By STEVE PAYNE -- The Toronto Sun
Steve Payne greeted by Aunti "Tom" at her rural home in Langkawi.
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LANGKAWI, Malaysia -- She's affectionately known as Auntie Tom. An 85-year-old twice widowed soul who lives alone in a wooden, ramshackle house.
Macik Tom, her real name, shuffles uncomplainingly from room to room, home to garden, as tourists stand awkwardly by with their cameras.
Dodging the chickens, Tom happily shows how she grinds betel nuts for food and rolls her own cigarettes for pleasure.
Her kitchen is a hodgepodge of pots and pans and her bedding is piled up messily in the corner. There's running water and hydro, but the toilet is an outhouse in the tangled, jungle garden.
Tom, who wouldn't live any other way, is now firmly entrenched on the tourist route in this island paradise that may soon rival Bali for its beaches and tranquility. Tom gets paid for her willingness to entertain foreigners and give them an insight as to the old ways of living.
On the way to visiting Tom, I'd spent 10 minutes rescuing a young calf in a nearby field. The animal's lead rope was hopelessly caught in a bush and the calf's mother was getting frantic at her offspring's predicament.
The rescue reopened a wound on my leg - I smashed it on a bedpost on Survivor Island. My guide, Abbas, grabbed a local leaf, rubbed it into a sticky green balm and put it on the cut.
"This will stop the bleeding and help it heal," he said.
He was right.
Langkawi, on the west coast of peninsula Malaysia, opposite Thailand, has 104 islands at low tide, 99 at high. Only three islands are inhabited, the main one being significant for several magnificent beachside resorts such as Pelangi.
Pelangi Beach Resort in Langkawi.
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Trips to uninhabited islands, including overnight stays in wood cabins, can also be arranged.
The main island is duty free, 25 by 30 kms and has a population of 64,000, only 22,000 of whom were born there.
Development has really only taken place in the last 12 years, a fact shrouded in mystery. The plot concerns Makam Mahsuri, who was wrongly accused of adultery and, according to legend, bled white blood at her execution.
With her last words she cursed the island, saying it would be barren for seven generations - 175 years.
That period ended at the same time serious tourism development began.
Mahsuri's tomb is another attraction. Her relatives though, have long since moved to Thailand.
Langkawi boasts a number of legends, including a freshwater lake where childless couples come to drink the water in the hopes of having offspring. It's said that a couple who had been married 19 years without having children set that legend in motion. The woman apparently saw the lake in a dream, came to its shore to drink and became pregnant soon after.
There are other landmarks here, a giant Eagle, erected at the cost of millions to overlook a harbour.
Nearby there is a massive hotel that lies empty, the expected tourist guests never materializing. The reason is simple. Visitors prefer the beach.
The Pelangi resort offers good reason why.
Feeding the monkeys in Langkawi.
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Sprawled along several kms of sand overlooking the South China Sea, its tranquility is the stuff dreams are made of. At 6 a.m., jogging along the beach, the sun just coming up, the traffic jams on the Gardiner Expressway are as far away as the Moon.
Had I been lucky enough to arrive here as a 19 or 20-year-old, odds are I would never have left.
It's cheap enough to live.
The locals rarely cook at home because the price of food from roadside vendors is so low. For less than $1 you can eat yourself silly and for just a few dollars more you can visit restaurants like The Fantasy Hot Wok.
Owner Alan Yang even takes time out to usher you into the kitchen, where staff demonstrate the art of making fried ice cream.
Yang knows a marketing ploy when he sees it, selling souvenir golf shirts. Later, at the Taipei airport in Taiwan, at least five travellers were spotted wearing them.
I was one.
For more information contact:
LTI Tours, 416 962 9661
Malaysian Tourism 1 888 689 6872
Malaysian Airlines 416 925 6670