There are a few ways to get to Langkawi from Penang. One is, you take a flight. But flights can be expensive. Another is you take a bus to Kuala Perlis and then take a ferry to Langkawi. That takes a good 4-5 hours but this is the cheapest way to get there. The third way, and the one we took, is a high-speed ferry to Langkawi. The travel time for this is about 3 hours, but it can take longer if the waters are choppy.

I remember the ferries in Istanbul that had big windows so you could look out but in Malaysia, the ferries are far more run down and have smaller windows. I slept through most of the journey and then woke up when we arrived at Langkawi. From the ferry station, we had to take a GRAB to get to Pantai Chenang, to our AirBnb.

Now, here’s the deal with Langkawi. Unless you are staying in a very high end resort (why would you want to spend so much on a hotel room when you’d barely spend any time there? I never understand the need for this!), getting a room on the beach is difficult, but not impossible. There are some shacks on the beach, but the street next to the beach is just as good. Better, I’d say, because it is lined with a row of shops and restaurants too.

We checked into our AirBnb and it was lovely, with a welcome drink of iced tea and a welcome fruit platter. The plan was to head out to the cable car but we decided to sleep instead for a bit. Then in the evening, we headed out to the beach.

Barely any distance away from the AirBnb, the beach was nothing like I had expected. We had planned to do what we do on most beaches – Kay goes for a swim while I lounge on a day bed and eat golden fried prawns and a cocktail. But the beach had barely shacks. We found one Indian-Pakistani shack that didn’t have any beer, so I ordered a Durian milkshake (yes, well, milkshake at a beach), and some fried beef. Not the best, but that’s all we had. We spent some time there, and I took photos of a gorgeous sunset on the beach. But the beef wasn’t so great and I was hungry. So we headed back to the street behind.

Lined with a row of Indian, Thai, Chinese and Malay restaurants, as well as a couple of utility stalls, the main Pantai Cenang street is wonderful to walk on. If you are looking for an ATM,  walk down to the 7-Eleven where you’d get two ATMS inside the store. We chose to eat at a place called the Islandish bar and restaurant and it was a lovely family-run restaurant serving very good Thai food. It wasn’t as expensive as some others on this stretch either – a baby lobster was just 15 MYR per 100 gm, and full-size lobsters were about 19 MYR per 100 gm, unlike 21 MYR at other places. They looked and tasted just as fresh, and the restaurant cooked it beautifully. They also serve beer and a variety of juices and soft drinks.

Later at the AirBnb, we asked about snorkelling trips and they recommended a guy. He came over and booked us in for a trip to the Pulao Payar island for a full day’s snorkelling for 120 MYR. We booked there and was just getting happy when we heard from someone else that they’ve booked a trip for 85 MYR. Actually, that street has a number of vendors offering these snorkelling and island-hopping trips and the wise thing to do is check with a few before you decide on one. Someone else we heard had paid 240 MYR for the same trip. So yes, the prices vary.

Our trip to the island began at 7:45 am next morning outside our AirBnb. A small bus picked us up, along with other people from different hotels around the area and it was close to an hour’s journey to the ferry terminal. There, after a 20-minute break and a rushed omelette breakfast, we were taken to an equally run down ferry to go to Pulao Payar. Almost an hour later, we got to Pulao Payar, but the ferry couldn’t go all the way to the shore. We were transferred on to a smaller boat and then had to walk over a makeshift bridge to get to the shore.

Here, we were escorted to our part of the beach and handed our snorkelling equipment. There were another two ferries that had brought passengers in and they had separate parts of the beach as well. But it was sufficiently spread out so there was no overcrowding. The rules were simple – keep your lifejacket on, do not lose the equipment, feed the fish but don’t give them a chance to bite your fingers off, do not go over the boundary because there’s a steep fall after it, and get out of the water if you cut yourself and bleed because that’ll attract sharks.

There was a changing room too, but believe me when I say this, it was the dirtiest place I have ever seen. None of the doors had any locks, there were no lights in the dark, dingy changing room, and the commodes were literally overflowing with shit. Plus there was a good deal of menstrual blood on the floors. Kay said the men’s changing room was equally disgusting. So our advice is, wear your swimwear underneath your clothes when you leave your hotel. Do not use that changing room, even if you are armed with disinfectants.

The organisers sell fish food. In most other places, we had seen that you observe the fishes in their natural habitat, but here, it’s about luring the fish in with food. Each packet of fish food is about 5 MYR. There are picnic tables and benches on the beach under a tree if you want to spend time on the beach.

The sea was sufficiently warm and the snorkelling equipment did not look particularly clean or hygienic But what the hell, right? The fish swam right up to us the moment we started scattering the food like we had been taught to and there were all kinds – clown fish, a baby shark and if the organisers are to be believed, even a barracuda.

The ferry earlier had a hawker who was renting out waterproof cameras for 30 MYR but we hadn’t taken one. We should have though. There were some people from our group who were carrying fantastic waterproof cases for their phones and we looked on jealously as they took photos.

Lunch was included in the trip costs, but it was really, really bad. Just rice, a broth of cabbage, some boiled cabbage and one rather undercooked piece of fried chicken, as well as a little cupcake and the apple. The apple and the cupcake were lifesavers in fact.

Then at 2.30 pm, we were taken back to the small boat and then to our ferry for our hour-long journey back to Langkawi. By then it had started pouring and the water got seriously choppy. The boat bobbed up and down the entire way and it took us a little over an hour to get to Langkawi. There, we were shown to our respective buses and we headed back to the AirBnb.

We went out again later that evening and picked up beef burgers from the little stall called Eddie’s on the Cenang road. That little unassuming stall has really the best burgers we’d had in a while. Later that night, we ate at the Islandish again and this time, it was a fried crab dish. Later, we went to the beach rather late, and this time, there was more activity – there were a couple of fire eaters but there was still no place selling beer except for one bar that was so full that we couldn’t bring ourselves to even set foot in.

That was Langkawi for us. We realized we had made a bad mistake by not spending at least one more day there because the Mangrove tour is supposed to be a must-have experience there, what with bat caves and all, although there isn’t much to the island-hopping trip we heard. Maybe we’d go back another time, straight to Langkawi for another holiday.

Have you been to Langkawi and done the mangrove tour? What do you think? Is it worth going back there one more time for it?