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“Beautiful, white, soft (hot) sand, calm, blue waters...” |
While waiting to board the boat to Langkawi (there are two - one at 8:15am and the second at 8:30am), we were told that the sea was rough overnight and some minor damage had been done to our boat. Instead of taking 2.5 hours it was going to take 4. using her McGyver like mind, Adrienne spoke to the ticket collector and asked, politely, that if any passengers for the 5:15am boat didn't turn up, then could we please go on that boat? That was fine with him and we were let onboard the early boat.
It was beautiful when we arrived in Kuah, the main town on Langkawi. The sun was hot and the water calm. We took a taxi (RM17) to Cenang and found a room at Gecko's Guesthouse for RM25. This place could do with being a little cleaner, but it served our needs.
It was a quiet day; we hired a scooter in the afternoon and rode back to Kuah to find out about ferry tickets to Satun in Thailand. The one-hour trip costs RM27 but you can only get tickets from the day before. We were told that getting them an hour before it leaves is safe. Back in Cenang we took a sunset walk along the beach, finding the water deliciously warm, and had our first beer in Malaysia. Langkawi is totally duty free, so alcohol is very cheap.
On Friday morning, Adrienne sadly dropped her Greenstone pendant on the concrete floor of our room, and the bottom broke away; it now looks like a crescent moon. As for the rest of the day, we took a ride around the small island. Our first stop was Telaga Tujuh (Seven Wells). We climbed 638 steps in the heat of the day to reach the top, where water flows from one pool to another over mossy rocks. It is pretty cool, you can use the rocks to slide between pools, or admire the view to the northern end of the Straits of Melaka while cooling off in a lower pool.
On the way back down to our bike, we took a short detour to the bottom of the waterfall that ends the pools. An angry looking monkey blocked our pathway, but he really only seemed interested in an almost empty chip packet laying a little way behind us. Watch out for those monkeys!
Not too far away is what looks like an awesome gondola ride. We say "looks like" because as we were leaving Malaysia the next day, we had a limited amount of ringgit left and couldn't afford the RM25 each. Oh well, next time. Another trip we couldn't take because of a much steeper cost was on a boat along a river to see bat caves and to feed eagles. RM150 each! We couldn't imagine it costing that in NZ, especially on the type of boat we would have been going on.
Instead, Sean had read about a beautiful beach in the northern part of the island, Tanjung Rhu Beach. It was gorgeous! Beautiful, white, soft (hot) sand, calm, blue waters... and very few people! Too bad no one has put any budget accommodation in, but would that be detrimental? It looked like there were only two, five star resorts. Again, one day... We took a swim in the almost too warm waters before jumping on the bike again in time to get it back to the shop.
Friday was the beginning of a water festival on Langkawi, mostly located in Cenang. It didn't appear, at least at this stage, to have much in the way of water fights. Competitions and sports were held on the beach, including beach football (football is very popular in this part of the world), beach netball and sand-mosque building competitions. A concert was held in the evening with a rock band playing, but it was calmly sitting on the sand for these locals. No jumping around wildly. Of course this may have been due to the lack of beer on the beach. We found none that evening.
After one last breakfast of roti canai, we jumped on the ferry to Thailand. Bon voyage!
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Nevil says:
Hey Guys, Happy Anzac day, It sounds like you are having a great time, Good to see beer on the beach coming into the story more and more. That is certainly much better than work. Enjoy the diving, I had awesome fun when I did the course. Cheers Nevil