Tag: <span>andaman sea</span>

Date: 30th September 2010

After a great first day in Langkawi, today morning we were up and ready for our island hopping tour.

Langkawi roti canai — For breakfast, I had ‘roti canai’ which is similar to Kerala parota, but fluffier. To drink, Milo, which is waaaay more popular in Malaysia than it is in India.

We were picked up by the tour operator at 8am and dropped off at a pier where other tourists were gathered as well.

Langkawi island hopping tour private speedboats — These were the kind of boats we were going to be driven around in

Langkawi island hopping cloud sunny skies — It was a lovely sunny day to be out on a boat trip

Langkawi island hopping tour boat steps — All the tourists were divided into groups and we got into our boat

Langkawi island hopping tour wave splash — Given my past experience going on a similar trip in Krabi, I was more careful this time in protecting my camera equipment

Our first stop on the tour was to get a glimpse of the Pregnant Maiden Island, called so because it looks like a lady lying down with a pregnant tummy.

Langkawi island hopping tour Pregnant Maiden island — Took me a while to make out where the ‘pregnant maiden’ was

Langkawi island hopping Pregnant Maiden island panorama — This is a panorama comprised of 6 shots. See if you can find her. (Hint: Head is on the right)

Langkawi island hopping tour tourists speedboat — We moved on

Langkawi Dayang Bunting Marble geoforest park arrival — Soon after, we arrived at our first major stop on the tour

We were at the Dayang Bunting Marble Geoforest Park, which is located inside the Island of the Pregnant Maiden.

Langkawi Dayang Bunting monkey at pier entrance — Our welcoming party. The monkeys, not the old guy.

Langkawi Dayang Bunting Marble Geoforest park monkey on tree — Needless to say, there were going to be a lot of monkeys here

The stop was for us to check out a lake inside.

Langkawi Pregnant Maiden island park monkey opening bottle — But I was more amused watching monkeys

Langkawi Dayang Bunting Marble Geoforest lake — The lake inside is famous because despite being in an island located in the sea, the lake’s water isn’t as salty

Langkawi pregnant maiden island lake — You can also swim here

Langkawi Dayang Bunting Loiyumba jumping water — … or jump in, like Loi did

Langkawi pregnant maiden island lake paddle boats — There are also paddle boats for hire

They also have one of those “fish spas” here with small catfish ever ready to nibble away at your feet’s germs.

Langkawi Pregnant Maiden island lake tourists catfish spa — Plus it’s free

Langkawi pregnant maiden island lake catfish massage — The water is cool, but the nibbling at your feet can be ticklish… and slimy

Langkawi Pregnant Maiden island lake catfish spa — But when people throw bread crumbs near your feet…. it can get a *little* too much!

Langkawi pregnant maiden island lake swimming — We had nearly an hour to spend here

Langkawi Pregnant maiden island changing rooms — They have changing rooms for men and women here itself

Langkawi pregnant maiden island women's changing room — … but it kinda helps to know English

45 minutes in, we made our way back to the pier

Langkawi Geoforest park monkeys on stones — Like I said, lots of monkeys here

You have to be a bit careful though. Yes, they are more afraid of you than your are of the monkeys. But if they see anything enticing in your hands — like juice bottles or food packets — sometimes they will come at you and just grab it. Also, I saw some idiots throw things at them. Please don’t do that.

Langkawi geoforest park monkey coke bottle — 2 seconds ago, that Coke bottle was in that old man’s hands. He didn’t fight for it back… because that would make human race look inferior.

Langkawi geoforest park boats leaving — We got into our boats and moved on

Our next stop was a short trip away.

Langkawi island hopping tour fish feeding farm — Next up was a fish feeding farm…

Langkawi island hopping tour fish feeding farm arriving — … which was also a restaurant. Hmmm.

The thing was, you had to pay to feed the fishes. This isn’t exactly included in the package.

Langkawi fish feeding farm baskets — But we didn’t go for it

We didn’t opt to feed the fishes because, 1) all 3 of us weren’t interested 2) the concept of paying to feed fishes, fatten them up and who then (possibly) end up on the restaurant menu didn’t sound right to me.

