Travel plan Malaysia - 3rd part: Langkawi and Penang

This is the third part of our journey through Malaysia. You'll find the first part of it through Borneo here and the second part where we visited Kuala Lumpur and the Perhentian Islands here
Destination: #Langkawi & #Penang
Activities: sightseeing, swimming, street art, visiting a #3Dmuseum
Time needed: 7-8 days
Budget: £550
Route:

This was a #budget trip, we were trying to spend as little as possible and from our experience Malaysia is a bit more expensive than Thailand but still very affordable.
We arrived in Perlis, the gateway to Langkawi at 6am by an overnight bus from Kuala Besut. The journey took about 7 hours, (tickets were £9 per person).
We waited for the first ferry which was scheduled for 7 am (tickets were £3.50 per person). The boat ride to the island took just over an hour.
From the port we decided to go to Pantai Cenang Beach because it sounded like an area we would enjoy, with nice beaches, budget friendly accommodation and food, a cool backpacker-ish style that we've come to love during our travels.

We didn't book a place to stay ahead of time because we arrived quite early in the morning so we wanted to choose something we liked there and then. You'll find all types of accommodation on Pantai Cenang, whether you like luxury and hot showers or budget rooms with common bathrooms. We are somewhere in the middle, not too much luxury but we like a big double bed and a working (not necessarily private) shower. We found a room here for £10/night, which was a goo deal considering it was newly built and had private bathrooms.

Pantai Cenang had a nice beach, although the water wasn't very clear. The lady at the local diving centre told us the visibility is usually only up to 4 meters we decided against diving here.

We rented a car for about £15/day and drove around the island.

Our visit to the 3D museum was great fun, we took some crazy pictures there. The entry fee was £7 per person.

We stumbled upon a couple taking wedding pictures on the beach:

We also visited the Black Beach

The Langkawi #Skybridge was my favourite

It is a 125-metre pedestrian cable-stayed bridge. The bridge deck is located 660 metres above sea level. To reach the bridge you need to take the Langkawi Cable Car to the top station, where an inclined lift called SkyGlide takes visitors from the top station to the bridge.

From Langkawi we took a ferry to Penang. The journey took 3 hours (tickets were £11/person).

In Penang we stayed in #Georgetown, Little India at Chalies Budget Hotel and we paid £20/night there.

The most popular and most fun things to do on this island is looking at street art and eating at food courts. You'll have such a huge amount of meals to choose from, you could stay there for a month and eat something different every lunch and dinner. All these tasty meals will only cost you £3-£4.

Penang is so huge and difficult to cover on your own if you are limited on time that we found the best way to discover the place is to get on the hop on-hop off buses. We bought a 48 hour ticket for £14 per person. You can also get combination tickets with entrance to a few sights included. Have a look here at what their options are.

The idea is that you can hop on and off the bus at various sights and spend as much time there as you need, until you hop on to the next bus to see another sight.
We made good use of our tickets and hopped off at Penang hill:

Penang Hill is actually a number of hills, the highest point is 833 m above sea level. The hill is a forested area. It was used as a retreat during the British colonial period.
The entry fee was £5.50 per person.
A steep cable train takes you up to the top:

It was very cloudy that day but I loved to look at all that whiteness below us

There was a hindu temple on the top

The National park is another stop of the bus and it's great for hiking and lying on the beach. There are several routes you can take, you'll get a map to follow at the entrance office. The entrance is free of charge, but you'll need to register to get in. We chose an easy trek and explored a few beaches. You'll need good shoes for this trek, flip flops won't do the job. The path going through the forest can be slippery, steep, covered in branches and tree roots.

We also visited the State Mosque in Penang. Volunteers will give you a free guided tour through the mosque, they even let us watch their evening mass prayer. We enjoyed this visit a lot and we got to learnt a lot about Islam.

From Penang we went back to Kuala Lumpur. We bought our bus tickets for this journey on easybook.com, tickets cost about £18 each.

You'll find the first part of our journey through Malaysia here:
https://steemit.com/travel/@peterveronika/travel-plan-malaysia-1st-part-malaysian-borneo

And this is the second part of our journey there:
https://steemit.com/travel/@peterveronika/travel-plan-malaysia-2nd-part-kuala-lumpur-and-the-perhentian-islands