Langkawi, Wow-wee

We arrived in Langkawi, an island off the west coast of Malaysia, after a pretty bumpy flight and a pretty jumpy Brian (the hypnotherapy has worn off, I'm going to have to slip him a valium or else he'll just have to live in Thailand forever).

We had found a great deal on a lovely little apartment to rent for the week from this Dutch couple who ran a few properties there. They picked us up at the airport which was nice of them. Unfortunately the apartment was around a 30 minute drive from the main touristy part and was near a Malaysian holiday town called Kuah (we think that's Malaysian for kip). The apartment complex was gorgeous with lovely gardens and a HUGE pool. We had a lovely studio with a big deck at the front so were delighted to unpack for the first time in two weeks. There was a load of little dub-step birds living in the trees outside the apartment (dub step is dreadful dance music, but the birds were very funny - see here http://youtu.be/ZGhVXgMoz4g ).

We went out the first night to find somewhere to eat and have a few drinks. Do you think there was a bar anywhere in sight? You can imagine how distressed we were. Langkawi is a duty free island so in theory there should have been a river of cheap beer flowing through the town but, alas, Malaysia is a mainly muslim country so they don't go in much for having a drink and enjoying themselves, no wonder many of them are so miserable looking. The Chinese-Malay and Indian-Malay are super friendly though.

The island is so beautiful, it's actually 99 islands in total. We went on a boat trip on our second day there. It brought us all around these lovely islands (they would remind you of scenes from King Kong or Lost). We met some funny monkeys, one of them stole my apple. I had a bit of a stand off with him over it but in the end I let him have it cos he was so cute (and probably had rabies).

We then went to this lovely lake on one of the islands but hardly anyone was swimming in it. I had to try it as it looked so nice and the water was really clear and warm. Brian dived in but I felt a bit paranoid as one woman was swimming in her full burka and I didn't want to insult anyone so I compromised and did a few bombs in my t shirt. I later found out that it was called the Lake of the Pregnant Maiden...oops, maybe thats why no one was swimming! That could put a spanner in the works!

We met this brilliant couple from Liverpool called Sylvia and Dave. Dave is a huge Liverpool fan (he's actually a toffee but we know he's reading this :)). They were staying in the apartment above us and knew langkawi really well as they'd been holidaying there for years and had even tried living there for a couple of years. They brought us down to Pantai Cenang which is a really gorgeous beach lined with loads of good restaurants and (thank God or Allah or Buddha or whoever!) BARS!

We spent most evenings down there after that as it was a great spot and taxis were really cheap back and forth. There was one really cool reggae bar right on the beach where people sat on mats on the beach and there were candles all around the place and cool bands playing. It was so chilled out.

On our last day in Langkawi, we went on the most amazing boat trip along a mangrove river and out to sea. The guide was brilliant and loved nature and was great at explaining how all the wildlife and the environment worked together. We met some hilarious monkeys who would dive off the trees into the water to swim for some monkey nuts. We also met a tribe of friendly monkeys who came onto the boat to say hello and eat some more nuts from us.

We saw loads of little bats sleeping in a cave. When we were in the dark bat cave, there was a woman in a burka on a different tour. It's the first time in my life I saw Brian bite his lip, well nearly, all he said was 'there's a batman joke there somewhere'.

We saw a small viper snoozing in a mangrove tree; brown eagles diving for fish; and a giant monitor lizard swam by us in the boat.

On the way back, we saw part of an air show that was taking place that week in Langkawi. There were huge fighter jets doing all sorts of tricks in the sky! It didn't do much to calm Brian's nerves about flying out the next day.

We then stopped off for some lunch in a lovely local restaurant on the river. It was a great day out and the highlight of the Langkawi trip.

Langkawi is such a beautiful place, we would definitely recommend it but stay in Cenang not in Kuah!

Oops, dunno how that got in there...

...that's more like it!

Sorry guys :)

Kuala Lumpur City

After Paddy's Day, we had another two days in KL. The city is amazing and full of life. We stayed in Chinatown off Petaling Street where there are hundreds of stalls flogging deadly knock off gear and amazing food.

We spent one day visiting the Batu Caves, where basically, you walk up a few million steps and enter a cave that that smells like the toilet of the Auld Dubliner at 3am on a Saturday. There were cute monkeys all over the place who tried to rob, scratch and bite you as you trekked the giant staircase in 40 degree heat.

