waves to stop us. We were seated in the lower section of the boat and could feel every bump as the boat hit the waves at a high speed. We also watched as huge waves swept over us as we hit each bump. To make matters worse, some of the locals were looking a little nervous as others emptied the contents of their stomachs into handy bags that were passed out soon after our departure. All in all, it was a tough 2 1/2 hour crossing and I can still see the marks on my knee as Amie's nails dug into my flesh in proportion to the volume of water that came up over the windows.

We arrived in Penang none the worse from our journey and walked to Chinatown where, after an hour of searching, we found something acceptable. Our original APTS (Acceptable Place To Sleep) requirements included cleanliness, with a bathroom, a semi-comfortable bed and a fan, but now as it has been pretty warm, we've added airconditioning to the list. That makes it a little more difficult to find an APTS within our budget. Furthermore, Malaysia is more well to do than Thailand so accommodation is more expensive, but still cheap compared to western prices. Penang was quite nice with not a beach in sight but I guess that's another story so . . . back to work.