We have been in Langkawi 4 days and 3 nights but we have the feeling that 3 days would be enough to visit it. Langkawi is just 3h by boat or 45 minutes by plane from Penang, where we have been the last days (check this post). It has a more relaxed vibe and quite a lot of nature, from beautiful beaches to mountains with dusky leaf monkeys and macaques.
The perfect itinerary in 3 days in Langkawi
Day 1: Go to the Langkawi Sky bridge, the steepest cable car in the world and the Telaga Tujuh waterfalls.
You can use day 1 to visit the north west of the island. The cable car is the steepest in the world and it’s pretty impressive. When we arrived at the bottom of the cable car, we got really lucky. While we were walking there was a huge family of dusky leaf monkeys! It was so difficult to spot them in other islands during our trip, and here they were, just observing the humans from really close by. They are not aggressive and they’re really curious, checking everything with their beautiful cute eyes.Â
Moreover, while you’re going up on a ride that will take 15 minutes you have a high chance of spotting the home animal of Langkawi, the red eagle. In fact, Langkawi has its name because of the eagle.
We spotted it by luck from really close since it was flying really close to our cabin. Maybe she wanted a human snack ;)
When going up you have the possibility of stopping in the middle to enjoy the first views. They’re building one thing that’s called the eagle nest but it was not yet finished so we didn’t get to see what it was.
However, what’s really the highlight is to go further up to see the beautiful curved bridge that joins two mountain peaks. The views from the bridge are really nice, you can see the ocean from everywhere but also the beautiful mountain formations.Â
The Telaga Tujuh waterfalls are also really nice. You can go for a hike to visit them. They're just 5 minutes away from the base of the cable car by motorbike. Then you can go for a hike to visit them. Going up there are a total of about 300 stairs but at the top you can enjoy a nice waterfall with macaques as well as a natural water slide. It's actually quite fun to go down this slide.
If you are up for a further walk you can visit the blue lagoon, which is just 15 minutes walk from the water slide uphill. The blue lagoon is just a very small waterfall but if you're up for a short hike it's nice. To reach it you have to turn right when you see these red marks after the 15 minutes hike.
and then you will reach the blue lagoon
Day 2: Go to the handcrafting museum and facilities, the wild beach, the Tanjung Rhu beach and the Langkawi eagle monument
The second day, we took the motorbike to explore a bit more the east of the island. First, we went to the handcrafting museum, which is free of charge and has many different types of handcrafting: from Batik, to Ceramics, to instruments, wood carving, etc. And you also get to learn the history of handcrafting in Malaysia and in Langkawi.Â
After checking that, you can head up to the wild beach, which is in this location. The entrance is not super obvious but you can park where google maps says and then go for a walk towards the west until you find some stairs that go directly to the beach. This beach is really beautiful and full of big round rocks that populate the sands. You can see this on our drone youtube video as well.
This beach is just a 10 minutes ride to the most famous, the Tanjung Rhu beach. This one is famous but is far from the main cities, which makes it still pretty free of tourists. That’s a very long white beach with beautiful palm trees. You can see that beach at the end of the youtube video.
Finally, you can end up your day going to the famous Langkawi eagle monument, which is by the port of Langkawi and is a monument that gives sense to the name of the island and the most famous animal of the island.
Day 3: Visit the mangrove forest and enjoy the sunset at Pantai CenangÂ
You can plan a whole day for that since there are many places that you can see when you do the mangrove forest tour. For example, you get to visit the bat cave, you can also do a boat tour through the mangroves and there are even some organized tours that will pick you up at the hotel. We didn’t do this tour because we wanted to have a relax day at our hotel and beach but we heard it’s pretty nice.
Then you can end up your day with a beautiful sunset at Pantai Cenang, which is one of the most vibrant beaches of Langkawi. However, it's always quite full of people (it feels a little bit like Lloret the Mar back home)
Where to eat
We were told from people living in Penang, that they had had food poisoning in Langkawi. That’s why, we would recommend to be careful with where you eat in Langkawi. We have tried a couple of restaurants and really liked the Yasmin Syrian restaurant. The other restaurants we tried were OK and food poisoning safe but it was not special ^^
Where to stay
For staying in Langkawi, we would recommend staying close to the main beaches since there are many activities you can do around and you also get to enjoy the sunset by the beach every evening. There are many hotels that might be good around this area but our hotel was really good and we would recommend it. It was the Lot 33 Boutique Hotel. The hotel decoration is beautiful, the swimming pool is not big but beautiful and the rooms are clean and spacious. What made the hotel really nice was the staff at the reception. They were super attentive, they let us have our breakfast at their facilities and even offered some things from the buffet to accompany it. they gave us directions and recommendations on what to visit and where to rent a motorbike.
Summary
We would recommend visiting Langkawi if you’re staying close by e.g. in Penang, and want to escape for a more quiet island that offers some beaches and also a beautiful nature. However, we would not recommend staying more than a couple of days since the food was not exceptional, the color of the water is not very beautiful and the visibility underwater is between 1 and 3 meters. When we were there, Èric was considering going for a dive but even the locals said the visibility was bad these days and they would not recommend it… But they also said that in general, the visibility in Langkawi is not good…Â
If you’re up for bird watching it may be an interesting destination as well since you can see eagles and horn-bills with high probability. Also, we got to see the dusky leaf monkeys and macaques from really close by.Â
We hope you liked this post and are motivated to check Langkawi on your next trip to Malaysia.