Amazing Langkawi

There are places where you yearn for time to just halt, to soak in more and more of the ambience, truly wonderful that these moments are. Langkawi was one such brilliant place.

July 2023

Our flight landed at Langkawi landed just past noon; the spectacular aerial views that the island offered from the comfort of the flight had already kindled a sense of excitement.

Smooth baggage collection and off we went in search of a SIM card; economical 12 RM for 5GB, pretty good for our 3 days sojourn. For the first time in my life, I opted for a self-driving rental car abroad, and this had given me slight jitters in anticipation. Thankfully, Aishah, the lady at Langkawi Go Rental car company who handed us the car, was very pleasant and put us completely at ease. She had this very pleasant welcoming attitude, shared us good news that our booking had been upgraded from hatchback to Sedan for the same price. She smoothly went through the formalities of handing over the car, and this was a great start to our Langkawi adventure. I would highly recommend Langkawi Go Rental car company for a great self-driving experience in Langkawi.

The drive was phenomenal, passing by the airport runway, where we did catch glimpses of few airplanes landing. It was a short drive to our hotel at Cenang Beach area. We had to check-in and use their access card to park at a public car parking lot. About the Cenang Plaza Beach Hotel, it is located in the most happening place on the Cenang Beach. Great for enjoying the activities along the beach. The hotel is nothing fancy but has decent rooms to have a good night’s sleep, I would definitely recommend this. In the evening, we drove around a bit, slight exploration of water body near to airport runway, found one go-karting place where our daughter did some karting while we spoke to a Pakistani family who were also touring this amazing place.

Just around the sunset time, we drove to the Pantai Tengah beach. It has a nice parking space around. This is a cleaner beach in my opinion, with lesser crowd. Nice place to swim around with family.

We spent some good time here until the sunset, and now the clouds looked spectacular.

We drove back to the hotel, took quick shower and had to walk only a few steps towards the beach to have a memorable dinner at Bamboo Cenang restaurant, studded with good sea food and amazing fire show on the beach.

The Cenang beach comes to life after sunset, so I would definitely recommend staying one night near the beach, to get a good vibe of this place. The fire show was a fantastic experience, what theatrics, what music, what performance.

After dinner, we strolled along the main road and found an icecream shop MyTee, bought couple of Vanilla ice-creams (one with fruits, other with chocolate), they were sooo good.

While strolling around, we found a Transformer show, folks sporting huge transformer metal attires and doing some incredible dance moves, the mood was simply electric. We stayed until slightly past midnight and then went back to hotel to have a good night’s sleep.

My mind couldn’t help but iterate a word continuously. The word was TRUST – Malaysian locals seem to have great trust in people. Aishah (from Go Rental cars) handed over the car with just 100RM deposit payment (no credit card collateral). The coffee guy near our KL hotel welcomed us with his trust, when he handed us the coffee and asked us to go for breakfast and then pay him (without even noting down our room number). At petrol bunk, we normally pay money and fill the fuel by ourselves (how much we paid for, but nobody there to check if we fill more!).

The sky next morning, as I woke up, was with incredible colors of orange and blue. I always wanted to do barefoot running, and this was my perfect chance to do it on the beach. By the time I set foot on the beach, the sky had turned blue, I missed out on the orange tint!

It was a good 30-mins barefoot beach run this morning and I loved it. I did see 2-3 other runners enjoying their run. We had to go hunt for some coffee and snacks, but only managed the same at a local convenience store, it was just ok. Shwetha insisted on visiting the Kilim Geo Forest Park, it was around 45 mins drive, a beautiful drive along some of the greener part of this island. We booked 350 RM for a 2-hours personal boat package.

Our boatsman was one Mr.Amir, a very welcoming chap. The boat ride was so nice, with fantastic views of the mangrove forest, very well maintained.

We were first taken to a Bat cave for extra entry fee of 5RM per person, it was good experience. Next, we arrived at one of the local fish farms, where the person showed us different varieties of fishes.

