3 Days Chasing Langkawi's Wildlife. Here's What We Actually Found. 🇲🇾

There is an island off the northwest coast of Malaysia that many travellers think they understand before they arrive. It's a place that promises breathtaking views, pristine beaches and guaranteed close encounters with wildlife. And in many ways it delivers on all of that. Langkawi is genuinely beautiful, the kind of place that's hard to leave. But what many don't realise is what all of that truly costs. Thanks for watching. We decided to start where the island's story begins, in the mangroves. Okay, ready? We met our local guide, Kin, and the boat driver on the far north-eastern tip of the island. Oh, hi. Nice to meet you. I'm Kin. Nice to meet you, too. The place that we're going to visit, such like the eagle area, the monkey channels, channels yeah and then the route will get narrower and narrower. So hopefully we can see spotted wildlife animals for today. Kin is a freelancer, but today is working for Junglewala, the tour company we chose to show us around this beautiful ecosystem. I want to see the mudskipper. I think they look so funny. Yeah. Jungle Wala are one of only two operators here that are committed to sustainable and ethical tourism. So this is Tanjuru, the north-east of Langkawi. As you can see, this area is one of the beautiful areas. All of this geoforest park is estimated around 82km per square. Mostly it's covered the north east Langkawi and east side of Langkawi. So mostly here the mangrove in between the limestone formation. As we boarded the boat, we were told to prepare for a bumpy ride. So it's very important. The mangroves, it's a very good ecosystem for the sea and it's a home for faunas. And for humans, also it's very important because mangroves also, this is high oxygen area. And they absorb carbon dioxide also quite stronger than the rainforest, at least four times. And the mud, what the mud can do, it absorbs the heat, controlling the temperature. It's too hot right now, right? Without the mangroves, it would become hotter. The heat much stronger but with the mangrove when you go a little bit deeper later you can feel the temperature starting to drop a little bit you can feel quite chill the breeze feels much cooler because the mangrove do the job controlling the temperature. As we approached the entrance to the mangroves we couldn't help but think it was something straight out of a storybook. To get inside you have to pass through what locals call crocodile cave. But it's guarded by a family of long-tailed macaques. These cheeky bunch perch on rocks and branches, watching every boat with what feels like the intensity of pirates searching for treasure. When they spot an opportunity, they take it. Oh no! It's quite entertaining to watch until you understand what's really happening. This isn't natural behaviour, it's learned. For years, the tour boats have passed through here doing the same thing, feeding the animals. What tourists see as harmless fun has fundamentally changed how these macaques survive. They no longer forage as they should, they just wait here and have become dependent on the daily supply of human food which is very high in calories. This leads to excessive breeding and overpopulation, to numbers that far exceed what the island can naturally support. I mean that's why like this kind of trip it's good to go with the guide, at least they can create the awareness yeah yeah but sometimes of course. Like I said, different people come with different mindsets. Even we say that we're not encouraged, they say, why not? We pay a lot of money for this tour, so we want to feed the monkeys. So what are we going to say about it? Say no. I know. But usually we will advise them. I mean, Professionally, we will advise them not to feed the monkeys. Yeah. As we pushed further into the mangrove, we finally spotted the one animal we were most hoping to see, the mudskipper. A funny looking fish with frog-like eyes that defied its own biology by choosing to live on the land. But we were quickly pulled away when Kin spotted a rarely seen animal that most people would rather avoid. Ah, today is lucky day. We haven't seen this for days. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the short-pit viper or mangrove pit viper. So this is, let me check, it's female. So it can glide actually, it's not flying. It can glide at least one meter. So it jumps? Yeah. That is why if we go a little bit closer, we have to be careful when it's on the strike mode. If it's sleeping in the ditch, it should be fine. But now, if it wakes up, it's actually blind. It just can feel our temperature, the body temperature, the vibration of temperature. So that means if we go too close when it's on the strike mode, It can strike, followed by our body temperature. How lucky! Lucky. Lucky. As we venture deeper, Kin guides us into a section of the mangroves that only jungle wildlife tours visit. And the beauty here becomes impossible to ignore. No. So see how clean the water is? Look! Wow! It's a clean salt water. The mangroves play a vital role in the ecosystem that's far beyond what we realised. And we're sure that there is still so much more to uncover here. But for now, it's time for us to see the animal that symbolises Langkawi. We'll be right back. Brahmani kites are magnificent predators with wingspans that can reach up to one and a half metres. They are renowned for their aerial agility and keen hunting instincts. But as is with the monkeys, feeding these beautiful raptors comes with consequences. Yeah, the PD, I mean, they've been fed with chicken skin or chicken fat, yeah, because this thing float, they're