For those not familiar with any Scousers, the “la” is a kind of vocal punctuation.  As far as I can tell, Malaysians use it in exactly the same way, i.e.

You all right, la?

I’m going to the shops, la.

That film was awesome, la. 

Since the use is so similar, I find it hard to believe that it evolved simultaneously, but I don’t know if it originated in Liverpool and got transported to Malaysia or vice versa.

Now if I can just squeeze in an extra run in Kuala Lumpur along with my usual Saturday run, I will be back on schedule before Borneo (when I will no doubt fall behind again).

For the first time on our trip we hired a car and explored the island.  We started off at the Sky Bridge.  It takes two cable cars to get up there and the views over the island are fantastic.  You can see birds of prey wheeling at eye level. 

After that we hiked to the Seven Wells waterfalls, where I took a dip. 

We had been planning to do a guided wildlife trek in Langkawi, but we managed to see so many animals just hiking about by ourselves that we wondered if it would be worthwhile.  We’d already spotted.

1.  Macaques

2. Cute dusky leaf monkeys

3. Snakes having snake sex

4. A big lizard

We decided to do the guided trek anyway and we are so glad that we did, although it was not what we expected at all.  Most of the trek went through a hotel resort complex.  What wildlife could we expect to spot there?  As it turned out – loads.  Before we’d even started the trek, the guide waved us over to show us something that he had spotted on his way in.  A young buzzard had caught a lizard almost as big as itself.  It couldn’t carry it away, so it was crouched in the undergrowth right by the hotel entrance, pinning its prey to the ground and waiting for it to stop struggling. 

Once we’d started the proper trek, the first thing the guide showed us was a tree with some lumps protruding from its trunk.  On closer inspection, the lumps turned out to be sleeping flying lemurs, but they were so well camouflaged that you would never have spotted them if you didn’t know what to look for.  The lemurs would start getting active around dusk, so we would come back there later. 

We also saw a giant squirrel, which we’d also seen in Laos and India, but we got a closer view this time, more dusky leaf monkeys and ubiquitous macaques. 

Then we went into the jungle and our guide explained a bt about the types of trees.  He showed us some huge termite mounds and told us that the locals can predict the weather by the termites.  A few days before the rainy season starts the Queen termite produces a generation of winged termites who will leave the nest to set up elsewhere.  If you see flying termites it means that rain is on its way.  

Further into the jungle I spotted a small lizard on a tree.  Just as I pointed it out, another lizard flew in to join it.  These were cool gliding lizards and our guide was beside himself to get such a good view of them.  He started telling us that the male can puff out his throat during courting, something that he’d never seen in the wild, only in documentaries.  Right on cue, the male started puffing out the sides of his throat to show bright red patterns on either side.  

Just before we left the forest, we came across a termite mound that appeared to be frothing.  There were hundreds of termites scurrying over it and hundreds more flying out.  So rain might be on the way. 

Back on the hotel complex we sat watching the sleeping lemur tree, waiting for the sun to go down.  The change from day shift to night shift is a very active time and we hardly knew where to look.  The monkeys were going to bed, the bats were coming out and the lemurs were starting to wake up.  As they began to move about, we could see that two or three had cute little babies clinging to their bellies.  When they fly, they spread out their limbs and gliding membrane so they look like big pancakes gliding through the air. 

We also saw some other flying creatures (it seems that everything on Langkawi flies); flying squirrels and tiny flying pygmy squirrels that we so quick that they were just like little darts. 

We didn’t expect to see this much wildlife before we got to Borneo.  We came to Langkawi for the beaches really, so this was a real bonus.  Speaking of beaches, we got plenty of beach time as well. 

More pictures of Langkawi are on Mr Beet’s flickr page, and in case you were wondering, the termites got it right.  Later that night, we were woken up by thunder and torrential rain.

On our first day we start off with a walking tour of the capital Georgetown, checking out the colonial buildings, mosques, temples and Chinese clanhouses. The highlight is Pinang Peranaken House, which used to belong to a wealthy Nonya (Malay-born Chinese) trader. The guide was very enthusiastic and insisted on our posing by the opium bed.

The next day we went to Penang National Park. We hiked through the forest for a couple of hours to reach a beautiful beach (some other people were also on the beach having got there by boat – the cheats!).

Turtles lay their eggs on this beach, so bits of it were cordoned off and there is a conservation centre where you could see some of the babies.

We also saw lots of wildlife in the forest, which can be divided into;

Animals which frightened Mr Beet:

Macaques

Big spiders
A lizard that looked like a snake
What we thought was a crocodile, but turned out to be a water monitor -it was huge!

