Hello to all of you and a Very Merry Christmas from Langkawi in Malaysia! Charlie and I are spending Christmas and New Year at the Pelangi Beach Resort in Langkawi and we have been joined by his sister Jennie and his mother Pat. Its a lovely hotel with 2 enormous pools and plenty of beachfront. The rooms are beautiful and panelled with teak and each is in a little block of about 4 or 6 set in gardens. There's a huge balcony and a separate dressing room, so the feeling is one of space and comfort. Jennie bless her has brough Christmas out in her bags, so there's a little Christmas tree (!) and we have decorations too.
Everywhere there are gardens with flowers and of course the hotel has been decorated for Christmas too and most of the serving staff proudly wear their Santa outfits including hats. There are quite a few Christmas trees and I don't think one is ever more than 50m from one - they're all decorated beautifully too. Being a luxury resort, there was a gala dinner for Christmas Eve and we all had to dress up for the occasion. Charlie and I both wore our new light jackets (linen one for me and a cotton coloured blazer for Charlie) that we had made in Vietnam. We also got to wear our black shoes that we have been lugging around on the holiday so far (somehow we just knew that we'd never be able to buy black shoes in our size in this part of the world!).
After the dinner which was lovely there was carol singing in the lobby and then most of us made our way down to the beach for the "Countdown Party". None of us really knew what this was about, but it was included in the price of the gala ticket so we went anyway. There was a huge stage somewhat similar to our friends Belinda and Kim's wedding in Singapore (Kim, do you remember the 2m high letters saying Happy Wedding to Belinda and Julian?!) where the band played and then, the spotlight was aimed out to sea and highlighted a boat. And no you really could not make this up, Santa arrived by boat with presents for the children (who really should have been in bed by this time of the evening!).
We danced the night away on the sand feeling absolutely boiling. One problem was that when the band played the Twist, while dancing, you simply dug your way into the sand so far that you had to keep climbing out!
We've got another 10 days at this hotel - no complaints save for the fact that the lovely staff wish you a Merry Christmas every time you catch their eye which gets a bit wearing after a while. Well, just call me Scrooge!
Off on a private tour of Langkawi tomorrow so there will be more photos and stories I am sure. We are roasting hot here and its quite humid as well, but no, I have to say that we are not missing the cold winter at all!
Merry Christmas to all our friends and we wish you were here with us!
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1 comment:
Hi folks, love the pikkies and the texts - Christmas for me was good as the family were round nobody got upset and all were happy with the gifts (a 1st).
Glad you folks are well and I'm still jealous about the whole thing!
Cheers,
Simon
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