We woke on Saturday morning to a stunning sight. To the images you see in travel magazines that advertise Malaysia, aqua blue mirror still sea, mountains and islands covered in deeply luscious greenery rising from the horizon, the odd quiet small fishing boat and not much more. It was a sight to behold.
We were all up early, and raring to go. The small jetty led us to a carpark where David and Graham once again negotiated the services of a driver for the day to explore this small but rich island. Yameen was an extremely chunky Malaysian man full of chatter who was happy to show us around his lovely hometown.
Langkawi was simply an island where Malay people lived until the 1980s when the President decided to invest big money and create tourist attractions, a small capital called Kuah and main roads criss crossing the island, which also saved the locals from having to drive miles around the coast to thenext village or get a boat to circumvent the island.
Emphasis was placed on Eco tourism and the island is now home to three of the four Unesco listed Eco parks in Malaysia.
Langkawi is a predominantly Muslim country, 30% Malaysians, 30% Thai, 30% Indian and the rest Europeans (UK, Polish, Dutch and Norwegians) who have settled there, the government encourages apartment purchases by non residents and they all seem to muddle along very peacefully. The whole island feels tidy, quiet, and relaxed.
The President was thanked by the Malay people by having a tower erected in his name, a viewing point over one of the parks on the outskirts of Kuah and home to a statue of a giant Eagle.
Lang means “eagle” and “kawi” means limestone. The reason for all the 100+ islands that make up this archipelago was a volcano eruption 500,000 years ago, throwing up limestone boulders and creating several large and numerous small uninhabitable islands, which became home to several different species of eagles.
In the early morning as we docked, it had rained which bought the temperature down to 30c, normally 37c! Being near the equator, December is going into the 8 months of summer having just had 4 months of a rainy winter where temperature drops to 20c.
Yameen, our driver, first stopped at the city’s Eco park where we saw the Eagle Statue, a baby sea monitor (lake lizard) and the white Maha Tower.
Next stop was some very picturesque waterfalls in the Kilim Eco Park, small in comparison to others we’ve seen, but being enjoyed by families paddling in the water and bbq-ing on the walk side.
Then the highlight of the day!!!!
A high speed speedboat trip amongst the mangroves which included watching troups of monkeys on the riverbank, a visit to a cave inhabited by sleeping bats and stalagmites, watching Brown Eagles and Brahminy Kites feed off the fish that were bought to the surface by the boat movement, admiring the various shapes made by the limestone and overgrowth and speeding along the waters at full throttle, something that made us all smile.
Graham was simply ecstatic, there’s no other words to describe him. There are also no other words to describe the beauty of the scenery, beaches and island outcrops, it is simply beautifully lush.
Lastly, we were taken to our only prebooked activity, a panoramic cable car to the 1st platform, a walk out over a glass floored cantilevered viewing platform, another cable car to the highest platform then 350 steps to the top platform, right amongst the clouds!
Diane certainly conquered her fear of heights (and even calmed a young Asian girl who was clearly panicking while her boyfriend ignored her), David used 2 batteries on the camera taking hours of videos and we all exhausted the words “wow, stunning, amazing, lush, spectacular, out of this world”.
The Skycab is the world’s longest free span mono cable car, and worth every penny of the £15 each, we spent 3 hours going up and down, including a break for lunch, and were absolutely knackered, breathless and hot by the time we got back into Yameen’s car for our 40 minute journey back to the cruise terminal. As we got in his car and left the car park the heavens opened, the torrential rains stopping just as we arrived back at the cruise terminal.
A very long, busy day but we all agreed that it was a fantastic trip out!
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