Langkawi trip

last week my wife's cousin came back from the US and so the entire family (my wife's parents, siblings, cousin, uncle & aunts, nephew & nieces) all went for a holiday at Langkawi

We stayed at the Sunset Beach Resort, which is a nice little boutique resort on Pantai Cenang, on the west coast of the island. Squeezing everyone in a Toyota Hiace van proved a bit of a challenge (11 adults and 3 kids) but we managed to putter around with that.

The resort was a nice quiet place that had a clientele of mainly western tourists, some of which stayed there for weeks or even months. That is, quiet until our family descended on the place (true to their Hakka origins). I hope none of the other guests were too put off by our presence. The rooms were basic, having an air-conditioner, hot water shower, a mini-fridge and a tv (although ours was spoilt, we didn't really care as we don't watch much tv anyway). No shower screen to prevent the rest of the bathroom from getting wet.

Breakfast at the resort was basic but okay. It consisted of fruits and toast (both unlimited), and 2 eggs with half a sausage (yes, I know, half a sausage is rather pathetic). Sunset Beach Resort has access right to the beach, and the breakfast place is right next to the beach, so it's nice to have breakfast while watching the waves crash on the beach.

The beach itself is ok. Being Langkawi, there's the odd occasional alcohol bottle strewn about but other than that, it's relatively cleaner than most other Malaysian beaches (which isn't saying much, most other places are cleaner than Malaysian beaches). We had fun hanging around in the water and waiting for the waves to come crashing in and jumping with the waves. The downside was that the water was quite sandy and everyone would get sand in their swimming costumes.

Food, as expected, was expensive and the first few meals were disasters. The first meal which was a lunch in Kuah town cost us over RM300 and didn't have anything much, and wasn't very good either. Dinner which was down the road from the resort wasn't much better, and by the second day some of us were really fed up with Chinese food (although, some of the older ones only ate Chinese food, and the kids were extremely unadventurous and picky). We managed to celebrate Father's Day on the second day when we went to another restaurant which was also managed by the Sun Group, which was called Sunvillage Grill (adjoining Matahari Malay Restaurant). The funny thing was that only 3 people ordered stuff from the grill, whereas most people ordered food from Matahari (since they're managed by the same company, they allowed cross-ordering). I ordered the surf & turf, craving for a nice steak. What came was okay but quite a disappointment. The steak came all chopped up and probably griddle fried, teppanyaki style. The shrimp was okay but the potato salad that came with the meal was rather good. The Malay food there was pretty good as well, and came in abundant portions. By the end, nobody was able to move.

We also went adventuring and ended up at Sun Cafe (also by the Sun Group) which served international food. We had desserts there two nights out of three and they were good. Chilled lemon mousse cake and crepe suzette were good there. Second night we went back there to have the same things again.

On the third day, since it was more of a free and easy day, some of us younger folk went to adventure further and went to L'osteria, an Italian restaurant nearby. The pizzas and pastas there were pretty yummy! Although the pizza bianca (with smoked salmon and rocket lettuce) was an acquired taste.

We went to Underwater world as well and it wasn't really as good as previous years, mainly due to the fish poisoning case last year, I guess they hadn't restocked everything yet. It was quite unpleasant as well with many Malaysian kids running around and screaming their heads off. Can't Malaysian parents just take care of their kids and not let them scream all the time? Kids littering, banging on the display glasses (and stressing the fish) and worse, the adults were doing it too! And using flash photography! Are these people actually educated or did they just buy their way through school?

Dinner on that last night was some decent Chinese food (finally!) with some really huge mantis prawns! Although it cost about RM420.

One final note, this was the only time I actually semi-enjoyed flying with Air Asia. The reason being that normally Air Asia flights are overly crowded and without any seat assignments, everything goes chaotic when it's time to board the plane.