Malaysia #1: Langkawi Island

One of the reasons for picking Malaysia for our year end vacation was that it offered visa on arrival. And the scheme was expiring by the end of the year (2024). A lot (and I mean a lot) of Indians were thinking the same(!) and so clearing Malaysian immigration took a long time as they had to check everyone’s documents (bank statements, return tickets etc), not an already issued visa.

 

We got a taste of how much Malaysia values tourism upon landing in Kuala Lumpur (or KL as the locals call it). Upon disembarking from the flight, they give every passenger a welcome kit, which thoughtfully included a power adaptor and a USB charging cable (for the phone). Accompanied by a cheerful namaste.

 

From KL, we took a flight to an archipelago of 99 islands called Langkawi. We went go to the Langkawi Wildlife Park. You can literally feed the birds off your hand. There’s even a python that you can drape around your shoulders for a great photo op, though we were too scared. For the first time, I saw white peacocks. And also the peacocks doing their dance at such close quarters. The remarkable thing was the the fauna is so comfortable around human visitors that they go about their activities oblivious to our walking right alongside them.

 

The next day, with our daughter not in good shape for any long exertions, my wife and I went to the Eagle’s Nest Skywalk. The cable cars took us up. The skywalk is a glass bridge, and I’d only seen those in Instagram videos of China. Walking on one, where you can see the ground hundreds of feet below you, is a scary-in-a-fun-way experience. From there, we went to the Skybridge, a 125 meter curved cable-held pedestrian bridge. The view from there, of the land below and the Andaman Sea is awesome.

 

Then there is the Maha Tower (the language has a lot of Indian-sounding words, more on that in a later blog), a tall tower with a nice view of the Andaman Sea. We also went to the Eagle’s Square, which has a large statue of an eagle and is well lit at night. Why so much of the eagle themed stuff in Langkawi? Because the island is home to a large number of eagles. In fact, the Malay word for the eagle is the basis of the island’s name itself.

 

There were a lot of other things to do in Langkawi, esp. water activities. But we couldn’t do any of those because our 13 yo daughter hadn’t still recovered from her bout of illness. So we skipped island hopping and the water activities.

 

Malaysia is very affordable (more in later blogs), and recently a direct Indigo flight from Bangalore to Langkawi just got started. So we might come back to Langkawi for the missed water activities another time…

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