It was good to see though, and it had the tallest Buddha in the world if you're interested? No? Us neither, we're not great sight see-ers to be honest. We do it all like, but its a bit of a chore :) would love an ol' open top bus to take you around and do it all in one day.

We were a bit tired after all of our adventuring over the past few weeks so it didn't help when we got off on the wrong stop on the monorail on the way back from the bat caves and got totally lost. That evening, we had a giant feast at the hawker stalls in Chinatown - best tasting food of the trip so far! Amazing curries and bits and bobs! YUM! Well deserved after all those steps. It's cooked in the filthiest looking places but once you turn off your OCD (Brian) and forget the surroundings, it tastes delicious!

The next day we went to see the Petronas Towers. They were really cool big twin buildings. Brian interviewed for a job as Head Bouncer there and just lost out to Tommy Lee Jones who clinched it cos he knew all the words to Men in Black.

It was great in KL, but 3 days was enough. It was mental busy and while everything was pretty cheap, alcohol was more expensive than Ireland as its a Muslim country so there's loads of tax on booze. It cost the equivalent of €10 a drink there!

We had already had a mad two weeks travelling so were dying to get to Langkawi island to relax for a few days!

Paddy's Day in KL

We got to Kuala Lumpur city on Paddy's Day in the recovery position from the music festival in Sepang. As we said, we had met a really sound bunch of people at from the festival (Kiwis, Americans and Australians), some of whom were going partying in KL for Paddy's Day. We were wrecked tired but we had to do our country proud so we dressed in our finest emerald tack and went out to impress our new friends with our craic, ceol and banter.

We went to two Irish bars, the first one was pretend Irish and had a special deal on Guinness to mark the occasion so we stayed for a few social ones with our new friends Payden and Chris. Payden is a cool american guy who lives in Australia and is only 23 but so well travelled you'd think he was much older. He even lived in Ireland for a while! Chris is a lovely German chap with some cool tattoos and great stories from his own travels also. He is also living in Australia at the moment.

We moved on to a real Irish bar after a while (by real, we mean owned by an Irish ex-pat who knew his audience and overpriced all the beers). We managed to blag a few free drinks from them though and chatted with a few Irish peeps throughout the night. We met a young Cork girl who was travelling the world on her own and an older man from Ballyfermot who had moved to Sydney when he was 18. He was with his two Ozzie sons, a nice blonde English lady, and a 40 year old Malay woman who he claimed to be in love with after his holiday romance. I'd say he met her in a massage bar and treated her to a few nice meals for the week. The group looked like something from a Jeremy Kyle show but they were generally sound enough.

Jeremy Kyle would do quite well here actually as later that night we met up with our hilarious new Kiwi friends from the festival in a bar where Brian was charmed by two he-shes who took a shine to him and were petting him all night!

I had to tell Catherine and the lads from NZ that these 'girls' were packing a couple of half rings of white pudding down their jocks. The lads were shocked! I should have said nothing and left them to find out later for themselves. The girls were great craic (sorry wrong use of terminology) - they kept chasing me around and one was waiting for me outside the jacks! The other tried to stealth grind me on the dance floor! It felt like someone just wheeled a postman's bike into me. Gas, thought that stuff would only be in store for us in Thailand.

Overall a great Paddy's Day in Asia with some lovely new acquaintances (and we don't just mean the lady boys) :)

Future Music Festival - Raving for Dummies

Our first few days in KL were spent at Future Music Festival. The first day of the festival was dedicated to Armin van Buren's A State of Trance 600 Tour. It was my first time at a rave and I have to say that I enjoyed it more than I expected to. It was like doing a 9 hour spinning class in a sauna - must have burned about 15k calories dancing away :) Kept waiting for a bit of Rihanna or Carly Rae Jepson though but no joy.

