Malaysia Part II - Pangkor and Langkawi

Ok - onto Part II and the islands. Good stuff ahead, but first you have to listen to me bitch and moan about booking hotels. For quite awhile. Oh and just FYI - most of the basic info I give ya in these things is from Lonely Planet, even where I don't give them props. Just don't want to be accused of any plagerism. Of course I won't stand behind their info or my regurgitation of it.

Booking Hotels
My advice to anyone would be to not book any hotels on resort islands over the internet. Just show up and find a place. Sure, it may be a little bit of a hassle wandering around with your stuff, but you can figure out where the main beaches are and find a place where you want to stay. And don’t worry about the guide books (or other people) telling you it is the busy season and you need to book ahead. Not true. Sure, you may not get in at the first place you try, but there are plenty of rooms no matter what time of year. And you might think that after the Cliff Samed Resort fiasco on Koh Samet that I would have learned my lesson, but I didn’t.

The other thing about booking on the internet for the resort islands is that it is a nightmare. Most of the resorts don’t have their own website and you are booking through an agent who handles a lot of resorts on the island (even if they do have their own website, it usually cannot handle real time reservations). So you end up sending emails/queries about whether they have rooms available for certain dates – and wait 24-48 hours to hear back. The catch is you have to give your credit card information and if they have a room you have booked it. So you don’t want to send away like 10 requests and have to cancel 9 rooms. Anyway – what should have taken one hour took me almost two weeks. And this was to book two places, one for each island. The places I tried first were booked, then I had to juggle around our schedule based on the dates available at other places (and lord help you when you try to change a reservation).

Two examples that make this clear. We wanted to stay on Langkawi Island until January 1st, but I received an email saying that they were fully booked on New Year’s Eve, so could only take us until then. So we decided to head back to KL a day early and do NYE there. When we checked out on NYE the staff was “surprised” we were leaving “early” and thought it was “weird” that we wouldn’t stay for NYE. They had plenty of rooms available. It turned out for the best as we were ready to be back in KL by then anyway, but still!

The second example still causes me heartburn. We stayed on Pulau Pangkor (Pangkor Island) but I was originally planning on staying on Pulau Pangkor Laut, a small island very near Pulau Pangkor. There is only one exclusive resort on Pulau Pangkor Laut called, fittingly enough, the Pangkor Laut Resort. It is supposed to be just amazing – and it is very expensive (it would have been the most I had ever paid for a room). And we decided maybe we would spoil ourselves there and cheap it on the rest of the trip. So I get on the website and lo and behold there is one “Sea Villa” left for the two nights I wanted (two nights being the most we could afford). So I go through the whole process and hit the confirm button and it comes back saying there were “payment problems” and to try again. So I do. Same thing. Note that I am using the same credit card that I booked and paid for everything else on this trip. Just in case I try a different credit card. No dice. So I call the resort up and figure I’ll book over the phone. On the phone I am told that they only have a “Hillside Villa” left and that there is a minimum of three nights during that period. As I am on the phone I check their website again and it shows the “Sea Villa” available for two nights and I tell the reservation lady. She then suggests that I book on the internet. At which point I am about to explode. Needless to say they didn’t end up getting my business (not that they care I’m sure). But this drives me up the wall. If you can’t effectively handle reservations on your web-site, you shouldn’t offer that service. It is as simple as that. Review and test your website. When it is capable of handling reservations, then you can offer that service. Anyone think this bothered me at all?

Pulau Pangkor
Pangkor is a relatively small island (8 sq km) with a population of around 25,000. It has a pretty laid back feel and seems to be a tourist spot for mainly Malaysians, although you will see westerners there. Like many of the islands in this area it has nice beaches, and the jungle interior is basically untouched and uninhabitable. Pangkor doesn’t compare to Thailand’s islands and we found it ok at best, although that didn’t stop us from having a good time.

Teluk Dalam – This is a 4-Star Resort?
Either there is a HUGE difference between 5-star and 4-star resorts, or the star system is relative to the place you are (anyone know if that is true?). When we first saw our resort from the boat dock we thought it was going to be awesome, because it sure looked like it.