Langkawi fish feeding farm tourist — Boring huh?

Langkawi fish feeding farm teal water — Fortunately it was only a 30 minute stop, so I continued clicking

Langkawi geoforest islands blue sky huge cloud — We moved on

Langkawi island hopping tour guide smoking — Our boat driver, smoking

We rode up to what looked like a mangrove forest, where we would witness an eagle feeding session.

Langkawi eagles grey sky — Langkawi gets its name from eagles. Malay word ‘lang’ = eagle, kawi = reddish brown colour

Langkawi island hopping tour eagle feeding mangrove — The island is inhabited with a lot of eagles of that colour

The eagle feeding session works as such. The boats all float apart from each other and the drivers/guides throw some eagle feed (bread bits or some meat) into the waters, and the birds of prey come sweeping in with their beaks ready to eat.

Problem was, I didn’t have the right lens for this part of the tour. The most zoom I had was with my Tamron 28-75mm f2.8, which as a macro lens is great, but isn’t much when it comes to photographing fast moving birds.

Here are a few shots Ramesh got using his Canon 55-250mm telephoto lens.

Langkawi white breast eagle Photograph by Ramesh — (Photograph by Ramesh Iyer)

Langkawi brown eagle Photograph by Ramesh — (Photograph by Ramesh Iyer)

After the eagle feeding session, we moved on to our next and final stop on this tour.

Langkawi island hopping tour Beras Basah island — Beras Basah island

Langkawi island hopping tour Beras Basah island sign — If you wanted to swim in the sea or just hang around on the beach, here is where you are allowed to do it

Langkawi island hopping tour Beras Basah island beach — We were all keen to hit the water!

Langkawi island hopping tour Beras Basah island swimming — But I didn’t feel like leaving my camera on the beach

Langkawi Beras Basah island sea level — So I took it with me into the water! But I trod very carefully so as not to get a drop of water on the lens.

Langkawi Beras Basah island Loiyumba coral reef — Loi and Ramesh found broken corals

Langkawi Beras Basah island Ramesh Loiyumba corals — So I asked them to make use of them and pretend to be reindeers!

Langkawi Beras Basah island Mithun corals — Because you know, reindeers in water are… ermm… 🙂

Langkawi island Loiyumba Davidoff ad — Couldn’t help but turn this into an ad 🙂

Langkawi Beras Basah island Mithun floating head — Attempting the ‘head floating in water’ shot

Langkawi island hopping tour Beras Basah island hotel — After some time, we made our way back to shore

Langkawi island hopping tour Beras Basah island overcast skies — Overcast skies in the distance

Langkawi island hopping tour Beras Basah private property — Not sure if this was a hotel or not

Langkawi island hopping tour Beras Basah island dock — After drying ourselves up, we headed back to the pier

Langkawi island hopping tour Beras Basah island monkeys — Monkeys inhabit this island too

Langkawi island hopping tour Beras Basah island monkey — Amazing how they survive on the island, considering there are no human residents here.

Langkawi island hopping tour Beras Basah island forest — We left Beras Basah island

Langkawi island Malaysia yacht — We got a bit of rain as we neared the pier from where we set off in the morning

Langkawi island resort hotel — Pretty cool looking resort

The rain was mostly a drizzle once we got back. They were selling memorabilia plates of everybody who went for these boat trips and since they were only RM10, we all picked up our respective plates.

This was a half-day island hopping tour and it only cost us RM30 (Rs. 450 approx.) per person. I’ve done a similar tour like this last year in South Thailand. Of course, that trip didn’t start of well, with my camera getting wet and all, but I doubt I’ll ever get sick of seeing clear blue water and less crowded beaches far away from civilization.

As we were walking to our vans, Ramesh and I were talking about visiting the Langkawi Underwater World, just when one of the Sri Lankans who was on our boat overheard us. He turned back and advised us against it, saying that the Aquaria KLCC in Kuala Lumpur is “much better”. So we decided to take his word for it and dropped the idea of going to Langkawi Underwater World.

