Picto Diary - 21 December 2023 - Langkawi

Above: Sky Cable Car. Langkawi, Malaysia. 21 December 2022.

Langkawi is a duty-free island located twenty miles off the northwest coast of Malaysia in the Malacca Straits. This was our second stop in Malaysia having first visited, also by cruise, Kuala Lumpur and Penang, circa 2017. Tourism is the main industry of the island, which seems to be Malaysia's effort to replicate adjacent Thailand's famous vacation islands, Phuket, Ko Samui, and Pattaya.

Above: Map showing Langkawi, circled in red. I'm sure there is a story as to why Malaysia, and not Thailand, has possession of the island. When I observe a map of the Malay Peninsula the image of Japanese soldiers riding bicycles down the peninsula to take Singapore, 15 February 1942, always comes to mind.

This gondola ride was pretty interesting. A tourist attraction built from nothing twenty years ago, the gondola base was crowded with foreign and local tourists. The gondola base was full of souvenir stores (I bought a cap) and restaurants. The views of the Malacca Straits were spectacular. I was also impressed, as an almost daily winter user of Dopplemeyer made lifts and gondolas, that the device itself was Dopplemeyer manufacture. Gondola stats: six-seater gondola cars, one angle station, 1.5 miles long and 3000 vertical feet.

Seated across from us on the gondola descent was a family of three ethnic Chinese, Malaysian citizens. Mom, dad and a ten-year-old boy. I started a conversation, and they were happy to engage. The boy studied in English at a school in Penang where the family lived. They were on vacation. The boy said he liked to play basketball. I asked him if he followed the NBA and he replied that he watched NBA games. He volunteered that his favorite player was Kobe Bryant... a good American role model for a foreign kid. A German speaking, Italian fellow, who lived in the Dolomites, our age, was also riding in our gondola car. He didn't seem happy with the experience of hanging from a cable with a five-hundred-foot drop underneath.

The half day tour also included stops at a rice museum and a marina. Meh.

Above: Seabourn Encore. Pool Dick. Langkawi, Malasia. 21 December 2023.

From Seabourn Encore pool deck TIMDT contemplates walkway she traversed this AM on way to tour bus. Respiratory compromised, TIMDT, has shown good, even surprisingly good, stamina throughout this trip. Being at sea level clearly has a lot to do with TIMDT's seeming increased stamina.

Above: Seabourn Encore. Pool Deck. Langkawi, Malasia. 21 December 2023.

As the Seabourn Encore begins sailing the busy Straits of Malacca, direction east, to Singapore, Seabourn Singers perform Frankie Valli retrospective. Highly professional ensemble plays to knowledgeable, receptive, and grateful cruise going geezers. Lots of energy on the pool deck during this presentation. I feel sorry for next generation of cruisers***, for whom this music won't be familiar, and who will have no music from their own era worth listening to. But we boomer/silent geezers will revel in remembering, over the few years left to us, that "Big Girls Don't Cry."
*** As the world's sea lanes lose the protection of the US Navy, weakened by underfunding and inept leadership, and misguided US economic policies hollowing out the US middle class, there may not be a next generation of cruisers. Still, I have to admit, as far as my generation is concerned, that it was good living at the apex!

Above: Seabourn Encore. Observation Lounge. At Sea, Malacca Straits. 21 December 2023.

Cocktail hour in the Observation Lounge. Our favorite time and place on the ship.

Addendum:

These days I thought tourists abroad liked to wear a maple leaf to hide behind the tepid nature of Canadians image in the world. I choose a middle ground of wearing a ball cap with a British built Triumph motorcycle logo.

Peterbilt,
Bountiful, UT

That's the point I was making. In the first decade of the Millennium, the disgusting, pathetic (IMHO) practice of Canadians plastering their luggage with outsized maple leaf flag stickers was widespread as we traveled the world. I haven't seen it much recently. Your lily-livered compromise saddens me. I would have thought you would have worn a MAGA cap. At least you made a good move posing in front of Cafe Deux Magots in Paris.