Happy Wanderers

February 13, 2019 - Langkawi, Malaysia - Wednesday, Day 38

Our scheduled arrival into Langkawi was later 8:00 AM. We were right on time after cruising past small islands on our way to this larger island on the west coast of Malaysia at its northern end. Our tour was not scheduled to depart until 9:45 so we had a leisurely breakfast in the dining room.

St 9:15 we went to the meeting point for our tour. Because everyone had checked in they called for our departure at 9;30. This was an unusual but welcomed early start. We boarded the coach for the ride to our first stop. This was the Silver Eagle Square in the heart of the city 45 minutes from the port. This is home to a very large statue of a bald eagle. There are many eagles here and this tribute to them is very impressive. The square is surrounded by offices selling very tickets and tours. Once past them you enter a large duty free mall. We enjoyed the walk around the statue before the temperature reached its 95 degree high. The gentle breeze was refreshing.

Back on the coach we drove another 30 minus to the Craft and Cultural Center. After quickly touring the tool and wedding museums we found ourselves in a large gallery of shops featuring locally made products. With the limited time allowed we focused on batik fabrics, men’s shirts and women’s blouses and wraps. This batik is much nicer than some we saw in Indonesia because it is almost all hand painted. The difficulty is that in being so original it is also very muted.

There was also a gallery featuring local hand woven fabrics. These were beautiful and quite expensive. We spoke to the gentleman whose shop creates the weavings. He was giving a 50% off deal for Chinese New Year. Even at that, these were premium priced pieces. After a visit that was too short to do justice to the many vendors here, we boarded the coach.

Now we were headed back toward the port, but our objective was Underwater World. This is a large aquarium. It feature African penguins and Rock Hopper penguins in its collection. They were the big draw, but the exhibit of fish, corals and other sea life was very impressive. We had 2 hours to spend in the aquarium and shopping the nearby mall and street stalls. We spent an hour and a half inside before heading to the shops.

The mall was another large duty free extravaganza. Prices seemed pretty good, but the products were primarily chocolate and liquor. You can’t bring booze back to the ship, and we were not interested in buying chocolate imported from Belgium and Switzerland. We headed out to the street. We were very close to a beach so the vendors sold mostly beachwear. Their other goods were cheap foreign made imports. We returned to the ship without buying anything.