We had a very short Firefly flight from the island of Penang heading north to the main island of Langkawi. Once up in the air, the flight attendants quickly handed out peanuts, cookies and water. We got the giggles because as soon as everyone was served, the captain made an announcement that we were beginning our descent and would be landing in 15 minutes. We didn’t even have time to open our bag of cookies (Famous Amos!) before they collected the garbage and asked everyone to put up their trays.
The main island of Langkawi is a rapidly-developing resort island, with all the tourist trappings one would expect – resort hotels, restaurants, shops, water activities and tours. The main island is part of an archipelago of 99 beautiful limestone islands – similar to its Thai neighbor to the north.
We stayed four nights in a resort right on Pantai Cenang, one of the most popular beaches. Our hotel was called Casa Del Mar and had a Spanish theme. Our room included a patio facing the beach. The beach itself was very wide with fine white sand that was compacted down making it easy to walk on.
We spent most of our time sitting on the shaded lounge chairs in front of our room reading books, then cooling off in the ocean. The staff was very friendly, and would bring us ice water and even complimentary drinks sometimes. They served a nice breakfast each morning, which included lots of local foods to try – as well as the usual western breakfast fare. We also enjoyed a few more beautiful sunsets.
Away from the shore, the island is quite mountainous. Back in 2007, Langkawi was given a World Geopark status by UNESCO. The mountains on the island are the oldest in all of South East Asia, 550 million years old. They are beautiful and covered in lush evergreen forests. We got a great view of the Machichang mountain landscape one day when we visited the Langkawi Sky Bridge – about 30 minutes by taxi from our resort. This pedestrian bridge is high up in the mountains, and is unique in its design as it is a curved bridge suspended from just one tall support tower. To get to the bridge, we took a series of cable cars – which were fun on their own. On the highest mountain top in the second picture below, you can see the arrival platform for the first cable car. The first cable car was a 950 meters long (slightly over half a mile) free span single rope cable car. Before going on the second cable car, we walked around a little bit to enjoy the landscape. After arriving on the second platform, we took some stairs down to a path through the forest to reach the bridge.
Walking on that bridge was quite an experience! According to what we read, it is the longest curved hanging bridge in the world (125m, 410ft). The bridge deck is 660 meters (2,170 ft) above sea level. The scenery was amazing with great views everywhere.
There were lots of water activity vendors on the beach in front of our resort. Every day we would watch them haul jet skis to the water in the morning, and take them away in the evening pulling them off the beach behind pickups.
We decided to book a four-hour jet ski group tour one day. Sophie and I shared a jet ski – it was a nice new Sea-doo. Before heading out, the tour guide gave us a quick briefing about our jet skis and the formations we would be using during the tour.
The tour took us to several islands. I had never driven a jet ski in the ocean before, so I wasn’t really prepared for how wet we would get crossing the waves as we headed out to our first island. This turned out to be the roughest part of our tour, and Sophie was a trooper as she hung on for dear life as we flew up and down over the waves. The islands were beautiful, with limestone cliffs, lush forests and sandy beaches.
We stopped at one island called Pulau Dayang Bunting, another UNESCO Geopark, where there was a deep fresh-water lake called the Lake of the Pregnant Maiden. It got this name because the mountains surrounding it looked like a pregnant woman laying down. Lore has it that women who swim there can become more fertile. Sophie and I took our chances, and decided to wash the saltwater spray off our bodies in the fresh water anyway. Before leaving the island, we got some great tasting watermelon juice from a vendor. To make it, they just throw watermelon chunks in a blender. It is very refreshing and sweet; the hot, sunny weather probably helps their watermelons get to their perfect ripeness.
Our last stop on the jet ski tour was a little island with a pretty beach. We all took a swim, enjoying the immaculate white sand and the lovely water. This tour was a fun way to explore a little more of the beautiful islands of Langkawi and we are glad we signed up for it, even if it seemed pretty challenging at the beginning. Our tour guide was super friendly and would give us lots of thumbs up. The only negative was that my sunscreen didn’t last through all the times we got wet, so I got a bit of a sun burn. I should definitely wear a long-sleeve water shirt next time.
Eating out is always an adventure in South East Asia. On our first night in Langkawi, we ate fish and squid at a Chinese restaurant. On our second night, we decided to try our resort restaurant, which was a little more upscale than the restaurants in the street. On our third night, we reserved a table at a traditional Malay Muslim restaurant across the street. They seated us on our own platform in the middle of a rice paddy. We had to take our shoes off and sit on cushions at a low table. We ordered a platter of food which included lamb, octopus, shrimp, rice and several spicy sauces. It was certainly a different experience! On our final night, we tried an Indian restaurant where we ordered grilled fish served on rice baked in a clay pot, along with some roti canai bread. We really gave our tastebuds a workout on this trip! I would say that overall we preferred the food in Thailand, but it was great to try some of the many different Malay dishes. In any case, it didn’t cost much to eat out. Our last meal was about eight dollars for the two of us including drinks!
We found the staff at our resort to be super friendly and accommodating. This seems to be the norm in Malaysia, as all of the people working in the tourist industry have been well trained and seem to take pride in doing their job. They always have a smile on their face and it is contagious! As I mentioned before, English is commonly spoken, so it is an easy place to visit if one is worried about the language barrier. We were planning on doing more hiking and biking to explore the main island, but the weather was way too hot for that. As soon as you walked away from the beach and the resort – even to just go a block away to the main street to eat or shop – you would become a “hot drenched sweaty mess” per Sophie’s words 🥵. So most of the tourists there (a lot of people from England, Malaysia is a former British colony) would spend their time laying by the pool or the beach perfecting their sun tan. We enjoyed our time in Malaysia, but we are certainly looking forward to the cooler temperatures of Japan, which is next on our itinerary, after one last laundry run 🙂.
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