AIDA Transfer Cruise 2017 · Page 7

After 3 relaxing sea days, we reached the island of Langkawi in Malaysia.

As on all the other days of the trip, the day greeted us with glorious sunshine.

Before the trip we had already booked an excursion by email with USD, run by Shimi and Steve. You book with a small deposit to a German account, and the balance is paid at the end of the excursion (in euros or by card). In Langkawi AIDAbella lay at anchor, so we had to take the tender. Unfortunately the tendering didn't go as smoothly as we would have liked, and it took us over 1 hour to get from the ship to the pier – the actual crossing by tender boat took 5 minutes. But as we had wanted to leave the ship very early and so had plenty of buffer time, we reached our excursion on time. USD was waiting right at the pier with a sign and took us to the right bus, and shortly after 10.30 a.m. we set off. Our German-speaking guide (Tom) was very easy to understand and gave us an insight into the culture and customs of the country.

Past rice fields, we reached our first stop after 30 minutes: a Malay village, where we learned the story of Mahsuri. Then on to our main destination, the SkyBridge. Past dreamlike stalls and gangs of monkeys at the roadside, the drive took 25 minutes.