So much learned...

Uffff. Today we learn so much about mangroves that our heads are buzzing at the end of the day. At 1 p.m. - after a breakfast of garlic melons, salt apples, and very thin coffee - Peter picks us up and we drive to the secluded drop-off point for our little boat. Along the way, Michi realizes, "I've never been here before" (seriously 😂?! In the 1.5 days here in Langkawi, she's never been on this one side street?! - the funniest moment for all the travelers is credited to Michi 🤗😁)

There are 10 other guests on board with us from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

Peter, the only German-speaking guide for wilderness tours for the past 20 years, is the go-to person (you can find him in every home travel guide) for jungle trekking, bird watching, and mangrove tours... with quality!

The Swiss leads us into the woods and invites us to refresh our knowledge of biology and go even further. Who knew that...

• Mangroves are the largest collectors of CO2 and producers of oxygen
• Mangroves are the world's largest seafood spawning grounds
• Langkawi is home to both the smallest and largest species of bats (largest: wingspan 1.20-1.50m)
• The jungle fowl is the ancestor of our domestic chicken and originates from the local rainforest
• My favorite fruit - the durian - is pollinated by bats and is an aphrodisiac
• There are 178,919 more facts that I could fill entire books with

We travel through the mangroves / rainforest on foot with a lot of wit and charm, but at the end, my ultimate horror awaits me. A bat cave. It stinks! It stinks of their droppings. And right in front of the stinking cave, Peter invites us to sit down so we can listen to his 300th story.

And then we walk a few meters into the cave. We are quiet, no lights (e.g. for taking photos) are allowed, only Höfinger has a flashlight that he occasionally uses to shine into the end of the cave, because thousands of them sit up there and complain because we are shining into their bedroom. I am fascinated and repulsed at the same time. These noises, the smell, and all the red eyes! But we enjoy the trip to the fullest. And we realize that the world is a small place. One of the travelers - she is traveling alone for 3 weeks in Malaysia - is from Hannover and lives in the house that Dania and I will move into on July 30th 😊

We see interesting bird species like kingfishers and hornbills in the wild, monkeys, and hope to encounter the crocodile that is native to the area, but we don't.

At the end of the tour, we ask Peter for two things:

A) to drop us off somewhere along the road on our way home, at a restaurant he would recommend (we end up at the Thai place)

B) to give us a contact who can take us to islands that are not visited by tourists

Said and done, and we review the day, the informative and wonderfully funny day, before going to bed.

The next morning, we are initially delighted that our complaints about breakfast have been immediately addressed. So the day can start well. Michi will be leaving tonight on July 28th. She will first travel from Langkawi to Singapore and then on to Berlin.

But first, we still enjoy the almost empty beach and the warm water... until Michi gets bitten by a trumpet fish 😂

Before our driver acquaintance picks us up and takes us to the night market, we do some shopping for souvenirs in the supermarket.... and yes, the moment when you realize that you're too fat for Asian supermarkets is priceless.

Whatever. We still go to the weekend market. MIZIE drives us and guides us through the market. This is how it goes: one person buys a dish (on average for €0.65) and all three of us eat from it, and so on for a while.

With full stomachs, we then say GOODBYE at the airport.... Ciao, Michi! It was nice with you!