Weekly #5: Mangroves, Street Art and Colonial Architecture in Malaysia
After four weeks in Thailand, we had to move on. Our tourist via was expiring after 30 days and we decided to travel by ferry to our next country of Malaysia. We had an amazing time in Thailand but we looked forward to a new country as well, where I unexpectedly met up with an ex-colleague and visited one of my bucket list destinations.
Koh Lipe: the Maldives of South East Asia?
Thursday, 30 January 2020
Travel agencies are literally all over the place in Thailand. Every hotel, shop and restaurant is a travel agency on the side as well. And all of them advertise Koh Lipe as the Maldives of South East Asia. We have a full day to discover the island today to see if that is true. However we’ve never been to the Maldives, we can tell that the turquoise waters are indeed very clear and the beaches have powdery white sand. From the islands we’ve visited in Thailand, I think Koh Lipe has the most beautiful beaches! We also like the reggae bars on the island, the lack of cars and the fact that you can walk literally everywhere (the island is only 3,5 km long and 2,5 km wide). My absolute highlight of the day was seeing tons of yellow striped fish in the water, just two meters from the shore, you don’t even have to go snorkeling for that.
On to our next Country: Malaysia!
Friday, 31 January 2020
We would have loved to stay longer in Koh Lipe, but our tourist visa is expiring today and we are also looking forward to discovering a new country. From Koh Lipe it is only a quick ferry ride to Malaysia. We booked our ferry in the afternoon so that we can have a long breakfast on the beach at our favorite spot: Benny’s On The Beach. This veggie café serves smoothie bowls with local ingredients without additives on a small section of secluded beach, has very chill vibes and offers only eco tours. In general we see awareness for the environment in Thailand but the contrast between the places that do (bamboo straws, only veggie meals) and the places who don’t (serving inside dinner on single use plates and in plastic cups) is quite significant. We try to reduce plastic by using our water filter, but sometimes it is really hard to avoid plastic in Thailand.
We have to check-in for our ferry at 2:00 PM. The process is bureaucratic but structured. At counter 1, you have to drop off your passport and you receive a boarding number. At counter 2, you have to pick up your passport again. At counter 3, you receive an exit stamp in your passport and have to drop off your passport again. “You will get it back on the boat”. The officer already collected a huge pile of passports so I guess we will be fine. Two hours later, we are transported by long tail boat to the ferry. As soon as we departed, we were reunited with the pile of passports and they were handed out by country. “Germany!”, 20 people raise their hands and the first person got the pile with German passports to hand out. “Sweden!”, “Malaysia!”, “Australia!”. It was an interesting process and honestly, I felt relieved when I got my passport back again. 90 minutes later, we arrived in the small harbor of Langkawi, Malaysia. An officer with a thermometer was awaiting us to check for fever. We can really tell that the vibe has changed now that the Corona virus is all over in the news. Many western travelers also started to wear face masks and the border controls are getting more strict and focused on health issues.
The harbor in Langkawi was much smaller than expected. No ATM, no money exchange office and no store to buy a SIM-card. We have no other option than paying too much for a taxi… We could pay with our last Thai Baht and we are happy when we arrive in our guest house, the Cottage Langkawi. While I was chilling in the garden, I suddenly hear “hey, Marjolein” and I can’t believe my eyes when Viki, a former colleague of mine at Yext, is standing next to me. What a coincidence that we are staying at the same place, at the same time. She also went traveling in South East Asia and started in November and I hadn’t expect to meet her, as we both didn’t initially plan to go to Malaysia. It was great to see her, to catch up and to have dinner together.
Hot Lazy Day and Getting Lost in Langkawi
Saturday, 1 February 2020
Since we arrived on Koh Lipe, we feel like the climate has changed. It is still as sunny and warm as in the central and northern parts of Thailand, but the level of humidity seems to be much higher. It is only 34 °C degrees but it feels like over 40 °C degrees so we take it slow today. We stroll around on the beach and have food at the ‘Local Food Restaurant’ again. Yes, they are very inventive here with business names! We also found a nice looking cafe on Google Maps that we wanted to visit. We took a route via the beach but got lost on the way on a luxury resort with over 20 buildings. On Google Maps it looked like we could exit at the end but then we got lost on the next property of a clinic. When we finally found a way to the main road after returning to the point where we started, there where no sidewalks to be found. Suddenly a car stopped and the guy asked us where we wanted to go. Apparently, not too many tourists are walking by the main road... When we showed him the directions on Google Maps, he directed us to get inside the car. We were a little hesitant at first but he didn’t want any money and he had a shirt on from some travel agency. We got in the car and he really dropped us off at the cafe that wasn’t really easy to find. Why are Malaysian people so friendly? We got some great iced lattes and ordered a Grab (the Asian equivalent of Uber) back to our guest house for 4 RM (€ 0,88).
Exploring the Mangroves of Langkawi
Sunday, 2 February 2020
For today we booked a boat tour through the mangroves, located on the northern part of Langkawi island in the Kilim Karst Geoforest Park. It is interesting to see that there are quite a lot of Malaysian families traveling around in Langkawi too, exploring their own country. The boat trip includes a stop at the bat cave, monkey island and a secluded beach that only can be reached by boat. The nature was stunning and it was great to see lots of monkeys and eagles from close by. It was a bit sad to see though, that some people forgot their food and drinks in the park, resulting in monkeys drinking out of Coca Cola cans. Many tourists found this entertaining, I found it very very sad.
