Langkawi Travel Guide
Travel guide to Langkawi, Malaysia with comprehensive information about events, shopping, and major Langkawi sporting events to help you enjoy your visit more.
Langkawi Overview
Langkawi is a group of 99 islands off the north west coast of Malaysia. However there are only two of the islands inhabited, Pulau Langkawi and Pulau Tuba. The former being the primary destination.
It has developed only recently as a tourist destination, riding on the back of increased demand for "alternative" destinations and supported by government assistance in the shape of a tax free status and the upgrading of the air and sea links. This transformed Langkawi, seemingly overnight, with the tourists beating a path to this beautiful island, with beautiful white sandy beaches, dramatic mountains and deep lush foliage. A number of high quality hotels were built to cater for the visiting tourists, ensuring the whole experience was a supreme one, and so it is.
One of the good things about the tourism business still being quite new is the absence of overtly commercialised elements everywhere. It is an important part of the country's economy but they have not thrown everything at it straight away, which would have spoilt what is a gorgeous part of the world. Outside the tourist hotel areas the natural part of Langkawi is allowed to continue, with some truly spectacular mangrove forests housing the indigenous animal life and maintaining a lot of the ecological balance.
The hotels themselves tend to be pretty well self contained, providing all that people want. However it is possible to explore beyond their boundaries, with some lovely local restaurants offering a range of outstanding Malay food.
Top Langkawi Attractions
The Kilim Mangrove and Nature Park is a wonderful experience, with the opportunity to feed eagles thrown in. The park is a natural environment for the local wildlife, including monkeys, bats and rays, all of which can be seen at very close quarters in this fascinating one hundred square kilometre nature reserve.
Shopping in Langkawi
Kuah is the main place where shopping can be found, the Langkawi Fair Shopping Mall for example, with around a hundred shops in two storeys. There are also a number of other shopping malls and department stores where a great variety of goods are available, and the tax free element makes it an attractive proposition.
Langkawi Sporting Events
Water based activities are far and away the most popular here, which is no surprise considering where it is. Waterskiing and windsurfing are the favourites with visitors, and make for great excitement to contrast with the generally laid back atmosphere of the area. Diving is not prevalent here due to the cloudy water, with the only place that it is worth doing being the Pulau Payar Marine Park.
