Langkawi

I would rather blog than study, but I must study, so this must be quick...

Matt, Tenley and I are in Langkawi for the long weekend. We left on Friday night, and on Thursday when I looked up whether or not the hotel has wireless (it does - in the lobby), I came upon trip advisor and other sites that all had HORRIBLE things to say about this hotel. See for yourself - they're HORRIBLE. I saw that we had paid in full for it (I have to say that I took myself out of planning for this trip, because I was too busy, so I take no responsibility, but I also have no right to put blame - but WHY didn't someone look at the reviews? I'm not sure.). I looked at all of the terms of the booking, and indeed we could not cancel. Well, since my priorities for the weekend at the beach were doing work and sleeping, and the review said bed bugs, smelly rooms and other horrible things, I looked into canceling my ticket. It wasn't refundable or anything of the sort. So we came.

Okay - if you're used to staying in fancy resorts - yes this place is shit. If you need clean - yes - it's pretty not so clean. If you want fancy, fresh fruit - you're not in your element. BUT, if you're used to totally simple backpacker places, and all you need is a place to sleep that has pretty good location and is kind of clean - it's FINE!

My funny experiences, though, include the fact that it has "the biggest pool in Malaysia," and it has TONS of rooms, but it has only about 15 or 20 lounge chairs by the pool. This morning, when Tenley and Matt went on a tour, I wanted to sit and write, so I started looking for a chair that wasn't occupied. Every one had a towl on it or something, but NOT a person, and it was just after 9:00 am. Finally, I saw four in the shade, and while three had towels on them, the other had nothing.

I sat in one of the chairs. For 45 minutes I wrote in peace, and finally a woman came up to me and said, "You know, you're sitting in our chair." I said, "well, no one was sitting in it, it had nothing on it, and there was literally no other chair that didn't have something on it." "Well we reserved it last night, and just because we slept late doesn't mean it's not our chair." "Well, you're not sitting in it, so why don't I just sit in it and continue to do what I'm doing until you have four people that fill these four chairs." "Well, I think you can sit in OUR chair until we have two people that come, because we saved four chairs over here in the shade so we could have our privacy." "Fine. Bitch." (The bitch part was under my breath).

Then, I was here catching up on emails (50 related to INDEVOR!!! Oy), and all of the sudden there was no more internet. What? I went to the desk, and I said, can you please let me know why there is all of the sudden no internet? She said, "oh, we're charging our mobile phone." Oy. Maybe find an outlet that doesn't affect the internet for the whole place? Welcome to Malaysia.

Outside of our hotel (which is where we have spent most of our time), we have spent a day diving with very poor visibility, but it was nice none the less. We played settlers on the beach at a nice place (I won all three games - yup). Yesterday we rented a dude with his car, and we went all around the island. To be honest, it's nothing special, and definitely nothing we haven't seen before in SE Asia. I don't think I would come back unless there was something special going on, but it's definitely pretty. We were a bit bored, so we went to the Westin, on the recommendation of Jeff (Tenley's husband who has stayed there before), and it was awesome. We sat in their beautiful bar/restaurant with an amazing view for four hours - I studied, Matt slept, Tenley read. We even got the complimentary cocktail at 6pm. Pretty sure it wasn't meant for us, but oh well. Only US$300 per night to stay there. In my dreams...

Last night we went to another nice place on the beach, had great food, Tenley won settlers (way to go!!!), and I'm heading back to Singapore later today. Matt and Tenley come back tomorrow.

One more weird thing - we saw monkey roadkill. I have never seen that before. Kind of felt bad.