We could order the fishes that we wanted to eat, and then continue with our trip, come back for the lunch later. Amir took us to eagle feeding area, he mentioned now they don’t feed eagles so much, maybe 1 boat out of 10, else the eagles will get lazy to hunt and depend on humans for food, and hence survival.

Then he ferried us to the Andaman seas, where he showed us the last island of Thailand.

The stunning difference in color of the water between river and the ocean was evident. Few moments of ride on the Andaman Sea & we saw a big signboard of Kilim Geo Forest Park on the rocks, surely one for the pictures!

Amir brought us back to the fish farm area, and our lunch was served. Brilliant, simply brilliant seafood, the best one in our whole trip. Crab pepper, prawns curry paste, rice was bit hard for our liking though.

After the lunch, we were back to the boat docking yard, and the wonderful trip was over. We tipped 20RM to Amir and waved goodbye to the fantastic Geo Forest. We drove back to the downtown, and checked in to our next hotel, Resorts world Langkawi.

The resort area looked great! Parking was huge, and the hotel had a nice resort ambience. Room was just ok though, it looked bit aged. We went to their infinity pool, fantastic swim with great views.

We also had some fries and chicken wings by the pool; it was a wonderful experience. Met a nice gentleman from Bangladesh, this is what I appreciate about travelling, we meet people from different countries, hearing their unique stories is always nice. We then went back to our room, took shower and went to 33 Bistro & Bar for dinner, this is a live music spot, decent Turkish pizza and other bread stuff. There were some good cocktails too. After the nice dinner, we drove back to hotel and slept off.

The next morning, we waited for the shuttle to pick us up from our hotel. We had booked this Langkawi Island Hopping Speedboat Tour online via Pelago. Speed boat (Boat carrying ~25 folks) ride in the ocean was nice, bit bumpy due to the waves though. The first hop was the “Pregnant maiden” island, named after the structure of the mountain range here. After alighting here, we could hike up to this beautiful scenic lake. Me and Aishani went kayaking, it was a meditative experience.

After this, Aishani took a dip in the water with rest of the folks out there, I forgot to bring my swimming trunks, so missed out big time on this pleasurable swim. The boat then took us an eagle feeding area, an experience you pretty much bump into everywhere in Langkawi. After all, Eagle is Langkawi’s symbol. Next stop on the boat ride was a beach, where we spent around 1 hour.

It was just ok though, too many small rocks on the ocean bed, making it uncomfortable to walk in water. We got dropped at the pier by 1pm.

We went to hotel, freshened up and drove to Bobi’s restaurant, which was highly rated on google. Lot of reviews mentioned their beef coconut curry, and so I ordered this. It was simply brilliant, one of the best coconut curries I ever tasted in my life. Shwetha had Ayam (set meal), Aishani had squid dish, everything was spot on.

After lunch, we decided to go to the Crocodile Park. The space was good, but way too many crocodiles. Good for kids I believe. We returned to hotel and went to Cenang Beach area to have the ice-cream one last time. I had ice-cream with Mango & peanuts, the vanilla flavor is truly brilliant. We walked around the beach, and although it was around midnight time, there was lots of action here, and the vibe was amazing. We sat down, and relaxed for a while, watching the awesome fire shows, that continued deep into the night. Reluctantly, we had to leave and drive back to the hotel.

We checked out the next morning and drove to the airport. We met Aishah, who did a quick check on the car and handed over 100RM back. We were inside the airport by 8am. Our flight was at 10am to Singapore, and we had enough time to complete the check-in formalities. The past 2-3 days have been an amazing experience for all of us, great holiday, perfect spot to unwind, a complete vacation feeling. I would definitely recommend Langkawi for anyone seeking pleasurable vacation along the coast, with amazing sea food and unique experiences. Truly Amazing Langkawi… We will be back for more!