It's the holiday season

In addition to being in Malaysia and Singapore right before Deepavali/Diwali, we also happened to be there right in the midst of Ramadan, which was quite interesting. I hadn't realised that fasting all day included no liquids, which has to be tough in such a hot climate. We arrived in Langkawi around sunset, and at a stop sign our driver suddenly asked us if we minded if he took a sip of water since it was the end of the fast and he hadn't had anything to drink since the morning. (We probably should have told him he couldn't drink because we preferred that he drive us in a state of thirst-inspired delirium. Oh, and we learned a completely random thing about Ramadan when we checked out of the hotel: evidently women do not have to fast during their period, but they do fast when they're pregnant. And no, we didn't understand the rationale behind that distinction.) Every day in the newspaper there was a list of the exact time to start and break the fast (it varied for each city and province), and even McDonalds got into the act with a daily "Buka Puasa" (which probably means "break fast" in Malay) special. (McDonalds and KFC also both advertised that they serve halal meat.) It probably would have been fun to go to one of the night markets where people would gather to eat yummy Malay food to break the fast, but we were too busy watching monkeys at that time to leave our hotel.