The lake

We rose to another hot and sunny day that began with a 10-minute dinghy ride to a jetty already swarming with tourists shuttled by longtail boats from Langkawi (Malaysia). The attraction was the 10-hectare freshwater lake on Pulau Dayang Bunting, the largest freshwater lake and the second largest island of the Langkawi archipelago.

It was a short walk from the jetty, up an incline, through a draw in the cliffs, then down some 100 steps to the rafts on the lake - along the route were many monkeys, some with adorable new infants! Signs at the lake indicated Lifejackets Must Be Worn which seemed strange to us having spent so much time swimming without such things and even au natural. Was it that many visitors don't know how to swim?

However after diving into the cool blue water, we realized right away that the freshwater, compared to seawater, made us much less buoyant and required some definite expense of energy to simply stay afloat.

Freshwater for a change

After swimming, we walked the boardwalk nature trail along the lake shore to a spot called the Miracle Border where we could see the ocean at a level some 12 m (40 feet) below separated by only a thin ridge of rock.

We diverted our return to our Sea Turtle to explore a cluster of smaller islands. There we spotted a cute romp of otters hanging out beneath a cut in the limestone formations with just their curious heads peering out at us. Above the otters, we admired the grey limestone cliffs textured with hanging gardens of streaming 30-metre (100-foot) long vines, palms, and bushes interspersed with weeping limestone stalagmites. We again dinghied right inside a couple of caves carved out by ions of erosion.

Dinghy spelunking

We left later in the day to return to Singa Besar for a relaxing evening.

Another day done