I haven’t stepped on to Langkawi for almost ten years. My first visit was when Dr. M just designated the island as a duty free haven. Things were very different in the early 90s. Kuah Town was just fishing village, with one row (at the most two rows, if memory serves me right) of old-skool shop houses. Now, things are very different.
We bought a cool package from Air Asia, and ended up staying at the hotel right next to the airport. Having been aware of this, we had rented a car as well (which picked us up). Saying that, we could have walked from the airport to the hotel without breaking a sweat.
This brings me to the weather. Throughout our stay in Langkawi, the weather was cool, dry (as in ‘not humid’) and overall incredibly pleasant. I hardly broke a sweat at all during my stay there.
Hotel Helang, under the same management as the Langkasuka Resort, was incredibly impressive. The hallmark of the whole hotel was space and light. The corridors were vast, the ceilings were high, the windows were large, and there was a feeling of airiness about the whole hotel, even on the upper floors and in the bedroom.
The first day was pretty relaxed. After arriving, we had an (expensive) meal at the airport, then crashed for awhile. After that, I went for a swim at the hotel pool, then we headed out for a meal. That first night,
We ended up having dinner at an Indian restaurant just outside Kuah Town. Honestly, I didn’t see much on the way, except little village houses and a few cows and chickens. What surprised me (in a good way) was how nice the roads were. The dual-carriageway (which hadn’t existed when I first went to Langkawi) was smooth, no potholes or bumps, no dips or irregularities, and the car just slid over the asphalt like silk, unlike my experience of roads in KL.
Then we headed on to Kuah Town itself. Again, another pleasant surprise! The night market was on, and we bought plenty of fruits and food and tit bits and settled in for a night with the movies on our laptops in our plush hotel room.
In the next post:
- The Snake Sanctuary
- Gunung Raya
- Traffic jams!