When we arrived at our Airbnb, we mentioned to our hosts that we wanted to visit Kilim Geoforest Park. The park is a natural area made up of mangrove rivers and is home to lots of wildlife, including bats and sea eagles. They suggested we take a private tour with someone they knew called Apit. We were able to book an early morning tour with him, arriving at 9am. The great thing about booking a private tour was that we had the boat all to ourselves. Also, we were able to set off before the main tours arrived, which meant the park was much quieter and we could enjoy the scenery without the crowds.

^{Waiting to set off on our boat tour.}

We all had to wear life jackets as we sailed out of the river and into the sea. As we travelled along the coast of Langkawi, it was incredibly bumpy as we went over the waves — we literally had to hold on to the boat at times! I was trying to take lots of photos and videos and I had to really hold on to my phone as was worried I would drop it. We also had a great view of Thailand to our left. We hadn’t realised just how close we were to Thailand, so it was pretty cool to see it in the distance.

After about 10 minutes we made it to the Mangrove River and saw the Kilim Geoforest Park sign.

^{Sailing along the coast of Langkawi}

We sailed a little way up the river and our first stop was the bat caves. I think we were the first arrivals of the day and we had the entire place to ourselves. As we got off the boat we walked along a raised platform to the reception hut and there were a few monkeys watching us. As we walked past them they would jump towards you and it was quite scary!

We were then given torches and entered the caves. The caves were really dark and the roof was covered in bats which you could only really see when shining the light at them. We were only inside for about 10 minutes but we really enjoyed the bat cave.

^{Inside the bat cave.}

Our next stop was the fish farm, which to be honest – we weren’t that impressed with. There were a few fish in tanks and we saw a sting ray but that was about it.

We then sailed along the mangrove rivers and spotted lots of wildlife on the muddy banks. We saw crabs, lizards and loads of monkeys. We also passed quite a few tour boats and they were absolutely packed so we were very happy with our private tour!

^{Views from our boat}

Our final destination was a lake where we could watch the sea eagles. Another tour boat was feeding them pieces of chicken so we spent quite a long time watching them dive down to the water for the food. We loved the tour and it was definitely our highlight of Langkawi.

It was still the morning so Stu wanted to visit the town of Kuah to see the eagle statue. On route we stopped at a viewing point for some photos with the ‘I Love Langkawi’ sign. We then had a quick Starbucks before heading home to chill in the pool for the afternoon.

^{A little bit of sightseeing!}

We had reservations at ‘The Cliff’ for tea which Izzy had found on TikTok. We expected it to be really busy but it was so quiet. However the food was really good and we were able to watch the sunset!

^{‘The Cliff’ restaurant.}

^{Sunset from ‘The Cliff’}

After tea we went for a walk along the beach to watch the fire dancers and then into the town to see the Transformers dancing to ‘Gangnam Style’ together with a crazy panda!

^{Our entertainment for the evening!}

We then headed home as we had an early flight to Kuala Lumpur the following morning.