Two weeks ago I joined a one-day “Langkawi Nature Discovery” package to Langkawi– an island north of Penang. The package was offered by Langkawi Coral– a Langkawi tour agent in Penang. It had been decades since I visited the island. Even though Langkawi is not as well developed as Penang island, it is in fact bigger than Penang, and even Singapore!

According to the tour guide, the reason it is not well developed is due to the distance from mainland. It took one hour to travel from mainland, or 3 hours from Penang island by sea, which is soul-torturing! Things will be different if there is a bridge built between mainland and Langkawi.

I actually arrived early and I took some sunrise photos at Tanjung City Marina, next to Penang ferry terminal. This is a good place for some nice wallpapers.

The cruise departed at 8:15am at Pier Swettenham.

After 3 hours of long journey, finally we arrived at Langkawi jetty.

It was already 11:30am and we straightaway took lunch at Charlie’s Place, a fine dining bistro in Royal Langkawi Yacht Club which was just a walking distance from the jetty.

I actually tired of meal provided by tour agents as most of them were of low quality. This one, however, was exception! We were given 6 set lunches to choose from. To waste no time, we actually pre-ordered the items, including:

1. Nasi Goreng Kerabu
2. Cheese Chicken Burger with Fries and Coleslaw
3. Cheese Beef Burger with Fries and Coleslaw
4. Fish and Chips
5. Spaghetti Napolitana
6. Club Sandwish

The set lunch came with vanilla and chocolate ice cream.

At 1:30pm, we jumped back to the van and started visiting first place – Langkawi Cable Car. Sadly, this is a place which much depend on the weather, and shit happened that day such that there was strong wind, causing cable cars not safe to be used. I only able to snap some cute ducks on the pond there. We then replaced it with Langkawi Underwater World.

Before that, we visited Kilim Geoforest Park – a newly introduced tourist spot in Langkawi. Inside the park, visitors take a boat ride to visit different locations. It came with different package and ours one was the shortest one – Mangrove Tour consisting of Bat Cave, Eagle Watching, and Fish Farm. This package costs RM200 per boat if you go there by yourself, in which I find it kind of overpriced. The duration was approximately 1 hour.

Our first stop was Fish Farm. It was a small platform on the river in which you can feed various kinds of fishes inside nets. Depend on the time you arrived, some fishes may already finish feeding and lying lazily on the net. The one we saw was stingray feeding, in which it was so mild that it kissed your hand if you approached it with food. Luckily it had no teeth.

Second stop was eagle watching. The tour guide actually threw some chicken skins on the river to attract eagles. The eagles circled few rounds on the sky before flying down to grab their prey. Unless you have ultra zoom camera with ultra fast manual focus ability, taking photos with eagles proved to be difficult.

Our last stop was bat cave. It was an extremely dark cave in which no flash was allowed. Our tour guide brought along a torch light so that we could see bats sleeping on the ceiling. This was the perfect moment to use my 20mm F1.7 lens.

That’s all for the Kilim Geoforest Park. There are many geo parks in Langkawi and this is just one of them. The last stop was Langkawi Underwater World.

We were actually fighting with the time here. We reached there at 4:00pm and we have only 45 minutes to finish visiting the place. Seriously the underwater world was getting better compared to decades ago and was as good as the one in Singapore. You may also download its brochure I grabbed here.

The underworld world comprised of few areas, including land area, fresh water fishes, sea fishes, penguins, and souvenir shops. If you asked me what is the best in there, I would say “Penguin!”. I love them as they are cute (probably influenced by some animation movies out there). There was a duty-free shop next to it and I personally spent 30 minutes in the underwater world, then another 15 minutes to grab some chocolates in duty-free shop before departing to jetty. This is the only chance you can shop.

Phew~ luckily we were able to make it to the jetty. We departed from Langkawi jetty at 5:15pm.

I must remind you that this is a very rush package, in which you spent whole morning traveling on sea and you only have half day in Langkawi to visit 3 nature places . Seriously one day is not enough to enjoy every single detail in Langkawi.  This package is suitable for visitors who wish to discover the nature but have limited time to do so. Special thank to Encik Jafri for his patient and helpful guide during the day. Also, thanks to Langkawi Coral for the trip.

This package costs RM350 for adult. You may download my itinerary here. Things may change in future make sure you contact Langkawi Coral for latest price as well as itinerary.

Update [27-Mar-2011]: For other interesting places in Langkawi, see figure below (Click/Save target for bigger view):

No related posts.

Snorkeling without seeing bikini girls laying or playing on beach is a sin. We actually arrived at the floating platform which is near to the beach. This post will show guys out there how to get to the beach to see mouth-watering bikini girls.

