Langkawi
After a few days in KL we flew last week to the holiday island of Langkawi, just on the Malaysian side of the border with Thailand. We stayed in a slightly rundown resort hotel with a big pool next to a quiet beach. People fly to Langkawi from all over the world and I don't think I've ever been to a place with a wider mix of tourists - Indian, European, Australian, Chinese, US, Malaysian and many others I'm sure. Oddly it seems particularly popular with Russians with several Russian restaurants in the main tourist hotspots. For me the highlight was a visit to a museum devoted to rice cultivation. In Borneo we see lots of activity associated with rice growing and the museum helped us make sense of it all with a gallery explaining the cultivation process surrounded by working padi fields. What struck me most was how much hard work is involved in rice production by comparison to wheat. The fields have to be prepared and flooded, the irrigation care...