Brian loved it, he was delighted with all of the DJs performances (do you call them performances? I dunno). The ASOT 2013 radio show started at 5pm with Armin who introduced Ben Gold. He was unbelievable! We missed Super8 & Tab, but got W&W in. Catherine loved them and was singing along. Don't ask me how as she never heard of them before! One of the big trance song breakdowns (slow bit of dance song) started and Catherine turned to me and asked me 'is this a slow set?' I think she was expecting Wet Wet Wet to turn up. Cosmic Gate were franking unreal! They played exploration of space and it was class, brought me back to Star Beach days with all the boys! Ked, Skinny and Johnny Maye would have loved it - there wouldn't have been a half moon in sight! Armin came on with a bang then - his show was unbelievable! Brian's Chinese-man hairs were standing on their ends. Kudos to Caff for putting up with the 9 hour song (as she says).

The second day of the festival was a bit more chilled. We saw Temper Trap, Fun, Rita Ora and the Prodigy. Fun were brilliant, they were Caff's favourite. Rita was shite, the power kept cutting out on her and she didn't even notice cos she was lip-syncing. Gas!

The food at the festival was savage, we tried the Rendang curry, Biryani, Sushi, Laksa and Roti. Don't judge us, we needed the energy for all the dancing!

We met up with some cool people from New Zealand, Oz and America while at the festival and are meeting up with a few of them today in Kuala Lumpur to celebrate Paddy's Day. We had been staying at a hotel (www.theyouniqhotel.com) near the F1 Racing Track in Sepang where the festival was on but moved to KL city this morning to a cool hotel (www.geohotelkl.com) in China Town.

SL to KL - Getting to Malaysia

We had a lovely last lunch by the river in Bentota before setting out on the 4 hour trip to the airport. Our mental taxi driver picked us up at 4.30 even though our flight was at midnight. I didn't want to be on the Sri Lankan roads in the dark - it was bad enough in daylight!

We had travelled down on a Sunday so the roads were quiet - still totally chaotic but we hadn't seen anything yet. Our trip back was on a Wednesday evening and every stretch of the road was packed with Sri Lankans driving with a death wish. We reached Colombo at dusk. It is such a poor city and we saw some sad sights along the way. It's really polluted also. Our driver insisted on stopping off to show us this manky temple. We had to take our shoes off to go inside, I don't think we'll ever be clean again. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice Buddhist temple with a giant gold Buddha inside and loads of lovely incense burning (probably to hide the smell of feet). They had this poor, beautiful baby elephant chained up inside (a gift to the temple from the government WTF?! Could they not have just sent some flowers or chocolates?). The poor creature was miserable and dancing around in frustration. I nearly cried. Couldn't wait to get out of there. Our taxi driver was dying to show us more 'sights' so we had to be firm - the crazy cohint had just made a 9 hour round trip for the equivalent of €45 and was still dying to bring us on a detour!

I asked Brian if i could sit in the edge seat on the plane so he ended up in the middle beside a little Indian dude. The guy was hyper, I thought it was his first time on a plane but it turns out he was just a nutter. He was travelling to Malaysia to work as a labourer.

He asked Brian (in Indian) to set the time on his lovely little pink Baby-G watch. Brian thought that maybe it was a gift from his daughter so was endeared to him and also helped him with his movies as he couldn't work the in-flight entertainment. He was hopping around in his seat, trying to get the air hostess' attention by making kissy noises at her. Me and Brian were in kinks laughing at him.

Little did we know, we were sitting beside the biggest pie-ball in Sri Lankan Airlines history. He skulled a glass of red wine in approximately 2 seconds and then proceeded to yelp at the air hostess for more. Except rather than saying 'excuse me miss', he proceeded to make this loud kissing sound with his lips to get her attention. It sounded like a mongooses mating call. Couldn't help but break my heart laughing. He stopped being funny when he started to cover one of his nostrils and spurt out the first digit of the number 11 in mucus all over the airplane wall, then the second digit came a few seconds later to complete his number '11'. He continued doing this for the last half hour of the flight. By the end of the journey, the wall looked like a full essay of ogham writing you would see in a megithic tomb. Knacker.

If that wasn't bad enough, there was another lovely 70 year old Hindu lady sitting across from us. At the same time that our friendly neighbour was drafting his masterpiece, she began sticking her huge ET-like elongated index finger into her ear and started shaking it like a bear would a beehive. Her finger must have evolved throughout her artistic tenure and grown an extra 30mm just to ensure she could touch her eardrum. I thought her finger was going to come out the other side of her head and poke the guy siting next to her. She then kept looking at her finger after pulling it out of her gammon steak ear. She did this for the last hour too. Minging. Of course Catherine was fast asleep in my lovely aisle seat for all of the fantastic fluid exchange. Thank frank we landed in Malaysia without drowning in snots.

