On one of my many visits to Butterworth, I asked my Ma who is 80 years old, if she had any places she wanted to visit. While raising three of us, a chance never came up where she could have gone for a local holiday. I returned to Kuala Lumpur, made flight reservations through Air Asia and booked the chalet at Labu Labi in Langkawi end of July 2019. My daughter and I drove up to Penang on Friday morning and spent the night at Ma’s house. The next day, all four of us (me, my brother, my daughter and Ma) got a grab car and reached the Penang airport. We went early although our flight was at 3 pm. We requested for a wheelchair for Ma who has a bit of trouble walking long distance. Having had lunch at the airport, we watched flights coming in and taking off as Penang airport is quite a small one. Our turn came to board the flight, but there was no lift for Ma’s wheelchair to go up, so we had to assist her climb up the stairs at the tarmac. She was breathless and looked worried. Even though there are flights every hour of the day, the flight was full. It was about 45 minutes later that we touched at Langkawi airport. This time the crew was very good, they had a lift ready for Ma, so she did not have to walk till the taxi stand.
The drive to Labu Labi took us half an hour but it was refreshing. We saw kampung houses along the way, thick forests and view of laid-back life. Once we reached the chalet, we put our things and went to walk on the beach. It led us to a nice cosy restaurant at the far end, Scarborough where we had drinks and some food. We bought back fried rice for Ma who was trying to rest. The sea was welcoming, we wasted no time in diving in. It had been a while since we had a great time like this. Later in the evening, we walked down the road and bought nice kampung food (nasi ayam, mee hoon, mee goreng) and all of us ate in the room while all of us talked. A storm was building outside and the sea looked rough. We watched a bit of television and again bonded for a while and suddenly all fell asleep. I think the day had taken a toll on us.
The next morning after nasi lemak and ‘teh tarik’, we got a grab and headed to see Burung Helang (Langkawi got its name from it). Ma wanted to see this as she had always watched on television, so we somehow made her walk towards it. The view was catching, so we took some pictures here. We walked back to the stalls at the front, had an ice-cream and went to have Chinese lunch. After relaxing for a while, we then went to see Mahsuri’s tomb. Here we spent some time looking at old kampung houses, washed our faces from Mahsuri’s well. We read about Mahsuri and why she cursed Langkawi from the exhibition room. Ma seemed tired, so we went back to the chalet. We rested for a bit and got ready for dinner. This time we tried the Chenang beach but it was crowded with locals and foreigners. I thought to myself, we were lucky we had booked far away from the crowd so we could relax and enjoy the sea. We had Hydrabadi beriani which was so spicy as we kept drinking fruit juice but the naan bread and tandoori was good. We did a little bit of shopping across the lane, bought snacks and returned to our chalet.
It was our final day at Langkawi, we ran to the water, took more pictures outside our chalet. We packed our things and left for town. Friends had told us that chocolates were sold tax free, so we bought lots of chocolates, some to give to colleagues and some for ourselves. We spent some time here for lunch talking to the koay teow seller as we still had time before our flight. We reached the airport, got some coffee, looked around at the shops and checked in. Ma was calm, she knew what to expect and she was going home. She was happy, she had seen what she wanted to and this was special to her.
Our grab driver on our way home was mute but my brother and this guy could communicate. My brother knew some basic sign language and the guy used some easy gestures so they seemed to be getting on really well. The traffic on the bridge was heavy and it took us an hour and half to reach home but the guy told so many stories that we did not feel the time.