And in truth it wasn’t bad, but just far away (2km) from the lively town of Teluk Nipah and it didn't have good enough resources to make you want to stay there. The pool was actually very nice – and there were great views from the resort.But the beach was small and there was nothing to do there. The restaurant was expensive and actually pretty bad. And you got death stares for ordering alcohol. So how was our “chalet”? It was, like most of Pangkor, ok. It had a sea view and was steps from the beach and it was quite large. But it was nothing special and it didn’t help that we got the “chalet” with a garbage can right in front of it – which amused me the whole time.

Or that when we got to the room we had no towels, were low on TP and there was a tray of half-eaten room service left on our porch. This is 4-stars? One really funny thing about Teluk Dalam is that they have an outside Karaoke Bar (no alcohol of course) that blasted music until all times of night. And every night there were only 2 or 3 people there and the music must have disrupted the sleep of 20 to 30 people. Luckily we were far enough away that we weren’t kept awake by the, ahem, singing.

Pangkor’s Beaches, Monkeys and Donald Duck
Guess how I am going to describe the beaches of Pangkor? Yep, they are ok – nothing stunning, quite small and not very touristy. We actually didn’t spend too much time at the beaches as they were underwhelming. The beach at Teluk Nipah was probably the best overall, as the strip there had a lot of restaurants and shops and such. At low tide you could also walk over to a nearby island, which was kind of neat to do. However once we got to the island the only things to see there were a bunch of dying slugs and piles of garbage. The LP said the best beach on Pangkor was at Coral Bay.

And I guess it depends on what you want in a beach – the one at Coral Bay was small, pretty much empty, void of any amenities and next to a huge garbage dumpster that stunk like hell. The garbage dumpster did have one advantage though – we got to see a lot of monkeys. On both of the islands there were just more monkeys than you could shake a stick at. And it was really fun to see them everywhere and watch them up close.

Predictably their favorite place seemed to be the trash dumpster. It was just like Grand Central Station for them: monkeys coming and going; jumping in and out of the dumpster; tearing things to shreds to get at small amounts of food.We also noticed that a lot of the monkeys were missing arms and/or legs and lots of them had significant cuts and gashes, etc. A local told us that was from all the bickering and fighting they do amongst themselves. Although most of them didn’t seem to be too badly off if just missing one arm or leg.

Near the beach at Coral Bay was the Lin Je Kong temple, which welcomed you with a statue of Donald Duck. You can’t make this stuff up.

A Ride Around the Island
We rented bicycles to ride around the island one day. It seemed like it would be pretty easy to ride around the island in half a day or so. And it would have been if it weren’t for the massively steep hills going through the interior jungle of the island and the fact that the mountain bikes we rented were complete crap. We started heading around the island in the direction of the jungle interior. And this took awhile, because we ended up walking our bikes a lot. And this probably would have happened even with good bikes as the hills really were crazy steep, but it didn’t help that the bikes had about 4 workable gears out of 21. Every time I geared down the chain would never catch and I would be pedaling without going anywhere. But we were lucky to have started off in this direction as doing it at dark (it is very isolated) would have been eerie.

Our bike ride around the island only took a few hours and we saw many things including: the first evidence of soi dogs in Malaysia; monkeys; goats; hornbills; sketchy towns (and the infamous pink minibuses used as cabs); and an amazing sunset.Our trip brought us back to Teluk Nipah for dinner, and then we had to make the 2km bike ride back to our resort in the dark. It was crazy eerie as it was almost pitch black and we were surrounded by jungle.

Good Eats
The food at the resort was crap. We ate there for lunch on the first day and that was it except for a few pool-side snacks. However there were two good places, both in Teluk Nipah. First was Island Burger – some pretty good beef and chicken burgers, even though they weren’t really burgers. But the sauce they used was killer good and made up for it. I downed those things so quickly. Second was the restaurant we ate at all three nights. I can’t remember the name of it and according to the LP detailed map it is the restaurant attached to the Palma Beach Resort (but I don’t think that’s right). Anyway – we found it when we were looking for a place to eat on Christmas Eve. Most places had a set menu (another thing that is weird is being in a Muslim country that celebrates Christmas), including “our” restaurant, but “our” restaurant also had wine! (It was hard to find wine on the island: our resort restaurant didn’t have wine; most restaurants didn’t either; no way you could find it in a convenience store – beer only; and when we finally found a wine store in Pangkor Town and bought a bottle it was so awful that we couldn’t drink it – and that means it is BAD). And so wine was the clincher. But it turned out that the food was amazing also and on other nights we found out they served beer ice cold. So good. Anyway, they also had special head-wear for Christmas Eve dinner – you will only get to see me as Margaret will not allow her picture posted.Traveling by Bus in Malaysia
I will describe our adventures by bus as I promised in Part I during my rant against the Hilton concierge. Was it really such a “hassle” as the concierge said it would be? Well, yes and no. We had two day trips: 1) From KL to Lumut (the port for Pangkor) and for this there are really two options – bus or taxi. 2) From Lumut to Kuala Kedah (the port for Langkawi) and again the same two options. You can take a flight from KL to Langkawi (which we did on the way back) but not from Pangkor to Langkawi (direct). So it is kind of a hassle, but it would have been by taxi too – so the question is how much more of a hassle was it?

