There is one hour time difference between here and Thailand means it is light at around 7:30 am so we end up leaving around 9:30 am (or 8:30 am Thai time).

Even though the port is only 20 km away if we cycle the most direct route we decided to circle the island with a more substantial 50 km. The extra traffic on the roads still seems strange, lots of cars on the road still seems strange and no shouts of “hello” seems very strange. Time will tell if this is normal or specific to a tourist island like this.

We cycled past the airport then up one largish hill following the coast. There were several troops of monkeys along the roadside, waiting for any cyclists to expire before pouncing on them, we made it past un-pounced on.

The road then cut across the island and it got a little bit quieter here, until it reached the north coast where there was a lovely empty beach and a complete lack of anything tourist related. We followed the north coast for a while then cut back down to Kuah where we are stopping tonight.

In Kuah we easily found the Milvus Hotel when we have a small but comfortable room. After a shower we walked a couple of kilometres to the port building to double check on taking our bicycles onto the ferry, no problem at all. To get to the port building you walk through Legenda Park, with lovely ocean views, then past Dataran Lang or Eagle Square with it’s massive 12 m high statue of an eagle the island’s emblem. According to folklore Langkawi’s name came from two Malay words – ‘helang’ (eagle) and ‘kawi’ (reddish brown): hence lang-kawi.

On our way back we stopped for some food, tonight it was roti. The roti is malay for bread in this case a flatbread originating from British colonialism where many people were brought here from Tamil Nadu in India bringing their cuisine with them. The food was lovely, we are going to eat a lot of these!

The Strava route today.