Honeymooners’ seaside rooms at dawn, while the building on the end of the jetty is one of resort’s restaurants. Unfortunately we only ‘discovered’ it on the last night of our stay. Just that little bit cooler out over the water and fabulous ambiance as the sun set. Even had a four piece band roaming among the tables doing requests. My request was the Drifters’ Under the Boardwalk. Seemed appropriate for the location.  Should have gone there earlier in our stay and repeatedly.      [Pentax K-3 + DA 55-300mm zoom @55mm]

The Beach Bar at dawn. Please forgive the apparent crooked horizon. I was using a fisheye lens and had a choice between keeping the umbrellas vertical or the horizon horizontal.  I decided the umbrellas were the more important element of the image.   [Pentax K-3 + DA 10-17mm fisheye zoom at 14mm]

Early risers enjoying a dip in the pool      [Pentax K-3 + DA 10-17mm fisheye zoom @10mm]

Spider lillies (Hymenocallis caribaea??). Not native to Malaysia but look happy here in a tropical climate.     [Pentax K-3 + DA 10-17mm fisheye zoom at 17mm]

The Berjaya Langkawi resort has been sympathetically positioned in a section of native forest running along the coast and the accommodation units have been constructed in traditional Malay style. A guide for one of the morning walks hosted by the resort advised that no mature trees were felled  to construct any of the units.  Roads and units has to be fitted in and around existing trees. They’re done a good job as looking from the sea gives no indication at all that the resort comprised some 400 rooms. And there’s plenty of fauna that roams around the resort – ubiquitous macaque monkeys, the cute dusk leaf monkeys (aka spectacled monkeys), micro bats, Sundra squirrels and even the shy and nocturnal colugo were some of the locals we spotted. (Not heard of a colugo, also called the flying lemur although it neither flies or is a member of the lemur family. Rather it is somewhat similar in form and habit to an Australian sugar glider). The underside of the fronds of the silver palm tree in this photo is the daytime home of a small group of micro bats.     [Pentax K-3 + DA 10-17mm fisheye zoom @15mm]

Practicing on a resort jet ski the day before we did a jet ski tour through the Datang Bunting Geoforest. On the first post introducing my travel to Langkawi I mentioned I spent some time calibrating the auto-focus on my Pentax DA 55-300mm zoom lens while killing time at Kuala Lumpur airport between flights. This photo pleasingly shows the benefit of that effort.  Taken with the zoom racked all the way out to 300mm, the focus here is spot on and yielded a pretty sharp photo for what is essentially a consumer grade zoom. My son was a little disappointed to find that the island’s rental jet skis were throttle limited to around 60 km/h top speed.

My other son’s treat was to go parasailing. The Machinchang mountains and the chairlift featured in my earlier Gunung Machinchang post form a spectacular backdrop as he is winched out from the rear deck of the tow boat.      [Pentax K-3 + DA 55-300mm zoom @55mm]

[Pentax K-3 + DA 55-300mm zoom @135mm]

Squid boats waiting for darkness to fall.     [Pentax K-3 + Tamron 17-50mm zoom @ 50mm]

Lights on!     [Pentax K-3 + Tamron 17-50mm zoom @ 17mm]

Dusk.   [K-3 + Tamron 17-50mm zoom @ 34mm + polariser]

The previously mentioned restaurant at the end of the jetty. Pity about the floodlight shining straight back at the camera. All the green lights in a line in the background are squid boats. I doubt a single squid could safely swim by this section of Langkawi.     [K-3 + DA 10-17 fisheye zoom @ 15mm]

Pushing the limits here to get this shot. Handheld long telephoto shot at night – 1/320th sec exposure to avoid camera shake which in turn required sensitivity to be pushed all the way up to ISO 12,800.     [K-3 + DA 55-300mm @230mm]