Lounging on Langkawi.

We've just spent 10 fairly lazy days on the Malaysian island (pulau) of Langkawi, which sits in the Andaman sea, very close to the border with Thailand. Like the Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc, it has lovely, palm-fringed, white-sandy beaches, lapped by blue - but not crystal clear - waters. In fact, Langkawi sits in an archipelago of 99 islands, many of them incredibly small and uninhabited, and many with some gorgeous beaches, only accessible by boat. We've been puzzled, though, about why the sea is a little murky around here, with one or two exceptions amongst the islands. Certainly it's not good enough for snorkling - but we do have a theory: the sand, which really is as white as marble, is so finely textured that it's almost like flour. And you can certainly see, where the waves lap backwards and forwards at the water's edge, that this fine flour-like sand tends not to sink to the bottom, but rather stays suspended, not quite mixing to a paste, in the water.
Local legend has it that a local woman, Mahsuri, a maiden who was wrongly accused of infidelity, before finally being executed, put a curse on the island for 7 generations. As proof of her innocence, white blood flowed from her veins, turning the sands of Langkawi's beaches white. And the sea, albeit not as clear as elsewhere, is still really warm and inviting, nevertheless.

For the first 5 days here in Langkawi, we stayed in a traditional Malaysian wooden stilt-house - all dark wood, intricately carved fascias, and carved balustrades around the balconies - in the middle of a small jungle-like forest in the middle of the island. In the forest, there were dozens of rubber trees, each with its own cup catching the latex which oozed whitely out of the carved grooves in the bark. There were about 30 dwellings like ours dotted about amongst the trees, each housing 3 individual units, and a swimming pool, a restaurant and the vast Reception area about 5-10 minutes' walk through the trees.

The whole 'resort' - which, it must be said, has seen better days: probably nothing had changed since the 1950s, including the musty smell in the rooms!- was well away from the touristy areas on the island, and almost eerily quiet and peaceful, except for the night-time jungle noises! Whilst we were there, we saw a couple of 3-feet long monitor lizards ambling dinosaur-like below our balcony, several black and/or grey squirrels leaping around the trees, a few macaques crashing noisily through the branches, a skinny, bright green tree-snake, which I very nearly trod on, making it rear up rather threateningly (though I later discovered it's not poisonous) and, one night, a flying lemur (sometimes called a flying fox) which swooped onto a tree trunk just after dark one night, landing against and then hugging a tree trunk only a few feet away from where we were sittingout on our balcony. This gave us a bit of a fright at first: it looked like HUGE bat, about 2 feet long and with very large bulbous eyes, and indeed it certainly had that appearance in flight, with its vast webbed wings, but we were put right about that when we described it to a local chap a few days later.

We'd hired a car for a few days, as the place was so far from everything, and we toured around the island exploring the highest mountain (about 8,000 feet), several villages, a tropical fruit farm, a couple of waterfalls, two batik craft centres, a trip up to the second-highest mountain in the steepest and highest cable car we've ever been on, and a visit to the huge and very stylish gallery where you can see all the gifts given to the former Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamed by foreign nations, and heads of state (Formula 1 racing cars, Ships in Glass Bottles, Ming vases with Dr Mahathir's face painted on them - that sort of thing). One of the highlights of these trips around the island came when, near to the top of the mountain, Gunung Raya, a huge oriental pied hornbill suddenly flew, with great whooshing wings, right over our heads, and then sat in a nearby tree very co-operatively whilst we watched him through our binoculars for about 10 minutes. Up there, we also saw several majestic eagles soaring gracefully overhead, and two different types of monkeys sitting in the trees, or scampering across the road in front of the car. Oh, and we also went looking for something called 'Book Village' which we'd noticed on the map, but were disappointed to discover that it wasn't, after all, Langkawi's answer to Hay-on-Wye, but rather simply the Malaysian name for a small hamlet with several places where local families were swimming in a river-bed.

Our second place of residence here in Pulau Langkawi has been in 'Tropical Resort '- a collection of small chalets sitting slightly back from the beach, Pentai Tenang, in the southwest corner of the island, the chalets separated from the beach about 100 metres away by a small forest. Here, we've been delighted to see a whole family of oriental pied hornbill flying like huge air-freight carriers backwards and forwards across the little cleared path which we walk down to get the beach. We've also seen hundreds of mynah birds, mainly grey/black, with yellow patches around the head and wings - and even some with completely bald, but bright yellow heads. And then there've been several sightings of black-naped, but almost entirely bright yellow, orioles too, and particularly when we went out on a boat a few days ago, dozens and dozens more of the beautiful large eagles, and several types of kyte, swooping down to the water to feed on the chicken skins which the boat-tour operators throw out for them. Whilst sitting on our little 'verandah' outside our chalet, which looks straight out onto the cleared path in the forest towards the beach, we've also spied several much larger kinds of flyers - a never-ending stream of para-sailers gliding over the top of the trees, towed by small speed-boats, on their 10-minute flight around the bay, their numbers increasing in the late afternoon and early evening as people 'parasail into the sunset' - which can be pretty spectacular around here. Watching them from the beach a couple of times, we were struck one particular evening by the incongruity of seeing a woman taking off from the sands and over the bay, dressed from head to toe in a black burka, with only a letter-box slit for her eyes!

The manager here, a Malaysian man named Syukri, has been a real highlight of our stay here, too. A highly intelligent man, with perfect English and a wider English vocabulary than most English people, he'd lived and studied in London for 8 years a couple of decades ago, and has certainly brought back with him the kind of humour which is, perhaps, only really attributable to the English. He's an aspiring writer (and could probably out-write that Bill Shakespeare if he wanted to), a devotee of Jeeves and Wooster and Fawlty Towers, and a media techno-wizard, making up video 'promos' for a range of clients internationally. Every day, we've spent some time in his company, having conversations both serious and silly (or what Bertie Wooster might call "exchanging gay badinage and witty repartee"), and have been thoroughly entertained!

On Monday (23 Jan), it was the first day of the Chinese New Year celebrations, and we could hear (but were in the wrong place to see) loads of fireworks going off into the wee small hours all around us. By Tuesday 24th, though, we're off to Melaka/Malacca, where we'll hopefully be able to enjoy the continuing celebrations for Chinese New Year - which last for 15 days! - for some of the time with Adrian and Michelle , the young couple we had such fun with in KL a couple of weeks ago, who are hoping to join us for part of our time there.

Meantime, though, as we head into the Year of the Dragon, a very Happy Chinese New Year to you all.