We left the Hilton KL early in the morning to get to Puduraya Bus Station, which is described by LP as “hot, confusing, clamorous” and it is.

We never got the chance to stop by beforehand and get tickets, so we were hoping that the buses wouldn’t be full (due to the holiday season) and we also had no idea of the bus schedules (thanks Hilton KL!). We had been told by a few people to only use Transnasional Express as they are reliable and many other bus companies don’t have the best track record. We got to Puduraya Station around 9am and the Transnasional 10:30am bus was full, but the 12:30pm bus had a few seats left. We decided to check out a couple of other companies – one had seats left on their 10:30am bus, and the other one only had openings on the 12:30pm. So we decided to throw safety to the wind and jump on a 10:30am non-Transnasional bus. We really didn’t want to sit around the bus station until 12:30pm. Our bus was fine – nothing great and nothing horrendous – we got the last two seats.

There was lots of room and AC and it left right on schedule. The only down-side was there was no bathroom on the bus and it didn’t stop once during the 4 ½ hours. Yikes! I was impressed with the roads and infrastructure outside of KL – still the best I have seen in SE Asia. Funny how a 4 ½ hour bus ride can turn into an all day trip though - we didn’t get to our resort til close to 5pm after getting the ferry to the island. And had we been able to get our bus tickets earlier we wouldn’t have had to waste so much time at Puduraya (yes I like saying that) Station. So I don’t think there is much difference timing wise between the bus and a taxi. Price wise – our bus ride cost us about $4.50 each and the taxi quote we received was over $100.

The trip from Pangkor to Langkawi was a little bit more involved and frustrating. I am guessing a taxi would have made the day more bearable, but still long and quite expensive. And it really isn’t convenient to fly as you have to take the one flight from Pangkor to KL and then the late flight from KL to Langkawi – so it would involve only two 45 minute flights, but would actually take longer. Our day consisted of 7 different types of transportation: taxi from resort to dock; ferry from Pangkor to Lumut; bus from Lumut to Butterworth; bus from Butterwort to Alor Setar; taxi from Alor Setar to Kuala Kedah (port for Langkawi); ferry from Kuala Kedah to Kuah (the town in Langkawi where the ferry jetties are); cab from Kuah to our resort. The day started at 6am and we didn’t arrive until around 6pm – again funny what a bus trip of three hours and another one of two hours can turn into. The buses were fine again, and the first bus even made a bathroom stop! When we got to Butterworth it was complete chaos and quite frustrating trying to get tickets for our next bus. We went to the Transnasional booth and they tried to get us on a bus that was almost two hours longer to go to a port that would save us 15 minutes on the ferry. That pissed me off. So we just walked around and decided on a pretty generic bus that was leaving in 15 minutes – no problem with it. We found out later why Butterworth was so chaotic. I guess the bus station there burned down a few years back and they have still not gotten around to rebuilding it, so the makeshift one is just a huge parking lot. The ferry to Langkawi was an hour and the worst part of the trip, probably because it was at the end of the day. But the ferry was small, completely full and cramped. And you had to stay inside in your seat and it got hot, stuffy and pretty claustrophobic. It was the longest hour. But finally we were there - the jetty was new and entered into a mall, where you could get money, WINE!!! and a taxi. We weren’t expecting our taxi ride to be so long – over a half an hour, but Langkawi is much bigger than we thought and we were certainly at a secluded resort!

