Friday, August 6, 2010

after the cable car tour

just a reminder to my very few readers: my langkawi trip was very hectic (and internet-less) so the write-ups concerning this trip was written a few weeks after it happened. i am only keeping up with the date it happened so it would appear chronological. if you notice, the tense kind of follows the date when it happened, not when it was written.

after the cable tour, we dropped off a few of our companions to the airport where they will be catching their flights home. as for the rest of us, we later decided to go down the street parallel the chenang beach for a quick lunch. it was already 1 o'clock in the afternoon. so the four us, together with the workshop coordinator and his wife, walked towards the beach to find a place where we can eat. aaaah! the feel of the sand between my toes was heaven! :) well, as you might have guessed, i decided to walk along the beach on foot. heaven, heaven, heaven! :)

the restaurant we went to looked nice but i wasn't able to eat any local dishes because i think they have a foreign clientele who mostly orders food that is familiar to them. that is why i had pasta. i wanted to try out their satay but it was only available after 7 o'clock in the evening. (hmmm... i wonder how the o'clock term originated).

parasailing at chenang beach

 
 present day bioturbation. my slipper for scale.


it was a good place to bum around but we had to go back to the hotel soon because we were due to check out by 3pm and we weren't done packing up yet. it was a very weird arrangement with the hotel (and one we can't change) so after checking out at 3pm, we decided to put our bags to the storage room first, then bum around at the beach side until it was time for us to be picked up by the travel agents for our evening flight to singapore. i thought there was nothing more we can discover waiting there (unless you count the finding out that the hotel wifi didn't reach the beach side) but i was mistaken. i'm glad we became hungry.

enjoying our last few hours at langkawi by the beach

our hunger (and worry that we won't be able to have a proper dinner at the airport) led us to another restaurant just in front of the hotel -- Cactus. it was drizzling when we went there and the rain picked up after a while but that didn't get much of my attention. what did was the football club flags surrounding the place. it was pretty simple, with simple flooring, tables and chairs but to see the flags is pretty amazing. or was it just because i'm a football fan and the WC had just finished? oh well, never mind. the first flag that caught my attention was spain's. wow, iniesta! the second one was portugal's and then a football jersey of torres (#9). i just had to have pictures with it so i prodded my friend to take pictures of me with those items. another amazing "decoration" of this resto is the ceiling with lots of things written on it with chalk from many of their previous customers. the oldest one we saw was from 2003. we would have wanted to write ours but the only place available was at the back and we just didn't think that our writing would make a big impact when it would be written at the back where no one could see it.

the cactus restaurant was riddled with football club flags

 
 one of the writings on the ceiling. liked this one because the lionel name makes me think of messi :)

the most important thing though about cactus is their mean pasta and satay! my friends ordered pasta and me, chicken satay. the pasta has that tomato taste that i always look for in a pasta dish and the satay serving (10 sticks) has very large meat pieces on the stick and the peanut sauce wasn't too strong. i loved it! if i was given another chance to go to langkawi, i wouldn't miss going back here.

chicken satay. Yummy! that's with the capital Y! :)

another thing i liked about this place was the manager (or was he the owner? i don't know). he was very nice (he gave us free fruit dessert) and to while away the time, he gave us puzzles to occupy ourselves with while waiting for the rain to stop. fortunately, the rain did stop a couple of minutes before we were set to be picked up by our agent.

since i have nothing very significant to add anymore, except maybe the time i was held up at the x-ray counter at the airport because of my sand sample placed in a water bottle, here is a bullet of what occurred after our cactus trip:

630p - picked up by the ride to the airport
700p - checked-in our luggages
800p - passed thru immigration; at the pre-departure are
830p - boarding time
900p - got caught in runway traffic; flight delayed
1030p - arrived at sg; found out that there was a mix-up with our bags
1045p - at the lost and found baggage counter of changi airport; left without my bag
1100p - taxi queuing
1130p - arrived at royal park hotel where i'd be staying at a friend's

this is one crazy day, isn't it?!

the baggage story will have its own blog entry soon because it was a learning experience.


written on 08/19/10

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