Langkawi 2016

Booked only ten days in advance, the Langkawi trip didn’t need any concrete plans, most decisions were rather impromptu. Renting a car catered to our laziness as much as it made our schedule flexible. Thanks to Kamal’s phone music collection and Mukund’s awesome portable speakers, our drives were so much fun! While Satty, Kripa and I dictated the playlist, Mukund, Ranjit and Kamal kept swapping seats to satisfy their desires to drive. The video will self-narrate our travel story, I will thus write only about a particular incident that deserves a special mention here.

We all were eagerly looking forward to Kilim Geoforest mangrove tours, it was perhaps the best part of our trip; overwhelming beauty! It was indeed an unforgettable experience for more than one reason. We booked the tour through an agency de Baron, who were associated with the boat company Alif Boats. We got onto the boat which was to tour us around bat cave, fish village, mangroves, eagle spotting area etc.  We were not provided with life jackets, to begin with. The whole tour across different caves and islands was smooth; the boatman was cheerful and friendly.

On our way back in the final leg of the tour, we were moving at a high speed in the middle of Andaman Sea. The boatman sitting at the back of the boat was enjoying the sea view around with no assistant in the front to guide. I was sitting at the front, and saw a stationary boat right in the front, in a direction transverse to ours: 150-200 m away. Realizing the impending crash ahead, and a sudden a burst of flight hormones, we screamed at the top of our voices, out of fright and probably also hoping it would alert our helmsman.

Our careless boatman paying least attention and unable to act on his reflexes, could not steer the boat away in another direction. Fortunately, the guy on the stationary boat heard our screams and moved his boat away and we just got saved from what would have been a disastrous boat crash, with no land in view. We were very disappointed with how irresponsibly our boatman acted, as he still didn't care to look in the front after the accident. The impact with which the crash would have happened, all of us would have been thrown into the middle of the sea with no life jackets. It's scary to even think about those 5 seconds.

Lessons learnt? 1. Insist on life jackets if you aren't provided with one (regardless of the water depth). 2. If there isn't a assistant to guide the helmsman, always stay vigilant and don't take your boatman for granted. Look out for ALIF boats!

The boatman was fortunate to get away without any scathing remarks from our end, and a generous tip (he should have rather been given ‘tips’ for focussing! But feeling morally obligated to share this could-have-been fatal experience, I wrote a tarnishing review on TripAdvisor about ‘Alif Boats’ company. This is for people who look for reviews before booking their tours and can make an informed decision after learning this experience. That apart, the trip was great, so watch the Photostory!