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blue pin: visited; yellow pin: transit;

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Day 1: Singapore - Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) - Langkawi

Bought the air tickets a few months back, it cost about SGD 100 per person for SIN - KUL - LGK return on Air Asia. I always cannot resist when I see air tickets on sale, surely will go to the website and check.

We departed from Singapore at 8.55 am, reached KL in less than an hour. Quickly cleared the immigration and then half running to the departure building next door to check in again. In budget airlines, the luggage is not automatically transferred to another flight, that's why we didn't have any check-in luggage to save time.


View of Kuala Lumpur International Airport from the runway


Our airplane for SIN - KUL leg


A colorful Air Asia airplane with Tourism Malaysia ad


Another Air Asia with F1 sponsors' logo


A bigger Air Asia, probably is the one that flies to London.

LCCT (Low Cost Carrier Terminal)
KL budget terminal is not better than ours, it looks like a big warehouse complete with its aluminium roof.


LCCT departure hall

Our transit time was only 1.5 hour, it was a bit risky to have such a short transit time in case the first flight was delayed. But so far so good. :)

The flight to Langkawi lasted for an hour and it felt like a helicopter ride. We could see Penang and many lush islands before we reached our destination. The scenery was breathtaking.


The city of Penang


Many islets



Finally, we reached Langkawi. I didn't know it is a duty free island, will hunt those miniature liquor bottles later :D



After immigration, we saw so many counters offering the same service to tourists. From the photo, you couldn't see that they shout their lungs out to get my attention hehehe...



We bought voucher for a taxi ride from the airport to our hotel, Holiday Villa in Pantai Tengah. This short taxi ride cost RM 20. It was expensive. :(

Holiday Villa
Our deluxe room wasn't great, it looked as old as the photo of their superior room in the website. If I knew, I would just book a superior one. At SGD 135 a night, this wasn't good.


I hate this flower pattern bed cover.

But the view from our balcony was great, our room was facing the swimming pool and we could see a bit of beach from here.


Swimming pool


Pool bar and jacuzzi


Private beach

We went to the beach straight away, took some pictures and off for lunch.




Yay, we love the beach!



Before we went out for lunch, we had a quick check on the taxi fare list from our hotel to all tourist attractions in Langkawi. The taxi fares were pretty expensive, for example, one way fare to the Cable Car was RM 28, and we would definitely need a return trip. This would be costly if we are going everywhere by taxi.

Then we went to the minimart in front of our hotel to enquire about motorbike. It was his idea of getting a motorbike, I never ride a motorbike before and I was scared of getting on one. Surprisingly, the motorbike rental only cost RM 18 for 5 hours, RM 6 per hour for extension, and RM 30 for 24 hour. We would definitely rent a car instead if any of us could drive, unfortunately none of us could, so we rented a motorbike instead.

After lunch, we went back to the minimart and get our motorbike. After checking everything was ok, we were off to the Cable Car Station. This was my virgin ride, I was so excited that I kept laughing hahaha... I also made him promise that he could only speed up to 60 km/hr. :P

Actually we were really brave, because he didn't have driving licence at all!! Everytime we saw a police car we would ride very slowly hahaha...


That's our bike. Stopped a while for me to get picture and for him to check the map.

The good thing of having a motorbike is we could stop everywhere to take pictures like this below.



As we went nearer to the cable car station, we saw monkeys roaming on the street.







Finally, we reached our destination. Our hair was completely disheveled because of the helmet. This would definitely ruin all the pictures.

Langkawi Cable Car
The cable car ticket cost RM 30 each, but if you are a Malaysian, you could get it half the price.




Our hair wasn't that bad, huh? :)


Going up, up and up.


View below


Lush hills

The view from the cable car was great, personally I think the scenery was comparable to the cable car ride I took in Switzerland.


Reached second station in about ten minutes.

Second station




Third station and the hanging bridge on the background.


This look like a roller coaster.


View of Langkawi from second station.


Up to third station.

Third station


Viewing platform


View of Langkawi from third station.


A hanging bridge above the cliff

Third station is the highest point we could go. We went up to the viewing platform, took a few pictures and enjoyed the breezy wind with the great views below. Not for long, the dark cloud came towards us and we were completely surrounded. We were inside the clouds! This was amazing.


Dark cloud came towards us.


Poor visibility


Video on moving clouds

Since there was nothing else we could see in this kind of weather, we rode the cable car down. The rain was getting heavier when we arrived at the ground level. Now we were worried, riding a motorbike wasn't a good idea after all. :P

We waited for a while and browsed the souvenir shops in the area, but the rain didn't seem to stop anytime soon, so we decided to just heading back to hotel quickly.


Souvenir shops at Oriental Village

Eventhough it's still raining, we still stopped at a few places to take the sunset pictures. Looking at the pictures now, drenching in the rain was so worthwhile.










Biker chick :P


How wet he was..

May Hiang Seafood Restaurant
We had a great dinner somewhere near our hotel, both crab and prawns were great, but the kailan was too hard. It cost RM 90 for all these.




1 kg crab with onion sauce and curry leaves. It comes with a hammer.


Deep fried garlic prawn


Stir fried kailan

After finished the dinner, went back to hotel and soaked in hot bath tub for an hour. What a day... :D

2 comments:

Randy Furco said...

cool pics

Dya said...

wow you rent a motorbike without license? Is it allowed, don't they check? Haha..