not sick, so easy for the eagle to come and snatch. If too much chicken skin and chicken fat, so that means they don't receive enough protein or nutrients that they need. When they're hatching the eggs, the egg shell will crack. It's too thin because not enough protein. As we head back from the mangroves, we're already thinking about tomorrow, where we get another chance to see Langkawi's wildlife in its natural habitat. Machinchang Cambrian Geoforest Park is said to be a vibrant ecosystem spanning 10,000 acres and the perfect place for nature enthusiasts like ourselves. This area is the best place to be able to see the giant hornbills and that is one of the animals on our bucket list to see whilst we're here. See them banana beaks. After seeing how tourism is impacting the wildlife in the mangroves, we were keen to experience Langkawi's nature in a much less scripted setting. One of our favourite things about hiking through the jungle is the unique challenge and experience it brings. It's an environment we truly know very little about. And that comes with not only the excitement of chance encounters but also a slight sense of danger. Oh the butterflies! That's a monkey. There, he's a macaque. We've been hearing so many animals in the trees but have yet to clearly see anything. We saw a few glimpses of some macaques but we're still on the lookout for those giant hornbills. I really hope we see one. However with the mountain peak drawing closer and the midday heat fast approaching we knew our chances were becoming very slim. You see typically the larger animals are most active early morning when it's cooler and hang out closer to the base of the mountain. So as we hit the rope section we decided to shift our focus onto the push for the summit which holds the promise of stunning views. We'd heard of many people giving up at this point and turning around. And I have to admit, we started off very confident that this would be a walk in the park for us. After all, the trail is only five kilometres, but the heat and humidity here is relentless. This is not technically difficult, but definitely physically difficult. It's tiring. The view is worth it. Tropical rainforests are places where life thrives, but unfortunately this time we didn't get to see the wildlife we were hoping for. We think it's because we started a little too late in the day. So if you're going to give this trail a try yourself, we definitely recommend coming here for sunrises. All right, let's get ourselves back down to the bottom. Whilst we left here a little disappointed, we were still hopeful to encounter something special with what we have planned for the very next day. After missing the hornbills in the jungle, we were hoping an island tour might give us another chance at spotting some of Langkawi's incredible wildlife. With 99 islands to explore, surely we'd encounter something special. So we booked again with Junglewalla and met with Mashi, our local guide for a private tour around these beautiful islands. And our first destination was Pregnant Maiden Lake, which got its name not only from the unique shape of the surrounding mountains, but from a local legend of a princess who once suffered an unfortunate miscarriage. So she put the baby somewhere in the water at the lake over there and bless the water with the power of, if you swim over there, you can get pregnant. Pregnant Maiden Lake is a freshwater lake separated from the ocean by just 10 meters of land. It collapsed and then became a big basin here. But beyond this unique geology and the stories, there honestly isn't much else here besides some restricted swimming and an out-of-place party atmosphere. It's fair. So we quickly moved on to our second stop to see the eagles and kites again, but this time Mashi explained how feeding these birds actually impacts our health. Because the tourists are feeding the birds, that means that less snakes get eaten, which means that there's more snakes in the rice fields, which means that the food gets poisoned. Yes, yes, the farmer has to use the... poison, the pesticide to kill the snakes, to kill the rats, the mice. So it will affect the rice and that will be a big problem for us because we eat rice every day. It's important for you to do not disturb their ecosystem here. It's nice to see the eagles and the kites but they're supposed to be in their own habitat in their own wild. That would be nicer than the eagle feeding here. And I would say maybe if they keep eating the chicken skin like every day, maybe after this, maybe the next 20-30 years we might not see them anymore. They're all gone. Thank you, Mashi. Leaving the eagles behind, Mashi took us to one final stop, a quiet beach that only jungle wala visit. We've been told not to expect any snorkeling this time of year due to low visibility, so when the coral started appearing beneath us it felt like a little bonus we hadn't planned for. Wow yeah, oh beautiful. I feel like I'm gonna fall off any second. Help me. It was a genuinely lovely way to end the tour, but if we're being honest we still hadn't ticked everything off our list and one encounter in particular was still playing on our minds. And as luck would have it when we sat down for a final evening meal we were gifted with the sight of two hornbills flying off into the sunset and we wish we could have caught it on camera. I know this sounds impossible to believe because it's the type of ending you only hear about in storybooks, but for us that's the whole allure of the natural world. is not here to perform for us and seeing it in an unobtrusive way makes every encounter and fleeting moment so much more special.