After over two weeks in SE Asia, we're back in Malaysia, this time at the Port of Langkawi which is located on Langkawi Island in the north part of Malaysia and just a few kilometers south of Thailand. The weather today was projected to be the hottest day so far on the cruise at 94°f. And it did not miss the mark.
We docked sharply at 8am and while there was a short delay in getting the ship cleared, our group of 19 was timely in assembling in the Ocean Bar. As soon as the cleared message was given, we headed down to deck 5 to disembark. Immediately upon entering the covered gangway we encountered the heat, and it did not dissipate the rest of the day.
It was a fairly long walk to the port exit (1/8th of a mile), and our drivers for the two vans from the Langkawi Taxi Service met us. Mohammed was our driver and while he was pretty quiet, he did know some basic English. It was about a 45 minute drive north to the dock where the river tour boats were docked. Along the way we saw numerous monkeys and felt many speed bumps. There's no need for speed limit signs here! Several of the speed bumps were no more than 100 yards apart.
At the boat harbor we broke into two groups to fill two long and skinny boats with a blue vinyl roof stretched across chrome tubing. Our boat was powered by a Suzuki 140 and the other one was powered by a Suzuki 170. However, in looking around, the motor of choice seemed to be Yamaha.
After boarding the boat, our young and skinny driver backed us out of the moorage and headed us upriver along the mangroves. The river meandered a bunch, and from time to time we'd stop to observe something interesting like eagles feeding, monitor lizards swimming across the river, monkeys (these we bribed with peanuts and they didn't hesitate to enter the water to snag a peanut), and interesting rock formations such as the Crocodile Cave.
At the Crocodile Cave we turned around and sped down river to the Sas Rimba Floating Fish Farm where we took a short break and observed numbers of fish in pens including some sting rays, grouper, and tuna. Feeding the latter two was an aggressive proposition as these fish could easily take one's finger off!
We then continued on downriver to the Bat Cave where we observed hundreds of bats hanging from the ceiling along with many stalagmites. There were also a number of monkeys here including some really cute mother baby combinations.
We continued down river and did a high speed ride across the mouth of the river and back up the river to our starting point. We were gone about 2 1/2 hours. We drove back roughly the same way as we came and were dropped off at the port gate around 1:15pm. All of this was 150 ringits per couple or about $38 US. It was still hot and it would have been a 30 plus minute walk back to the nearest civilization, so we all elected to reboard the ship for lunch.
After lunch and a little siesta in the Crow's Nest, we attended a short talk by Terry Greenberg on the Chinese Diaspora in SE Asia. Once again it was excellent! I then watched the untying of the mooring lines from the Promenade Deck and the Maasdam slipped away from the dock promptly at 5pm, rotated 180° clockwise, and sailed out of the small harbor against the backdrop of two four masted sailing vessels. The Captain announced we would need to average 19 knots to reach the port for Kuala Lumpur by 7am tomorrow.
Tonight was the Guest Chef Gala Dinner in the Pinnacle. The chef was Pearly Gee from Penang, Malaysia and the meal was quite good, but took nearly 2 1/2 hours so we missed Story Time at 9:15pm with Chris, the Expedition Leader. The 10pm Main Stage show was a variety show with Peter Mehta, the magician who did closeup magic. We were called to the stage, and his tricks were very good. Tomono Kawamura, concert pianist, played the second half and was very good!
Tomorrow we'll be in Kuala Lumpur and will be doing an all day HAL tour. With a 7am arrival, we'll need to get going pretty early!
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