The beautiful Island of Langkawi

Our last stop in Malaysia was the island of Langkawi. Thanks to Jade not wanting to take the simple direct route of a 3 hour boat ride from Penang, we instead took the commuter ferry from Penang over to Butterworth on the mainland. From there we purchased bus tickets to Kuala Perlis  - a small port town right near the Thai-Malaysia border, and a 3 hour drive away. We arrived at Kuala Perlis in the early afternoon and bought our ferry tickets, but with the ferry not departing for over an hour we had to wait around in the tropical heat. Eventually though, after almost half a day spent getting there we made it to the gorgeous island.

Ferry heading to Penang

But we were not quite finished in our travels yet. Langkawi is actually a pretty big island, so a final 30min taxi ride to our accommodation and we could relax! But maybe not luxuriously in our extremely basic room which consisted of: a bed, sink and shoilet (my new name for a shower over the toilet, they are surprisingly very common, guess you can save time and do two things at once!). With no where to put anything it was going to have to be a floordrobe, but I guess you can't complain for 45 Ringgit a night (NZ $18). Then night fell and that's when the real fun started! The room filled with mosquitoes and then a symphony started playing. A symphony of insects and animals that is. Turns out there was a swamp right behind us and this was the favourite hangout of many mosquitoes, frogs, birds and any other animal you can think of that likes to come out at night (to be honest, I really don't know what came out at night, I wasn't going to investigate!). We gave up and went to get a pizza, but it seemed someone really didn't like us as just as we were about to leave a tropical storm hit: the skies opened up and torrential rain poured down, lightening flashed and thunder cracked. Half an hour later we realised the storm wasn't going anywhere, so Jade being the brave one donned his trusty poncho and off he went. On his return, he was the funniest sight: hair plastered to his face, clothes absolutely soaked, water pouring off him. He'd given up on the poncho as it obviously wasn't helping much, but to his credit he'd saved the pizza by wrapping the saturated plastic poncho around it. After eating the surprisingly not wet pizza we tried to block up the gaps where the mosquitoes were coming in (unsuccessfully, need to bring duck tape next time), and slaughter the hundreds which had already breached our security. We were going to need to find mosquito coils. We went to bed. The storm thrashed down outside.

Example of a shoilet

Aside from the rain and the mosquitos, Langkawi is just so relaxing. It's really hard to do anything much apart from lie on the beach, read and relax. And of course cool down with a much needed swim and refreshing drink afterwards. Having said that we did manage to pull ourselves away from the beach long enough to get to Oriental Village, at the foot of Mount Mat Cincang. Many shops, stalls, a petting zoo, bumper boats and you can even ride an elephant if you like! Reminded me very much of Dreamworld on the Gold Coast, just without all the roller coasters. The main attraction though is the cable car which takes you to the top of the heavily forested mountain - but it's a very very steep ride, I definitely would not recommend you look down. Once you make it to the top you can either get off at the small view point, or stay on and be taken over a valley to the main view point at the highest peak which is spectacular. You can look out over the whole island, and on a good day even see islands of Thailand.

Langkawi at sunset.

Where you'd find me most days

View from the top. You can see the orange roofs of Oriental Village below.

Islands of Thailand in the distance.

Coming back down from the cool mountain, we hit a wall of heat - it had gotten very very hot! So we thought we'd walk up the tree-lined road to the Seven Wells waterfall that we'd seen from the cable-car. A few minutes later we were in the shade of the forest, when Jade spotted something moving above us. We looked up to see a squirrel running across the power line. Then a bush up the road started rustling and out popped a monkey! He casually crossed the road and leaped up into a tree, then the rest of the troop followed closely behind. After wondering if that really just happened, we cautiously walked on by and then up a short jungle path to the waterfall. Other people obviously thought it was a good idea also as there were plenty of people cooling off in the rock pools, and it was so refreshing.

View of the waterfall from the top of the cable car.

Jade modelling some swimwear...

After some more lying on the beach and swimming we thought we had better make a move else we might never leave this place. So onto our next adventure... Thailand here we come!