So we returned to Langkawi Malaysia for a second time since we left a baby Stefan with his grandparents so we could have a week off being parents. We had been working offshore for seven months and we just needed a break. We are forever grateful for our short respite and Stefan has no recollection or adverse affects from the short time away. Plus we bought him a giant Pooh Bear to make up for it so we get 10/10 for parenting.

Langkawi to us was mainly to enjoy the wildlife. Our first time we encountered so much natural wildlife in our resort and so we hoped to be able to see that again. We were not disappointed. Monkeys everywhere. The vicious macaque monkeys roamed the street but the adorable dusty faced monkey with their black faces and white eyes also loved the resort. We saw huge families taking over a hotel balcony and staying until the rain gave up. The hotel had signs saying keep your windows and door closed and locked so the monkeys don’t come in. The macaques have learned how to open sliding doors and are really cunning little shits! My immediate thought was to save the fruit from breakfast to then entice the monkeys to our balcony. I will befriend the monkeys and they will happily eat fruit from my hand. They will love and worship me and I will get a million cute photos with them. Perhaps a little grape trail from the main road?

Well that’s when Nigel completely put his foot down and unreservedly said that I was banned from tempting the monkeys. He cited a small incident in Bali years ago that we now refer to as the monkey debacle. “You cannot save the fruit from breakfast to feed to the monkeys and aside from that we did not pay to get the rabies shot”. So I did not leave a fruit trail but the monkeys came anyway. They would leap onto the balcony and violently shake the furniture to show their dominance. At breakfast after the torrential downpours the monkeys would run from the trees to the beach and off to who knows where. We saw long tailed squirrels as well dancing from tree to tree. We took a cable car to the top of the island and had some amazing views. While we were there we saw people going to buy bags of popcorn only to have a macaque leap on their head and steal it two minutes later. People would be screaming and popcorn would be flying but the macaque’s would always win.

We moved to a second resort for a couple of nights which had typical Malaysian houses for rooms. Completely open to the elements with small shutters on all the windows and a steep climb up the stairs into the room with mosquito nets and guerrilla warfare type mosquito advice. In the morning we found some massive teeth marks on our half eaten soap in the bathroom. I can only imagine what would have happened if I’d encountered whatever it was in the middle of the night. We love living with the wildlife and we’re happy to have once again been a part of it.