Langkawi

Day 256 (March 11, 2019) – Langkawi, Malaysia

Malaysia was never on our list of places we planned on visiting when we thought about this trip long ago, but here we were! It was kind of fun because it felt a bit unexpected, although we had a very good reason for going there. Thailand only gives you a 30-day visa and our time was up. We wanted to stay longer to see more of the country and we could do that by exiting and re-entering to get another 30-day visa. In other words, out trip to Malaysia was our visa run. While we could have entered and left Malaysia on the same day just to get our new visa, we instead turned the opportunity into a 10-day Malaysia trip, visiting both Langkawi and Penang.

The sign for Pantai Chenang Beach on Langkawi. Also spelled "Cenang" Beach, this is where we, and most other tourists stay on the island.

Langkawi is a sizable island in the Andaman Sea just south of the Thai islands. From Koh Lipe, where we had previously been, it’s only a 1-2 hr boat ride, crossing the border somewhere along the way in the middle of the ocean in between the two islands. Although happy to leave Koh Lipe, Malaysia didn’t exactly provide us with a warm welcome on our arrival. The immigration officer failed to stamp Travis’s passport, which he didn’t realize until later, but fortunately not before we left the area. There was a bit of confusion trying to head the wrong way back into immigration to get the proper stamp but it was eventually worked out. Then the only ATM at the pier was broken (after waiting forever in line for it), meaning that we only had our Thai money and no Malaysian money. Partly because of this we ended up having to seriously overpay our cab driver with our Thai bills to get to our hotel.

Cenang Beach was huge and not at all crowded.

Despite the initial troubles, Langkawi was a really nice place to kick back and relax. And that’s pretty much all we did. This was likely our last island paradise of the trip and we wanted to do nothing but soak it all in. We also had a good deal of future trip planning to do and sorted that out while we were there as well.

Cenang Beach at sunset.

After the overcrowded island of Koh Lipe, the beaches on Langkawi felt awesome. They were huge, not at all crowded, and gave us plenty of space in the sand to relax. If we were to be beach snobs we might say that the water was a little murky and it was unfortunate that I got stung by a jellyfish, which was of course unpleasant. So we might not have been there at the best time of the year for clear and jellyfish-free waters, but it was still a nice beach by most standards.

Enjoying a cheap bottle of wine on the patio while playing cards and eating a bag of broad beans.

One of the interesting facts about Langkawi is that the whole island is allowed to sell duty-free merchandise. While we could care less about cartons of cigarettes and enormous containers of chocolate, we were intrigued by the inexpensive bottles of wine. On a few of our nights we picked up a $5 bottle of wine and enjoyed it in the evening on our tiny patio before heading out to walk on the beach or go find dinner. Had we been in Thailand we would have drank the wine on the beach, but given that Malaysia is quite a bit more conservative we instead chose to enjoy it at our hotel. However, had we really been in Thailand the wine would have cost quite a lot more and we wouldn’t have bought it in the first place, so we were happy with the compromise.

At one of the few Malaysian restaurants we found. I had the Malaysian laksa, which were noodles in a fish curry. It was a little bit too fishy for me, but I still ate it. Travis played it safe with the Thai-inspired tom yum noodles.

Surprisingly, it was a little hard to find proper Malaysian food. We didn’t even know what Malaysian food meant exactly, but most of the restaurants we found were of the more international variety. Langkawi was a huge international tourist spot, so it made some sense. Our best Malaysian meal was probably when we went to one of the local night markets. It was packed with people and vendors. I couldn’t tell you what all the food was, but it all smelled good. We went around and tried a bit of everything that looked tasty. Rice dishes, chicken, fried egg and vegetable patties, fruit, spring rolls, and a hundred other things. We left after we couldn’t possibly eat anymore.

The Langkawi night market.

Travis buying part of dinner. Some kind of savory fried dough served with hot sauce.

After our few days of chilling on the beach and with more of our future travel details sorted out, we were ready to head out. From Langkawi we boarded another ferry headed to Georgetown, Penang. It would be the largest city we’d been in for almost a month. It was a little hard to say goodbye to the beach but we were looking forward to the change in scenery.