Monday 12 March 2012

Langkawi!!! where Sri Lanka

Choosing your honeymoon destination can be a fun task for sure, but it can be challenging too.

In India, it's easy if you have a thick bank balance, but we did not hold that liberty.
Also taking in to account the fact that both of us are always hell bent on avoiding the cliches.
This trait of ours, helped us cancel out a lot of locations.

  • Kerela: We ruled it out as we thought it's place couples chose when they either are too busy or too lazy to search for other places
  • Thailand: Practically every middle class couple who wants an international honeymoon trip, ends up going to Bangkok/Pattaya/Phuket for their honeymoon, especially since every tour operator offers trips to Thailand at throw away rates.
  • Singapore: Same reasons as Thailand and also since it did not fit our pockets.

We contemplated going to Lakswadweep, but it was sort of overshooting our budget.

We had out-rightly rejected Malaysia, because till that point all we knew of Malaysia was Kuala Lumpur and the Twin Towers.(Yeah! consider us naive, lazy...)

The dream trip was approx 5 months away and we were crossing out more destinations than ticking them.
we were almost resolved to the fact that our honeymoon would be as banal as that of the thousands of other couples marrying during the same period.

It was about the same time when one of my friends had returned from Malaysia and was making us jealous by throwing a party for the same. :P
While he was going gaga over his trip, he mentioned this name Lankawi (he did not spell it and believe us we googled it with 'Lankawi' and not Langkawi).
He also mentioned that flights to KL can be quite cheap. We remember it not being a lengthy conversation but we captured few keywords that enabled us to google.

We googled Langkawi (lankawi), and saw the images on google, flickr and were quite convinced that it is scenic enough to be the destination for the most important trip of our lives.
We just checked out airfares and realised it more than fitted our pockets. (to be more specific, it was cheaper than flying to kerela).
And within moments Langkawi had more ticks than crosses.

Then we decided to ask some of our well read and well travelled friends about Langakawi.
(whether reading the best selling books and travelling to US/UK qualifies them as well read and travelled is a topic of debate for another day :P)

It was their reaction that made us sure we wanted to see Langkawi.
Most of the people we told that we were thinking of visiting Langkawi, had the following question:
Langkawi? Where is it? Sri Lanka

It was quite annoying to explain everyone that it was a cluster of 99 islands in Malaysia.
But it more than served our purpose of visiting a non cliched destination.

We were looking for a laid back place with some adventure. And I must say it did not disappoint us one bit.

And we proved ourselves correct when we boarded the flight for KL.
The flight to KL was jam packed with honeymooners and few other tourists, but the moment we boarded the flight to Langkawi, we realized only a few, like us, who had taken a pain to do some research were on board the flight to Langkawi. By the way, thanks to commercialization and competition, Langkawi has now climbed the ladder on the list of the honeymoon destinations.

Keep reading for more stories about how we picked our accommodation, travelling within Langkawi and exploring for vegetarian options in a non veg haven.

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