Langkawi Island

Mystery Meat BBQ Bonanza, Merdeka Hunt Prep and Hari Riya weekend in Langkawi.

Once again this is going to be another long one. I've held off on writing anything as reading about my everyday 9-5 life trying to hustle and make a living would probably want to make you blow your brains out, so here goes the highlights for the last 2 weeks:

Skimming over work quickly, I gave a presentation to the Design Department and Head of Construction concerning the implementation of some new software which went well and continued the long wait for the visas to be accepted. Done.

Once the weekend hit we met up with the LBS and some of the Balfour Beatty guys at Jacks place for pre-drinks. He's got a pretty sweet pad on the 15th floor just behind the main clubbing district in KL, although his balcony is just low enough to make your inner crazy man want to throw yourself off it. Actually it was quite unnerving and tickled everyone's gonads a little bit, so i tried to keep away in my cheap Ruskov induced state.

Stolen from Brad-  Half the group pre drinking at Jacks

The next day we held a Mystery Meat BBQ Bonanza, the idea being that everyone should come round ours and bring some kind of twisted food that you wouldn't normally go near in the UK. In essence, all of us were feeling lazy and wanted to do something without having to leave the villa for the day. As it turns out there was a stupid amount of fish that no one really wanted, a lot of prawns, some cat fish? Hell i dunno, but the pigs ear took it to the next level. Courtesy of Keith the sadistic bastard.

Tower of Food

The results of the 1st annual MMBB cook off

We've been put into teams for a Treasure hunt trip (basically a company run and paid for treasure hunt) happening on my birthday in a couple of weeks. This will involve us driving to a 140 million year old Rainforest in the north of Malaysia near the Thailand border for 3 days, and i have been granted the heavy duty and moral obligations that come with the title "Steward" for the trip. Hah. 

Hari Riya In Langkawi!

So, Hari Riya is the festival that celebrates the end of Ramadan for the Muslims in the country, and as a result everyone gets some time off which we decided to use in a trip travelling to Langawki, located pretty far north up near the Thailand Border. Hari Riya is basically the Muslim version of Christmas (that's probably culturally insensitive) so we decided to join the mass exodus of people living KL in search of something beautiful. Langawki is surrounded by the Andaman Sea around 30km off the coast of Northwest Malaysia and we were adamant about reaching it before the rainy season hits from October to March.

Map of Langkawi: 

Getting there was a ball ache, starting with a night bus from China town leaving at midnight on Saturday. The Bus was actually extremely comfortable (for a bus) but still:

Night buses suck

Lookin Sheepish (Stolen from Brad)

Once we arrived in Penang we got a taxi to George town, arriving there about 5am leaving us with over 3 hours to kill until the ferry hit. Inevitably we ended up sleeping rough in the entrance to a bank on the main colonial strip through town. Classy.

Anyway we hit up the ferry to Langawki:

Ice Cold Ferry (The guy on the right can smell my fear)

And then a turbulent journey in the back of an unlicensed taxi driver where I managed to head butt the side of the car due to the lack of seat belt. The van itself looked like it was held together with duct tape and malice, and I was glad to get off the thing and away from the driver who proceeded to demand more money with a Christian Bale circa his American Psycho era look pasted across his face. Nutter.

Also the ferry was utterly freezing, we all resorted to shielding ourselves under wet towels, blankets, and a multitude of layers in the effort to beat the industrial sized aircon. Honestly the pure stupidity of half freezing people to death for 2 and a half hours when the weather outside is a good 30-35 degrees is just shockingly retarded. 

Ignoring all that, Langkawi is a really, really beautiful place. Made up of 99 seperate islands, we were staying about a 5-10 minute drive from Cenang beach on the south-west of the main island. Before we hit that up however we decided to go on a cable car ride up the 2nd tallest mountain in Malaysia, Mount Mat Cincang at about 2300 feet. 

Sped up video going down the cable car. Music from Beirut

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Lookin up

The view was really spectacular, and the gondola didn't seem too dodgy on the ride up or down. Regardless I’m never fully relaxed when travelling on anything remotely mechanical in this country, especially when there's a drop of hundreds of feet into a deep Rainforest canopy beneath you.

View from the summit

Seven Wells

Once we got down we took a walk, climbing around 350m up the mountain we just came down to reach the top most waterfall of 7, naturally formed from the river running down the mountain and a really tranquil place with beautifully fresh water. We had the place all but to ourselves and this was a fantastic way to cool off from the climb up which reduced us all to a sweaty mess. 

Langkawi Waterfalls

Group photo at the top of the 7 wells.

Also the near vertical drop on the other side of this sturdy looking edge protection kept things interesting.

Cenang Beach:

Pinched from Mitchell, a good few hours into the drinking session.

This place is really very pretty, and we chilled here for almost the entire day on Monday, entrenched at a quaint little bar where we ordered Tiger after Tiger till we drunk that dry, then Chang after Chang at 5RM a pop (a quid :D). Mix that up with a bit of swimming, and playing catch with some Pakistani construction workers who later asked us for a job the time just flew by and before we knew it 7 hours had passed and a bar tab of 260RM plus had been built up (including dinner). It was great evening and incredibly relaxing, the guy who ran the place lived in the UK half the year, kept the drinks fresh and the music impeccable. 

Beautiful Swimming

Chillin

Parasailing 

Before we became rooted in that bar, Myself, Keith and Mitchell went for a walk along the coast and stumbled upon some guys offering Parasailing (basically where they tie to a parachute to a boat and you get dragged along).

Intrigued, within a couple of minutes Me and Keith found ourselves strapped into the thing after paying 11 quid each, and before they could finish giving us the extremely limited safety brief we found ourselves a hundred feet or so in the air, soaring over the ocean with breathtaking views (see video) . It all happened hilariously fast and for that cheap you really can't beat it. Saying that the guys seemed pretty professional, and i guess there wasn't actually much to learn. 

 Flying about

 

It was time to come in, and utilising my extensive safety knowledge which consisted of "Hey boss, you pull this when i whistle lah?" we made a near vertical dive for the beach and completed a textbook landing apart from staking it at the end. I was trying to film it at the time which meant that i only had 1 arm free which probably resulted in this flunk of a touch down, but the footage is pretty sick so it was worth it. 
Watch below.

Video: Landing

It was a great experience, one of the best of Malaysia so far. The whole trip cost me 760 Ringgit, just over 150 quid. Bargain.

Mid Flight, Woop! Woop!

I'm trying to wrap this up now, so in brief...

• Brad walked off very drunk for 3 hours and eventually made his own way back at 4-5am (the rest of us having opted for an earlyish night)
• We met up with some of the other Loughborough guys and had a few drinks
• We've been invited to come chill with Dr Barnabas in Singapore if we ever drop by and feel like grabbing a bite to eat
• My sunburn hurts
• We got back to KL at around half 5am, Villa Florra by 6am, and started work at 8:30. I'm typing this at work and feel like blended manure. 

Langawki is touristy with overpriced food, under priced beer and a healthy supply of westerners.

 And beautiful.

Sunset photo: Courtesy of Tom for this one.