Pulau Langkawi
Langkawi is a much larger island (478.5 sq km) than Pangkor, and certainly bigger than we were expecting. It also has a pretty laid back scene, although unlike Pangkor it seems more directed at western tourists. Some of the beaches on Langkawi are magnificent and others are more ordinary. It is definitely more like the Thai islands, although not anywhere near as crowded and touristy. Like many of these islands, much of the interior is uninhabitable jungle clad mountains, which makes for some beautiful scenery.

Tanjung Sanctuary - Another “4-Star Hotel”
Our resort was called the Tanjung Sanctuary and it certainly was secluded. There was no way to get anywhere without a car or moped. The resort consisted of 30 or so chalets in a forested area along the beach.

It was really a “sanctuary” as there was tons of wildlife around, especially monkeys and lizards.

There was actually a sign in our chalet that stated the Tanjung Sanctuary was not responsible for any damage by the “mischievous monkeys” if we left our doors open and let them in. Again, the resort had its own beach, which was actually pretty nice, but small and secluded. We walked around the resort beach the first night and never set foot on it again. Our chalet was huge – like twice the size of our place in Bangkok, but it was still a little disappointing, considering how expensive it was. The AC kicked butt though. And unlike the restaurant at our resort on Pangkor, the restaurant at Tanjung Sanctuary kicked some more butt. It was on stilts over the water and the food rocked.

The breakfast buffet was ok – but dinner was incredible. We ate there the first night because we had no way of getting anywhere else, but it was so good we actually ate there another night when we weren’t forced to. Still, I wouldn’t stay there again as it was too isolated.

Langkawi’s Awesome Beaches?
Langkawi has some amazing beaches, certainly much better than Pangkor. For the most part the beaches are bigger, cleaner, busier, and have much better views. The main beach is Pantai Cenang where most of the beach chalets, restaurants, shopping and bars are. It is quite a fun area, although the beach is only ok. Closest to our resort, but still a 10 minute drive away, was Pantai Kok (also shown on the signs as “Kok Beach”) which was deserted, but had some amazing views, especially the mountain backdrop.

The most stunning beach we saw was Tanjung Rhu – which had amazing white sand and again some great views.

It was about as popular as Pantai Cenang and there was a lot to do (it also had an Island Burger type place and I made short work of some burgers), although it was still basically empty compared to Thailand’s beaches. In fact Malaysia is known for its “empty beaches.”

Eats on the Island – “All Finished”, Cold Shakes and a Double Cheese-Burger
There were some good eats on the island. But before I get to that, let’s talk about some funny stuff. So as I mentioned many blogs ago, in Thailand when they don’t have something they tell you “no have.” But in Malaysia it is “all finished.” And it goes for everything. You order something on the menu that they don’t have and they will tell you “Sorry, all finished.” You try to rent a car or moped and the place is out of them, “all finished.” And I am really having trouble deciding which one makes me smile more. Honestly, I think “No Have” vs. “All Finished” would go 12 rounds.

We stopped for lunch one day at this little Italian place along Pantai Cenang. It looked good and the food was good. But we had another milkshake episode. Margaret and I have learned to make sure and ask if the milkshakes are cold. So we notice they have milkshakes and our favorites: banana (Miss Maggie) and mango (Mr. Rich). Margaret asks our waiter if the shakes are cold and he replies “Yes, very cold!” So now we are psyched! And Margaret orders a banana shake and the waiter says “Oh sorry, all finished.” I almost can’t hold back my laughter as we have seen about a million bananas walking along the road. How can you be on a tropical island and not have bananas? I guess the 8 people working there currently doing nothing must not be able to walk five paces and get some bananas. So as I am laughing at Margaret’s misfortune I order a mango shake and of course get the same “all finished” reply. The only thing they have left is a watermelon shake. Sick. Might as well of had piping hot shakes like everywhere else. Sigh.

