Imagine our surprise when we ended up at Pusat Bandar. Pekan Rabu was never reflected on our maps nor my GPS and I finally realised it was the name of a building opposite the bus stop. That bus stop was like an informal interchange though and we got onto another bus which only left after the driver and conductor had their breakfast. When the bus finally left, we soon found ourselves at a petrol station where the bus refilled and the driver took a toilet break. Great. We reached our destination at around 10am, an incredible 2 hours to cover a distance of not more than 12km (from our hotel to the ferry terminal). Nonetheless, the bus ride from Pekan Rabu cost only RM1.50.
We caught the 10.30am ferry and arrived slightly after noon. Settling our return ticket, we then rented a Perodua Kancil for RM50 and headed out of the vicinity. Inexperienced me suddenly realized we were almost out of fuel and had to drop by at a petrol kiosk. I wasn’t even very sure of where we were headed but finally, we found ourselves at the Seven Wells Waterfall where we had lunch. It started to rain and Dad definitely preferred the comfort of the car rather then hiking up to the waterfall hence we took a drive to the Langkawi Waterfall. We gave the crocodile farm a miss though but stopped by at the Black Sand Beach (Pantai Pasir Hitam).
By then, we were running low on fuel but I figured it was enough for a drive up Gunung Raya. The mountain (881m) had a pretty scenic 23km winding road up and it was as if I was taking practical lessons on driving up the mountain with a manual transmission vehicle. It was pretty cooling up there but the sun was setting and the scenery was blocked by mist. Interestingly, one of the slopes was so steep that our small Kancil couldn’t cope on second gear. The car then started rolling back. Fortunately there were no vehicles on the desolated road! Intense pressure on the gas at first gear got us inching up the slope again.
Driving down was also pretty fun but I had to be rather careful around the tight and narrow corners. We ran into a very heavy storm and with limited visibility, driving past 80km/h on a narrow single carriageway didn’t seem like a great idea. We refueled at a petrol kiosk near Padang Lalang before heading to Jetty Kilim. It was like a resort built around a river. We headed back to Kuah Town.
We stopped by Eagle Square for some photo-taking but the weather was wet and visibility poor. Returning the vehicle, we hung around the ferry terminal but there was nothing much interesting that could hold our attention. KFC sounded like a good idea but the service was so slow that we gave up our place in the queue and rushed to the ferry.
The 7.30pm ferry finally pulled into Kuala Kedah at 9pm. I spent the whole time on the boat watching The Hurt Locker. At Kuala Kedah, the taxi drivers claimed that there was no bus. Yeah right. They wanted RM20 for a ride back and refused to back down past RM18. We found two other tourists who had bargained to RM15 but the driver refused to take four people. It was funny to watch the other guys rejecting the drivers outright, saying it was a rip-off. Anyway, the bus came and we were more than happy to board.
Dinner was great. We had curry chicken noodles (RM3) which were among the best I have ever tasted. Next was satay, 10 sticks for RM4, but Pak Halim gave us 11. The same thing had actually happened on Penang and I wonder why. Perhaps to keep customers loyal? The satay tasted better than the one we had on Penang. We also had a Chinese bun which was just simply enormous that the two of us were almost too filled to finish, before retiring to our room for the night.
Money spent: RM266
Participants: LSH, Dad
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