Langkawi Malaysia

A few hours by bus to a small town in southern Thailand, an overnight stay and then a 2.5 hr ferry ride to the Island of Langkawi in Northern Malaysia brings our travels in Thailand to an end.

Langkawi is an island about 20-30kms square with a number of smaller uninhabited islands around its periphery. With some peaks up to 2000 ft high there are some dramatic views and scenery.

The longest beach (2km) on the island is a beautiful fine white sand, but the water is not particularly clear...a greenish cloudy colour with a visibility of perhaps 1meter or so. Funny what a difference that makes...not nearly as appealing to splash around in as crystal clear blue water.

So this main beach named Cenai is surprisingly undeveloped, with some mid-size mid cost (50-80$/night) lowrise 'bungalows' along the beach front, some shops/restaurants along the street, and really cheap rooms/bungalows (20$) night across the road from the beach. Overall it has a laid back not overly touristy feel to it compared to many places in Thailand where you feel like you're in nothing but an overpriced tourist ghetto.

Interesting when you're travelling for months on end like this that having a room on the beach isn't that much of a priority really...in fact, a room across the road is more appealing as its quieter and cheaper...so what if you have to walk 3 minutes to get to the beach! So many beautiful sunsets.

Now the beach was just too hot to hang out on during the day...the sun is so amazingly intense and there is no wind blowing in off the ocean, instead a light wind blowing from the land. Since in Canada almost all of our travelling is east-west you don't really notice how much the temperature and strength of the sun can increase as you move 300km or so further south. In fact by now we are 1200kms south of Bangkok and as a result it is a much hotter, more intense sun during mid-afternoon now.

So we hung out here for 5 days or so thanks to the low-keyness. Our accomodation was Shirin guesthouse, an outfit with about 10 simple wooden bungalows in a quiet garden, run by an eccentric Iranian and his Japanese wife. In many of the places we've been you can find outfits like this where they really take care of you in a personal way and you actually hang out with and get to know your hosts and there is a bit of a feeling of sadness on both sides when its time to move on. For instance there were some people (retired types) staying here who come back every year and stay for a month!!!...a home away from home for 20$ a day.

So what else did we do?...spent an afternoon at a fairly impressive aquarium with hundreds of tanks of fish including the most amazing of all...the dragonfish. How did a thing like that come to be?.... google it ... you will be amazed.

We also rented a motorcycle for a day and drove around the island, to the highest peak at 2500 ft, to a tropical fruit farm to sample the local fares, and checked out the new marina and some of the megayachts in port there (resisted the temptation to dine on fish and chips - it looked sooo good).


Here we are at the fruit farm posing with the world's largest Guava!

And the food here....lots more Indian in flavour. We had limited ourselves to only Thai food for the 6 weeks or so in Thailand and so we dove into the Indian food with gusto :D Nothin' like stuffing yourself on Massalas, Naans, and Lhassi's for 8$ for the two of us. Good thing there are no weigh scales on these paths 'cause I think the layers of fat on us are getting thicker! John did manage to find two on our journey - one didn't work (I laughed) and another, he had to pay! It is important to mention here that when dining true Indian style, you eat with your righthand only. This is tricky and fun! Skill comes from necessity i.e. nothing is to get in the way of eating such yummy dishes!

Is that all we did? Where did 5 days go? Yet we seemed busy all the time or maybe we just aren't able to do as much in the same amount of time as in the frenetic world of home?