Leaving Penang in the morning, I took the ferry to Langkawi, a big island on the north west coast of Malaysia. The island is so close to the border of Thailand, that the whole island is a duty free zone, which is good for the beer price and shopping in general. It’s quiet touristy, even the locals go there for their holidays. I got a shared cab from the harbor to the beach my guesthouse was on (I got a recommendation from the owner of Father’s Guesthouse in the Cameron Highlands). It was quiet nice, so I checked in. It’s called Gecko’s Guesthouse. I decided for the dorm, as it was the cheapest option with 15 RM.

First thing to do on an Island? Of cause, check out the beach!

At a first glance it looked really nice. White sand, palms, lots of people and water sports stuff. I laid down and worked a bit on my tan. When I finally decided to get into the water (which wasn’t very long after I laid down, as the sun was burning really strong), surprise surprise, the beach was filled with tons of jellyfish. Ewww! They’re probably harmless, but I just don’t like glibbery stuff touching my legs while I’m  in the water…so I skipped swimming for today and returned back to the guesthouse and chilled in front of the TV. They had pay-TV, so we could watch the Olympics. Go Germany and Switzerland!

A bit later I went back to the beach to take some sunset pictures. I was a little to late and the sun was already gone, but the sky still had a nice color:

The next day I met David from England and Freddy from Sweden. Both great guys. We decided to go to the beach together and tan melt in the sun. This time there were no jellyfish, as it was still high tide (the jellyfish only seem to be a problem at low tide). I’d have really liked to go jet skiing, but even here that stuff is very expensive. Too expensive for me…I’m just not paying 30€ for 15 minutes.

As I mentioned Sweden above: For some reason, this island is invested by Swedish people. Almost everybody in the age range of 18-30 comes from Sweden. Really strange how that changes from location to location. It never seems to be even; there’s always one country that is dominating the location. In my hostel in Penang 8/10 people were German, here 9/10 people are Swedish…

Anyway, later that night we went to a pretty cool beach bar called Babylon, with live reggae music and a cool atmosphere. I only took a picture in daylight, so just imagine this at night, with candles, lots of people and a band

On the way back, it was already dark, the reason happened, why you guys didn’t get any blog posts in the last week: I slipped, because it was too dark to see the track to the hostel. On my way down I tried to hold on to something to stop the fall. All I could reach was a window (they don’t have real windows here, only these glass jalousie style windows). Of cause the thin piece of glass couldn’t hold my weight and cracked and I cut myself in the hand pretty bad. It was a very deep cut and bled a lot, so Freddy rushed to the guesthouse to get some band aids. He patched me up pretty good! Thanks again man! The next day I went to the hospital get it stitched together. The doctor gave me five stitches and two packs of antibiotics to prevent an infection.

Foolish as I am, I started taking the antibiotics. Not 24h later I got a bad case of diarrhea, a white tongue (which again gave me a dry mouth and a really bad taste) and got extremely tired. I googled it and as it seems these are all normal side effects of the antibiotics… great. For me, that wasn’t worth it. That stuff is supposed to get me better, not to make me sick! And as it’s only a precaution…so I stopped talking the pills and was hoping for a fast recovery. But no, that would be far too easy. The next day consisted of sleeping in front of the TV (I couldn’t keep my eyes open for 30 minutes straight) and running to the toilet. Fun times! Next day got even worse, because in addition to the other symptoms I got a fever and the toilet runs got more frequently. Horray, even more fun times! At day 4 it started to get better. I wasn’t so tired anymore, the fever was gone (thank god) and the diarrhea got also a little bit better. Freddy and David both left on this day. I also wanted to leave and go with Freddy to Koh Lipe, but I didn’t want to put one foot on a speed boat with still having diarrhea, so…

On the next day I felt much better (the diarrhea was not gone 100%, but good enough), so I booked the next speed boat to Koh Lipe (Thailand) and decided that I wanted to at least do something on the island before I leave. There’s a lot to do and see on Langkawi and it’s a shame that I was already leaving without taking a look at it, but after a week in one place you just have kind of enough of it, doesn’t matter if you have seen all kinds of natural beauty or just the guest house toilet… To get the most out of my last day, I took a cab to the cable car that goes up to over 700m where you then get a really nice view of the island. It’s the same cable cars you have when you go skiing or snowboarding, it’s even build by a company from Switzerland. Apparently it is the longest one-cable cable car in the world (not sure if that should impress me or frighten me!). With 30 RM to go up it’s not really cheap and I had to wait about an our in queue, but in the end the view was well worth it!

First you could get out in a small middle station, but there wasn’t that much to see there. Well the view was great, but you could also see the two viewing platforms a bit further up, so all I thought was: I want to go up there and see the view from up there, why do you get me off here? So, back into the cable car and up we go…

The view from the top was really breathtaking. I won’t waste many words here. Just enjoy the pictures:

A bit below the viewing platforms they build a large bridge to enjoy the scenic view even more:

The view was really impressive!

When I went back, I went straight to the beach to be there early enough, this time, to watch the sunset. The waiting was well worth it. There’s just one word for it: Fantastic! We just don’t get sunsets like this back at home…

And no, these pictures are not modified! That’s just the way the sun goes down on Langkawi, Malaysia…

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