Langkawi

The islands were known to sailors and to Kedah's sultans long before they were settled in any numbers, and their name is usually explained through the words for eagle and reddish-brown. Kedah, one of the oldest Malay sultanates, ruled them, and the archipelago sat on a hard frontier: Siamese forces raided and occupied the coast repeatedly, and in 1821 the island's settlements were burned during a Siamese attack. The best-known story of the period is that of Mahsuri, a woman executed on a charge of adultery who, in the legend, cursed Langkawi for seven generations — a curse locals say expired only in the 20th century.

For most of the colonial period and the first decades of independence Langkawi was a poor rural district of fishermen, rubber smallholders and rice farmers, with a small town at Kuah and very few visitors. The change came in 1986, when the government of the prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, himself a Kedah man, set out to turn the island into a resort destination; duty-free status followed, and with it shops, hotels and visitors.

An airport, a ferry terminal, roads and resorts followed quickly. The cable car up Machinchang opened in 2003, and in 2007 UNESCO designated the archipelago a Global Geopark, recognising rock formations among the oldest in the region. Tourism now dominates the local economy, and the arguments on the island concern development on the coasts, water supply and how much building the forest and mangroves can absorb.

Langkawi is a Malay island in a conservative state, and beneath the resorts it remains a place of kampungs, mosques and rice fields. Village life follows the Islamic calendar: Friday prayers empty the shops around midday, Ramadan brings bazaars selling food for the evening meal, and Hari Raya open houses fill the kampungs with visiting relatives. Malay is the everyday language, spoken in the northern dialect shared with Kedah and Perlis, and English is widely understood in the tourist areas.

Legends are unusually present here and are part of how the island explains itself. Mahsuri's story, the Lake of the Pregnant Maiden, the field of burnt rice at Padang Matsirat, and two giants said to have quarrelled and flung pots and gravy across the landscape all attach to specific places that visitors are taken to see. The geopark has added a second layer of storytelling, about cliffs and caves as geological time.

Traditional crafts and trades survive in a modest way — batik workshops, boatyards, fish farms in the mangrove channels and eagle-feeding trips that have themselves become controversial among conservationists. Away from Pantai Cenang, where the dress code is loose and bars stay open late, visitors are expected to behave as they would anywhere in rural Malaysia: modest clothing, no public drinking, and politeness towards elders.

About 100,000 people live in the Langkawi district, most of them Malay, with smaller Chinese and Indian communities concentrated in Kuah. Kuah is the administrative and commercial centre, with the district offices, schools, the hospital, banks and the big duty-free stores; the rest of the population is spread through villages across the flat interior and along the coasts.

The economy runs on tourism, and has done since the late 1980s: hotels, boat operators, taxi drivers, guides, restaurants and duty-free retail employ a large share of working islanders. Fishing and aquaculture continue around Kuala Teriang and the eastern channels, rice is still grown in the middle of the island, and government offices and the airport provide steady jobs. The reliance on visitors makes the island sensitive to anything that stops them arriving.

Daily rhythms are early. Fishing boats go out before dawn and markets open soon after; the middle of the day is hot and quiet; and the evening brings the night market to whichever village has it that day, along with families walking the Kuah waterfront. Water supply in dry years, traffic on the Cenang strip at peak season, and the cost of housing for workers are the issues that come up locally.

Langkawi's cooking is northern Malay, close to that of Kedah and Perlis and noticeably influenced by southern Thailand. Laksa Kedah, noodles of rice flour in a thick gravy of poached fish, is the regional dish. Nasi campur — rice with a choice of curries, fried fish, vegetables and sambal from a spread of trays — is the standard working lunch, and roti canai with dhal or curry is the standard breakfast.

Seafood is the obvious strength. Squid, prawns, crab and whole fish are grilled over charcoal or cooked in sweet-and-sour, chilli or tamarind sauces at open-air restaurants along the beach roads and on the Kuah waterfront. Ikan bakar, fish wrapped in banana leaf and grilled with a sambal paste, is a local staple, and dried and salted fish from the island's own boats is sold in the markets.

The night markets are the cheapest and most interesting eating: satay, grilled chicken, murtabak, curry puffs, apam balik pancakes, cut fruit and pitchers of sugarcane juice and iced teh tarik. Mango, durian, rambutan and the fragrant Perlis harumanis mango appear in season. Duty-free status also means alcohol and chocolate cost far less here than on the mainland, which is why islanders and visitors alike shop in Kuah before leaving.