Window to my world: Langkawi

Showing posts with label Langkawi. Show all posts

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Legends and roundabouts

On our last day in Langkawi, we went to Taman Lagenda. It's supposed to present all the legends of Langkawi in a park. But...it wasn't really well done, and we just walked around in a rather dirty (and ugly :s ) park, wondering what we were doing there. In some places there were stones with plaques describing the legends...but they were so faded that we couldn't read the words properly. I'll just post a few of the more interesting pieces.

the entrance

the map of Langkawi

the layout of the park

not sure what this is...

Ayer Hangat

Kuah and Belanga Pecah ("gravy" and "broken bowl/urn")
Maybe that's the legend that gave Kuah town its name...but there was no information there.

And then...there were lots of other stuff but I kind of gave up on understanding the legends.

the is Garuda and Jentayu, though I've no idea what's the story behind it...

This one is quite funny...a recreation of the black sand beach (I wrote about it in this post)

There was quite a large area of the park dedicated to Mahsuri (I wrote about her tomb here)

This is Pandak Mayah's spear (Pandak Mayah is Mahsuri's father, and supposedly only his spear could kill Mahsuri...or was it his keris? Anyway, that's the legend...)

the eagle can be seen from the park

To end the Langkawi posts, here are two rather pretty roundabouts that we came across while driving around the island.

That's all folks!

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Reddish-brown eagle

Langkawi got its name from "lang", as in helang (eagle) and "kawi" which means reddish-brown in old Malay. I'm not sure what happened to the original reddish-brown eagles that gave Langkawi its name, but now there is one huge eagle on Dataran Lang (Eagle Square) to keep the myth going. :P

reaching the square

the entrance arch looks better from the other side, because of the position of the sun (it was nearing sunset when we arrived there)

view of the square

Here is the eagle from a few different angles:

Next post on Langkawi will the the last!

Friday, May 11, 2012

Of hot springs and political gifts

Time to continue on our Langkawi trip! This episode, we're visiting the hot springs. There is a gate leading into what they call Ayer Hangat Village.

the hot spring area

The water was rather dirty...I wonder why they don't clean it up a bit. There wasn't any information to be found anywhere either...maybe they're just starting to build up the place for tourists. There was someone cleaning one of the jacuzzis as we walked by, so we got to take a peek into it.

the jacuzzis (there are a lot more)

inside, there's a private pool (and a shower head too)

I can't remember the price, but it was per hour, and any number of people can go in.

the main hot spring source (the original Telaga Ayer Hangat), boarded up

little pools with roofs over them...there were several, but some weren't warm at all!

here we can soak our feet...again, there was no sign board ot anything

Now this one was really warm...especially when we put our feet in. Just touching it with our hands at first, it didn't feel so warm...

Inside the pool...is it algae?

The water's not very clean, huh...but maybe this is what contributes to the medicinal properties? :P

After that we went to the Perdana Gallery (which was on the way back to our hotel, actually). We weren't planning on going in, but it wasn't too expensive (RM5, RM3 for senior citizens, I think) so we went in to take a look. There were really too many things...all the stuff that Mahathir received during his stint as the Prime Minister. Looking at all those, I wonder...how much money was spent just to make yourself look good to other countries? :s Rather pointless...

If we wanted to bring our camera into the gallery, we needed to pay an extra RM2, so we didn't. So I only have photos of two ships in the parking lot outside the gallery.

Impressive...especially the first one.

More to come...you haven't seen the eagle yet! ;)

Monday, April 30, 2012

The scary bridge

It's time to share photos from Langkawi's Oriental Village! And that would include the cable car as well...

entrance to the Oriental Village

the lake in the middle of the village

another end of the lake

There were several bridges across the lake (because one end was like a river, actually...)

Then here's the main attraction, the cable car. There are three stations, the bottom station where we take the cable car, the middle station where we can take photos, and the top station where we can go and take a walk on the famous suspension bridge.

Oriental Village, viewed from the cable car (see the lake in the middle?)

Then from the middle station:

the top station and the suspension bridge

leaving the middle station

the suspension bridge viewed from the cable car

The suspension bridge is a little way down from the top station...to get there we have to walk along a small trail.

This is it! On the suspension bridge

It's really scary if you are scared of heights...because once you're in the middle of the bridge, it's like you're out in the open, floating in the air. Of course, it's a way to be walking in the air without magic...and that's the point of the whole thing. But I couldn't walk the whole length of the bridge...I was afraid I would get stuck in the middle, not daring to move either way. -_-

This is as far as I went...before turning around and heading back :s

At the very top, we were at an altitude of 700m, as a signboard kindly informed us. :P

In an earlier photo, we could see two round things at the top station...here they are.

one of the "round things", for lack of a better name

the other "round thing", where there was a stall selling drinks and hot dogs/burgers

the suspension bridge viewed from the top station


Telaga Tujuh (Seven Wells) We didn't go there, so this is the only photo we can get (though even if we did go there, we wouldn't get this photo. Haha...)

And to end this post...some rabbits!

There was a petting zoo (with only rabbits, if I'm not mistaken) in the Oriental Village. We didn't go in, but some of the rabbits were near the fence.