.....or should that be did it rise into the sky? Yesterday I saw a very strange phenomenon, a perfect circle of cloud covering the sun, surrounded by a halo and have never seen anything like it before. And neither had anyone else by the look of it as they stared at the sky. But this is where a trusy iPad comes to the fore, a quick Google and there you have it. It was a 22 Degree Halo, caused by ice crystals and cirrus cloud. Most impressive and I managed to take a picture of a part of it. It did say online that it is not always a harbinger of bad weather but this time I think it might have been.
We are still very clearly in the supposed dry season here, but since the halo sighting, we have had monumental thunderstorms each evening, huge light shows showing the silhouettes of the islands in the inky dark distance, but enough already.... I didn't sign up for this! But it has produced some amazing sunsets.....
I had got used to taking a walk in the cool of the evenings to the beach area to find something to eat, but the thought of getting caught outdoors in lightning doesn't do it for me, so today decided to walk a bit in the day to be on the safe side.
I discover that the hotel provides a shuttle into Kuah the main town so venture there in hope of Duty Free heaven. The town is quite small, all low rise and not targeted, except for the Duty Free stores, at the tourist population. No coffee shops, bars or decent looking cafes and a clamber over open drains wherever you walk. Duty free here is limited to booze, cigarettes and chocolate - one huge shop selling nothing else but chocolate, perhaps it is highly taxed in the rest of Malaysia? A few dusty electronic shops and not much else so the diamonds will have to wait for another time.... I had read that Eagle Square is the big thing to see, but no luck. The shuttle driver had never heard of it and I and the other two people in the shuttle didn't have a map to find it (local tourist maps are impossible to get hold of), so I gave up. The town couldn't hold my interest for the 41/2 hours before said shuttle came back so I get a cab back to the beach area, and what do I find? A tourist map of Kuah, clearly showing the much vaunted Eagle Square and details of Langkawi's largest shopping centre just down the road from where we had been dropped off..... Oh well, another day, another shopping trip!
Also another first today in Langkawi - a cruise ship. The hotel is on a small marina with a longer pier off to the side. And today appeared a huge P&O ship, the Artemis, here for the day. It looked huge next to the othee yachts and small long tail boats. It was like being back in the Caribbean! But there aren't that many, the next one due is the Queen Elizabeth which unfortunately doesn't arrive here till the day after I leave, such a pity, I would have like to have seen it.
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