You've Got Pictures

Okay. So I know it has taken me a while to finally post our pictures from Malaysia thanks to crippling internet speed, computer problems and a jam packed schedule but now you must wait no longer. Here they are. I did not take the time to caption all the pictures as it has already taken me so long to get them posted and I did not want to delay any longer. So I will describe here a summary of what you will see.

We flew from Jakarta to KL and spent one night there before heading to the island of Langkawi. While we were in KL, we visited the Petronas towers, which is not just 2 tall office buildings we found out. There is a shopping mall attached to the bottom floors and in that shopping mall was Petrosains, an interactive Science Discovery Center. We had a fun morning there exploring all the exhibits. After lunch we then headed up to the Skybridge which connects the 2 towers at the 29th level. This trip gave us a bird's eye view of the downtown area.

That evening we flew to Langkawi for the next 5 nights where we stayed at the Meritius Pelangi Beach Resort and Spa. The rooms at this resort were spread out in 51 one and two-story Malay-style chalets, with the biggest chalet consisting of 8 rooms. Our rooms were situated on stilts over a large pond. The 2 main highlights at the resort were the swimming pools/waterslides and the shell collecting on the beach. I have never seen SOOO many cool seashells in one place that were so easy to find.

Our big outing for this trip was a Mangrove Tour by boat. Know what a mangrove is? I didn't either until I saw am episode of Man vs Wild on the Discovery Channel. Basically, mangrove trees grow in swampy like areas with their roots, acting like stilts, hold the tree up out of the mud. We boarded a boat which took us down a river through Langkawi's mangrove forest. Along the way, we spotted various wildlife including monkeys, mangrove pit vipers, a monitor lizard and lots of eagles. We made a some stops as well. First at a bat cave where we saw hundreds, maybe thousands, of bats sleeping. We stopped for lunch at a floating restaurant for a grilled seafood feast and explored the fish farm there. And then we watched 10-20 eagles at an eagle feeding ground.

We took another adventure on the Langkawi Cable Cars through the clouds to the top of the Machinchang range. I have been on several cable car rides but I have to admit this one was pretty scary. We went on a cloudy day so as we got towards the top, our cable car was engulfed in the clouds. And then we stopped and started, stopped and started. Each time the cable car stopped and started, it began swinging up and down, side to side. Crazy.

Most of our meals we ate at the hotel, but the last night we ventured out to Barn Thai restaurant. The restaurant is located in the mangrove forest we had toured on our boat ride. To get to the restuarant, you follow a 450m wooden walkway through the mangrove trees. There is the possibility to see the local wildlife along the way, but the night we went, our kids were the only wildlife we saw :). It was a nice restaurant with great Thai food. An overall fun experience.

So that is about it, I guess. Enjoy the pictures.