Kade enjoying a boat ride in Thailand. On the way to Monkey Island!

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Langkawi Island


See where the Thai-Malaysian border is?  As you cross into Malaysia from Thailand, there's a little island in the Andaman Sea named Langkawi.  Down below it, you see Penang.  I would have to research it, but Penang may be the source of the Thai dish, Penang Curry.  In my early years in Thailand, I visited Penang once.  It was to do a Visa Run, which I blogged about here.  Basically, until my work permit was arranged,  I had to step and out of Thailand and then return, in order to ensure that my passport stamp was valid, so that I could legally stay in Thailand.

Another time, after I had been living in Bangkok a bit, I traveled down to Kuala Lumpur (the Malaysian capital) to meet some Uzbek friends - one a student (Bahadir) I taught in Tashkent back in 1994, and the other (Sanjar) was his neighbor.  But I knew them both really well.  At some point, after hanging out in KL, we took a bus north to a coastal town, where we caught a ferry to Langkawi Island.  My friends had done all the research, and took me to a resort on the northern side of the island.  We pretty much stayed there the whole time.  It was some nice R&R.  I remember we met a couple of girls from the US.  One of them was from New York, I believe, and the other was a Pakistani or Indian-American who was very intelligent and loved to debate, especially anything to with women's rights.  She also smoked a lot (that stands out).  My friends and I would walk on the beach and try to net some crabs.  Another time, we walked over to a much nicer resort next to ours, and we took a dip in their swimming pool!  I recall attempting to carry on a conversation with a couple of very cute Japanese ladies who were vacationing there.

I will have to check with one of my friends, because I am not sure where we went after Langkawi. I just know that I was sitting next to Bahadir on a bus, and there was a food stop at a night market in Malayisa.   It was pouring down rain, but we managed to order some skewers of grilled chicken, which we took back on the bus to eat.  And on the bus, we spent a lot of time reminiscing about the year that I spent in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.  It was a wonderful experience - at that moment, on that bus - thinking back on those days in Tashkent.  It had been almost a decade.

click here to read of one young lady's time on Langkawi

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