Lankawi, Malaysia

We spent Spring Festival in Lankawi, Malaysia. I had just returned from Afghanistan.

We stayed at a beautiful resort.

The boys and I explored a bit. A taxi driver took us into his rubber plantation and cut open a rubber tree so we could see the latex run. It hardened on our fingers.

Village houses had latex sheets hanging to dry on bamboo racks. The sheets looked like bathtub mats. This picture is from the Internet.

Sky and I went for a morning in a boat to feed the eagles. The boatman had a bucket of chicken innards and as he flung bits of chicken into the air, eagles would swoop out of the sky to snatch them. This is Sky in the prow of the boat. His legs were so long.

There was a beautiful swimming pool that the boys enjoyed.

The boys...

... were joys.

There was a nice boardwalk over a tide pool filled with fish.

The beach was lovely, too. We didn't swim much in the sea, but we did go out one day in a hotel boat to fish. The boatman threw a hook and line into the water near one of the islands you can see here, and pulled in a squid.

Either he knew just where to throw the hook to pull in a squid or he was very lucky because he caught one on his first throw. He cut up the squid for bait, it's black ink squirting into the bottom of the boat. True was the only one who caught a fish - a small brown grouper.

The boys ordered French fries and True liked a fruit punch they called a Casuarina, named after the tropical evergreen tree that grows all over Asia.