I mentioned how good our resort restaurant was, and there were some other pretty good places as well. One in particular was an Indian restaurant in Pantai Cenang. The food was amazing and we ordered (and ate) so much it was embarrassing. It was a really small little place and was packed. The owner was super nice, as were all the waiters. The only unfortunate thing was a group of Danish (I think) people at the table next to us who caused a stink when the place ran out of Carlsberg (I know this seems like a sin Thomas). They were so rude that the owner ended up leaving and got back a ½ an hour later with a bunch of Carlsberg. The other place was an Irish pub (can’t remember the name – it was a girl’s name – and I still have yet to be somewhere without an Irish pub) where I got my daily Guinness. One night we decided to stay there for dinner and I got the Supreme Double-Cheeseburger, which the staff assured me I couldn’t finish. They were impressed about 2 minutes after it was put in front of me. And it was a damn fine, normal, real burger. So the speed eating thing I can still do. But after about a ½ hour my stomach tried to kill me. It sucks getting old.

Cruisin’ Around Langkawi – “7151”, Cable Cars, and a 12½ Cent Mountain
So we had to rent a vehicle as we were stranded at Tanjung Sanctuary. And the resort price for a moped was ridiculous, so we took a cab to Pantai Cenang and hung out for the day and rented a car in the early evening. We were still a tad nervous of riding mopeds from the Koh Samet incident. And renting a car for 24 hours was about $12. And we got the coolest car ever – it was tiny, a stick (this means not automatic), and of course everything was basically reversed as they drive on the wrong side of the road. I dubbed it “7151” due to the license plate, and this is pretty much my favorite picture of the trip.

So when we got the car the guy told us we had enough gas to get to the nearest gas station, which he sort of gave us directions to. So it was getting dark, we were running out of gas and I had to drive a stick with my left hand (yes, I know what I just said). Interesting enough, the pedals are not reversed. And although there were a few embarrassing moments I never even came close to crashing.

Langkawi is a big and somewhat confusing island to navigate. But after a few wrong turns I pretty much had it down. One of our stops was Oriental Village, a shopping complex where the Langkawi Cable Car runs from. Oriental Village was terrible – a horrific tourist trap. But the cable car rocked. It took you to the top of Gunung Machinchang at 708 meters, and it is the steepest cable car in the world. These things make me really nervous and Margaret made fun of me for being a wuss (note that the cable cars were not running when we first got there because it was too windy). But then she freaked out as well when we were going up because it was friggin’ scary.

There were some great views atop of the mountain, and at the bridge you could walk out to. Our drive included a trip to Telaga Tujuh, a waterfall of over 100 meters and where I was able to cool off in the pools below (and above).

And of course more monkeys!

We also decided to drive up Gunung Raya, the tallest mountain (881m) on Langkawi. The LP said that there was a lookout point/teahouse on the top and that the mountain was closed to tourists some days, but that you would know because the gate at the bottom would be closed. Lucky for us the gate was open, although there was a charge of 0.50RM to pass, which is about 12½ cents. It was a windy journey up the mountain and quite weird. There were a lot of construction signs saying not to go any further, but we did as did other cars. The lookout/tea house at the top was closed and in disrepair. There were some good views though.

On the way down we noticed that the first sign telling us to go no further was at 7km (it was 13 km to the top) and that’s when it dawned at us that the guard was telling us not to go past 7km and not that it closed at 7pm. At least we think so. One other thing is that you have to go slowly up the mountain, and when you encounter monkeys on the road they don’t really move out of the way. In fact they approached 7151 pretty quickly. I got good at rolling up (yes, no power windows) the windows very fast.

Crickey! It’s a Croc Farm!
So yes we visited Crocodile Adventureland, which had an amazing number of crocs from all ages.

It was much like the one I went to in Cambodia (although that one seemed scarier and a little less safe) and the highlight had to be the feeding show. It was kind of crazy and the guy feeding them seemed way too confident. And he was, because the crocs got him!

Crocodile Adventureland even took care of mutant crocs.

And of course even after the croc feeder disaster we were able to keep smiling.

Am I Sure I Want to Post These Photos?
I really can’t believe I am going to post these photos. But since I am I have to explain. I didn’t shave for most of the vacation and on the last day back in KL, as I was shaving I decided to leave a moustache as I thought it would get some laughs. And get some laughs it did. I do have to admit that I made myself laugh so hard I nearly passed out. Well, here they are – and yes in that one I am doing my best “Ponch” imitation (although Max pointed out that it was more of a John doing Ponch imitation).

Also without thinking of the possible consequences I sent one of the pix to Max – and this is his quick workup. Be afraid. Be very afraid.