NFL Super Bowl and Riding the Worlds Steepest Cable Car in Langkawi
Monday, 3 February 2020
Early morning for Kai today, as today was Super Bowl Sunday (or for us, Super Bowl Monday)! San Francisco 49ers vs. Kansas City Chiefs. The game started at 7:30 AM Malaysian time. However we had wifi in most of our accommodations, it was not always very speedy or stable. Fortunately for Kai, the internet was stable enough in our accommodation (The Cottage Langkawi) to watch the game. After I joined Kai to watch the halftime show, I worked in my bullet journal and got some amazing coconut pancakes from the Breakfast Bar (did I mention the inventive names already?). I met some other Americans there, who were watching the game. It is fun to see that no matter where you travel, you always meet other tourists watching their favorite sport games.
After Kai celebrated Kansas City Chiefs winning the game, we took a Grab together with another German couple from our guest house to the Langkawi SkyCab. Our Grab driver was a very entertaining and chatty lady. She is admiring the current prime minister for his fitness at the age of 95 and for the changes he made for the better since the last prime minister resigned. The previous prime minister was apparently very corrupt and sold a lot of land to Chinese investors. It became really clear that Chinese investments are having a huge toll on the country with resorts being built for Chinese tourists, that are prohibited to enter for Malays. She also had a clear opinion on the Corona virus and told us that Malaysians working in the tourism industries are required to inform the police if they get in touch with people from the Wuhan region. After 20 interesting minutes (chatting with local Grab drivers is a great way to learn more about the country!) we arrived at the Langkawi SkyCar. This is the most popular tourist attraction of the island and most of the pictures you’ll find while googling for “Langkawi” involve the cable car or its views. With a vertical rise of 680 meters on a 2079 meters horizontal distance (steepest gradient: 42 degrees), this is the worlds steepest cable car (and they proudly and heavily advertize with that). I’ve read many stories online about long waiting hours but even though we arrived around noon, it was not too busy and we had only a couple of other visitors queuing in front of us. Is it because of the Corona virus? We don’t know, but we’re lucky not to waste time on waiting. It takes about 15 minutes to get to the top with the SkyCab, where you have to pay again to enter the SkyWalk. It was a little on the expensive side (85 RM for the cable car and another 6 RM for the bridge, around € 20 per person in total) and it has lots of Disney Land vibes but the views are unbeatable and walking on the bridge was spectacular. I’m glad we went and experienced a little bit of Austria in Malaysia.
We end the day with fresh coconuts and ice cold beers on the beach. The wide white beaches of Cenang are relatively quiet during the day but as soon the sun is setting and the temperatures are getting more bearable, all the tourists come out of their resorts and beach bars are filling up. Very relaxed vibes here and a nice end of a great day!
Off to my Bucket List Destination of George Town!
Tuesday, 4 February 2020
You might have heard about George Town, the capital of Penang, known for its colonial architecture, amazing food, mixture of cultures and street art. This was the place in Malaysia that was on top of my bucket destinations list and I can’t wait to explore the town. We depart late in the day from Langkawi so we first spend our last hours in Langkawi with a sunrise walk on the beach, a long breakfast at the Smiling Buffalo (our favorite place for coffee in town) and catching up on some photo editing in the garden of our guest house.
When we arrived in Penang, we took a Grab car to our hostel and our driver was - once again - a very kind and chatty lady. She couldn’t stop providing us tips about Penang, gave us some insights into the Malaysian social safety net (there are flats provided by the government to people with low income - we like!) and told us that one of her three sons wants to study in Germany. It made the long ride (it was the first time we saw traffic jams since Bangkok) feel very short.
The host at the reception in our hostel gave us more insights into the history and food culture of George Town. George Town has an interesting mix of cultures, as many Indians, Chinese and British settled down here in the 19th century to trade. Chinese still count for 53% of the population in George Town. One of my favorite anecdotes he shared with us was about where the name of the street Love Lane came from. At the end of the walking street, there is a boys school and a girls school. Parents used to drop off their kids at the beginning of the street and as soon as the parents would leave, the kids were holding hands. How cute of a story is that? Our host recommended a dim sum restaurant around the corner and accompanied us, as he needed to get some dim sum for his mom. The restaurant was not really something for our taste (a bit too traditional with lots of meat and seafood) but it was an interesting introduction into the culinary scene of George Town. I get some very tasty brown rice pancakes (tastes a bit like a flat salty donut with a rice consistency on top) from a street food stall for 1 Ringgit (€ 0,22) as a dessert and we go back to our hostel.
Exploring the Street Art and Colonial Architecture in George Town
Wednesday, 5 February 2020
We spent a full day strolling around through the historical city center and UNESCO word heritage site of George Town. My high expectations were totally met! I love the colonial style architecture, the charm of the somewhat poorly maintained facades, the mixture of Malaysian, Chinese, Indian, Malay and British cultures, the street art, the street food stalls. Everything is within walking distance, what makes it even better. Also the foodies in us couldn’t be happier today, as we have tree amazing meals. We started the day at Daily Dose cafe with juice, granola and an avocado toast. For lunch we have some of the best Indian food of our lives at Woodlands Vegetarian. A large part of the Penang population has Indian roots so the Indian food is really really good here. For dinner we headed to the Chulia Street night market. When we sat down at a table, three waitresses from different food stalls approached us with their menus. From one we ordered steamed veggies, from the next some fried rice and from the other a juice. We go back to our hostel with tons of photos and some really happy bellies!
