I want to dedicate this post to my lovely husband whose Birthday is tomorrow. Thanks for making my life so interesting and wonderful; I wouldn’t change anything about it! Happy Birthday, honey!
I also want to say big thanks and Happy Birthday to Dev, a dedicated naturalist and our guide in Langkawi, we took the best memories from that trip thanks to you!
I was dreaming about South East Asia for ages. I was obsessing about the jungle and wild life and greenery I would see and the hot and humid air I would breathe. In my mind it was all extremely exotic and for some reason I thought I was capable to survive in the rain forest. Too much TV watching doesn’t help; I’ll tell you this for sure.
We arrived in Langkawi Island on a hot April day, the weather was hot but not as humid as it was in Kuala Lumpur. We made our way to the chalet I booked online after reading a gazillion reviews on TripAdvisor. To my surprise it looked exactly how I imagined it, and the rooms even exceeded my expectations! What I didn’t expect was getting into the boiling hot sea! “Now that’s a surprise”, I thought to myself, “I’m never going to enjoy this sea!” Two seconds later Yakup got stung by something on his arm and I just giggled and said he was a wuss and that he should chill and enjoy the sea like he would enjoy a bath. As I finished my smart mouthed comment I was stung on the leg and off we went to the beach. That was our first day in Langkawi.
One of the things on our To-do list was going on a mangrove tour. There were two options – going with a motor boat and get a general idea of the mangrove forest or go by kayaks and get in the deep of it. When we were making this decision I was either deaf or out of touch with reality because when we finally got to the floating platform where our kayaks were waiting for us things started to seem a bit clearer in my head. It became clear that I have never sat in such a small boat before, I never had to row to make the boat move - I always had someone else on the boat, preferably my dad, who can row for 30 km on the river and tell you jokes in between and you can sit with an ore in your hand and look busy. This was the case of actually making the vessel move with your own power! I started feeling uneasy. I looked around at our group – we were eight people everybody seemed moderately athletic and everybody has kayaked before but us. But then I also remembered that we did white water rafting in Turkey at our previous holiday where we had to row vigorously in a ten-people boat, and we did 12 km that day and I wasn’t even that tired. I felt like the load has lifted off my shoulders, of course I would be able to do it, I’ve done it before!
I came prepared. I purchased water shoes for my husband and myself, based on our experience rafting, I realized that flip flops don’t really work in this kind of environment. So as soon as my feet touched the ground after the previous holiday first thing I did was ordering water shoes from Amazon. As I continued researching about the mangrove I’ve realised I’d need a dry pack to keep my camera and passport dry. Why would you need a passport in the middle of the mangrove, nobody knows, but at that time it all seemed like a reasonable idea.
Wearing new water shoes and equipped with a brand new dry pack clipped to my shorts I marched on to the dock. It was time to sit in the kayak. Our strong and masculine guide basically pulled me in to the kayak by grabbing the back of my shorts, something like I’d imagine you could do to a small child, but he managed to get all seven of us plus himself into the kayaks.
I had the front seat, while my husband was sitting behind me. He was excited, I was nervous. My confidence was melting away with every paddle I made. We floated around in circles while other 3 kayaks followed each other in a straight line. I thought it was normal, they all have done it before, so we would get used to it in the course of the trip. The instructor got us all together in the middle of the river and we did the health and safety talk. At that point I was getting more nervous about our hopeless efforts to paddle and make the kayak go where we wanted it to go. To make the things worse, I was paying attention to the safety instructions with all ears and when our guide told us about hitting the roots of the mangrove and the possibility of a snake falling on you from the branches I started hyperventilating. He went on to say that the mangrove would get very narrow, so we have to watch out. “Watch out my ass”, I thought, “how the hell are we not going to touch those roots if we are touching the roots on the 25-meter-wide river, let alone if the mangrove will get narrow!” I was panicking, all I wanted to do was to go back to the floating platform and get out and sit in the Thai restaurant and get drunk while the rest of them are paddling. That was out of the question, I would be risking getting killed by my husband if I was to back off. So I chose to risk getting bitten by a mangrove snake and die of intoxication instead! The Instructor’s words were ringing in my head, “if the snake falls into the boat, the snake owns the boat. You jump out”. I looked around – the murky waters of the river didn’t appeal much. The idea of a mangrove snake falling into the kayak didn’t appeal to me even more. I was frozen with fear and panic.
I also discovered that while I am panicking I do not paddle very well. In fact we were so bad together we have used most of our energy in the first 30 minutes and that’s even before we’ve reached the narrow channels. As we were arguing who was rowing in the wrong direction the rest of the kayakers made it look effortless. The deep breathing wasn’t working very well, I couldn’t see anything around me, the panic took over. Yakup was getting angrier by the minute and swearing he would never go with me on an adventure tour like this and that I can forget the jungle trekking and a night walk through the jungle. As we were fighting while I am constantly thinking and watching out for the mangrove snake to land on my head, I felt something falling on my back close to the neck, something wet and slimy and I screamed. It was mud Yakup accidently picked up from the bottom while he paddled and it accidentally landed on my neck. By now I was shaking.
The channel was getting narrower. The roots were sticking out of the water, the branches above us created a beautiful and potentially lethal green corridor. We got to a clearing where our four kayaks could just fit and our guide told us that the mangrove is about to get really narrow. By that time I already got a grip of myself and was just staring at the branches above me every time we hit the root. Yakup told me to sit still and not to paddle, so I had plenty of time to ogle at the branches and take every branch for a mangrove snake ready to fall into our kayak or even better on my neck.
All this time I was controlling myself not to fight with Yakup as we were told the couple from Sweden who were on their honeymoon and the new wife hit the husband with the paddle and split his forehead, so he had to have stitches. Or like a gay couple who at the end of the trip ended up punching each other in the faces. So I kept my mouth shut despite my husband’s threats to never ever go with me on an adventure again. Luckily he is forgetful, so we did go into the jungle together, but he tucked his pants into the socks because he was afraid the termites would go up his pants. I proudly walked with my jeans over the sneakers.
The mangrove snakes were busy that day. Nothing fell on me and we made it to the end of our destination extremely tired but alive and happy. I managed to relax and after lunch we tried to paddle together and even though we were lagging behind we pretended we were busy looking at the monkeys we saw in the branches. By the end of the trip I realized how much I enjoyed the day and what a great teambuilding experience it was for a couple as well! We didn’t kill each other and didn’t even split each other’s heads with the oars! I was very proud of us and mentally thanked the mangroves.
Greetings from the Island of Love,
Your Tanka Lou
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