Langkawi – A small but beautiful island off the coast of Kedah in the Straits of Malacca. That was the place where we spent a good four days together with my sister and her family during the last June holidays. Contrary to what most people said, I think there are a lot of activities that one can do on this tiny island. I will be breaking these down into four blog entries, as follows.

[Part One] – This shall cover our itinerary for the first two days, including Kuah town, Eagle Square, Makam Mahsuri and Pantai Pasir Hitam.

[Part Two] – This shall cover our day three where we visited cable car, seven wells and the beach.

[Part Three] – This shall cover our day four where we visited Pulau Payar Marine Park.

[Part Four] – This shall cover our accommodation and its surroundings, including Pantai Cenang and the beach.

I usually don’t plan for any sightseeing on the first day of our holidays. Instead, we will typically spend the day finalizing our logistics. For this trip, the first thing we did when we touched down at the airport was to make arrangement/booking for the car rental and land tours. Since we booked from the same agent and we were a relatively large group (five adults, three children), we got a good price and a further discount on that. Before the trip, I had read from various sources that it is cheaper to book the car and land tours at the airport. I was quite skeptical initially as I remembered it was cheaper when I booked my land tours at Phuket (Thailand) streets many years ago. However, the initial price that the agent quoted me was already cheaper than I had read from the web. Of course we signed up with the agent on the spot and later, we did verify with some of the tour agencies in the town and confirmed that we had the best rates. 😉

In my case, we didn’t pick up the car from the airport. Instead we arranged for the car to be delivered to our hotel the next day and to start our tour to Pulau Payar Marine Park on the third day. There were some risks involved as we had to make full cash payment upfront but only to collect the car on another day. Anyway, we made our confirmation and got our deal. Everything was smooth and safe. 😉

After collecting our car on the second day, the first place we went was Langkawi Eagle Square (located in Kuah town) and our usual practice was to buy some souvenirs and food for our friends and relatives first. Once that was cleared, we could then enjoy the rest of the holidays (in peace).

So the first stop was shopping and that was planned for the ladies. Next, we drove to Makam Mahsuri, the grave of the island’s legendary heroine, Mahsuri and this was for the kids. With the same admission, you could also see a Malay house and learn more about Malay culture as well. The kids also had a good time learning about history and even had a go at retrieving buckets of water from a functional well.

Our next destination was Pantai Pasir Hitam (Black Sand Beach). As it was raining when we got there, the kids remained in the car and I had to quickly snap a few photos before moving onto the next programme, i.e. dinner! In fact, I was in and out of that place in less than ten minutes and hence didn’t really had a good feel of the area. Personally, I don’t think that’s a beach suitable for swimming. There are so many better beaches in Langkawi. This beach was rather dirty and without amenities.

It was quite a boring day but these were the standard activities that we (as tourists) had to do, i.e. to buy some souvenirs and learn more about the local culture. The next day will be better, I promise.

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