View from Mary’s beach-set villa #6

Part of a weekly series featuring luxury hotel expert Mary Gostelow’s hotel pick of the week.

Langkawi, generally referring to one 185 square-mile island off Malaysia’s Andaman Sea coast, is in fact an archipelago of anything between 99 and 104 islands (can’t they count? you might ask – no, when the tide goes out, what were two islands at high tide is now one island at low tide).

Four Seasons Langkawi, on Langkawi island’s north-east coast, is a mere 15 minutes’ from the airport (fly in from Kuala Lumpur or Singapore). In 2007, Prince al-Walweed saw the 90-room resort, on 90 acres flanked by white sand and jungle and bought the whole thing, and paid out yet more to upgrade it to Four Seasons status. Stay in one of the 20 beach villas, with indoor and outdoor bathrooms and 20-foot private pools.

Aerial view of the mangrove forest

Use your black city bike, personalized for safety, to explore the campus with its fun kids’ club, adult-only and family pools. And the sensational spa: reach your treatment villa via an elevated walkway formed of old rail track sleepers. Visit the nature conservancy centre, and sign up for a two-hour mangrove safari.

Mary with GM Andrew Harrison, exploring the mangrove forest.

You are within minutes from the UNESCO-heritage Kilim Karst Geoforest that dates back millions of years. Aidi Abdullah, top naturalist at the resort, is an amazing guide. Set off in a near-silent motorized pinas boat. In 90 minutes, we passed only one other load of tourists and a moored boat with three extremely mature locals fishing. Our skipper had eyes like a hawk. He spotted vipers sleeping, coiled around narrow tree branches and shielded by leaves. He saw a Macaque monkey, atop a tree and supposedly on guard for the rest of his commune playing in the undergrowth but in reality, sucking a leaf thoughtfully. There are 15 different mangroves here, said Aidi Abdullah, showing how the rhizophora grow seeds that sprout down vertically, like arrows: after about 2.5 months an arrow falls off, plunges to the bottom of the water and immediately grows as a separate tree. And then it was back ‘home’, for a much-needed G&T.

An Macaque monkey seen out by our guide Aidi Abdullah.

Read out last week’s Hotel of the Week here.