Animals which did not frighten Mr Beet:

Baby turtles
Mudskippers

Ants

On our final day we went to Kek Lok Si Temple, built into the side of a hill overlooking the city. The temple is huge and designed on the principle that “more is more”. Since preparations for Chinese New Year were underway it was “even more is even more”. There were, at a conservative estimate, a gazillion lanterns decorating the temple.

Mr Beet hanging a prayer ribbon wishing for safe travels.

More pictures of Penang on Mr Beet’s flickr page.

I was delighted to track this book down in a book exchange in Trivandrum.  It almost made it worth going to India.  The final book on my top 100 and I finished on a medium.  The book was ok, although I did notice that Mr King has a bit of a urine obsession going on.  His favourite adjective is variations on pissy, pissing, pissant  and honestly, there are at least a dozen references in the book to people wetting themselves.  I don’t know if this was meant to be a recurring theme in this book, or whether it appears in his other works.

So that’s one more item ticked off the list, and with less than six months to go until the big 3-0, a good time to fess-up that I’m not going to get this all done.  Currently, the list looks like this.

1. Go to Glastonbury - COMPLETED Summer 2009, 2010 and 2011

2. Go to Edinburgh Festival – COMPLETED Summer 2010

3. Go kayaking – COMPLETED Summer 2010, plus we’ve done loads of kayaking on this holiday

4. Read the top 100 books – COMPLETED January 2012 finishing on Stephen King’s “The Stand”

5. Watch the top 100 films – INCOMPLETE 98 down 2 to go (Apocalypse Now and The Seven Samurai).  We are hiring a campervan in NZ which comes with a dvd player, so I could have finished this then, but since I will have other things outstanding as at June 2012, then I’m not so fussed and they can wait until I’m back home.

6. Go surfing – COMPLETED February 2009 in Gran Canaria

7. Learn to ride the unicycle – INCOMPLETE – I have tried and it is bloody hard.  Need to put the hours of falling off again and again in before you can expect results.

8. Go horse-riding – COMPLETED Summer 2009

9. Qualify as a solicitor – COMPLETED 2008

10. Go scuba-diving - COMPLETED Summer 2011

11. Go veggie for 1 month – COMPLETED 2008

12. Paint a picture – COMPLETED in Chiang Mai in 2011

13. Climb a Munro – COMPLETED Summer 2011

14. Get something published – COMPLETED Summer 2008

15. Take a circus skills class – COMPLETED 2010

16. Go to a big arena concert – COMPLETED 2008

17. Do a marathon – COMPLETED 2011

18. Learn to play a musical instrument – INCOMPLETE I don’t think 5 piano lessons can possibly count, will continue these on return to UK.

19. Go paintballing – INCOMPLETE I could get this one done in NZ I expect.

20. Go to a Shakespeare play at the Globe – COMPLETED 2009

21. Go paragliding – COMPLETED Summer 2010

22. Learn to dance – COMPLETED Summer 2009

23. Go zorbing – COMPLETED Summer 2008

24. Go to Notting Hill Carnival – COMPLETED Summer 2008

25. Go skiing – COMPLETED on an indoor ski slope in 2008 and in the real thing in Lapland in 2011

26. Go in a hot air balloon – COMPLETED Summer 2010

27. Learn to do the splits – INCOMPLETE – I’ve been really naughty and not done any stretching.  I will start from today!  It’s blogged now so it’s official.

28. Go rock climbing – COMPLETED 2008 and done loads since then

29. Go abseiling – COMPLETED 2008

30. Learn to rollerblade – INCOMPLETE – I can rollerblade, but I wanted to get good before I ticked this off. Still not good.

So I have six things outstanding currently and at least some of those (unicycling, instrument) I cannot do on my travels. It’s going to be a big, fat FAIL come 13 June 2012. But I still want to do those things, so I’m going to try to get them done before my 31st birthday. Now, I’m not changing the deadline and pretending that’s it still counts – I still consider this a FAIL, but I still want to finish my current list before I start drawing up a 40 things to do list.

We originally had Tiger Beer as a contestant in the Thai heat, but we subsequently discovered that it is in fact a Singaporean brew, so it gets another chance to compete.  We had to look pretty hard for another local brew to go up against Tiger, and we found it in the shape of Raffles beer.

Mr Beet declares that the winner is Tiger (although it already missed out to Chang in the Thai heat, so I don’t give much for its chances in the pan-Asian finals).

Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon

parkrun on tour in Ho Chi Minh City – *seriously cool photo*

The Mekong Delta: the Norfolk of Indochina

Phnom Penh

Siem Reap - *flooded forest

The Angkor Temples - **pretty damn cool

Battambang - *bamboo train

Me eating KFC in Phnom Penh

Kratie 

Ban Lung - *elephant riding

Cambodian food

Mr Beet’s Cambodian beer chronicles 

My first parkrun in Laos