Thursday, November 11, 2010

Day 3 in Langkawi on 5 November 2010 (Temurun Waterfall)

The Datai gave us a late checkout on the last day of our stay there which gave us only a couple of hours in the evening before dinner to visit an attraction in Langkawi.

So we decided to make a stop at Temurun Waterfalls. Temurun Waterfalls is allegedly (that is what 1 of the signboards there says but I'm not too sure about the truth of that) the highest man-made waterfall in Asia and is located along the road to the Datai, about a 15min drive from Taman Buaya in the direction of the Datai Bay.

There is a relatively small parking area (for about 5 cars max) near the entrance to the waterfall but one would do well to keep the doors of one's cars securely locked, and the windows wound tightly because of the fearless monkeys around! If one minds having monkey prints over one's windscreen or having to shoo a bold monkey off one's car, then it is worth the trouble of parking on the opposite side of the road instead (near the wooden hut in the pic below).

As I said, there are loads of monkeys at the Datai Area. Within mins of walking along the trail to the waterfall, we were treated to a display of monkey business per the pic below.

There were various signboards in English around the attraction, like the one below. 1 of them claimed that the water had healing properties...but this is strongly doubt given the lack of pp queuing to bathe in or take home bottles of water from the falls.

One must be warned that the path up to the waterfall can be treacherous and one would do well to hold tight to the handrails. The steps are uneven, high and haphazardly placed. It is certainly not advisable for the very young, very old or those carrying infants to navigate the steps up the the highest point which is where the yellow hut is in the pic below. And there is even less reason for one to climb those steps if one is into taking photos because the magnificence of the watefall is best viewed from its base as per my pic taken below.

However if one insists, and one is bent on having a dip at the very base of the waterfall, then one would be treated to a view similar to that in my picture below. One should also note the treacherous steps I'd talked about on the right of the picture.

There were surprisingly few tourists at the waterfalls - only one group of 3 actually who had a local friend so I would think this attraction is one of those that should only be visited if one has absolutely nothing else to do in Langkawi.

No comments: