Beware of Monkey …….

Friday 20/12 - Langkawi

We’ve travelled overnight down the coast of Thailand and wake up just south of the border at the Malaysian island of Langkawi - somewhere we’ve never visited although we’ve come close to including it in our itineraries. 

These island look mystical in the soft early morning mist, shapes regressing in various tones of blue-grey. Clearly this is a far quieter destination than Phuket. 

Here we’ve opted for another boat trip - you’d think we’d have had enough of this being on a cruise ship for nearly two weeks. But this is a river safari through the mangrove edged channels. The Kelim River runs through the Kilim Geoforest Park - again karst rock formations - some areas 500 million years old. 

First there’s a visit to the bat caves - tiny little black leathery creatures hanging out after their nighttime feeding frenzy. There’s quite a lot of stooping with low tunnels to negotiate, but this is far less challenging than the huge caves we visited in Borneo where the smell of bat guano was overpowering and huge insects wandered the walls! 

Then we set off along various channels in our long-tail boat - me sitting at the front today as I feel it’ll be safe on a calm river!  To be honest, there’s not much wildlife to see - but the mudskippers on the mud banks are very sweet! There are monkeys - crab eating long tailed  macaques who are happy swimming as well as swinging from trees. And of course, they’ve learnt that where there are people there are easy pickings so we’re warned not to carry food with us and to carry backpacks in front of us. We feel the warning notices stating ‘Beware of Monkey - you have been warned. Not responsible for injury or death’ could be seen as rather extreme - then we hear screams coming from some local tourists who have just come off their boat, one of whom is being attacked by a monkey trying to take her bag! 

We have no such encounters, but spot three monkeys on a ledge above a cave entry who pose obligingly. Then there are great sightings of white bellied sea eagles and  brahminy kites soaring overhead, occasionally diving down for fish - especially when  one of the boats throws out food for them which is against park rules apparently. 

We head out into the open sea - thankfully briefly as things do get decidedly bumpy at that point - focusing on the rock formations which form animal or human shapes and have been named by locals. 

And finally it’s back to the departure point where we change our mode of transport to road and head back to port. Langkawi is certainly a very beautiful place.