What Is It About Saxophones?

Ever since I started travelling to South East Asia I have been struck by the orientals love of the saxophone. I recall many, many years ago being taken to a traditional Tea Dance in Tainan, Taiwan’s oldest city. At least 100 couples, all dressed up to the nines moving gently to the beat of a sizeable orchestra, overwhelmingly consisting of saxophone players. The Strictly Come Dancing judges would have been very impressed. The saxophone is, of course, a perfectly legitimate instrument  but it does emit quite a mournful sound which I don’t really associate with Christmas

and yet it dominates the piped music in many places I have been.

What I saw and heard of the Christmas Eve party here did, at times, verge on the hysterical. Bearing in mind that a) this is a Muslim country and b) most of the guests in the hotel are Muslim it must have been quite difficult to please everyone at such event. So the compromise seemed to be some sort of Bollywood dancing show complete with Christmas hats! I’m not sure this was generally appreciated by the guests as when we returned from dinner at around 10.00pm most of the customers had already left.  This gave the Father Christmas clad master (or in the case, mistress) of ceremonies a problem as, clearly, she and the dancers had been booked to entertain until a much later time. So she reverted to the age old trick of trying to get the guests up on stage to join in the dancing. But the guests were having none of it. Nobody moved. The MC’s exhortations to dance became louder and louder which had the effect of encouraging app 50% of the few remaining customers to flee. She made one last attempt to get things going by starting to sing which was her terminal mistake. Obviously, she had not been recruited for her singing talents. It was a truly dreadful noise. Out of tune, out of time and she was seriously out of luck. Her attempt at Mariah Carey’s ‘All I want for Christmas is You’ was  the final straw. It was so devastatingly awful that the remaining scattering of guests left. The whole event was over by 11.00pm! God knows what they have planned for New Year’s Eve but I shall not be here!

Christmas Day itself was understated as you might expect in Malaysia. In fact, very much a ‘normal’ day except for my phone call home which made it special.

Where I am staying is a little distance from Chenang Beach which is the main tourist ‘strip’ on this island. And the difference between the two close locations is quite noticeable. Whereas my location is quite quiet and uncrowded, Chenang is much busier

and much more commercial

The greater difference, though, is in the street directly behind the beach. It is chaotic. In their infinite wisdom, the local government are in the process of widening the pavements (at peak season, naturally) thus seriously restricting the two way flow of traffic. And bearing in mind that the locals seem to have no concept of parking considerately,

traffic jams are inevitable. It can easily take 20-30 minutes to drive through this 1km stretch of road.

What I have also noticed is a seeming lack of prioritisation. Making the place look presentable is obviously understood as you will often see armies of strimming people cutting patches of grass that, frankly, don’t need cutting and yet leaving great swathes of the main drag littered with rubble. The result is a higgledy piggledy mess of shops – some of which have been around for a while

and restaurants.

Don’t get me wrong, Langkawi and the nearby islands are geographically beautiful. I get the impression, though, that nobody, apart from one shop owner, has quite worked out what sort of tourist destination these islands should be. And that shop owner is very clear.

The heavens have just opened and it’s chucking it down plus thunder and lightning, very very frightening . One happy couple don’t care , though, as they have taken refuge by the pool bar!

Such weather conditions often happen at this time of day which means it must nearly be beer o’clock!

Phileas