Langkawi island is a “tropical paradise” of mangrove swamps and tourism and like other parts of Malaysia it is a developing area. Here’s the pretty view out from the ship.
We didn’t see much of the tourism side of the island but we did spend the day in a geopark where we learned about the mangroves. The ride out there was almost an hour so we saw a wide variety of homes and businesses just as we did in Indonesia.
Be sure to note the pile of watermelons under the tarp. Most of the eating establishments were closed because it is Ramadan but since those who are fasting can break the fast after sunset the food markets are still in business.
The traffic was light, the roads were good and the cars were of all types and ages.
When we got out to the mangrove area we saw more than mangroves, of course. Monkeys are usually too fast to photograph but this one was content to sit on the electric wires and eat.
Near the bat caves we saw “walking fish” which can live out of water for some time and, of course, the bats inside which do a good job of eating mosquitoes each evening so that we didn’t see a one.
Those black specks are the bats! The limestone cave was interesting in that the guides didn’t seem to be concerned at all about people touching the formations. How different from our country where in some caves you even have to wear booties to protect the floor. At the entrance to the cave some of the roots from trees up above have grown down through the ceiling and have been covered with the lime leaching out of the ceiling.
Outside the caves the trees clinging to the side of the very vertical rock wall were, if possible, even more impressive than the ones we have in AZ. And the bark and the lichen on some of them was beautiful — to me at least!
But what we came here for was the mangroves. They have about a hundred varieties here and we saw the very different fruit of a couple of kinds; not that anyone except the monkeys eat it. The roots stand out of the water at low tide and under water when it’s high at which time they “clean” the water, according to the guides, but it’s not clear to me what the process is and the clean water that they pointed to didn’t look very clean to me although it was cleaner than most water we’ve seen lately.
The boat ride took us through lovely scenery and at one point we enjoyed watching two different kinds of eagles fishing all around us.
I think the eagles got a better, cleaner meal than the diners who ordered the fish grown at the local restaurant / fish farm that we visited next.
As I said, Malaysia is a developing country.
I loved the view from your ship!