"can you ever just be whelmed?"

Ari and I also made a short trip to Pulau Langkawi (approximately 3 hours from Pulau Penang) and unfortunately, although the island had the same "chilled out" vibe, we were slightly underwhelmed by the beaches and completely overwhelmed by the intense waves and serious undertow. Basically it had me wondering how anyone could survive a tsunami.


(Note: Looking at these photos again has made it very apparent that we were/are completely spoiled by the white sand beaches and beautiful clear calm water of The Perhentian Islands. And the above statements are probably even more ridiculous compared to the quickly approaching New England winter...sorry. Sometimes, looks can be deceiving...)

So when we arrived we rented a scooter and drove around the island. Ari usually the designated driver, had me ride up and down a deserted street with him on the back...

and it would be INCREDIBLE to have a scooter in the US- do you know how much faster it would be than walking?

Anyway the map we had, boasted a black sand beach "Pantai Pasir Hitam" on the other side of the island. Sounds pretty awesome right? Sadly,

this is me giving the beach a (deserved) thumb down...

and if i wasn't holding my helmet in the other hand i would have given it two thumbs down...

we drove around for awhile before it started to rain and we headed back to Pantai Cenang (where we were staying), went swimming for about 30 mins, had some pretty good lebanese food (there's a large middle eastern community) and basically that's it...

And, those are our highlights of Pulau Langkawi. We only stayed one night and probably only had a tiny taste of the island but we were pretty excited to get back to Penang...