Langkawi Love :)

We had planned on going to some island off of Malaysia that would be a 4-hour bus ride and then 1/2-hour ferry ride. The island sounded great... but the travel time (after a 3-hour flight back from Borneo) did not sound so great.

During our last afternoon in Borneo Riki, Saleshni, and I sat down and researched a bit about other island choices around Malaysia. We decided on Langkawi and I'm so glad we did! Langkawi turns out to be one of the most popular island destinations of Malaysia but it's not at all overdeveloped or too crowded... AND is only a one-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur.

This one-week trip ended up including 6 plane rides and is the first time I've ever booked a flight for the next day. Gotta love AirAsia! Not only that... but after our jungle-time in Borneo... we got a great deal (buy 2 nights get the 3rd free) at the SHERTAON LANGKAWI RESORT - Yes, please!

We arrived in Langkawi Tuesday afternoon...

This is the view from the Sheraton's lobby. Gorgeous. The Sheraton Langkawi is secluded and has its own private beaches and 3 restaurants. It was such a nice getaway.

Saleshni and I enjoying a walk on the beach.

The infinity pool.

And pool bar.

Perfect Wednesday morning... on the beach with plenty of reading material.  :)

Our room was great!

Tea each morning on the balcony.  :)

Wednesday afternoon we went into the main strip, Pentai Cenang... it is just one street with some shops and restaurants and this is the busiest we saw the beach -- pretty awesome.  :)  Locals kept coming up to us and offering island hopping tours. We were on the main island of Langkawi but Langkawi is actually a cluster of 99 islands.

This is where we had dinner. The restaurant had such a fun vibe to it. It is called Champor Champor, which means "all mixed up" in Malay.

We spent Thursday morning at the beach. There were signs warning us about jellyfish but people were swimming and all had been fine so far. ...Buuuut Saleshni ended up getting stung on the top of her ankle. She said the jellyfish felt like a huge pillow! Unlike the common belief of peeing on a jellyfish sting, we were told to leave it in the salt water for a few minutes, then spray the area with vinegar, and about 30 minutes later, she was given some cream to rub on. Lesh said that it stung pretty badly for a few hours... it was tender to the touch even later that night... but the next day it had pretty much gone away.

We moved up to the pool after Lesh had gotten the sting... but about 20 minutes later it began to sprinkle. The day before it sprinkled for just a few minutes and cleared up so we stayed a bit until the rain got harder. We finally made a run to the restaurant upstairs... and it's a good thing we did! This was a serious storm... torrential downpour, lightning, and HUGE claps of thunder. We ended up ordering some laksa - a spiced noodle soup made with coconut milk -- the girls had been wanting to make sure to get some while in Malaysia so it was perfect.

That night we walked down the road to this restaurant, Shin Me -- a Chinese Malaysian restaurant that one of the cab drivers recommended. Staying at the Sheraton was fabulous... but the food was only decent and the prices were crazy... so it was nice to be able to get a local meal for local prices.

We had Thai rice, fish, veggies and "bean curd" (tofu). I had a fresh mixed fruit juice (apple and orange) too... here it was about $2.00, where as the fresh pineapple juice I ordered our first night at dinner at one of the Sheraton restaurants was $8.00 ...ridiculous. (Malaysia uses the Malaysian Ringott... basically everything is multiplied by 3 from the US dollar... so my juice at the Sheraton was 24 ringott.)

The Sheraton buffet was a great deal... usually it is 60 ringott ($20) but they were having some kind of promotion and we got it for 44 ringott each. My 2 lattes alone would have been the 44 ringott if they had not been included! We even made sure to wake up early enough to get to the buffet with enough time to sit and enjoy a few rounds over time.  :P

I really liked this harbor...

I know that there are wild animals in the world... and places where monkeys roam free... but I guess I never thought I would be in one of those places because it was surprising to see monkeys all over!

These were all taken from one of our cabs that we had stop on the side of the road to get some photos. Monkeys seemed to be all over Langkawi. There were even some in the trees at the hotel by the pool - one of the workers was trying to get them to go away... but there I was taking pictures and marveling at how cool they were! Ha!