After 4 nights on the island of Langkawi, we still don’t really know what to think of it. After 6 weeks in Thailand we were ready for a change, and Malaysia is certainly a lot different from Thailand. In Koh Lipe Thailand, they were selling pot plants at road side stands, but most of the restaurants here don’t even sell beer. Malaysia is a mostly Muslim country so they have a lot of different rules and we are still getting used to it. No pork anywhere and wine is a rare find. Langkawi was changed to a duty free island years ago to encourage trade and tourism. There are a lot of tourists here from other parts of Asia that come here for the beach and the tax free shopping. But we didn’t think the beaches or the shopping in the duty free shops was that great… Prices weren’t that cheap and we were scared to swim because of jellyfish. Thai beaches have really spoiled us with white sandy beaches (with shade!), warm water, and safe swimming.
The main tourist attraction is a gondola to the “skywalk” on top of the biggest hill on the island. It looked really cool so we took a Grab (Asia’s Uber) to the gondola base on our first day. The Gondola was in a touristy hell called Oriental Village and there were people (and cheap souvenir shops) everywhere. There was a selfie museum and a 3D selfie museum, a 6D movie theater, a petting zoo, and the other tourist traps and kitschy souvenir stands all over the place. We got our tickets and went to wait in line. The line wasn’t moving. The gondolas were moving but they were all empty. After about an hour they put a sign up that said there was technical problems. We could wait around and see if they were fixed, or get a refund. We got a refund and got out of tourist zone as fast as we could. We weren’t getting on any gondolas that have technical probs. So I guess we got a semi-decent Grab tour of that part of the island?
We did enjoy the new food choices that we were seeing in Langkawi. We found a night market that had a ton of stuff that we had never seen before. We tried a lot including baby crabs (deep fried little crabs with a spicy sauce). They were good, but in the middle of the night, all the adventurous food might not have seemed like a good idea anymore. But our stomachs rebound well, and with a lot of water, we were feeling ready for some more spicy new stuff by lunchtime. We had a lot of rice, fried noodles, soups and seafood during our time on the island. Our favorite was some huge prawns that were slathered in garlic butter.
After our failed gondola sky walk trip, we decided to take a boat tour the next day. It was a 6 hour trip to see mangrove swamps, caves to see by boat, bat caves to see on a hike, fish farms, eagle feeding, and monkeys everywhere looking for free food. Sometimes it is nice to meet and talk to other people besides your spouse. We ended up with a friendly group of 15 people from Germany, Bahrain, Holland, England, Bangladesh, China, and a creepy guy from Sicily currently living in Toronto. Lots of interesting conversations… The tour itself was fun even though not of the activities were particularly mind blowing or photo ops. But of course I did take a lot of pics.
The last day on the island we visited an mediocre aquarium and then visited another town for lunch. Not any photos that are really share worthy from that day so I will end this post here. Next stop- Penang Island Malaysia where we can hopefully get a better understanding of what Malaysia is really like.