Langkawi and the Ladies (Part I)

I did something I never really expected to do in my life this past weekend. It wasn't that I went to visit Langkawi, Malaysia - a place I never knew existed until about 2 weeks ago when Nima mentioned it to me. The shocking part is that the trip consisted of 3 chicks and myself - clearly potential for some interesting times. YIKES! In addition to Nima, her friends Avana "Dagger" Desai and Meeli "Langawi"Patel came into town at the end of last week and are here in Singapore until the 20th. All joking aside, the girls are a lot of fun and I was looking forward to a fun, entertaining trip. Not to mention pictures of me looking like a big lurch among some girls.

The trip was fairly short notice for me, since I was supposed to be long gone to Sri Lanka by now. Still, I was able to get a booking at a reasonable price, and so I hopped along for the ride. We left Friday evening after Nima finished work, and arrived in Langkawi after a quick 1.5 hour flight.

The first dagger of the trip was the fact that we couldn't get a booking at our top 2 hotel choices. We wanted to stay at the Bon Ton Resort, a place Nima read about and fell in love with. Unfortunately they only had one night available. There was another resort we tried (I forgot which one exactly), so plan C was the Langkawi Village Resort. Even there, we could only get "standard" rooms which were indeed very very ordinary. We managed though, keeping in mind that the point of the trip was to avoid spending much time in the hotel. Friday night, though was low-key as we grabbed a bite, booked a boat tour for Sunday, and headed to bed.

Saturday morning started just like last weekend - at the breakfast buffet. It wasn't as good as Melia Bali, but it was solid for a free breakfast. After filling up we headed off to an island hopping tour. Langkawi is an archipelago (I've been itching to use that word!) of over 90 islands, and a common tour is a motorboat ride through the waters, stopping at 3 main points: a freshwater lake among the islands, an eagle's cove - the name of the island means "Red Eagle" - where feedings take place, and a white sandy beach island to relax. We took the entire morning to hit all these points in an enjoyable and efficient manner. I liked the freshwater lake as it was tucked away inbetween the mountains with gorgeous views (the view in the pic is of the "sleeping pregnant woman", if you can figure it out). The beach was also one of the best I've ever been to, though it was loaded with other boat tourists. The eagle feeding was cool too because they got really close. By the way, the reason there are dozens of eagle pictures on the Smugmug site is because we all love the "rapid-fire" setting on the Canon SD cameras. Definitely spend some time checking out the Smugmug site to really see how nice the boat tour was, and how goofy me and the girls are.

One of the strangest things I've seen in Asia was at the freshwater lake. Some guy couldn't quite figure out how to use the live vest in its traditional sense. Instead, he got a bit creative. Nima faked taking a picture of me so she could get a picture of what I'm talking about. KAPOW!!!

After the boat tour we headed back to the hotel to figure out the rest of the day, and so that Meeli and I could throw down a couple Tiger beers we got from Duty Free - like you needed to know that. We made what turned out to be the most clutch decision of alltime though - we rented a car for the rest of the weekend. Nima bravely volunteered to be our driver - on the LEFT side of the road mind you - so that we could really explore for the rest of Saturday and Sunday morning. It was awesome, and we were especially impressed by Nima's quick learning and sweet driving skills.

Once we got the car we headed north, Nima driving, me shotgun, and the girls in the back. Destination: The Datai, the best hotel in Langkawi known for its pristine beach. Its even listed in 1000 Places to See Before You Die. Our experience, however, was less than glowing. We got there around 3:30 for a late lunch, but they were quite pretentious and reluctant to allow non-guests to even enter the premise. The receptionist acted as if he was doing us a favor by letting us in for lunch, and after supposedly calling the restaurant and asking them to squeeze us in, he allowed us to go ahead. The resort itself was nice, I can't argue there, but it was also full of American and European tourists and a fake-friendly stuffy staff. Basically, the place could have been in Malaysia, Hawaii, Florida, or St. Thomas and you wouldn't have known the difference. Anyway, we had a decent lunch in a completely empty restaurant - though it was western fare the tuna sandwich was very good - and then we snuck down to the beach even though technically it was for guests only. The beach was nice, but the island beach we saw in the morning was 10x better. We crashed for a couple hours at the beach and then headed back for dinner...or so we thought.

On the way back Nima mentioned she heard from Erin that the cable car tour was worth checking out. According to the way-off-scale tourist map, we were close to the cable cars. So we navigated to the attraction and made it just in time, at 6:30. Basically the cable car tour is a huge gondola up to the top of a mountain with observation points. The interesting thing about Langkawi is that while accommodations and food might be relatively expensive for Malaysia, the tourist attractions aren't. The morning boat tour was only 45 RM (about $14USD), and the cable car was 15RM, less than $5. It was the best $5 I've ever spent. Not only were there views magnificent from the platform, there was a treetop walk too that was really neat. On top of it all, we happened to time it perfectly to catch the sunset. The ride up and down are a bit nerve-racking, and Avana was acting like a donkey in the gondola, freaking Nima out. Its a must see if you're in Langkawi. The pictures do the talking here. Again, check out the SmugMug pictures to get the full story.

Part II of Langkawi is coming soon, stay tuned...