After we left Georgetown we headed by boat ferry to the most northern Malaysian island, Langkawi.
We ended up staying 3 full days in the main town of Kuah, but the third night was difficult to find. Due to the first day of the Chinese New Year holiday on Saturday, Feb. 13, many of the hotels were booked and we were not able to find any availability prior to getting to the island. So when we arrived we spent about 2 hours going from hostel to hostel trying to find a place that had rooms that night or were decent conditions for a cheap price. We finally found a nice place that must have recently opened (ViStar) that was just a little bit down the road from our current hostel. Then we hit the beach which was only a couple hundred meters away. It was a great beach to begin "the beach" portion of our trip!
Motorbiking Around Langkawi
For the next couple of days in Langkawi we rented a motorbike and explored the various parts of the island. We went to Oriental Village, which was a big tourist trap, but we decided to go up the Langkawi cable cars (gondolas) anyway. There were three different levels with a sky bridge at the top that gave you some great views over the island and the surrounding ocean. It was super steep getting up to the top as well; at one point were were just going straight up on our cable line.
So far we are really enjoying renting a motorbike in various places to explore, especially on the islands. On Langkawi they have no public transportation, only taxis, so we actually saved money by renting a motorbike and getting around ourselves. Plus we didn't have to go out and search for a taxi each time we wanted to go somewhere.
Local Langkawi Markets
Two of our nights in Langkawi we went to the local night markets located on different parts of the island. We tried some new foods, mostly sweets, while we were at the markets. One of the things we tried was a gluten rice ball with some jelly candy inside that was covered by dried coconut on the outside of the ball. Another was a crispy pancake folded in half that had some sweet corn, coconut and peanut pieces spread inside. (They consider corn a dessert item in Asia). Then the next night at another market I found something similar with mini soft pancakes with a coconut, sugar and egg mixture inside -- they were delicious! The best part was that each of the snacks only cost 1 RM each -- about $.33 USD! As we were leaving we found a vendor selling homemade ice cream and we couldn't pass it up for only 1 RM each as well. Our dinner that night was definitely heavy on the "sweets" food group.
Our last full day in Langkawi was the start of the Olympics in Vancouver, BC. So we tuned into watch the Olympic Opening Ceremony on Saturday morning our time. By the end of the ceremony we had gathered quite the crowd around the TV. In the afternoon we rode the motorbike around the island and stopped at a few different beaches along the way. At one place it was only us swimming and it was nice to have the place to ourselves in this little piece of paradise. That night for dinner we stopped at a local seafood restaurant and had some squid salad, mixed vegetables and rice. It was good, but they definitely like their seafood spicy in Malaysia!
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