Langkawi: Island hopping trip to Dayang Bunting Island and Beras Basah Island

Langkawi Islands is made out of a total of 99 islands. Sounds like quite a lot for me. The main island is of course the Langkawi Island where a population of more than 45,000 lived in, the rest smaller islands are scattered around the main island.

Langkawi got macam-macam islands

Great islands come great boats

With so many beautiful islands around it, I don’t want to miss it so I decided to go on the island hopping trip offered by the hotel where I stayed.

The boat took off from a small fishing village nearby the hotel and headed straight towards one of the famous island in Langkawi, the Dayang Bunting Island. The island is the second largest island of the Langkawi Islands and it’s a 15 minutes boat ride away.

The island gets its name from an old time legend that surrounds the freshwater lake called Dayang Bunting Lake. The lake waters are said to possess magical powers that will enable women to bear children if they drink it. So if you girls don’t want to get knocked up after a Langkawi trip, here’s a leongyiyang.blogspot.com top tip of the day: Don’t drink the Dayang Bunting Lake water.

The legend about the magical lake water came from the shape of the island’s mountains. If seen from far away, the Dayang Bunting Island looks like a pregnant woman. For me the shape is not exactly a pregnant woman because it’s quite weird.

When I arrived at the island I had to climb up a small mountain before I reached the legendary lake. The way up and down the mountains was challenging, first of all the stairs were steep, everyone had to climb like hell, secondly we had to beware of monkey attacks because the monkeys there will attack anyone with plastic bags as they think that there’ll be foods inside.

If the monkeys weren't attacking you, they were scratching each other's back

The lake is between circles of mountains. It was tranquil before the whole bunch of visitors including me arrived. There’s a protected swimming area for the visitors to swim and to go for a paddle boat ride.

I decided to go for the paddle boat ride. There were 2 kinds of paddle boat, the traditional one and the solar powered one. As a lazy person I chose the solar powered one, when I sat inside the boat I was impressed at how the technology of paddle boats went. Powered by a solar panel on the roof, the boat gets 6 forward gears and 3 reverse gears.

3 reverse gears… even our magnificent Proton cars have only 1 reverse gear.

If you think that the boat can go fast because of so many gears then you are wrong. The boat was as slow as 5km/h and sometimes I even had to paddle it for extra speed.

I don't think not many people will want to drink it

When I was paddling around the lake I found out that the lake water was dark green and can’t even see the bottom of the lake. Plus with so many people swimming around, I think that if a woman drinks the lake water, she’ll get a stomach ache instead of getting pregnant.

When my time limit for paddle boat was up, I came ashore to return the boat and found there were people gathering around near the swimming pool area. Out of curiosity I went to sam pat to see what’s going on.


When I got there I got to know that there were free foot massages. Not human foot massage but those fish foot massage where you put your smelly legs into the water and some small fishes will suck on your feet dead skins. Some say it can help improve blood circulation or help you to extend your life to another 1,000 years. This has become a big business for some people as more and more fish massage centers opened in the cities.

I wanted to try it out myself to see what the hype is all about so I put my super smelly feet into the lake. Some fishes came and “kissed” on my feet, the feeling was at first “geli”, after a while I actually quite enjoy the massage. However, a minute later all the fishes went away to other people’s feet, maybe my feet were too smelly for the fishes.

Apa tengok-tengok?!

Just when I wanted to take out my feet from the water I felt something weird. I looked down and found something scary. A big ikan keli was “kissing” my feet, the feeling was as comfortable as the other small fishes but appearance do matter for things like this, a weird looking ikan keli cannot compare with those cute little fishes, so I decided to take off before more ikan kelis come.

Next destination of the island hopping trip was the Beras Basah Island.


I don’t know why it was named Beras Basah which means “wet rice” in Malay, but I guess maybe the sands there were as white as rice and were wet because of the sea water, so they named it Beras Basah Island.

Sounds like a stupid assumption.



But the fact that the sands there were as white as cooked rice isn’t an overstatement. When the boat reached the dock of Beras Basah Island I couldn’t wait but to run towards the beach. When I ran until I reached the sea, I realized that I forgot to bring my swimming trunks, so I went back to the beach miserably with a half-wet khaki pants.


See how I am attracted to nice beach.


It was hard to see other people swimming happily in the crystal clear sea water and I just watched by the beach.

Damn, I missed one of the best swimming places in Langkawi Islands just because I forgot to bring my swimming trunks.

I never knew that a simple swimming trunks can make my travel in Langkawi so miserable… If I got the chance to travel to Langkawi again I will definitely bring my swimming trunks wherever I go.