Tour de malaysia - Day 4 KL

Reached KL Sentral (the railway station of malaysian capital) by morning ...
Headed to our hotel which was in the heart of the city .. the name of the place was 'Serai Inn' .. regular bed and breakfast types place to cater to budget tourists .. the place was fully booked , luckily we had booked online. we checked in .. since there was 8 of us we had taken thr 8 bed dormintory which was damn cheap .. even by indian standards !
Then we headed for local sight seeing .. roamed around the city a bit .. most of the prominent landmarks were near from our hotel ... then headed to Batu caves

they are pretty old (4.5 million yrs acc to wikipedia) .. apparently the temple was built by a local businessman some 150 yrs back and its a famous shrine with a huge number of pilgrims visiting every year .. its got a pretty imposing Murugan statue about 150 feet tall!
there is a steep climb up to temple which is in a cave , there are about 300 steps !

we wanted to watch the qualifiers of the Race - which btw was the main reason of Malaysia trip !

so headed back by bus to KL and reached KL sentral station and found buses for as less as Rm 10 (about Rs.120) for a trip to Sepang track which was near the Airport .. it was really far away about 50 Km .. but the roads were fantastic and on the way we saw townships of CyberJaya and Putrajaya (new administative capital) getting constructed .. they are superbly planned and executed on a mammoth scale and will come up in a few years

The atmosphere at Sepang international circuit was like tht of a carnival with people from different nationalities , supporting different teams decked up in diff colors , waving flags of their nations / teams .. the Ferrari flag was most prominent and red attire was the most common one ... there were stalls put up by the teams selling official merchandise
Lot of buying/reselling of tickets were also happening unofficially outside ticket counter and was being carried out by Europeans not locals !
There was a huge European crowd , but lot of support for the local team one which local company Petronas was sponsoring ... it was called Sauber Petronas earlier .. now its just BMW Sauber .. but after Ferrari the local team had maxmim fans .. then came McLaren ... with a huge number of people sporting Hamilton caps ... then finally a sizeable contigent was decked in blue cheering for Alonso and Renault team !
we had hillside stand and since it was qualifiers the place was not fully packed ... we settled down and eagerly waited for cars to begin practice laps before qualifiers start ... the pure joy from live action .. seeing the Formula one car coming roaring in and pass right infront of your eye is somethiign which has to be experienced and no words can do justice to the sheer delight in this experience ... from where we were sitting we could view a straight sectiona and 2 corners ... the whole atmosphere and the sound of the cars made it an unbelievable experience ... the feel of the track is something u never get while watching it on TV
In the evening we went to Petronas towers , the building was simply brilliant with lights at night ... same for KL tower .. but petronas towers was something else
Finally headed to Chinatown and after roaming around quite a bit managed to locate a shop which sold F1 T-shirts cheap ... since there were frequent raids the guy took us to backside of the shop and displayed the merchandise and packed it and asked us not to open it till we were out of the place ! we were getting it for 10% of the price of Original T-shirts and they looked the same !!!

Tour De Malaysia - day 3 langkawi

We decided to go on 'island hopping' tour , there were lot of private boats which were available , since we were a group of 8 we got a boat of our own - (Refer pics) strapped on the life jackets and embraced ourselves for a heck of ride through seas !

We were taken to a couple of islands after 30 min high speed journey through the sea ... waters were relatively placid still since the boat was an open one and with the winds blowing fine spray of water against faces it was good fun ride ..

We docked at the first island whose name totally escapes me ! the place was supposed to be famous for watersports n stuff ... unfortunately we went on a local holiday and all the shops were closed.

Then we headed to another island after another 10 min ride through sea ... this one was another smallish island but had a freshwater lake in it !!!
the lake was on top of a small hill ... there were lot of monkeys all over tht place .. after trekking up the hill we reached the lake .. boating facilities were there .. u cud rent a canoe or pedal boat and go across the lake
Once tht was done we moved out of the island after 5 mins we reached a point between a set of uninhabited islands ... this was the place for 'eagle feeding' ... ppl toss food in tht place and eagles come in great numbers , swoop in and grab a bite !

after watching it for 10 mins we headed back to the main island .. the whole trip took about 3 hrs
By now we were running out of time .. there were lot more stuff to explore like the Bridge where the Hindi movie 'Don' was shot and a waterfall and couple of places like an island which had a marine park and another one famous for scuba diving ... since we were running out of time we drove around a bit ... had food and returned our rental cars and hung out near Eagle park and took the Ferry back to mainland Malaysia , from where we had to catch an evening train back to Kuala lampur

Tour De Malaysia - day 2 - Langkawi

We had planned to reach Langkawi through train and ferry instead of flying direct(which on hindsight was a better option ! ) Train was till a place called Alor Setor (they called it something like 'alor star' ) , we reached Alor Setor at 8:30 in the morning with a slight delay of 30 min , which was pretty common in Malaysia as a fellow traveller informed us. "Our Railways aren't as efficient as the Indian Railways" he added leaving us shocked , proud and at some level amused also !

