We woke up, enjoyed a quick breakfast of banana and chocolate crunchies and left the Rainbow Lodge behind. We used the WiFi to order a Grab taxi and applied a discount code we picked up from a billboard at the airport. It all went through OK and about 2 mins later our driver arrived.
A nice relaxing, relatively long taxi journey later and we were in Kuah. We were dropped off at the ferry terminal and bought a ticket from the booth behind KFC. We had some time to kill so went to see the symbol of Langkawi, a huge eagle, on the quayside. There was a quaint garden to walk through but we decided we wouldn't have time to explore much of it. Instead we headed back to the ferry and away from the flag following groups from the cruise ships.
The ferry to Kuala Kedar was smooth and pretty fast. When we disembarked we were in Malaysia, well it was certainly a thousand miles away from what we experienced on Langkawi. Local people, local shops, local buses!
We walked to the end of the terminal and waited for the bus to Alor Setar. We didn't need to wait long and the white bus whisked us off to the main bus station. We were going to buy a ticket there for tomorrow's journey to Penang.
We got our ticket, had a chicken rice dinner before walking along fairly main roads to the Bee Motel. The journey was fairly dull, just traffic and tarmac. We checked in, left again and went off exploring.
Just a street away from where we are staying are food markets, not just one but lots! We resisted and went to see the main attraction, the Zahir Mosque. Not many people stop in Alor Setar but that's good for us. When we arrived at the Mosque, we were welcomed, lent some extra items of clothes to cover up and taken on a free tour by a super friendly man.
The building is beautiful and we learned a little about it and about Islam. There were some enormous doors with special features representing the 5 pillars of Islam, the 6 beliefs of Islam and the 17 prayers (well it is not actually prayers but relates to the 5 prayers a day).
There was a stunning ceiling, pretty stain glass windows and we had a fantastic time exploring with our guide.
Next stop was China Town. We passed a dragon boat practicing on the river and stopped at Cafe Diem, which won the 2019 heritage building award. It was really quite pretty. China Town = FOOD! We sat and ate very tasty roast duck at a small cafe before heading back to our hotel for a short rest and an aircon fix.
In our room the curtains had fallen off the rail and we couldn't reach to get them back on. We asked one of the hotel workers to help, assuming he would fetch something to stand on, but no. He opened the window of our room on the 3rd floor and climbed up onto the window ledge. Half hanging out of the window and very nearly falling out of the window, he managed some how to get the curtain hooks back on the rail. Tense moments for us and we were just watching!
In the evening we went for a walk to view the major attractions by night, all lit up. The Mosque, Clock Tower and Drum Tower all looked great. We then sat and watched the local people at the fountain, which was also lit up with dancing water. A very peaceful setting to spend the evening.
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