LANGKAWI
A beautiful island in northern Malaysia,
on the west coast just below the Thai border
The plan in Langkawi is to relax after five days in the hustle and bustle of Singapore town.
Beach front hotel or airbnb plus a sandy beach plus a load of books, beers and biryani, that is what I call a plan. Probably 7-10 days to totally relax. Probably hire a car for a week so we can see the island as well.
​
But, like all our plans it very nearly changed completely. Due to the aforementioned dampness we both spent hours pouring (get it?) over the various weather forecasts for - wait for it- destinations as far afield as Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Bangkok, India, the Philippines, and Burma. Hunting for somewhere with good weather. In the end it appears that there is a general weatherfront across SE Asia that is causing erratic weather conditions and so one place is almost as good as another - so lets stick to the plan for the moment. So we fly to Langkawi.
​
We are booked into a traditional Malay house which is part of a small hotel out in the sticks with ten of these villas. lovingly stolen from up-country families who preferred cash and a nice new concrete block house to these amazing structures, silly them, lucky us.
​
We walk the three miles into the local beach town through pretty countryside along country lanes with added water buffalo and egrets everywhere and enjoy dinner and then use GRAB, the local Uber, to get home. Then a day of rest before we start seeing the sights. Oddly it is not raining and the sun is out. Despite this I am the only person in the village wearing a pacamac and standing under a brolly. Old habits die hard.
​
Sara gets chatting to a couple by the pool and they are from Strood and they were members of The Roffen Club. They tell me that they had a lovely meal there in 2005 but that the potatoes were cold and the steak was overcooked. I thank them and put my umbrella back up and return to our amazing room seen below.
​
Its that big cos it's a whole house for some people.
We do a day of thinking and come up with a cunning plan for the next part of the trip. This is after several hours of trying to work out the best way to get from here to Kuala Lumpor by boat, train and car. Which apparently can't be done so we compromise. We love this hotel so we extend to 8 days here. We hire a car for a week in Langkawi, a brand new Nissan Almera Turbo for the princely sum of £27.33 a day (incl CDW) so we are now fully mobile. Then we book a £30 a head flight down to Penang next week where we will pick up another hire car and do a one way hire to Kuala Lumpor via the Cameron Highlands and central Malaysia for a few more of countryside and tea plantations before more days tramping round a massive town in Kuala Lumpor. Its a plan!! So now on with the trips we have planned to do here in on our week in Langkawi, of which we have a list as long as Sara's arm ....................
First we list the places to visit on the island, then we manfully work through them. Google gives us all the info and so we visit the Sky Cab (cable car) up to the Sky Bridge (a bridge in the sky obs), The Datai, the most expensive hotel on the island, The Mangrove swamps for a boat tour, climb the highest mountain, and a cycling tour of the farmlands, plus plenty of visits to lovely bars and restaurants along the way, plus a selection of white sand beaches. It was hell I tell you.
​
Below are a quick selection of pics to illustrate our travels. On the right is a cautionary picture of Sara after she decided that the one single lonely long green thing sat astride here mouth wateringly delicious baked sea bass was a solitary french bean when in fact it was - you guessed it - a whole chili. Sara munched down on it and within seconds her head exploded, poor thing. I patiently queried why any chef would adorn a dish with a single french bean but my query remained unanswered, apart from a few muffled grunts and whimpers.
​
So on with the slide show..................
The impressive site above is sold as 'Feeding the Eagles' but as Any Fule Kno these are in fact the iconic bird of Langkawi, the Brahminy Kite. I'm guessing 'Feeding the Kites' raises more questions than answers, or as is so often the case, the guides are clueless. My money is on the latter. Lovely sight, shame there were no eagles.
OUR BEAUTIFUL HOTEL POOL IN A LAKE OF LILY
We do always manage to make fools of ourselves - and our mangrove swamp tour was no exception. We were a bit peckish so avoiding the crisps and sweets we settled on a big hand of tiny bananas, settled down on a seat and munched our way through a bunch, only to be told later by our boatman that they were literally monkey food, not for human consumption. Well we liked them and Sara is seen above replying to said boatman in true British style.
​
We also visited the Adventure Park and got in some right scrapes!! - little things please little minds (mine mainly).
After those adventures off we went on a hot sweaty four hour cycle ride through the backwaters and farmlands of the island before a trip to Kuah, the capital, and a ride up the weird tower below. Constructed at vast expense for absolutely no apparent reason. It boasts an observation deck at the top, a seating lounge half way down, and fuck all else. We were joined by two other people on our visit. We were outnumbered by the staff about 10:1, deeply odd.
And so it is time to move on. A really enjoyable week in Langkawi is over, and it didn't rain once, and it is time to fly south to fine the rain, to Penang, a major island town a bit further down the coast and get the brolly out again