10 Toddler Foods In Langkawi

Eating in Langkawi wasn’t as exciting as we expected. Miss M was more disinterested in eating than usual and every time we got a morsel of food into her we celebrated.

The effort of getting her to eat detracted from our own eating enjoyment . And the offerings in Langkawi were quiet tourist-oriented, so we ended up eating a lot more Western food than we usually do — even when we’re in Australia! We did find some street food … eventually.

Here are 10 items suitable for toddler tastes:

1. Chicken rice

A very different presentation of the standard chicken rice, with a little side serve of shredded carrot and cabbage and a delicious homemade soup.

2. Chicken ham stack

Something from the Western part of a beachfront restaurant’s menu. Miss M ate some steamed broccoli and carrot and a decent helping of cheesy chicken. The adults also found this delicious.

3. Fried rice

An Asian travel staple, which has become our fallback. Unfortunately, Miss M didn’t want to eat at all the night we trekked and trekked and trekked looking for toddler-friendly food. I pulled the corn kernels out of this fried rice for her and they ended up being her dinner.

4. Mysterious street food

We found a street food stall near the laundry behind our guest house. For 7 ringgit (US$2.33) we got several packages of rice and meat, sticky rice and coconut jam, donuts, crepes and other mysterious-yet-delicious items. The mystery deepened when the stall was closed the next two mornings we went back.

Sticky rice with coconut jam

5. Sandwiches

An English-style tea room near our guest house provided several toddler-friendly lunches. Cheese and salad sandwich on white bread was much more popular with Miss M than chicken and salad on multigrain bread.

6. Mie Hoon Sup

A delicious noodle soup, recommended by the waitress at a local place. Fish balls, morning glory, bean sprouts and noodles in a chicken broth, garnished with chopped chives and crushed roasted peanuts.

7. Claypot tofu

Another fallback travel dish for us. Bland from an adult’s point of view, but everything is mushy enough for a tired toddler.

8. Supermarket items

The minimarts in Langkawi offered a wide selection of crackers, bread and bread rolls, yoghurt, cheese and milk, as well as a legion of chocolate and sweet biscuits. During our short trip, plain yoghurt served as entree and toy for Miss M.

9. Breakfast buffet

We stayed in a guest house with no breakfast provided. It wasn’t til the last day of our stay that we decided to check out the breakfast buffet put on by a nearby resort. It wasn’t the greatest hotel breakfast I’ve ever seen — not by a long way — but there were a lot of toddler-friendly food, from Chinese style rice porridge to Western-style boiled eggs, baked beans, toast and tiny chicken sausages. Fruit and fluorescent-orange “juice” finished off the meal. After breakfast, which we paid for, we snuck into their pool area and spent several hours splashing around with cute kids and burkini-clad mothers.

10.  Iced Milo

We really struggled to get food into Miss M. Thankfully, most places served Milo, a chocolate-flavoured drink that is supposedly full of vitamins and minerals. Whatever. It had some nutritional value and she’d drink a bit of it. As is the case in other parts of Asia, takeaway drinks are served in a little plastic bag with a straw.

And for dessert:  ICE CREAM!!! Because beach holiday equals ice cream.

In hindsight, I think staying at a guest house that didn’t serve breakfast made feeding Miss M much more stressful than it should have been. It meant we had to mount food expeditions three times a day instead of two. And we left our pram on the luggage carousel at the Penang airport, so carrying a 10kg+ toddler up and down the street searching for food took the edge off our holiday moods.  Luckily Miss M sleeps late, because all the eating outlets on the main drag of Langkawi didn’t open until 10am.

But the moral of the story is, once again, if you’re worried about feeding little people while traveling in Asia – don’t be. If you want to go, go. There will be plenty of food options for everyone.

By: Barbara

A career girl who dropped out, traveled, found love, and never got around to going home again. Now wrangling a cross-cultural relationship and two third culture kids.