Checking back it’s been another month since our last entry. Another, whole, month.
Time really has become irrelevant now. 9 months in Langkawi was starting to feel like a life sentence and it feels like we have been yearning for somewhere new now for an eternity. But with Malaysia’s current lockdown restrictions due to be reviewed at the end of August we are now more desperate than ever to stay here longer.
It’s crazy how fast things can change during this global pandemic.
I started writing this entry a few days ago. You know, just coming back to it every now and then and adding a bit more here and there. Now that I have just sat back down to it I have deleted a good few hundred words of text.
I was talking around the possibility of other countries opening their borders to tourists. Somewhere we could move on to. I was going through in detail how fast things change, particular with Indonesia and Thailand. Bali may open, no it won’t. Existing tourists need to leave there, now they don’t etc. Now I have decided to just scrap that part as it’s changed every day for the last week and I really can’t face making yet more amendments to the situation with these countries. These really are strange times we are living in. Non more strange than our governments u-turns, but that’s a different subject for a different blog.
So in a nut shell. Bali/Indo is shut now until at least the New Year. Thailand is changing it’s mind more times than Boris Johnson doing a 7 year old’s multi choice quiz on the best cartoons. We will just take each day as it comes. Those days are now focusing in on the Malaysian PM’s impending update regarding the restrictions currently in place.
We find out our fate at some point over the next 3 or 4 days. If things change and we have to leave then we need to get out of Malaysia by the 18th of September. That’s about 3 1/2 weeks away. A very sobering thought for us both as going home is the last thing we want to do. Would you want to leave the sun kissed beaches of the tropics to head back to the embarrassing mess that is the UK right now? No, I didn’t think so.
So we have tried to come up with some sort of a plan B in the event that we do have to leave. The best option we have found so far is to go to Turkey. We have never visited there before and it certainly looks like another interesting place to visit and explore the culture and the history. If worst comes to worst then that is probably what we will do. Anything to avoid going back home.
That said, we are really struggling to get enough hours teaching to sustain any more traveling. But we will keep trying and hang in as long as we can. Hopefully Malaysia extend their restrictions again allowing tourists to stay in the country and hopefully we manage to get some more paid work to allow us to stay on the road longer. Indefinitely ideally, but hey that’s the dream. Got to give it a go.
So with time possibly against us we have been making the most of our days and the freedom that the new relaxation in the covid restrictions has given us. In fact we have had a pretty damn good time recently.
We are very settled in our house now. We like it a lot and have just paid up for another month. That would take us right up to the September deadline to leave should we be forced to exit the country.
We have spent many a day relaxing on the quiet beach at Tengah, it’s just a few minutes from our house. Reading books and taking a dip in the sea every now and then to cool off is a nice way to relax on an afternoon. You cant beat a nice beach day and during the week days when there aren’t as many domestic tourists on the island the beach is beautifully quiet. Most days we have sat there for hours without another single soul on the beach. Bliss.
Our local boozer, “Lan’s bar” is stumbling distance from our house, like 20 seconds walk, and we have been getting ourselves out for a drink 3 or 4 times a week. It’s just a tiny wee hut with a nice character about it. Like a very small grass roofed beach bar, just not on the beach. There is a nice regular crowd there most nights. A good mix of locals and ex pats/tourists. It’s been nice to socialise and also the fact that it is mainly regulars makes us feel a bit safer that we are keeping our circle of contacts small while still being able to get out.
That said, Lan’s Bar being so close is also a dangerous thing. We don’t need a lot of persuading to head there and that has now turned into spending more money that we don’t have as well as suffering more hang over’s than we would like to. Oh well, such is life.
We had a nice night round Dawn and Brian’s, an ex-pat couple from the UK. After giving their cat his antibiotics for week they were kind enough to invite us for food and wine one night along with our friends Billy and Jane who live just opposite them.
It was a great meal with great company and after finishing up there we continued the drinking over at Billy and Jane’s. It got a bit messy, 6 am messy. For Billy and Jane it was 1 pm the following day messy. I don’t know how they did it. I was done at 6 am and can’t understand how they could still be going at lunch time the following day. But that’s the island for you I guess, these things happen.
That’s pretty much it for another month folks. Not much new to report really, just more of the same sun, sand and steaming drunk Northerners.
I miss writing regularly but it’s just been hard to lately. No new adventures to report of, no major excitement just a continuation of our last 9 months. I have a list of random articles I want to write at some point. “How to buy a motorbike in Vietnam and ride the Ho Chi Minh Highway”, “Unmissable meals in Bali”, “Idiots guide to the Trans-Siberian” (given my experience in Russia it would probably put more people off than encourage them) but non of these are relevant right now. Pointless articles to write given the current global situation. It’s not as if anyone can head off and use those articles for advice. Maybe if I get really bored I might do some just to keep myself busy, but at the moment it just doesn’t feel like time well spent.
Speaking of 9 months I was chatting to Billy and Jane earlier today. I was saying that it now feels like we are living here in Langkawi. Whenever we have been on the road in the past, no matter how long we have stayed somewhere it has always still felt like traveling. There has always been the option to move on to somewhere new even when we have been in the same place for a few months. This time is different though. I think 9 months in Langkawi is long enough to be considered as living here. I’ve rented flats back home for less time than that and despite what I’ve said in the past about Langkawi and it not being the most exciting or interesting location in Asia, we have settled in to life here and would be happy to stay on longer. At least until things in the world settle down a little.
So, the next blog entry is currently a lottery. It will either be in around a months time, meaning we are able to stay here, or it will be in just a few days time and we will be headed to Turkey or more drastically back to the land of Boris and job searching.
Stay tuned…….
