Legenda Park, Langkawi

Legenda Park, or Taman Lagenda in Malay, is located near Kuah Jetty on the island of Langkawi in Malaysia.

The 50 hectare Legenda Park is dedicated to the legends of the island of Langkawi, with views of Kuah Bay and the famous Langkawi Eagle Sculpture.

About Legenda Park

Legenda Park was opened in 1996 originally as an attraction which you needed to pay a fee to visit. Unfortunately, over the last 20 plus years Legenda Park has decayed due to an obvious lack of maintenance and now admission is free.

Legenda Park is not the most interesting attraction on Langkawi but it’s still well worth spending an hour visiting and its closeness to Kuah Jetty, the main passenger ferry terminal for the island, means it is somewhere you might have time to visit whilst you are waiting for the next ferry to depart. Aside from the sculptures and buildings at the park, about which discuss more below, the park is a pleasant place with plants, trees, shaded walkways, views of Kuah bay and places to sit and relax. Legenda Park is a great space of which a lot more could be made.

The first attraction is located at the entrance to the park which is a wall with a map of Langkawi and the surrounding islands.

Legenda Park has sculptures and themed gardens retelling the many folk stories which are part of the local culture. One of those stories is the tale of the Lake of the Pregnant Maiden. The legend is that a heavenly Princess came to earth to bathe in the lake and a young Prince who saw her fell in love and unsuccessfully tried to win her heart. The unsuccessful Prince sought the help of a local shaman who advised him that the way to make the Princess fall in love with him was to rub her face with mermaid tears. In order to procure mermaid tears the Prince lured a mermaid into the lake with a golden ball with which the mermaid was so preoccupied that she did not notice the tide receding. The mermaid’s tears were collected in the golden ball when she cried as she drowned in the lake having been rendered unable to return to the sea.

With the assistance of the mermaid tears the Prince managed to make the Princess fall in love with him and she became pregnant. However, the story takes on a tragic twist when the baby dies after 7 days as a negative effect of the Prince’s trick in killing the mermaid to get her tears. The end of the story is that the child was buried in the lake, which thereafter gained special powers to make women fertile. According to the legend the Princess left a giant albino crocodile to guard the lake to make sure that only the worthy were allowed to enter the lake and benefit from its fertility giving magical powers.

Another of the tales retold at Legenda Park is that of the Chinese Princess who was to be wed to the son of the Roman Emperor forging an alliance uniting the world’s then two great super powers. Fearing the effect that this new mega-Empire would have on smaller independent states a Phoenix took the Chinese Princess hostage whilst she was sailing from China to Italy to get married, and kept her hostage on the island of Langkawi. According to the legend the Phoenix then killed the Roman Prince when he attempted to rescue the Princess. The Prince’s body was brought to the Pavilion where the Princess was kept and seeing them together the Phoenix realised that the union was intended by the gods and left the earth in disgrace at his mistake.

Location of Legenda Park

• Legenda Park is located 1.1 km walking distance from Kuah Jetty.

Next read about Tao Dan Park