We had to take a 15 min taxi ride to the ferry terminal at a place called .... There was a ferry every 30 min or so , but breakfast was a problem for us finding veg food anywhere in southeast Asia is a harrowing experience. But this was a small town and we had given up hope of finding food when we stumbled upon a 7-eleven store and managed to find cheese sandwiches ( thts about the only food vegetarians can get at that place as even ready to eat noodles are all non-veg)
We caught the ferry at 10:30 am and the boat ride went slightly below expectations for me. I had really looked forward to this 45 minute ride over sea as it would be the longest sea cruise for me.
we were seated inside the boat and the seating was just like a bus/flight and through the closed glass windows u look at the sea outside. Not being able to feel the sea breeze/smell the air was a dissapointment. However it was great looking outside and seeing just water all around and the sea was pretty placid and the journey was very pleasant.

We reached Langkawi islands at 11:45 , situated on Andaman sea Langkawi is an archipelago of about 100 islands mostly small ones and a few big ones , the main one biggest of the lot is called Pulau Langkawi ( i know it sounds like a food item for us ! ) and is reachable through sea and has an airport. The island dotted with trees is a proper desktop wallpaper material. A prominent landmark near the boat jetty is the big Eagle statue. Langkawi means land of Eagles.

We had booked rooms in a place called Eagle Bay resort , which was pretty close to Eagle square We had done booking over internet and rooms were just like the pics we saw online , good comfortable rooms and easy on our pocket also.
The first task after checking into the hotel and freshening up was to find a good restaurant which served Veg food.We talked to the hotel staff and got directions to an Indian restarant nearby.

There is no public transport on the island , cabs were available but werent tht cheap. The best way too move around on the sufficiently big island town was to hire cabs/bikes. Since it was very sunny and rains are always a possiblity in tropics we decided to get a car for 4 of us.All we needed to show was a valid license (even Indian one wud do !) and pay a deposit of 100 Ringgit (Rs.1100) and we took the car on rent for a day ; We took a Hyundai Accent and had to shell out just 70 for one day. We were given a map of the island , there sign boards at most places , the
roads were very good. The map however wasnt tht easy to follow as the locals had warned. But there are only 3-4 main roads in the island its not really possible however hard u try to get lost on the island. After 3-4 wrong turns we managed to locate an Indian eatery. It turned out to be a South Indian one much to delight of many of us(6 out of 8 guys in our touring party were from South India) It was our first Indian meal in 2 days and hence seemed to be pretty good despite the fact tht it was a low end restaurant. There was a Pakistani food joint also in the vicinity. We headed to the gas station next and filled the car with petrol. It was a Petronas outlet and was a self serivce one , the cost for 1 litre of Petrol in malaysia then was just Rs.18 for 1 litre when it cost more than Rs.50 in India !

We saw the list of attractions in the island and their location on the map and decided to tackle the White sand beach and black sand beach first as it was already late afternoon (3:30 pm ) . Both of these were located near each other on the North eastern side of the island and we were on the South east side. The whole strech of road was wonderful with trees and vegetation on either side we reached the entrance to White sand beach where public entry was from one end of the beach and the majority of the beachfront was occupied by a Star hotel/resort full of foreigners. The beach was almost empty but for tourists from the hotel facing the beach. There were a few shops selling trinkets and Tshirts outside the entrance to beach , but no local or hawker was present anywhere on the beach. A few small islands were visible and a few them seemed very close by from the beautiful white sand beach. We saw a group of European tourists wading theough the somewhat placid sea towards an island some half a kilometer into the sea and decided to follow the suit. Tht was one the best experiences on langkawi the walk to the island through sea with water at waist/chest level most of the time and occasionally reaching neck level( I didnt know swimming ) . So it was an exciting trip walking to the island through bluish green water.

Around 6 pm much against our wishes we decided to move out of the beach and head to the blacksand beach which was just a few minutes drive from there. But the few minutes drive became a really long one as we got lost and kept missing the entrance to the beach repeatedly and only when we drove extremely slowly we managed to find the beach. It was somewhat secluded and there was nothing around the place to suggest it had such a beautiful beach. There was absolutely nothing there no vehicles. people or shops selling touristy stuff etc.
Unfortunately sun was setting and the there was lovely pier and a lot of fishing boats on one corner of the beach and the other side had gigantic rocks and was simply beautiful. After clicking a few pics in the fading light we moved to their Pier and had a look at boats , there was a fishing community near the boats and there were a few houses with local fishermen.
After a quick shower to get the seawater and beach sand out of our bodies we headed towards Pantai Cenang Beach which was the more commercial beach supposed to teem with people and shops. This was supposed to be a popular hangout spot for all tourists and was supposed to provide best in shopping and food. After finishing our dinner we made up plans for 'Island Hopping' tour next morning