Life on a tropical island

Doug and I took a hydrofoil to Langkawi. I haven't seen so many white faces since I left the US. We are staying that the Kampung Tok Senik Resort . The architecture is similar to the kampungs we stayed in during our travels in the 1970s and 1980s minus the live animals roaming around in the thatched roof and underneath the rooms. The rooms have AC and TV, both unheard of in our backpacking days. The resort seems to serve a predominately Malay community, the Australians and Europeans seem to head for the beaches. The beaches are lovely, but we aren't particularly "beach people" especially after age took our beach bodies.

Instead of lulling on the beach or duty-free shopping (Langkawi's most popular activities) we took a half day tour on the river and sea. It was largely a wild-life tour, with the much of the wildlife coaxed by the tour operator into playing their roles. Our first stop was an eagle feeding area. The boat's driver tossed in chicken skins and we were treated to seeing numerous eagle's (brown and white ones) close up. Over the course of 15 minutes boats similar to ours arrived. An Australian woman asked if the number of boats that could come in was limited - there aren't. One wonders about the environmental impact of the continual stream of diesel-spewing votes. The guilt thoughts of a tourist.





Next we went to a bat cave. Those hanging black dots are bats. About half the cave seems to have been abandoned - which gave rise to my thoughts about the environmental impact of tourists. We stopped at a crocodile cave, but unlike the eagles the tour company apparently hasn't found a way to get the crocodiles to come and make themselves known.

We really wondered what drove the tribe of monkeys to this barren bank. We didn't see any boats drop off food - maybe at the end of the day monkey treats arrive. The
tribe was large enough that we could spot isolated monkeys, which Doug speculated were young males ousted by the dominate male.


We also stopped at a fish farm and had a terrific fish lunch. The trip out to see was not very different from Halong Bay Vietnam, i.e., wide expanses of seas and heavily vegetated rocks/islands.