Category Archives: Malaysia

Dayang Bunting Marble Geoforest

Photo Morsels goes jet skiing to bring you this post featuring Langkawi’s Dayang Bunting Marble Geoforest.

Prior posts have introduced Langkawi and visited the Machinchang Cambrian Geoforest and Kilim Karst Geoforest Parks. These parks along with Dayang Bunting Marble Geoforest make up the three three major geopark sites on Langkawi.

Dayang Bunting Marble Geoforest is a collection of islands on the southern side of Langkawi and a popular day-tripping location by long boat. For the more adventurous, the area can also visited by guided jet ski tours which is what my family elected to do. We shared two jet skis between the four of us and set off with four other riders (also sharing two jet skis) plus our guide, a young Thai lad who, we discovered, had spent several years living in Melbourne, Australia before returning to Asia.

First up, I’ll quickly recycle a photos from the Gunung Machinchang post which shows off the general Dayang Bunting area.

This view from Gunung Machinchang’s summit overlooks the island of Dayang Bunting together with surrounding smaller islands. Dayang Bunting is the largest of the islands on the horizon slightly to the right of centre.

Departure point for the jet ski tour is Langkawi’s most popular beach, Pantai Cenang. I wasn’t ready for my near new dSLR to disappear into the Andaman Sea, so for this trip, the Pentax gear was left back at the hotel and my smaller Samsung NX 1000 camera with its 30mm F2 prime lens was pressed into service.

Ready for action, Datang Bunting jet ski Tour

On Pantai Cenang, kitted out and ready for action. No need to run the gauntlet of a naval blockage to head out to sea as the ‘U-boat’ on the horizon is a low rocky island that delivers a surprisingly realistic impression of a lurking submarine.

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Kilim Karst Geoforest

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Photo Morsels continues its exploration of Langkawi with a visit to the Kilim Karst Geoforest.

Prior posts have introduced Langkawi and noted its declaration as a UNESCO Geopark in recognition of the island’s relatively unspoilt environment and unique geological features.

Langkawi contains three major geopark areas and a number of smaller sites. The previous post visited the Machinchang Cambrian Geoforest Park. This post turns its attention to the Kilim Karst Geoforest at the opposite end of Langkawi Island to Machinchang.

To quickly summarise the Kilim Karst Geoforest, it is a network of mangrove waterways that takes its name from the Kilim River, one of three rivers in the area and from the geological term ‘karst’ which is used to describe landscapes formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, dolomite or gypsum. It is this karst topography that makes the area quite special. Words can’t really do the beauty of this area justice, so let’s just get on with the photos.

Our boat trip started at Tanjung Rhu where there’s quite a flotilla of long boats waiting to service the tourist trade.

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Gunung Machinchang

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Gunung Machinchang? What’s that you say?

Well, to cut straight through the suspense, Gunung Machinchang is a mountain peak and the dominant feature of the western end of Langkawi island. It is also the subject of this second post in a photo series featuring images from a recent holiday to Malaysia.

Destination for the first week away was Langkawi which is located on Malaysia’s west coast just inside the border with Thailand. Langkawi’s tourism has been developed around its largely unspoilt natural beauty and the island has declared itself as a UNESCO Geopark, ensuring it’s development is guided by consideration for the environment and its unique geological features.

Within Langkawi, there are three major geopark areas and a number of smaller sites. One of the major parks is the Machinchang Cambrian Geoforest Park. The park protects a geologically significant area, with the sandstone rocks that form Gunung Machinchang and the adjacent peaks representing some of the earliest land to form in the region we now know as South East Asia. The sandstones date back to the Cambrian period some 500 million years ago and were originally part of the margins of the Gondwanaland super-continent.

Langkawi folklore however ascribes the presence of Gunung Machinchang to a fight between two giants. Mid-fight, both were struck by lightning and turned into stone. One of the giants became Gunung Machinchang and the other Gunung Raya, the other significant peak on the island. Gunung, by the way, means mountain in Malay.

Park visitors can access Gunung Machinchang’s peak via a cable car that rises from near sea level all the way up to Gunung Machinchang’s 708 metre (2323 feet) peak. Built around the cable car’s base station is a tourist village area called Oriental Village which incorporates a cluster of buildings incorporating Malaysian and Oriental architecture styles. I’ll save images of that for a later post.

So, onto the cable car ride up to Gunung Machinchang.

For my first photo, I conveniently found a car coming around the base station’s turning wheel decorated with quite a pretty advertisement for Langkawi rather than one of the not so interesting ones for a local bank.

Readers of my previous post should recognise the bird featured on the front of the cable car. Quick memory test: what was it called again?

The cable cars look to be exactly the same models as used on Mt Titlus in Switzerland. I found this somewhat reassuring having previously undertaken a cable car ride up and down Mt Titlus!

If you happen to visit Langkawi and plan to use the cable car, please note that it is closed on certain days for scheduled maintenance. These days are advertised on the cable car’s website. Continue reading →

Malaysia Holidays

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Hello all, and welcome to a new photo series featuring images taken on a recent holiday to Malaysia.

In this post, I’ll provide a quick overview of the trip’s itinerary so you’ll have some idea of where Photo Morsels will be taking you over the next few weeks.

The primary destination was the island of Langkawi. Located on the western side of Malaysia just below the border with Thailand, Langkawi sits more or less midway between the Malaysian island of Penang to the south and Phuket to the north in Thailand. It’s main attractions are three geoparks that feature the island’s distinctive geological features and natural beauty. For the active, Langkawi has some nice beaches for indulging in all the usual water sports. But overall, Langkawi is much more low key compared to some of the well known South East Asian island locations like Bali or Phuket, which is fine by me.

After a week on Langkawi, several days were spent in Kuala Lumpur, and to finish, a quick stopover back in Australia at Darwin before returning home.

All up, two weeks away.

That’s plenty of time (too much time?) to take photos, and the primary reason I’ve been a bit quiet on Photo Morsels the past couple of months. I found myself with roughly 1,300 photos to sort through, process, edit and then try to select the best for sharing on Photo Morsels and elsewhere. And I discovered there is a downside to improving as a photographer – the throw-away rate has dropped noticeably. This meant more images were worthy of putting some effort into than would have been the case for equivalent numbers of photos on prior travels. I’m happy to report that the task is now complete, so let the posts commence!

This is a photo blog, so I can’t let a post slide out without at least a few photos, so for this introductory post I’ll cover the trip from Adelaide to Langkawi.

Adelaide Airport and an inspection of my ride for the first leg from Adelaide through to Kuala Lumpur. A nice shiny new A330 (registration 9M-MTO for the plane spotter) painted out with the One World logo to advertise Malaysian Airlines’ recent joining of, you might be surprised to learn, the One World alliance. My flight was just a few weeks after the disappearance of MH370, so I found myself during the flight with a somewhat heightened interest in watching known features go past…

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