The tour company dropped us back to our hotel.

Langkawi Sweet Inn Motel chairs lobby — The lobby downstairs at Sweet Inn Motel

Langkawi motel cat licking — One of the many cats that visit Sweet Inn

Langkawi Pantai Cenang village — It had just finished raining

We stepped out again, this time for lunch.

Langkawi Skol beer Chang beer — We stopped by a restaurant to quench our throats first with some chilled beer. I tried SKOL which I never had before. It was average in taste.

Unfortunately, looking at the menu, it offered very little in terms of vegetarian for Ramesh. So after beer, we sought some other restaurant.

Langkawi Pantai Cenang lane — So we went further down Pantai Cenang road to check out other restaurants

Langkawi Underwater World Malaysia — This is Underwater World Langkawi

Langkawi restaurant soda pop iced tea — We sat down at a restaurant in front of Underwater World after Ramesh found something he could eat

Langkawi Malaysian chicken curry rice — But the food wasn’t particularly good. I didn’t like my chicken curry rice.

Post lunch, we checked out some Duty Free stores. Langkawi is a Duty Free shopping destination, so one would assume you would find some great bargains. But as we hopped from one shop to another, that wasn’t the case. Especially with electronics. We walked into the Canon store at a mall adjacent to Underwater World and found the prices to be far higher than that of Singapore. We were aware Malaysia isn’t as cheap as Singapore when it comes to electronics, but still, the prices we came across were a bit exorbitant. Some even higher than prices back in India.

I feel Langkawi businesses were taking advantage of the “Duty Free” label and jacking up the prices because you never know, some less-informed tourist would buy into the whole gimmick and assume they got a good deal here.

At this point, Ramesh and Loiyumba wanted to head back to our hotel in Langkawi for some rest. This being our last day on Langkawi, I didn’t feel like resting, so I told them I wanted to roam around a bit more.

I was contemplating heading to Kuah, Langkawi’s main town, just to see what that side of the island had to offer. But since we had already walked quite a bit, I decided to head further on and visit Pantai Tengah beach. In the process, also share some more beachfront hotel options on Pantai Cenang in case you wanted to know where to stay (I highlighted some places in the previous post).

Langkapuri Inn hotel Langkawi — Langkapuri Inn to the left; the yellow building is a BBQ restaurant

Sugary Sands Motel Langkawi — Sugary Sands Motel

Tanjung Malie Beach Motel Langkawi Malaysia — Tanjung Malie Beach Motel

Green Hill Beach motel Mali Perdana Resort Langkawi — Green Hill Beach motel is the one with the green sign

Sunset Beach Resort Langkawi Malaysia — Sunset Beach Resort (http://www.sungroup-langkawi.com/sunset/)

The Cabin Langkawi budget hotel — The Cabin Langkawi (http://www.thecabin.com.my/)

Aseania Resort Langkawi Malaysia — Aseania Resort, not on the beach though (http://www.aseanialangkawi.com/index.html)

Langkawi Durian fruit melons stall — Durian (similar to Jackfruit), is the national fruit of Malaysia (I think)

Langkawi way to Pantai Tengah beach — Head straight down this road to get to Pantai Tengah beach

Langkawi Pantai Tengah beach Malaysia — This is Pantai Tengah beach

Langkawi Pantai Tengah beach grey skies — It isn’t as big as Pantai Cenang… and the sand isn’t as soft either

Langkawi Pantai Tengah beach sand Malaysia — In fact, the sand was mostly broken shells. Not the best for walking barefoot then.

Langkawi Pantai Tengah beach shore rain — At this point, it began to rain

Langkawi Pantai Tengah field — Fortunately, I had my umbrella in my backpack. So I walked back instead of taking cover.

Langkawi Sri Kijang Bank Negara resort — This nice looking resort isn’t open to public

Langkawi Sri Kijang Bank Negara resort Pantai Cenang — Upon research, it belongs to a bank and is meant only for its employees. Posh.

