Langkawi: Red-Backed Eagle Land

New-to-us Port #43.

Langkawi, Malaysia … the last of the three new ports added to the itinerary when Myanmar was canceled.

While today’s destination was different from what the original itinerary called for, the temperature wasn’t all that different from what we would have experienced in Myanmar. It was a hot day … high of 93F … with a feels like of 109F … mitigated only slightly by being at a high elevation during the worst of it.

For this tender port, I opted to organize a tour … more of a car and driver arrangement with a loose, customizable itinerary. Our friends — Sonia & Boris and Younga & David — joined us … and we were off on the first tender to the Resort World pier around 10:00a … a ½ hour before the first O tours were even scheduled to meet up.

Mount Machinchang — Gunung Mat Chinchang to the locals — is considered the birth place of Malaysia, with the oldest rock formation in SE Asia … formed 550 MYA. Tradition has it that Mounts Mat Chinchang and Raya, and Sawar Hill, were once humans who transformed themselves into their present form. Regardless of how it was formed, this second highest mountain of Malaysia — 2,790 feet high — was our first stop.

While you can hike through the rainforest to reach the summit, we took the easy way up today by riding the Sky Cab. The bottom station for this cable car is at the Oriental Village … a theme park of sorts. It consists of colorful buildings situated around a central lake. We didn’t dally, however, opting to go directly to the ticket office to exchange our booking voucher for real tickets. Then onward to the skip-the-line queue included in our private gondola ticket.

Glassed in all around, the gondola afforded us lovely views of the scenery as we rode ever-higher above the lush green canopy of the rainforest blanketing the mountain. We briefly hopped off at the first station to see what was there before continuing up to the summit station.

Once at the top, we decided that we wanted to do the Sky Bridge, a 410-foot long curved pedestrian bridge described as being a cable-stayed bridge … at 2,170 feet above sea level. Spanning a gorge between two hills, the Sky Bridge received the Prix Acier — the Swiss Steel Design Award — when it was built in 2005 … for outstanding construction that exemplifies architectural quality and technical proficiency of steel works.

I was under the impression that access to the Sky Bridge was in addition to our Sky Cab admission. So, we got in line to get tickets. But when we approached the window, the woman said we didn’t need to pay extra for it. Yay!

There are two ways to get to the Sky Bridge from the summit station. One can hike down through the rainforest … and of course, back up again on the way back. Or one can use an inclinator called the SkyGlide. The queue to ride the latter was fairly long, so four of us decided to do the hike while the Gelmans got in line for the SkyGlide.

The hike through the rainforest wasn’t too difficult, but there were a number of steps to negotiate with some steep stairs at the beginning. Luckily the walk wasn’t too long — just about 10-20 minutes depending on one’s pace — and there was shade. But we still had to contend with the humidity … ugh!

It was worth it, though. The scenery — even though we had already seen it from both the cable car and the first station platform — was breathtaking. The color of the water was amazing … and would have been even more so without the marine layer that seems to be ever-present in these humid Asian countries.

Once we all had our fill of the scenery, we returned to the summit station for the ride back down to the Oriental Village. Any hope we had of wandering around the village was dashed by the mid-day heat. So, we decided to check out “Art in Paradise — 3D Art Langkawi” instead … admission included in our Sky Cab tickets.

We had no idea what to expect. And were quite surprised that we were required to take off our shoes. As it turns out, the exhibit featured over 100 3D paintings with which visitors can interact. Quite surreal at times. But lots of fun and well worth the time.

It was almost 2:00p by the time we left the exhibit. Rejoining our driver at the van, we asked him to take us to a restaurant for lunch. Despite the odd hour, The Roof, a nearby restaurant that caters mostly to the locals, agreed to accommodate us. Seated in a private room, we were grateful for the A/C that managed to cool us down. The food was excellent … and plentiful; the beer icy cold. A perfect respite before continuing with our tour.

Next up was to have been a stroll around Kuah Town, the main city in Langkawi. Considering how hot it was, however, we decided to just do a drive through the city. But we couldn’t resist getting out when we arrived at Dataran Lang (Eagle Square) to check out for ourselves Langkawi’s iconic eagle statue.

Tradition has it that the name Langkawi is derived from two terms … ‘Lang’ from the Malay word ‘helang’ … which means eagle; and‘Kawi' … from a word that means marble or reddish brown. The reference here is to the red-backed sea eagles that can be seen in the skies over the archipelago. We’d seen eagles flying far off in the distance, but the statue gave us our only close encounter of the day.

Our tour concluded with a stop at Pantai Cenang … a beach described as vibrant and popular. We intended to find a café and relax a bit with some cold drinks. But the ambiance we found at the beach was not one that encouraged us to continue with those plans. The entire beach seemed quite dead … the sand uninviting. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was because we got there at low tide. Anyway, it was getting on towards 5:00p, so we decided to return to Resort World and catch a tender back to Insignia.

By 6:00p we were back in our cabin, a refreshing shower foremost on our minds.

Next up … Phuket.Leia mais