Langkawi

After a week exploring two large cities, KL and George Town, we made our way over to Langkawi for a week of beach and island exploring. A quick flight over from George Town, we quickly got our luggage and found our car rental rep waiting for us at arrivals and not too long after we were in our way with Z driving on the other side of the road. He made it seem quite easy though at one point trying to signal for a turn he engaged the windshield wipers instead out of habit of where he’d think the signals should be. We had a good laugh and he never did that again. He was quite skilled at driving and never ventured into the wrong side of the road. The roads in Langkawi are fairly good and traffic is usually fairly light. The only thing to really be on the look out for are wild monkeys who often line the sides of the road and decide to randomly cross whenever they feel like it. We decided to split our time on the island at two different resorts. The drive to the first hotel was about 30 minutes from the airport. 

Langkawi is an archipelago of 99 islands about 30km off the coast of northwestern Malaysia. It's a duty free island which makes is great for shopping with a lot of liquor stores, but surprisingly we did not find the prices to be much cheaper despite being duty free. The island is a beautiful outdoor playground with great beaches and tropical forested mountains inland. The island has a fairly long rainy season and we thankfully visited at the end of its dry season and only encountered one evening of a slight tropical rain shower that didn't last very long. 

We stayed at the St. Regis beach front resort situated on the Strait of Malacca which connects the Andaman Sea with  the Singapore Strait and the South China Sea. The resort was located in a bay and as such it was really evident when the tide was out because the water receded well away from the resort and left a muddy bay floor. When the tide was in, it was a great place for swimming so long as there were no jelly fish present and we lucked out with none visible during our stay. The water wasn't the clearest given the muddy bay floor, but it was very warm with gentle waves and wasn't deep. We had a lovely spacious villa with a plunge pool and deck overlooking the bay. The pool was a great place to cool off from the hot 38C but feels like 45C with humidity weather particularly when the tide was out. The resort itself was a bit spread out over a beautiful property that was both beachfront on one side and jungle on the other. We got to see a bunch of wildlife as a result including two different monkey species, eagles and other beautifully coloured birds including one that was a shiny emerald green. The bay also had a lot of fish that were particularly visible when the tide was in. It’s quite possible Z may have even eaten a few of these fish as the seafood options were abundant and always fresh. 

We explored the island a bit; Z found a barber shop as he felt he needed to get a hair cut. I guess the heat and humidity made his hair grow faster than anticipated. The rest of our exploring was tailored to taking in the outdoors and wildlife. We spent one morning at the Langkawi Wildlife Park. This interactive zoo was a really cool experience. The zoo is situated over five acres and allows guests to wander throughout at their leisure with opportunities to feed the animals. At the entrance you can purchase a little bag of food which contains a variety of different seeds and vegetables that the animals eat. At each different animal station there is a sign indicating what that species likes to eat or whether the animals prefer not to be feed. At one point you can walk through an aviary filled with hundreds of different bird species. If you have bird feed in your hand, the birds will happily come and eat from your hand as well as we got to experience with a swarming of budgies. There were a lot of birds I did not recognize, but also peacocks, parrots, swans, ducks, and turkeys. One of the more unusual animal pairings was an enclosure that contain turtles and deer. This enclosure was one you could walk into and Z had the deer following him as soon as he entered. We got to see a couple emu and learned they like to eat peanuts. 

After spending this time interacting with animals directly, our next excursion took us on a boat ride in Kilim Geoforest Park. This park is part of UNESCO's global network of geoparks. We had a private boat which took us through the sprawling mangroves and gave us a relaxing view of the diversity of the park including the limestone rock formations that lined the river behind the mangroves. We got to walk through a real bat cave; thankfully the bats remained stuck on the cave walls even when we shone a light on them. We also got to witness an eagle feeding and stopped in at a fish farm where Z took the opportunity to volunteer to feed manta rays. He says they were gentle in grabbing the food from him, and I'll take his word for it... I was not in the least bit interested in trying. 

The Langkawi Sky Bridge is located closer to our second hotel stay. The sky bridge is situated a top Mount Machincang and is an engineering marvel. You get up to the sky bridge via a cable car that takes you up 700 metres while you enjoy the magnificent, unobstructed panoramic views of the island and the dense green forest of the mountain. As far as your eyes can see you have a view of the Andaman Sea once you get to the top. This sky bridge is the longest curved hanging bridge in the world at 125 metres in length. It's 708 metres from sea level and is not for the faint of heart. On really clear days you can see over to Thailand and Indonesia. It was so beautiful up there! 

Our second hotel stay was at the Ritz Carlton. Yes a bit of a splurge and a once in a lifetime stay for us. This hotel resort was wonderfully situated in a private bay with a pristine beach and expansive rainforest grounds. The hotel's residences are built to blend in with nature and provide complete privacy from other guests. It was quite a spectacular place. Our room faced the ocean and was sunrise facing. One afternoon as we were lounging by the plunge pool a family of monkeys decided to pay a visit and invade our deck. It was quite the experience, but they kept to themselves and didn't really come close to us. We had booked a special wellness package which included a vegan cooking class which turned out to be such a special and amazing experience as we got to make a three course delicious meal under the supervision of one of the sous chefs and then the pastry chef for dessert. This experience opened both our eyes to a different style of cooking and food that we could see ourselves emulating back home every once and awhile. We also got to enjoy a sunset at the beach experience with fresh coconut drinks and what made this even more special was that there weren't many others at the beach then so we pretty much had the whole beach to ourselves. Z enjoyed our sunrise kayak session; I wasn't feeling too great that morning so decided to stay behind. What is it with me and having days of not feeling well when we travel? It's getting a bit ridiculous I must say. Each night we were supposed to have a curated three course vegan meal at the restaurant of our choice, but the first two nights the restaurants couldn't figure it out correctly so we just enjoyed a three course meal of whatever we wanted. The last night we had a lovely specially curated vegan meal and were surprised at how quickly we actually felt full after the first couple of courses. We had the option of having breakfast each morning in our room, and tried it the first morning, but then decided we wanted to experience the breakfast buffet instead and switched to that for the other couple of mornings. And I'm glad we did because we sat outside and got to eat breakfast while watching really cute monkeys playing and eating in the trees. This stay was super special not only because we had booked the wellness package and got to experience a whole bunch of activities we otherwise wouldn't have, but because it was also such a tranquil and peaceful place set amongst nature. And getting to have this experience together was the best part!!