The next step is always the hardest

It has been a hectic couple of days, and so much has been crammed in to such a small space of time. So far we have done

Underwater world - sort of like the sea life centre in the UK, but on a slightly smaller scale (i.e. they only have one crab on display). It was your standard fare, but the animals they have on display as exotic, are actually things like our common seals, which is quite interesting.

Bird Paradise Wildlife Park - Before you ask, no, my grammar has not gone out of the window, that is actually how the park is titled! The place seemed to mainly house a menagerie of birds, with some reptiles and monkeys thrown in for good measure. Going against the grain of all best practice in zoo management and respecting the creatures, the zoo allows visitors to hand feed the animals with an assortment of fruits and nuts. This is great fun for the casual tourist like myself, and it also means that the zoo doesn't have to fork out on feeding the animals themselves!

I admit though i really upset a monkey when he tried to grab the whole bag of raisins from my hand and i wrenched it back out of his....he didn't half moan at me!! Also, i had the chance to hold a baby python, hand feed a load of budgies and hold a sea eagle and a tiger eagle. The chap in charge of the birds of prey was an elderly toothless gent who, upon finding out we were from England, proceeded to tell us of the time the Duke of Edinburgh visited the zoo, when he was aged 9. He then mentioned something about needing his teeth looked at and was "hawking" for some Ringgits from us. The strategy worked, as, still on a high from the holding-the-sea-eagle-experience, i parted with 2 Ringgits (about 30p) and he was delighted. The only downside to this place was that about half way around, a cunningly placed barrier titled "zoo personal(sic.) only" forced us to use the only other route, which seemed to guide us through what can only be described as maze of Hampton Court type complexity with salespeople trying to sell us alabaster objet d'art at every possible turn.

Canopy trekking - which is essentially like Go Ape, only about 6 or 7 times as high. It is run by a rather nice German called Jurgen who has set up home on the island. Obviously being of Teutonic descent, some old habits die hard and there was more than one occasion where he had to reprimand us "English swine" for not following his orders! The worst part of this whole experience though was the trek into the jungle, which involved climbing over 700 steps. At first i thought, "that is not too bad" but by about 400 steps, i was in agony, and by 600 my heart was close to bursting! However, it was all worth it, and being a big fan of jumping out of trees a la Tarzan, i was in my element. Although i admit the abseiling out of a tree that was over 40 metres high was quite precarious at times, it was a hell of a buzz once you landed!

In the jungle, the humidity is such that, i must have sweated over half a stone on this activity alone.........the sad news is that this was subsequently piled back on again when a large group of us went out onto Mangos - a secluded beachfront restaurant, where I tucked in to massive T-bone steak.

This is an image of the zip line we had to go down. The perspective on the camera does not really do it justice, but it is over 120 metres long and is a good 10 metres above the tree tops too. I know a few people back home who would not have like this one!!:D The thing about this zip line is that once you resolved to go down it, there was no turning back from the large abseil out of the tree i mentioned earlier; that is the only way out of the tree (apart from falling, obviously)

The above image is a view from the top of the tree. The vague red dot you can see is a helmet of someone far down below.

Cable Car ride into the mountains - This was a hell of a cable car ride, Langkawi is a small island, but it also has some fairly impressive mountainous regions (all of which are rain forest). The cable car ascends from sea level to the top of a 700m high peak which commands spectacular views of the whole island and the rain forest below. The steepness of the ascent almost defied logic.

We were a little bit worried as there was cloud cover on the top of the mountain, which might have obscured our view, but as if by magic, by the time we got to the top, all the clouds cleared and we had some incredible photographic opportunities.

The above picture shows Langkawi as viewed from the top of the mountain. Words can't describe how cool this is, as you are looking around and you are surrounded by the distant howls of monkeys and jungle wildlife. The village you can see is where the Cable car departs from and the rock formation in the bottom centre is the Seven Wells waterfall (see below)

Seven Wells waterfall - A mildly impressive waterfall down the side of the mountain that the cable car goes up. I say mildly impressive, because anything less than Niagara falls is generally lumped into this camp by me. Once again, there was a massive amount of steps to negotiate before getting to this - surely the Malaysians have the foresight to install escalators!! The ascent to this was slightly notable for the overly friendly Iranian chaps we met along the way who insisted on having their photographs taken with me (lets hope that photo doesn't come back to haunt me!).

The other side of the waterfall is a rather nice jungle trek, which allows you to get a flavour of the environment we had seen from the Cable car. All it means is you have to negotiate a rather narrow bit of the waterfall to get to the start of the jungle path. Like a seasoned tracker, i took off my shoes and socks and prepared to walk through the water. Sam, was being a little more cautious and looking for a place to cross safely - women are such wusses!! I turned to her to snort my derision at her general cowardliness, by stating it is perfectly safe to cross here, when a sudden gust of wind (or that is what i am claiming) tipped my balance and i fell into the waterfall drenching myself head to toe. This was slightly concerning, as i had my camera in my pocket, but fortuantely it did not get a drop on it, one of the few parts of my body that remained dry!! As i write this all my money is slowly drying out on the window sill of the hotel.

Other bits and bobs - We were interested in visiting the Black Beach, thinking it to something similar to the beaches in the Canary Islands, but were disappointed to see it was mainly due to the large cement works across the way dumping all their effluent out into the sea...suffice it to say i didn't go for a swim there.

On a more general note, i have penned a few lines of this best man speech (which is progress) but i am quickly running out of time. This was hit home to me when i was told there would be a rehearsal tomorrow at 9am! This is all getting very real now...

The next couple of days will be spent on more administrative elements surrounding the wedding - getting married in Malaysia is more complicated than an Icelandic crossword! I have only seen a glimpse of the hoops the bride and groom have had to go through, but even after that amount of time i would have been tempted to say "sod it, let's just live in sin".