Homesick iPhone

iPhone is freaked out, misses the Irish climate :)

Sri Lanka

After landing in Sri Lanka, we were worried that we might get the same scorpy treatment we got in Dubai...but we couldn't have been more wrong! The Sri Lankans are the friendliest and most peaceful mother truckers alive! They are so smiley and genuinely interested in you. We travelled from the airport to Bentota (a 3.5 hr taxi ride through almost every town along the coast.) The roads are mental with pedestrians, tuk tuks, buses, bikes and cattle all vying for space, beeping constantly and overtaking each other. The whole route is lined with small towns where you can see the people going about their daily business. Every one of them is an entrepreneur, selling anything from coconut strings to the smiles on their faces. They make just enough to live on yet seem so happy, bartering their way through the day!

Our taximan was gas. Brian asked 'Is there much crime here?", and he replied, "no sir, the only crime was on one tourist who was an Englishman. He came with his wife and he upset a lot of people when drunk and everybody killed him''. We imagined everyone in Sri Lanka ganging up to kill this drunk Englishman. The 1916 rising, poppadum style :)

The place we are staying is called Dalmanutha Gardens in Bentota http://www.dalmanuta.com - it is a gorgeous little spa hotel on the Bentota river in the forest. There are only 9 rooms available to stay in. They are lovely little bungalows with their own gardens and there are tropical birds, lizards and squirrels everywhere and the river even has crocodiles. We ate dinner on a little pontoon thing out on the river on our first night, it was gorgeous!

After 14 hours sleep (we had been up for 36 hours straight while travelling here), we took a boat ride from our hotel to Bentota beach and on the way we were shown all sorts of things like how to carve a coconut sea turtle and we saw the Monday market (a local market where the people come to buy fish, spices, veg, etc. It was mad but they fling all their left over crap in the river water out back which is a bit sad to see as it is such a beautiful place :( ).

The beach is stunning though, no high rise buildings here, just beach and forest. The water is 27 degrees and so clear you can see to the bottom. The local people are brilliant, genuinely nice with a bit of "I'd love a rupee orf this cohint" about them. Not too much hounding by them, and even the ones that do try to pester you are so smiley you don't even mind.

Caff is humming a trance song as I'm writing this! I'm trying to get her into it before Van Buren's concert on Friday. It seems to be working. I convinced her 'BT sky larking' is about a bird flying around at the edge of space! She loves it now, lol!

We got a tukx2 to a restaurant on a lake which had good reviews on Trip Advisor and had some savage tucker - giant fresh prawns and curry. Our crazy tuk tuk driver insisted on waiting for us for two hours! Felt like I was being watched by a Daly 2 months in when I was with Caff first! No dropping the shoulder over dinner anyways. Just home now with a glass of vino. Going fishing in the morning to crocodile river (not rock, clear off Elton John).

A local guy, Khan, brought us fishing on the river. The same thing again, he was a super happy chap, carving out his living doing ten jobs a day. He wasn't too fond of the Muslims. He had two dairy cows and his home was broken into one night and the two cows were stolen and slaughtered (apparently by the Muslim cohints). He told us that he killed one of them, eek! Brian said "fair franks to you". He'd also told us that the Muslims had put the cows into a taxi so we might have been a bit lost in translation with the whole chat.

Brian caught a giant shark on the trip and was chuffed. He wanted to throw the fish back in but Khan wouldn't hear of it and banged it on the head a few times with the priest (that's what us fisher people call the fish killer tool) 10 minutes later, the fish came around and started flapping around in the boat. He was a fighter so he was but Khan wasn't having any of it so we took it home and our hotel chef cooked it for us!

On our last night we went into Bentota town for a few drinks and some dinner. A mad local guy walked us to our restaurant, even though we knew where we were going. I think he gets a few rupees in commission if he shows up with some people. The place is so quiet, you'd hope that it's not like this all the time. These lovely people could do with a few more tourists to keep them going. They live on so little yet are so happy and peaceful (Apart from culling the odd Englishman or muzzie).

We will definitely come back here someday!