Lost In Langkawi

Call off the search party, we are back online. When we last left off we were in Penang, and were planning where to go next. We decided to go to the small island of Langkawi off the north western coast of Peninsular Malaysia (it's still part of Malaysia). We heard about the island from other travellers, and some locals as well, and all agreed that it was the place to go, despite the fact that it was in 'low season'. if you ask me, the season got it's name based on the price of everything, and we were on the ferry from Penang on the 13th.

So here is a small wall of text on the lovely island of Langkawi.

First of all, the whole island is Duty Free. But Brendan, what does that mean? well, if you dont drink, smoke or collect fragrances named after redundant divas and self absorbed footballers, then you dont need to worry since Duty Free doesnt apply to you. For the rest of us, it means you can buy a beer anywhere on the island for about AU 44 cents. Yep. 44 cents. naturally i spent roughly 44 thousand dollars during my 10 night stint on the small tax haven. Even Kate indulged and purchased a bottle of very nice coconut flavoured vodka for about $7.60. bargain.


OK, so enough of that. what else does the island have to offer? Perfect beaches (though the water isn't clear, its still clean and aqua in colour), helpful locals, only 1 filthy Maccas outlet in the whole place, thousands of cheeky monkeys living in the trees all over the place and cheap food drawing inspiration from indian, chinese and malay inspired dishes.

Any problems or complaints with the place? The common problem of not being able to drink the water is still a bit annoying. There is the fact that there is no public transport in langkawi, so taxi drivers go to town in more ways than one when they get a fare. There are very few bins around the place, and most rubbish is thrown into private bins left beside the road, or into piles of rubbish which just get bigger and bigger. Oh, and just cos im a snob, ill add that some of the shells rolling around in the surf are DAMN SHARP, and my tender, pedicured tootsies were most displeased from time to time.

so there are some pros and cons. as far as the touristy stuff we did when we were there, its a much shorter list... we hired a motorbike and explored the island. we found that the remote beaches were as clean and pretty as the main public beaches. We visited the beautiful (man made) Seven Wells Waterfall, and went for a swim in it. we went to three different night markets and sampled heaps of amazing food (including choc-iced tea). We went island hopping, since Langkawi is actually made of 99 islands, and fed eagles on the same day trip.



the rest of the time? well, a normal day in Langkawi for us went pretty much like this:

9:30am - get up bright and early for a morning swim at the beach 3 minutes walk from our hostel. the water is about 25 degrees or so. i dont hate mornings so much anymore.
10:30am - swimming is hard work, so we reward ourselves by going out to breakfast at any local establishment, usually consisting of Roti (flaky fried bread served with curry sauce) and a random rice or noodle dish with a crap load of chilli in it.
11:00am - still cool enough to swim, so back to the beach to float in the calm waters or lie on the warm sand and read a book.

11:30am - getting hot out here, and we are all about sun safety, so we head back to the hostel. We relax during the heat of the day in the hostel bar, playing chess and sipping a cleansing ale. Playing Nintendo DS and reading books are also acceptable pastimes at this point in the day.
4:00pm - wow, time flies when you are drinking cheap beer and playing tetris. better head back to the beach to cool off.

5:30pm - back to the hostel to freshen up and head into town for dinner. Dinner could be anything, but our favourite was a Mee Rebus (noodle soup with curry sauce, beef, onions, tofu and EXTRA CHILLI) from a local night market for only AU$1 followed by a Banana Roti served with sweet condensed milk for dessert for about AU50 cents.
8:30pm - head back to the hostel, which always had a few other travellers hanging around in the evening. we would have a few more energy beers before retiring for the evening with a good book or videogame in our room.

So i guess you can appreciate now how busy we have been for the last 11 days. we clearly didnt have enough time to update the blog. besides that, i think that the Langkawi has an aged hampster running in a wheel powering their single dial up modem, judging by the 'speed' of the connection the one time we did actually try to get on.

Small Plug

Special mention goes to the place we stayed:
We stayed in the Rainbow Lodge, off the main drag of the northern part of Cenang Beach, which is the main beach on the western side of the island. The owner, Addie, is a top guy who thanked us for staying for 10 nights by making us and our other friends dinner.

The other people staying at The Lodge were a lovely bunch of people, with Ivan and Casey from NZ taking the award for 'nicest people in Langkawi'. Surprise winners considering their origins. It was really nice to find some other travellers who we could hang out with around the island and have a drink with in the evening (or morning...)

All in all, its easy for me to say that Langkawi is the first place that we really didnt want to leave. The lovely climate, food, beer, people and beaches were everything we could ask for, but we have so many more places to see, so regretfully we had to move on.

We are now back in Penang for a couple of nights, just to see the things we missed, and organise our next hop to the Cameron Highlands, in inland Malaysia. We will do a bit of a write up of Penang once we leave it for the last time in a few days.

//Brendan