The beach strip road is long and is a bit scruffy and very smelly as the open drains run the whole length under the pavement with vents every few metres. It's a real bucket and spade area with shops, stalls, Langkawi Underwater World and Duty Free Malls. Some Europeans, but lots of local families and unlike Thailand, not a Mc Donald's or Burger King in sight. And of course, not a girly bar anywhere, and the signs for any bars are muted, with no extravagent Happy Hour offers. It's quite interesting, Kedah, the state in which Langkawi is situated is a conservative one, for example, their weekend is the Muslim Thursday/Friday, whereas other more liberal states here keep to the Western Sat/Sun weekend. All of the local girls wear scarves covering their hair. Yet it is a Duty Free area with huge stores selling cheap booze, cigarettes and chocolate and a tourist hotspot welcoming people from all over the world. The pool at the hotel has a notice about correct bathing attire, not for Westerners, who as long as you are not topless anything goes, but for locals with pictures of what cover ups are acceptable. The people I have come across so far are perfectly friendly and polite, but there is a certain reserve, especially having just come from Thailand.
Pantai Cenang beach itself is a long curved bay, very wide with the finest white sand I have ever seen. It's really powdery, like white concrete dust, or perhaps a more romantic description would be talcum powder! This means it compacts very easily so nearer the shoreline it feels very solid and much easier to walk on than most others. But enough of admiring the view, time for a why why, so I repair to the Beach House Bar and Restaurant looking out over the sea. I get chatting to Shannon, a refugee from Canada's cold winter and she regales me with stories of her travels which I enjoyed. She was on a visa run from Thailand and was bemoaning the lack of cheap accomodation, she is staying in some strange little place for about £20 a night, using ferries and trains rather than planes, so I did feel a bit of a fraud in the backpacker department, my street cred took a bit of a dive....
I had walked about five miles to get there and wander about in total, so felt ok getting a taxi back. The one downside to Langkawi is that there is no public transport, it's either taxis or hire a car or a motorbike. I miss the Thai Seongthaws. And why of all the taxis cruising along do I have to pick the one that is about to break down.... It's pitch dark on the road over the headland and we struggle up like a bucking bronco, but luckily we are able to cruise down the hill so I get back in one piece. I did feel sorry for the poor driver, he kept apologising, I just hope he managed to get back home.
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