Before visiting Langkawi, I knew I wanted to do the Sky Cab and I’d read that Tanjung Rhu was a beautiful beach. But when our taxi driver insisted that we must do the Mangroves – I had no idea whether he was trying to sell it to us or whether it was genuinely unmissable. I later learnt that he was super genuine and just wanted us to have a good time – it was such an incredible experience!
Firstly Tanjung Rhu beach was idyllic – like heaven on earth. White sands, turquoise sea, islands shooting out from the waters. They provided such heart stopping views. The sea was so inviting after the hot sand was burning my feet – but what a welcome paradise. The best bitof this beach – is for such a lovely, day; there was hardly anyone there!
In the carpark of Tanjung Rhu, there’s some little desks where you can book your mangrove tour. We just booked an hour one but I believe you can book a 4 hour one too. It was very well priced and we had our own boat, with our own driver and on we hopped. We drove round past the magnificent islands and headed round the corner, we stopped at a little hut in the water to pick up some food. Ahead of us was a boat that was stopped with eagles swarming over it – as we got a little closer, our driver threw our bread out and the eagles were above us. I can honestly say have never seen that many eagles that close at one time, it was amazing!
After a few moments of enjoyment, we kept going and got to the real mangroves – heading down the river with all of the beautiful lush trees either side, rock cliffs ahead of us and peace and serenity. Then we spotted them – monkeys! Everywhere – all in the trees, hanging off, running around! I believe this was my first time seeing monkeys in the wild and so close up ( I saw them from the bus in Penang but much further away). They were so cute! We carried on going to ‘the crocodile caves’… now I couldn’t work out whether he was joking and there were no crocodiles or whether it was literally home to the crocodiles… we shall see!
As I had crocodiles on my mind – I looked over at the water in front and shouted ‘crocodile’… quite a skinny one at that… so skinny, that it was a snake rapidly skimming through the water. At that point I was VERY glad I was in the safety of the boat, but of course another experience to add to the list!
After an awe-inspiring journey, we eventually reached the caves and a rush of relief (and slight disappointment nonetheless) when i realised the crocodile caves just have that name but don’t actually inhabit crocodiles (or not that we saw anyway). But it was very cool to go into the caves and we saw some big bats flying around in there, we stayed a short while for a photo stop and to admire the cave (apparently when the water is more shallow you can boat through the cave and get to the other side, however when we went it was quite high).
We turned around and enjoyed the incredible views on the way back, no worse or less breathtaking than the way there.
We eventually reached the beach and it was sunbathing time! It is honestly one of the best beaches I have ever been to and so refreshingly uncrowded it really was pure paradise…
Thank you for the BEST time! This is a real gem of Malaysia and I can’t wait to come back.
