Last stop before Thailand

We've had a pretty relaxing three nights on Langkawi. It's been really hot and humid, and the guest house we stayed at didn't have air-conditioning which was kind of a bummer. But, we were lucky to actually find a room along the beach strip. The days leading up to Chinese New Year (Feb 14) are a huge travel time for people in the region, and although Langkawi has a lot of foreign tourists, there are also quite a few local tourists too.

The ferry from Penang was pretty straight-forward, about a three hour ride. It was on a Victoria Clipper type fast ferry that was completely full. We got a kick out of the fact that they screened the movie A Perfect Storm during the trip, especially since the ride was a little rocky.

One of the days here we did an "Island Hopping Tour" where we got to visit the Island of the Pregnant Lady and swim in a fresh-water lake on the island, which supposedly helps with fertility...

From Langkawi

Also in the lake are hundreds of catfish that will rub against your feet if you stick them in the water. This is a popular spa treatment around Malaysia; we've seen "fish soaks" advertised all over the place here.

After the lake, we went to an "eagle feeding" where the boats dump food into the water and lots of eagles come out to grab the food out of the water.

From Langkawi

And lastly we went to a third island where there was a beautiful beach for swimming and beer drinking!

From Langkawi

Other than the tour, it's been pretty low-key here. And today was a recovery day (unrelated to the beer drinking). Last night I went to bed with a pretty high fever and didn't sleep all that well. I also had to take Imodium...which thankfully worked quite well. I'm feeling a lot better, the fever has subsided and I'm hoping that's the worst of it. It may have been caused by something I ate or drank, but Jaimee didn't get sick and we pretty much ate/drank the same stuff. Anyway, there are few people who come to SE Asia and don't get sick, so I guess it was only a matter of time.

Tomorrow we take the ferry on to Thailand, where we hope to catch an overnight train to Bangkok. We've arranged couchsurfing in Bangkok for the weekend. We'll see how that works out...

Here are all the photos from Langkawi (including monkey pictures!)