Our trip to Malaysia was the first time I had been to a predominately muslim country and a bit to my surprise I found it quite comfortable. But then again I’ve always found diversity more comfortable than a lack of it. Which is one of my struggles here in China, because there are…well…a lot of Chinese people here and my lack of language skill means I see people in less than their full dimensions..and they I. But, anyway, back to Malaysia. We are at our resort, located in the center of a small bay on the island of Langkawi. I am following Yang and the kids down the path to the beach. Walking up the path is a  blond eastern euro women who is not too young, not too pretty, and certainly not too shy about wearing a bikini top over her rather substantial assets.  Walking directly behind me is a muslim man and his wife. The wife is wearing a black burqa – you know the head to toe, only the eyes showing (if that) outfit some muslim women wear. The man is in a pretty contemporary western style outfit. Even though the burqa is as black as night I’m pretty sure the muslim couple are on their honey moon because they are holding hands and have “that look”. At least from what I can see. I can only imagine what the woman in the burqa though when the blond woman walked past. I don’t need to imagine what the man was thinking. Have you ever wondered whether the united states has more churches or gas stations? I’m not sure what the point of question is, but I’m guessing gas stations are the clear winner. Well, in Langkawi mosques outnumber gas stations by, I would estimate, 10-1. And not for a lack of cars either, its just seemed that every mile or so there was another mosque but it could be an easy 10 miles before you came across a gas station. As we found out leaving the airport with an empty tank of gas and asking ourselves “hey, you think mosques sell gas?”. In addition to mosques there are prayer rooms in public places like airports and hotels. The prayer rooms are broken into men and women sections and it is very easy to mistake then for restrooms as the signs reads “men/women’s prayer room”. I’m not saying I walked into one thinking it was one, but I’m not saying I didn’t either.
Outside our “chalet” and Elisa in her new swimsuit. We did have fun driving around…visiting the crocodile farm, the beach, local shops restaurants. We all got some type of food poisoning which wasn’t great but we’ve all since recovered. A couple of nervous moments when Lydia heaved shortly after boarding the plane at the beginning of our eight hour trip home but she was fine the rest of the way. Yang did need to visit the airplane prayer room once at the end of the flight.
Lydia and Aidan on the beach.