Debbie's Place Irish pub bar in Langkawi — Debbie’s Place Irish pub on Pantai Cenang

Langkawi Sweet Inn Shida Laundrette — There’s a laundry shop very close to Sweet Inn, very reasonable rates for service

I went back to the room to drop off my laundry, and to see what the other two were up to. Ramesh and Loi were taking a nap and so, I decided to step out again.

Way to Rasa Eksotika The Palms guesthouse Langkawi — I wanted to explore the area behind the motel

Langkawi Pantai Cenang house lodges — Some of the houses here have been turned into budget accommodation for tourists. Good income for villagers.

Langkawi village field water buffalo — Apparently all water buffaloes do is stare at you

Langkawi Pantai Cenang Malay house — I had reached a main road at this point

Langkawi weekend market fish Malaysia — I saw this market by the main road…

Langkawi weekend market Nasi Beriani Malaysia — … and since there was a lot of food on display, I had to check it out!

Langkawi weekend market fish balls Malaysia — I forget if these were fish balls or cheese balls… or fish balls with cheese powder coating

Langkawi weekend market Apom Balek Malaysia — Apom Balek, sweet stuff. I sampled a few of these. (‘apom’ sounds like India’s “appam”)

Langkawi weekend market Nasi Beriani price Malaysia — ‘Nasi’ is Malay for rice and ‘Beriani’ is well, biriyani (RM 3.50 = Rs. 50)

Langkawi weekend market van vendors — Seemed like this was some sort of weekend market, not a mainstay

Langkawi weekend market sotong kangkung Malaysia — Guess I knew where to bring Loi for dinner

Langkawi weekend market fruit stalls Malaysia — Lots of fresh fruits and vegetables on offer

Langkawi weekend market dried fish — Dried fish… lots of it!

Langkawi weekend market cempedak goreng Malaysia — ‘Cempedak’ is a type of fruit, ‘goreng’ I’m guessing means fried

Langkawi weekend market lychee Malaysia — Not sure what these were

Langkawi weekend market juices Malaysia — All these colourful juices made me thirsty

Langkawi weekend market corn juice Malaysia — So I had corn milk juice. Weird choice, I know. But I didn’t come all the way here to strawberry milkshake.

Langkawi economic rooms village — You got budget accommodation out here as well

After spending some time at the market, I knew I was coming back here for dinner. Great street food at very low prices — who am I to complain? I headed back to let the other two know about my ‘discovery’.

Once I got back to the room at around 6pm, Loi was still napping. So we forced him to get out of bed and get ready. We set out by 7:30pm.

Langkawi Palms guesthouse at night — It was pitch dark and there weren’t any street lights on this route

Langkawi street market orange susu air kelapa — ‘Susu’ is the Malay for milk (yup); ‘kelapa’ means coconut and ‘air’ is water (seriously)

Langkawi street food spring potato — Wondering what this is?

Langkawi night market spring potato — It’s potato

Langkawi night market putu mayong — Keralites, looks familiar?

Langkawi Malay street food putu sign — Puttu! Albeit, a slight variation

Langkawi street food making putu — This is how they make lots of it

Langkawi street market fried fish — This is fish apparently

Langkawi street market pizza vendor — I ordered a seafood mini-pizza from here

Langkawi night market seafood pizza — Mostly crab meat and prawns; RM 5 (Rs. 75) for one

Langkawi street food fried rice noodles — A lot of the food was already sold out

Langkawi night market boiled meat — You take the basket and tongs, pick up whatever you want and you will be charged accordingly

Langkawi street food Loiyumba boiled meat — After you choose, you cook it in boiling water

Langkawi street food baby octopus — … even stuff like this (Yuck)

Langkawi street food spring rolls samosas — Picked up some chicken samosas and vegetable spring rolls (RM 2 = Rs. 30)

Langkawi street food fried chicken bbq — Was tempted to get some fried chicken too but I didn’t want overeat 🙂

Langkawi street food burgers — Picked up a beef burger as well. ‘Daging’ = beef, ‘ayam’ = chicken, ‘benjo’ = egg (RM1 = Rs. 15)

Langkawi weekend market stalls — The night market was a lot more crowded than earlier

Unfortunately, everybody except Ramesh got what we wanted. There was very little in terms of pure vegetarian on offer at the night market. So we headed back to the main road so that Ramesh could pick up his dinner from a proper restaurant.

