Delicious Langkawi
It's 6 am and we have just arrived into the little town of Kuala Besut, the launch pad for the Perhentian Islands. We have a fast boat at in an hour and whilst we wait for the sun to rise over the dark port, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to write about our first few days in Malaysia. Travelling within Malaysia is proving to be so much smoother than I would have ever dreamed. The buses are brand new, they stick to the schedule, everyone speaks an excellent level of English and the bus driver even stopped at an extra service station so I could use the bathroom. This has never happened in an overnight bus journey before. Just amazing!
Travelling south in Thailand was so troublesome in comparison. We had a ticket direct from Samui down to Satun, where the ferries leave for the Malaysian island of Langkawi. After the ferry from Samui, we were herded into an old, disgustingly dirty bus - there was chewing gum on my seat. Luckily, we didn't have to be on there for long, as it was just dropping our large herd of backpackers into the companies depot. This is where you have different colour stickers placed on your person and you wait an indeterminable length of time until someone shouts a number destinations. Most likely yours was in the list, so you get up and show your sticker for them to tell you to wait some more and you return to your grubby plastic chair. Luckily, I had an OK! magazine, all the way from UK, to keep me occupied - thanks Jonny!! In the end we were led into a minivan. We clambered on and as other passengers got on it was obvious every seat would be taken. Where would our bags go? Our driver first piled them high on the isle and then on top of us and crammed the rest into every space available, including the footwells and finally holding the last bag in place he managed to slam the door shut. We were packed into this minivan like sardines and travelled the rest of the way south (around 6 hours) at speeds of 80+ mph and within a few inches off bumpers of other cars. It was hideous, and certainly one of the most terrifying journeys we had. Comparable to death road I would say.
A quick overnight stop in a dodgy hotel stuck in the 1980s, and we were on our way to Langkawi on the morning ferry. The immigration process was so easy and an hour later we were in Malaysia. The difference was obvious from the start; everything seemed so modern. We spied a starbucks in the ferry terminal for much needed caffeine top-up. Amazingly, the wifi worked and when we tried to charge the laptop, we found the socket to take our long-lost friend, the 3-pin plug. We couldn't believe our eyes.
The roads in Langkawi also reminded us of UK. Just like Indonesia and Thailand, they drive on the left and all the road signs and markings are the same back home. They even have cat's eyes, which we hadn't seen for quite some time. Travelling to our hostel we had a pleasant chat to our taxi driver, whose English was impeccable, and, to our surprise, he not try and rip us off. We had been in Malaysia for less than an hour and it was exceeding our expectations ten-fold.
We spent the afternoon on a beautiful white-sand beach about 5 minutes walk from our hostel. There must have been at most 20 people on the whole beach. Utterly peaceful. There were quite a few muslim families too, swimming in all their clothing. It was lovely to see different traditions and cultures not getting into the way of some family fun.
There are 99 islands in this achipelago and Langkawi is the largest. With stunning beaches, jungle covered interior and some beautiful hills for long walks, it's a dream holiday destination, and no wonder it's one of the biggest tourism centres for Malaysia. However, the fact that Lankawi is tax exempt makes this island so much more fun. Food and drink is rather cheap, which means even short-budgeted backpackers, like us, can enjoy a few frosty tiger beers and fresh seabass barbequed in banana leaves without blowing the budget! We truly eat like kings and extended our waists by a few more cms. Not sure how we are ever going to fit into our tailormade clothes from Vietnam.
Over the next few days we enjoyed some more sun and swam in torquise waters. We also rented a bike to see the rest of the island. We had had a few recommendations to go up the cable car to the highest point of the island. The first view of the cable car does not really convey the steepness of the ascent. It was one of the scariest rides I'd ever been on, and had to do some heavy breathing whilst trying to avoid looking down. I'm not normally scared of heights, but when you are travelling 1000m up in a small metal box, over sheer cliffs, it sort of takes your breath away. I wish I could say the views were breath taking as well, but on the day we were there most of the view was hidden behind a carpet of white fog. Still, it was fun, and the journey down was even scarier than the one going up. Mark took full pleasure in seeing me squirm and actually proceeded to film my discomfort. Thanks baby! Our two night stay here seemed to come to end so very quickly, and far too soon we were on our way to the Perhenthians.
