So we booked our stay in Langkawi for three days at Amara Motel Langkawi in Kuah, it was a wonderful little place only 10 minutes walk from Kuah Pier. It is always quite difficult figuring out which part of a new town to stay in as you've never visited the place before and wouldn't know where the fun or interesting places are. After a bit of research, we opted for the pier so we'd be closer to it on departure, however, having checked out the island as the days went by, part of us wished we had stayed more towards Kedawang.
Nevertheless, Kuah grows on you.
On our first day we were too exhausted as we had been travelling on boats and planes all day to get here all the way from Koh Phi Phi, Thailand. So we relaxed at the hotel and in the afternoon, decided to go for a stroll.
We took a walk towards the pier wandering through the beautiful Legenda Park (equipped with gym bars for those fanatics like Dylan.. made his day!) and we ended up visiting the ever impressive Eagle Square, finally finishing at Jetty Point. Jetty Point has a super busy, but friendly, atmosphere and here is where you can book your ferry trips as well as all your tours and hotels for the area. We decided to have lunch in this food court and actually had a pretty good selection of cuisines considering we had just been 6 weeks on Thai food alone. Lunch for us both came out to a whopping 24 Rm (£4.60) for 2 meals, 2 drinks & desserts.
Because we felt like we needed a bit of fresh air and the weather was lovely, we decided to walk around the small town, along the main street (Jalan Padang Matstrat) for about 30 minutes we amazingly stumbled across a rather large shopping mall. I absolutely loved malls in Asia as they provided you with air con! Such a necessity in those temperatures and something I used to take for granted back home.
Our evening was made perfect when we realised the mall had a cinema! We watched the new Xmen Days of Future Past movie for £4.80, a nice price change to the standard £7 each ticket.
Hiring a bike in Kuah
On our second day we woke up quite refreshed and decided to go visit the other half of the island, so we thought of renting a motorbike. In Thailand, the process for this was simple and quick and not so bureaucratic, here, we were asked for our drivers license as well as our passports and a deposit. Nevertheless, we managed to hire one for 47 Rm for the day after asking about 10 people where we could hire one from. Not so easy or common in Kuah to rent a bike and so found it hard to locate a place, but thankfully we found one about 7 mins walk from the hotel just by Persiaran Putera Road, close to Langkawi Idol Kareoke.
We hired it for 24 hrs and we began our adventure by heading towards Kedawang. Its a good 30 minute drive from one point to the other with hardly any petrol stations .... Fill up the tank! We learn't that the hard way a we nearly ran out of it up in the woods... at night ... crapped our pants!
Anyhow, once at the town of Kedawang you can immediately notice it is more touristic as you had rows and rows of shops selling you souvenirs, more shopping centres and bigger hotel resorts. We parked the bike at one end of the street and started appreciating the ambience. Walking through the town Dylan and I decided to go to the huge aquarium called Underwaterworld where we nearly spent our days budget on (80 Rm / £16.00) but was totally worth it!
This place was incredible and a great place to take the kids. However, make sure to check the times before going there as each section of the aquarium has different feeding times for different animals. Dylan was super excited to hear that we had made it in time for the Penguins feed! We watched the trainers giving them lunch and interacting with them! Really good fun if you love animals. We spent about 2 hours wandering this place, as you also had people undertaking a live reptile show to learn more about snakes and similar creatures.
When we finished, what better way to relax than with a nice tea and ice cream sundae from McDonalds! Yepp they have these over here and yes I had to find it... it was perfectly located next to the Underwaterworld.
In the afternoon, we got back on the moped and decided to check out a beach recommended to us by our receptionist at the hotel by Pantai Pasir Hitam, unfortunately we are super bad at reading maps (how we survived the whole travelling is beyond me!) and ended up getting lost in the middle of a golf resort, in the middle of a beautiful forrest (the upside). We finally ended up on this beach just in time for the sunset, not really ever knowing if this was the beach our receptionist mean't.
We went back to Kedawang for dinner but soon realised was a bad idea as there were too many touristy places for dinner, meaning we ended up having a mediocre plate of pasta for £12.50, yes £6.25 is hardly much, but compared to the local rates we were used to, it was quite a fair price to pay.
Feeling like a local
On our third and final day we decided to take it easy and chill around Kuah, it was a great little place that I'd learned to love as you could really mix with the locals and the culture. We ended up having lunch at a hawker stall, in the midst of groups of men, women and children in the bustling Malaysian life taking up all the local traditions and family affairs. Forget menus (all in Malaysian that we didn't understand), forget talking (also in Malaysian) so it was up to communicating as humans do for our food. a perfect way to end our visit, this time costing us £2.30 for essentially three meals (Dylan repeated a plate) and drinks ... delicious!
We the made our way back to Jetty Point where we bought our tickets for our boat trip to Penang. Two one way tickets cost us 135 Rm (£26) and we sat in Starbucks until our ferry was due to depart, perfect for relaxing as it had free wifi! It was sad to leave Langkawi as I think it had so much more to offer us, but makes it all the more reason to go back to it some day!
Happy Travelling
Shereen
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We could not have survived our trip without having this to guide us through. It is a fantastic collection of trip itineraries, attractions to see, restaurants to visit and places to sleep! Well worth the money and not as heavy as I thought it would be carrying it. Enjoy your South East Adventure!
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