Since this was our last night in Langkawi, we hit the beach to the feel wet sand on our feet one last time.

Langkawi Pantai Cenang Rasa restaurant — This is the restaurant from where we had lunch yesterday and breakfast today morning

After checking out a few restaurants, Ramesh ended up picking up a vegetarian pizza from Italian coffee chain illy Cafe, which cost as much as all the food myself and Loi picked up from the night market.

Langkawi stray cat Loiyumba petting — While we waited, Loi petted stray kittens

Langkawi Pantai Cenang Mithun Divakaran — As it is this post has over 200 photos, might as well squeeze in one of me. (Photograph by Ramesh)

Langkawi stray cat fight scar injury — Wonder what animal this cat fought with

Langkawi Sweet Inn Zee Cinema — Back at our motel, this guy was hooked on Hindi movies

Langkawi hotel dinner street food beers — Dinner! 🙂

And just when you thought we had seen enough cats for one day…

Langkawi Sweet Inn cat eating — This came to our door. We had to share our food with it too.

Langkawi Sweet Inn cat Loiyumba — We kept referring to the cat as ‘it’. So, Loi felt the need to check. It was a ‘she’.

Dinner and drinks done, I ended the night satisfied with all that I saw today. Actually, I did want to head to Kuah town after we came back from our island hopping tour. But given that it ended up raining in the afternoon, it’s a good thing I stayed put in Pantai Cenang.

With 208 photos and over 2000 words, this is the largest post I’ve worked on. There were still some more photos I felt like using because they looked good, but in the end decided not to.

It was good day today, but tomorrow onwards, it’s four days in Malaysia’s capital — Kuala Lumpur.

Other posts in this series:

Singapore & Malaysia 2010: Planning and preparing for the trip

Singapore 2010: Day 1 – Little India, CBD, Clarke Quay, China Town… and a lot of walking

Singapore 2010: Day 2 – Orchard Road, mall-hopping… and already shopping

Singapore 2010: Day 3 – Singapore Zoo, Marina Bay Sands; leaving Singapore for Penang

Malaysia 2010: Day 5 — Langkawi (Ferry ride from Penang, Cable car & Sky Bridge)

Malaysia 2010: Day 7 — Kuala Lumpur (Low Yat Plaza, Petronas Towers, Jalan Alor)

Malaysia 2010: Day 8 — Kuala Lumpur (Batu Caves, Petaling Street/China Town)

Malaysia 2010: Day 9 — Kuala Lumpur (KLCC Aquaria, Merdeka Square, KL Tower observation deck)

Malaysia 2010: Leaving Kuala Lumpur… and about going back

Unseen Malaysia | 41 Bucket-list-worthy Destinations. View the interactive version here

Date: Dec 20th, 2009

Since I had to catch a 11:20am Nok Air flight from Phuket to Bangkok, I had to head back to Krabi first. I checked out of my hotel just past 5am and got a pick-up taxi that was heading to Krabi town.

Ao Nang in the morning — Ao Nang at around 5:30AM; above photos taken on the Nokia E72

The taxi went around slowly (as usual) to collect more passengers before picking up speed. After a while, it was still me and an American girl (forgot her name) in the back. So we got talking.

She’s been by herself in Thailand for quite some time, originally with the Peace Corps and now teaching at a school in Trang, which is where she was headed. She told me about Trang and how I should come there as it was a lot less crowded than Krabi — but still offers pristine coastal beauty. Sooo, another destination for my next trip! 🙂

Taxi to Ao Nang to Krabi — Left, the american girl; Right, possibly-on-drugs white bloke

The white dude in the “lungi” who joined the taxi ride kept twitching and stammering throughout the journey to Krabi bus terminal. He made me look rich.

