Langkawi

What a beautiful weekend we just had!  We took work off on Friday and spent a three day weekend in Langkawi, which can best be described as the Malaysian version of Hawaii.  

If we look a little tired, it's because we caught a 7:30am flight that morning!

Langkawi is a little island that is located a short, one hour flight away from Kuala Lumpur.  The hotel we stayed at was absolutely beautiful and set on it's own private beach with nothing and no one there to disturb the feeling of seclusion.
  

This is a path from our room to one of the pools.  The set up was so beautiful!


The hotel was a gift from friends in the ward because they were not able to use the room they had and we owe them big time!  We got there early Friday morning and after getting checked in and settling into our room, we went to the breakfast buffet and indulged in fresh fruit, croissants and pastries with homemade jam, and french toast.  We also went to one of the three pools, which was in the midst of trees and was set up like the beach with sand and everything.  

It was so beautiful!  Dinner was in a fancy restaurant and we just enjoyed our evening off together.

Sorbet was served in a bowl made out of ice.

On Saturday we went mountain biking to a waterfall.  

This is the island as seen on bikes!
 
The bike ride took us through a little village where we saw some cute kids, lots of cows and chickens, rice paddies, and rubber trees!  

You can actually see the glue like sap that they harvest to send to rubber factories.  It was pretty cool.  

Trip took this picture while the cow was moving and while he was on a bicycle.  Impressed?  I am!


After biking for about an hour, we got to the waterfall and walked up to the pool where we swam and cooled off.  It felt like a scene right out of a movie!  

It was just me, Trip, and a cute native family swimming under a waterfall in the middle of a rain forest in the mountains.  So cool.  When we got back from our biking adventure, we had just enough time to shower and eat lunch before our second adventure or boating through the Mangrove trees.  It was not as physically taxing as riding bikes, but just as exciting.  We were the only two people on the boat, so it was like a private tour.  

Look at those sweet orange life jackets.


The tour took us down these rivers to see the different types of mangrove trees, we saw some caves, and a ton of wildlife.  Some of the creatures we saw include eagles diving to pluck food out of the river right next to our boat...

more bats up close than I have ever seen.  Ever.  And we saw monkeys like you see squirrels in the States (the guide couldn't understand why we were so excited by all the monkeys).  

There was also a monitor lizard and a viper sleeping in a tree.  It's so amazing to think that these things are normal to these people when they are so exotic to us.

After such a busy day, we took it easy that evening by taking a nice hot bath and watching a movie.   I should also mention the beach.  We spent some time on the beach and it was gorgeous!  

There were no waves on the beach, it was more like a really large, salty pond.  The water was warm and the shore was almost empty.  Needless to say, it was hard to come back to work.  We would recommend this place to anyone who needs to relax and escape the world.  I will post pictures in the next couple of days so you can all see the beauty that I can't describe.