The Trip to Langkawi...

... the trip that was not meant to be? Here is the story:

It was a company trip and the organisers made sure it is during a long weekend break (weekend + public holiday) so that we did not need to take any annual leaves. Well, it is very considerate in a way but at the same time, being a long weekend, we would have to bare with traffic jams and huge crowds.

So off we went at approximately 10:40pm on 30 August 2007 on two buses (one designated the family bus for colleagues bringing along their family and the other designated the singles bus). Around 1 hour or so later, we were stuck in a jam that, according to a colleague, lasted 3 hours (I guess I fell asleep during this slow moving ride because to me it was only a short while). We arrived at the Kuala Kedah port (we need to take a ferry to Langkawi Island) around 2 and a half hours late and missed our 8:15am ferry. We had to wait for the next available one, which was 4 hours away... just take a look at part of the crowd in a part of the port on the right here.

So we stood and we sat, we napped, we chat, we wandered around for drinks and food for 4 hours. Then, we had to queue among the crowd to get into the ferry. At last, we were on our way!

After about an hour on the ferry we finally arrived and we went on another bus and a van (9 others and yours truly went into the van) that felt like another hour of ride but was actually half of that for our lunch. We were starved! The food tasted great but that was probably the tastiest during the period of the trip. Because we missed the earlier ferry, our round island trip was cancelled so we moved on to our hotel. We checked in and my roommate and I fell onto our beds for a nap before we had to move on to the "Underwater World".

My roommate and I missed the transport to the place. I had to blame him for this. He told me he wasn't going to shower when I tried to wake him up after mine. I fell asleep again and when my alarm woke me up to get ready to go, he told me he was going to shower! GASP! The tour guide was kind enough to bring the van back to pick us up and we did not hear any complains from our colleagues. :P

The Underwater World was moderately interesting with lots of aquariums. I expected that we would be traveling on a travelator (not sure what you call it... it's like escalators but without the steps) and moving within a super large aquarium but I was disappointed. Nonetheless, there were some interesting things like penguins (one particularly interesting penguin, tagged as "34", was just standing there in front of some rocks!!! A colleague was saying it was being punished, and I thought it was just sleeping - can't see if the eyes were closed, though - shown just below here), fishes and corals.

Off we went for dinner... I was still full from my lunch but nevermind. The food did not taste so well. I thought it was just me but I got confirmation from the rest of them. Off we went for duty free shopping after that. The first hour was fine until to my horrors, we were given four hours to shop! Some of us had to wait outside the shops for hours so that our shopaholic colleagues could indulge in their money spending habits!

At last we got to go home but because we were supposed to be on holiday, we had to go do some clubbing! Not wanting to be a spoil sport, I went along and being very alcoholic intolerant I spent my night puking. At 3am we can't find any taxi and we had to walk back to our hotel which felt like it was a thousand kilometers away in my condition.

Next morning, at 9am, we had to gather to go up this mountain that by then I could not be bothered with. After waking up quite late, I had a quick shower and a quick breakfast. Phew, was not late this time but my roommate barely made it. Luckily we were stalled by a lot of Harley Davidsons blocking the exit. :D

The sky was blue and the weather hot, so we expected to get some really nice view of the whole island. But of course, we all had to queue to go up there. This time, the queuing was worse. There were no designated areas to queue so people just make their own lines and there was only one small little entrance. As we went nearer, people started pushing. A couple of steps before the entrance, it turned into shoving. The ugly side of Malaysians on the day after our 50th Independance, really. A group of foreigners learnt the hard way and emulated our ways. Anyway, all my colleagues and family managed to pull through and I was the last one far, far, far behind. I was boiling by then. By the time I was up there, there was nothing to see. It had rained and there were lots of clouds. Every where was WHITE! So went down...

And when we reached our hotel, it was time for our tele-match! NOOOOO!!! We had 6 games and the last was tug-of-war in the beach (in the water). I had to say, it was a horrible idea but being on the beach, it helped to minimise some injuries. We had 3 groups so we had to draw lots. The lucky group get to only 'tug' once. Of course, my group was not the lucky one. After some extreme pulling, my group won. About 10 minutes later, we had to start our war with the lucky group. My group lost. My hands were shaking uncontrollably and my roommate and I decided we will take the flight home and not by ferry and bus.

Went to the airport to find all flights were fully booked for the next day so we settled for the same night. We had company dinner but we had to leave early to catch our flight. Despite all the problems I had, I felt sad leaving the rest of my colleagues. Suddenly, I felt close to them. I had a hard time carrying my luggage. Kept dropping my hand luggage. I can't hold my hands into fists after the tug-of-wars. Still my roommate and I managed home one piece with his brother giving me a ride to my house.

The following Monday, back at work, I found out that the rest of them had to go through some traffic jams and the bus ride took them 10 to 11 hours.