I reached Krabi around 7am and got a bus to Phuket but asked that I be dropped near the airport. The American girl advised me to do this because the bus will pass the airport anyway. But if I headed straight to Phuket bus terminal, the ride back to the airport from Phuket town would have cost me half-an-hour. See kids, striking conversations with strangers isn’t all bad.

Since I woke up early, the lack of sleep caught up on me while on the journey — and I just couldn’t keep my eyes open fo long.

I was awoken at around 10am by the bus stewardess as we neared my stop. I got down and out into the bright sunshine still in a daze. I looked around and wondered where the airport was. I saw the bus push on and across the road stood two moped taxis calling out to me. There was nothing around besides a highway, a few farm houses and trees. Also, a small sign pointing to a road that leads to the airport.

I crossed the road and somehow managed to get on the moped with all my luggage.

Taken (very carefully) on my phone while on the bike

The short ride cost 50 baht or so (don’t quite remember exactly how much I paid). Anyway, after answering my dad who called me just as I had arrived, I took a trolley and went in. Checked in my luggage, got a window seat and my boarding pass. Twice. At the gate where we were supposed to wait for our flight, a machine that supposedly opens the door with the boarding pass managed to get mine stuck in it. So I went back to the Nok Air counter and quite embarrassingly got myself another boarding pass.

While my flight left on time, I sat by the window feeling quite sad that my stint on Thailand’s beaches had come to an ‘incomplete’ end. That feeling changed a bit a few minutes into the flight.

Phuket aerial view — (This one was taken on the Nokia E72)

Panyee floating village Phuket — Ko Panyee a.k.a “FLoating Village,” wanted to go there too

Phuket Andaman sea cloud — I love this photo

I felt a bit more satisfied after seeing all that.

By 12:30pm, we were above Bangkok.

Bangok city aerial highway — (Taken on the Nokia E72)

We landed at Don Muang, Bangkok’s old International Airport, which is still being used by mostly budget carriers for local flights (hear that BIAL?). Took a metered taxi and headed to the highly commercial Sukhumvit area of Bangkok city. I didn’t have a hotel reservation or anything but I just looked at the city map and decided to stay in Soi 7 since it had a BTS station very close by. I had planned on taking the sky train this time to get around Bangkok.

I got down at the BTS station and just walked down Soi 7 (soi = street) in search of a room. Found a small sign for a family-run guesthouse called Thai House Inn pointing into an alley. Don’t be deceived into thinking you’re going to expect a down-rotten room in here. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at what you get for 700 baht (Rs. 970) a night (cheap for this area). The room and the toilet were clean and the only thing you will not find is a TV. (In case you want to know how to find it, I found a video by somebody who liked the place just as much.)

I checked in, unpacked, freshened up and went out for lunch. I was resisting eating Pad Thai (considered Thailand’s national dish) mostly because I’m not much a noodle person. But I caved thinking why come all the way here and not try it the way locals make it.

Pad Thai Bangkok — Sea food Pad Thai (badly taken on the Nokia E72)

It was okay. I still prefer my steamed rice and Thai curry combo 🙂

After lunch, it was straight to the BTS station (Nana stop on the map) for my next sightseeing destination. There was a reason I wanted to be back in Bangkok city by Sunday — Chatuchak Weekend Market.

Other posts in this series:

Getting ready for my trip

The day I left for Thailand

Day 1 – Suvarnabhumi, Pantip Plaza, Fotofile & MBK

Day 2 – Bridge over the River Kwai and Tiger Temple (Wat Pa Luangta Bua) in Kanchanaburi

Taking the bus to Chiang Mai from Bangkok

Day 3 – Maesa elephant camp, ‘long-neck’ tribe village near Chiang Mai

Day 3 (Part 2) – Chiang Mai Night Market

Day 4 – Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai… and back in town

Day 5 – Leaving Chiang Mai for Phuket

Day 5 (Part 2) – One night in Phuket

Day 6 – Leaving Phuket for Ao Nang by bus (via Phang Nga)