wonders and blissful beaches
Last Updated : GMT 05:17:37
Emiratesvoice, emirates voice
Emiratesvoice, emirates voice
Last Updated : GMT 05:17:37
Emiratesvoice, emirates voice

Marvellous Malaysia

Wonders and blissful beaches

Emiratesvoice, emirates voice

Emiratesvoice, emirates voice Wonders and blissful beaches

Langkawi is an archipelago of exotic isles
Malaysia - Arabstoday

Langkawi is an archipelago of exotic isles Malaysia - Arabstoday No one recognised Charlize Theron when she booked into the Langkawi Four Seasons hotel last year. It’s that kind of place. Megastars go off-duty, recharge and escape. Langkawi, part of Malaysia, is an archipelago of steamy crags 20 miles west of the Malay peninsula in the Straits of Malacca, roughly where Malaysia joins Thailand. A community of farmers and fishermen shares it with exotic fauna, fish and birdlife. Columns of limestone soar vertically from the sea. Wildlife gives Langkawi its name, which comes from the Malay word for eagle. It’s home to southeast Asia’s first Unesco ‘geo-park’, an area of prehistoric rock formations and was where scenes from Anna And The King were shot. The human side is devoted to padi fields and meadows grazed by mud-caked buffalo whose milk produces mozzarella. ‘Langkawi is what Phuket and Bali were like 40 years ago before the concrete mixers moved in,’ one local told me (although Lafarge does have a cement factory here). Protected by the Malay peninsula to the east and Sumatra to the west, the archipelago has a tropical climate that suits year-round tourism — about 30c by day and 28c by night. An island-hopper’s tour of the region would take in Phuket in Thailand for all-night parties; Penang for exotic food and architecture; and Singapore for a throbbing metropolis. These lie within a few hundred miles of Langkawi, yet it maintains an out-of-the-way feel and has been spared the great urban biomass. ‘Five cars is a traffic jam,’ one local told me. The Four Seasons gazes northwards across the Andaman Sea towards the Thai island of Ko Terutao. Its 48-acre grounds are Langkawi’s answer to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon: acre after acre of pool, lawn, incandescent flowerbed and an arboretum of palms, frangipani, tamarind and wild mango serve as playground and larder for squirrels, monkeys and fruit bats. A pair of friendly monitor lizards and several cats take care of pest control, while 70 gardeners look after the rest. Ninety-one ‘unique accommodations’ — 68 private pavilions, 23 villas — are strung out along one mile of beach. Unlike in the Caribbean, you never feel you’ve stumbled into a catwalk show or crashed a horrific cocktail party from Surrey. It takes time to acclimatise to the beauty of the place — and with 400 staff, you will want for nothing. You could easily feed a family on the fresh fruit and nibbles that kept appearing in my villa. However, even with the beach bar cocktails and the sublime Malaysian food, keeping in shape is not a problem: there is a gym and tennis court, and the grounds are so expansive and beautiful that you can keep fit and in shape simply by cycling around the tropical gardens. About the only drawback was the hello-fatigue from the continual smiling and nodding to the  gardeners who keep this paradise looking, well, paradisiacal. The best thing about my villa is the vast beach lapped by the dolphin-filled Andaman. After dark on the verandah, I sit out in the soft, balmy night. One morning, Aidi Abdullah, resident naturalist, taks me by boat to confront the bewildering wildlife of upriver Malaysia. ‘Nature-based tourism here is almost on a par with Borneo,’ he says, navigating into a narrow channel that marks the entry to Langkawi’s mangrove — a forest caught between land and sea. With roots exposed to air and tides, the trees filter out salt from seawater. As we sail deeper, it becomes a steaming, leech-haunted, cobra-infested nightmare. Macaques — small monkeys — play on the shoreline while kites and eagles circle overhead. ‘When the trees die,’ says Abdullah, ‘they sink into the mud, taking their carbon with them. A mangrove is a carbon bank, or tomorrow’s oil well.’  

GMT 05:06 2024 Tuesday ,06 February

New hunt for flight MH370 gets under way

GMT 10:28 2018 Wednesday ,24 January

New hunt for flight MH370 gets under way

GMT 06:02 2018 Tuesday ,23 January

Europe brings on charm and blue skies

GMT 05:13 2018 Monday ,22 January

Airbus to get '10 years of visibility'

GMT 08:09 2018 Sunday ,21 January

Emirates throws Airbus A380 a lifeline

GMT 06:56 2018 Saturday ,20 January

Lebanon says foiled IS holiday attacks

GMT 05:21 2018 Friday ,19 January

Emirates announces $16 bn deal

GMT 07:23 2018 Thursday ,18 January

Philippine volcano 'fireworks' draw
Emiratesvoice, emirates voice
Emiratesvoice, emirates voice

Name *

E-mail *

Comment Title*

Comment *

: Characters Left

Mandatory *

Terms of use

Publishing Terms: Not to offend the author, or to persons or sanctities or attacking religions or divine self. And stay away from sectarian and racial incitement and insults.

I agree with the Terms of Use

Security Code*

wonders and blissful beaches wonders and blissful beaches

 



Name *

E-mail *

Comment Title*

Comment *

: Characters Left

Mandatory *

Terms of use

Publishing Terms: Not to offend the author, or to persons or sanctities or attacking religions or divine self. And stay away from sectarian and racial incitement and insults.

I agree with the Terms of Use

Security Code*

wonders and blissful beaches wonders and blissful beaches

 



GMT 09:54 2018 Wednesday ,24 January

'Friendly and kind' N. Korean skaters

GMT 09:36 2017 Thursday ,07 December

Heidy Karam’s contract to present talk show close

GMT 10:50 2012 Friday ,20 January

Dusty weather expected in UAE on Friday

GMT 09:35 2018 Saturday ,13 January

New Zealand bat first in third ODI against Pakistan

GMT 10:48 2017 Saturday ,23 December

Meryl Streep's brand under threat

GMT 06:53 2017 Thursday ,11 May

17th Doha Forum To Begin Sunday

GMT 10:30 2017 Thursday ,23 November

Reports underline proliferation of weapons in Arab world

GMT 07:46 2017 Monday ,30 October

Catch it early, treat it early and move on

GMT 08:05 2015 Tuesday ,17 February

Conan O'Brien is first late night host to film in Cuba

GMT 16:17 2018 Thursday ,30 August

Five Saudi women pilots granted GACA licences
 
 Emirates Voice Facebook,emirates voice facebook  Emirates Voice Twitter,emirates voice twitter Emirates Voice Rss,emirates voice rss  Emirates Voice Youtube,emirates voice youtube  Emirates Voice Youtube,emirates voice youtube

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©

emiratesvoieen emiratesvoiceen emiratesvoiceen emiratesvoiceen
emiratesvoice emiratesvoice emiratesvoice
emiratesvoice
بناية النخيل - رأس النبع _ خلف السفارة الفرنسية _بيروت - لبنان
emiratesvoice, Emiratesvoice, Emiratesvoice