I had a summer holiday last week and travelled to Langkawi island in Malaysia.
Langkawi Island is located near the border with Thailand and is about two thirds as large as Awaji Island in Japan. This island is still blessed with untouched nature comparing to Bali island or Phuket probably because little progress has been made in the development of the area. It was a southern paradise which was pretty much localized in a good way to make us relaxed.
Main Means of Transportation is Motorcycle. Various Rental Motorcycles for Sight-seeing are Available
The island does not have any train system so means of transportation for islanders are mainly motorcycles or cars. The number of cars has been increased comparing to few years ago, but many people still use motorcycles as main means of transportation.
Mainstream of the motorcycles seen in Langkawi are underbones or high wheel scooters with around 150cc displacement. Japanese made are very popular because of their performance and reliability, but are bit too expensive for them. I also saw several Chinese, Korean, and Malaysian bikes which Japanese riders are not familiar with.
You can find rental motorcycle shops all around and you can rent a motorcycle for about 1500 JPY per day. They are very popular among tourists. These service was used especially by western people. They were riding around with sunburnt skin (don’t know why but often they are half naked). By the way, they insisted it is too hot to ride bicycles! lol
Sports Models Becoming More Popular in Malaysia
I talked to local friends and they told me more people in the island now want to own sport models, so it is not that unusual to see big motorcycles in Langkawi. In fact, I saw some BMW, KTM, KAWASAKI, and Honda’s liter sport models rode away in the city center.
Also, the roads are now well-maintained along with the resort development. If you are a little away from the city, you will see nice winding roads which can be seen in Hakone area in Japan. A lot of local people in the area love motorcycles and they have some motorcycle clubs to join.
Some young riders got together near the port, and had a heated conversation about bikes. That reminded me the same scene which could be seen years ago at Honmoku pier, in Yokohama Japan! lol
There are quite a few female riders too. Malaysia is basically an Islamic country so most of ladies are wearing something like riding hood called “burka” (most of them are showing their faces. Not that strict!). I saw two girls in burkas are enjoying two-up riding while chatting to each other. That was such a heartwarming moment.
I felt that it is like lively motorcycle market with full of youth overlaps with Asia’s remarkable growth.
Necessity of Improving Traffic Manner is a Common Issue in Asia
On the other hand, recently, the number of traffic accident has been increasing in association with the traffic volume and high-performance vehicles.
If you observe the traffic in the city you will find that wrong-way riding and ignoring stop signs are nothing out of the ordinary. Some riders take way too much wide right/left turns at an intersection. It is noticeable that there are a lot of rough and aggress riders around.
It has been required by the regulation to wear a helmet since few years ago. I also heard that police has been reinforcing cracking down on speeding. Those days are now gone when everybody was riding freely without any worries, and now it is time to enforce the traffic rules and to improve everybody’s traffic manner.
This might make you feel like they are running so behind, but it was the same here in Japan around 20 years ago. We did not think any thing when we saw riders without helmets or going wrong way on a one way-street. We were “here” not that long time ago.
Getting back to what I was saying, it was so nice to see there are so may young people there in Langkawi who love motorcycles and have passion for big, fast and cool bikes. I was just simply feeling great about it!