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 carefully managed and traditionally rice seedlings are raised and individually planted, rather than the seed being broadcast across the fields.  The whole process comprises a complex, time-consuming and back-breaking set of activities which require communities to work collectively and must have an enormous impact on the culture and world view of rice-based societies.  Seeing the working padi fields also allowed me to understand more about the South East Asian diet as land used for rice production can also accommodate duck and fresh water fish in abundance.

The next morning I went on a long run from our hotel out into the countryside, starting before sunrise to take advantage of the cooler air.  At the half-way point I stopped before retracing my steps and looked around. Dawn was breaking over the padi fields with Langkawi's mountainous interior as a backdrop, the air was filled with bird song and I felt, maybe for the first time since I stepped off the plane in Borneo in December, in tune with my surroundings.