Malaysia: Luxury Mangrove Cruise, Langkawi

Our third and final day in Langkawi, Jewel of Kedah in the north west of Peninsular Malaysia, was quite packed. We checked out of Aseania Resort Langkawi soon after breakfast and travelled some 30 minutes to Naam Adventure office in Jalan Tanjung Rhu, not far from Four Seasons Resort Langkawi, for our morning mangrove cruise tour. If you recall, we had travelled with Naam Adventure on our first day in Langkawi when we went on a luxury sunset cruise tour with them, so most of us, if not all, were excited about this.

We were not disappointed when we saw our boats, berthed at a small jetty by the beach behind a line-up of ATVs and not far from another line of jet skis, all belonging to Naam Adventure. Each boat can accommodate up to 8 passengers but in our case, they gave a boat each to groups of 4. Our boat captain was the first lady captain in Langkawi and she’s very popular among clients, especially girl groups and couples from the Middle East as her being the captain of the boat would mean that Muslim ladies who wear hijab can take them off while travelling at sea, unlike when the boat captain is a guy.

We left the jetty not long after 10 and sped away to Gua Cherita (Cave of Legends). Langkawi is not just about the legends of Mahsuri, who cursed the island of bad luck for 7 generations, and Tasik Dayang Bunting (Lake of the Pregnant Maiden). Apparently, there are plenty more stories and legends that happened in, or originated from, Langkawi; and Gua Cherita is associated with many of them too. This includes some interesting cherita (stories, in old Malay) involving a Prince of Rome, a Princess of China and Garuda in the Battle of Big Birds; Merong Mahawangsa and Kingdom of Langkasuka; and many more. I was just awestruck to find out about this as I’d never heard of Gua Cherita before and I don’t think many others do too unless if they've previously been here.

Gua Cherita

Next, we jetted to an area where there’s a signage of “Kilim Geoforest Park” a la Hollywood Sign for some photo opp. Kilim Geoforest Park is one of the three geoforest parks in Langkawi, which collectively became the first in South East Asia region to be recognised as a Global Geopark by UNESCO back in 2007.

The recognition given by UNESCO was for their “significant geo-heritage features like landscapes, caves sea arches and sea stacks, dropstones, fossil and local community involvement”. Apparently the rocks of Kilim were formed some 490-370 million years ago. *jaw dropped*

Travelling along by water, we could easily see how beautiful and scenic this geopark really is, with dramatic and ever changing landscapes just as we turned around each corner.

On the way to Gua Kelawar (Bat Cave), we bumped into a line of fisherman’s traditional boats doing a mangrove cruise tour too, although the route might be different from ours. We saw more of them when we got to Gua Kelawar. There’s a small entrance fee to the cave (just RM3 for locals and in our case, covered in the package).

The foul smell of guano – bat’s poop 😟 – greeted us as we entered the cave. Luckily it’s just a short walk (on a boardwalk) inside the cave. Your guide would probably have a torchlight with him/her but I guess you could probably use the torchlight feature on your mobile phone as well to see hundreds, if not thousands, of bats sleeping.

As we exited the cave on the other side, we came into “Monkey Village”, a mangrove area where you’d find some monkeys just hanging around watching people watching them.

Our next stop was 'Hole in the Wall', a floating restaurant which also doubles up as a fish farm where you can see and feed some fish like grouper, cermin, kerapu harimau (tiger grouper) and even stingray. While a stop here is normally included in the mangrove cruise tour, lunch on the other hand is not part of the package. However, if you’re on a private tour like we were with Naam Adventure, you could arrange to have one here. The seafood is fresh and it’s a nice break from the sun above too. And oh yes, you should try feeding a stingray here and get your arm sucked into its toothless mouth too. That’d be a quite unique experience.

Hole in the Wall Floating Restaurant is on the left

After a quick lunch, we boarded our speedboat again and jetted towards Gua Buaya (Crocodile Cave), which you can enter only when the tide is low. Unfortunately it was high tide when we were there. We were told that the cave used to be inhabited by crocodiles but these days, just like Gua Kelawar, it’s been taken over by bats. At a certain angle however, you can see a crocodile in the rock formation near the entrance to the cave.

Gua Buaya

Afterwards, we headed to Eagle Sanctuary, and saw plenty of sea-eagles, Brahmini eagles and white belly eagles flying above, looking for food whilst some were just contented to be sitting on a mangrove tree branch, like this regal-looking Brahmini eagle. (If you’ve been to Langkawi, you could have not missed a statue of this eagle species standing proud at Dataran Lang (literally Eagle Square) as its name forms part of the name of this archipelago of 99 islands, Langkawi.)

From Eagle Sanctuary, we sped back to our starting point at Tanjung Rhu for our next destination and activity – Langkawi Cable Car. On reflection, this mangrove cruise tour is the third one I’ve been on in Malaysia (the other two being in Cherating, Pahang and Setiu, Terengganu, both on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia) and each one offers a different landscape and experience. Kilim Geoforest Park, for example, certainly has plenty of treasures to offer so I do think this is one of the activities not to be missed when you’re in Langkawi.

Further Information:

Mangrove Cruise Tour is offered by Naam Adventure, a local premier water leisure sports company that specialises in adventure and luxury tours around the island. The cost of the cruise is RM215 per person, with a minimum of 4 persons sharing/to go and maximum of 8 persons. Even if you’re just a couple, do check with them as you might be able to share the cruise with some other couples too. If you however prefer to have a private cruise instead, you can charter the whole speedboat to yourself for a similar mangrove cruise from just RM1650.

A Thank You and Disclosure Note
I was in Langkawi at the invitation of Tourism Malaysia Kedah and Firefly, a Malaysian airline that flies twice daily between Subang Airport (in the outskirt of Kuala Lumpur) and Langkawi. The sponsorship however has in no way affected my review of the places that we went to.

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