I left the hustle and bustle of Kuala Lumpur to head back up north to a Malaysian island called Langkawi. I was really looking forward to doing something specific here on this getaway of an island: nothing. 🙂 At some point in my travels things just get so go-go-go that you need a “vacation from a vacation.” An acquaintance of mine, Jenn, coincidentally posted something on her blog around the same time detailing the phenomenon. So I set out to recharge here before I made my way to Singapore.
Langkawi is mainly a tourist island for Malaysians to vacation on, so you have everything from jet skiing to parasailing on the main beaches. It was entertaining watching them land, as they would just hang from the parachute ropes and monkey-bar around the the ropes that they wanted to pull.
A lot of my time was spent sitting on beaches and eating food, but I rented a scooter for the duration of my stay and traversed most the island on it. Saw the Langkawi Eagle, apparently:
They seem to be more into cleaning certain streets on the island, as I noticed outside of a market, where there were three people cleaning up, well, not much really.
The food – oh how Malaysia made me miss the food in Thailand. It may be because I ate tons of Thai food at home, and never really ventured towards a Malay restaurant in Seattle, but when I hit Malaysia, I had no idea how to read the menus. Lots of pointing and asking involved, but eventually I landed on a few safe staple meals. Still, most everything seems to revolve around seafood of some sort, usually of the “fried straight from the ocean, bone-in, head-in” variety. I found some good food carts by the airport and also followed the night markets around the island (they move to a new location each night.)
It’s quite an adventure ordering food in a language you don’t know, when you’re not exactly sure what something is. Like this for example – I ordered one of these by pointing, having no idea what surprise awaited me inside (I think it was potato-y something):
I stopped in the valley of the island to have a look at some of the rice fields:
And managed to make it to the skycab – where you could get a good panoramic of the island, if the weather was right:
At the top they were working on repairing this single-pylon suspension bridge, which they said was a large feat to build, given the architecture type and transportation of materials.
Other than that, the rest can be chalked up to sunburns, tans and swimming. On to Singapore!
What happened to Bali? Maybe you were just having to much fun there? Boy that bridge was really something…I don’t ;think it would be on the top of my list to cross though! Love and Hugs….G.M.
That was ” too” much fun…I know….. read before sending!