There are two beaches which are very near to each other. You can reach the first beach by just snorkeling from the platform.

Sadly, not much to see there.

The second beach is at few hundred meters away. There are two ways to reach there. Snorkeling to first beach and walk to the destination…

… or use this “D-Day” boat.

Unless you are state swimmer or used to smuggling illegal things underwater, taking “D-Day” boat is a smarter choice.

I was surprised that nobody is wearing life jacket on boat.

Ahh~ the second beach is a paradise. You can also perform snorkeling there. I noticed that the second beach is operated by another company and when I asked for a mask and life jacket, they were not allowing me to do so. I ended up took the same “D-Day” boat and go back to platform to took my life jacket and the mask. Lesson learned.

There are bridges for you to walk around.

Looks like this boat is out of service…

From another bridge end, you can see the harbor is at the far end.

You can also enjoy jungle tracking there. It had a ball-dropping staircases of 183 steps (should be piece of cake for hikers).

While finding my balls, I snapped some photos as well.

When you reached the top of the hill, you could another side of the sea.

Shxx! Have to walk down again

We still got sometimes left before going back to platform so I took this opportunity to snorkeling. Look ma~ it is a sea cucumber! I hope I can bring one back home for Chinese New Year.

Look! It a baby shark! In Pulau Payar, sharks like this will pass by you quite often. Make sure you didn’t eat KFC in the water or else sharks will eat your drumstick (Guys also advised to hide their sausages and meat balls securely as well). We were told that the “Shark Feeding” session was canceled that day due to the fact that the guards were injured.

I was being chased away at 3pm as it was time to go  back

As a whole, Pulau Payar is definitely a place to visit thanks to its rich corals, fishes, and clean beach. It is hardly to have a clean beach nowadays in which you can see through the soft and crystal clear water as well as playing with salt water fishes. Perhaps the only drawback is that the time is too short to fully enjoy the beach and snorkeling there. Definitely will visit again if got chance.

Related posts:

1. Pulau Payar (Part 2) – Now Eating
2. Pulau Payar (Part 1) – Now Snorkeling

After living in Penang for a while, I asked myself, is there a beach nearby where I can enjoy crystal clear water? The answer is yes, by paying Pulau Payar a visit. I went there in one of the Sunday. It took me few days to arrange all the photos. As a result, this post will be divided into three parts – “Snorkeling”, “Beach” and “Food”.

Pulau Payar is actually an island in the neighbor state – Kedah. To go there, you can take the cruise from Swettenham Pier in Penang here.

We departed at 8am and it took about 2 hours to reach the destination using the cruise above.

Oh ya, make sure you bring sun block there or else your parents won’t recognize you when you return home.

After 2 hours ride, finally we arrive at the floating platform called Langkawi Coral.

For this trip, I noticed many white guys/girls as well as Chinese from China were there as well.

The platform is quite hygiene. Unfortunately there is no locker so make sure you don’t bring gold bars or diamonds there.

This is the GPS location.

Standing from the platform, you can see the water is crystal clear.

And there are massive amount of salt water fishes beneath it.

Beside the platform there is a staircase in which you can walk down for snorkeling or to play with the fishes.

Look at those fishes, there are so adorable!!

I hope I can bring some of them back.

If you asked me how I took underwater pictures. Basically I wrapped my camera into a waterproof case called Dicapac. It took some courage to submerge your few K camera into the water. For my case is like taking one PC into water.

Another thing to note is that once you put your camera into the waterproof case, you probably need to set to AF mode as well as Auto scene mode. Operating camera in manual mode underwater is a nightmare. I wasted 50+ photos just to snap those fishes. Already told them not to move but they never listen.

Time for snorkeling!! There are snorkeling gear for you to use there. What you need to bring is your swim suit.  This is my first time doing snorkeling. It took me few tries to fit the mask properly. Sigh~

The coral is great.

You can see fishes of many species wondering around the coral.

I even saw some Nemo (Crown fishes) hidden in sea plants.

Even though that was my first time snorkeling, I was quite enjoying it. At first you may feel scared as the water is somehow deep and some naughty fishes will come and “kiss” you. Eventually you will get used to it. Make sure you wear a life jacket for safety reason. I will definitely do snorkeling in the future again.

That’s all for the first part. For those who can’t wait for 2nd part, here is the Langkawi Coral link in which you can make reservation from them or call them at04-899 8822.

Related posts:

1. Pulau Payar (Part 2) – Now Eating
2. Pulau Payar (Part 3) – Beach