These next photos are of Kuah town….the main urban center of Langkawi.

Lots of businesses in the buildings

The Financial District

The PL Soon Huat store is our Pork lady - she sells pork products at the back of her liquor store….remember this is a Muslim country so PORK.

The shoe repair stand: you must stay with him otherwise he is so busy talking to other customers, he forgets to repair your shoes, in Malaysia there is always tomorrow to do the work.

Ladies’ store, one of many.

Our favourite computer store, it carries everything we need for our computers, phones, iPod, iPad, etc, plus they know their products and can speak English.

The children learn at a very early age how to hold onto a motor bike, can you imagine seeing a Mom on her motorbike with her little girl (or as many as 4 little girls) on a motor cycle cruising around Toronto/Milton! 

Joe Pharmacy: this is where you can get all of your drug and medicine needs, with known brands.  You can get drugs here without a prescription whereas in Canada you would need a prescription. This seems to be the norm throughout Malaysia.  I should have taken a photo of the Guardian Drug store in Langkawi Fair Mall - they sell all beauty products but no drugs, not even a box of Band-Aids.  We kept on trying different drug stores when we first arrived thinking at least one would have medicines and drugs, nope!

The amazing thing is I got a prescription from my specialist in Penang, filled it out in Georgetown, showed the pharmacist at Joe’s the box my prescription came in, he filled it no questions, now I just ask for the product, they order it in and we pick it up a week later!!!

Langkawi Fair Mall: we go here all of the time, they have shops we like, and it is very clean and brightly lit.  We start off at Billion Grocery store, they get fresh vegetables and fruits from the Cameron Hills every Sunday and Wednesday.  We didn’t see their lovely produce today, due to flooding in the hills.

Aisles with canned drinks, pasta, noodles, condiments, lots of cartons of eggs, they are never refrigerated.

Rice and many more things, it looks like a box store – but it is a grocery store.

The stores here are not quite like our stores back home but they still carry many of the foods we are used to, sometimes the crackers and biscuits are not as fresh as they could be.  After an energetic foray throughout the store it is time for lunch.

Say what you want about McDonalds, but it is fast and is always the same around the world.   We need speedy service as we have to buy booklets of parking coupons with day/time/month/year and minutes that you scratch off, then to put by our windshield - just like the meters we have back home, only made out of paper, and we are right down to our last minutes and the meter person is always giving out tickets.  We had run out of parking coupons ….and so, wouldn’t you know it, we got our first parking ticket - but we couldn’t find anywhere to park at the government building where you pay the fine for tickets. So I sat in the car and John ran in to pay, hoping we wouldn’t get another ticket, while paying for our first ticket.