10/31/2009, Palau Pangkor,Malaysia
We love Ratatouille, but have less of an appetite for real live rats.
Even the numerous and very friendly ones that are purported to stand in line on the pontoons at Port Klang ready to embark without invitation. And so we abandoned the idea of leaving the boat there for 2 days to go to Kuala Lumpur. I was discouraged at even a 1% chance of returning to rats on board-no thanks.
Instead we decided to anchor in the outskirts of Port Klang and continue in the early hours of the morning, while still dark, to the island of Palau Pangkor where we now sit.
Bikes were pulled out, and we circumnavigated the island on pedal, a delightful 20km or so round trip, up and down steep hills through the tropical forest. Its always so nice for us to get around on the bicycles and I realize how much I miss this not being a more regular part of our lives.
There's a somewhat unspectacular old Dutch fort to see, and a sort of replica of the great wall of China, but there was no information displayed as to who built it, or why it was built. Where Port Dickson seemed to contain more of an Indian population, this island appears mainly Chinese. Today is Halloween, and since we are at anchor, Kara and her friends from Dandelion will have to trick or treat by dinghy in the hopes of garnering some treats from the other 3 boats anchored. We're off to Georgetown Penang early in the morning.
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10/27/2009, Port Dickson, Malaysia
Leaving busy Singapore behind us, in a matter of mere hours, we knew we had entered Malaysian waters when our cell phone buzzed welcoming us to DIGI, the Malaysian satellite provider. We motored through the night so as to get some miles behind us hugging the edge of the shipping lane on the Malacca strait which turned out to be surprisingly easy. Huge tankers and cargo ships glided by us in an orderly fashion along the designated lanes of the ocean highway;all were visible on our AIS system and not an unlit fishing boat was in sight. We arrived at Port Dickson, south of Kuala Lumpur, where check in was even more efficient than Singapore. Prices are also right. Malaysia is looking good! Kara is happy to have the 4 other kid boats, they all gather on the dock to fish where she managed to hook herself a few, the prized one being her own heel;she stumbled back to Magnum somewhat concerned, increasingly more so when Uwe emerged with the blue pliers to remove it; the same one that he uses for a real catch. Rusty legs were exercised as we took a rapid ride into town about 12km away. A new country, new scents, new money, new food, new language;but we know nothing about it. Tomorrow we're off again, northbound for Port Klang.
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10/22/2009, One Degree 15 Marina, Singapore
For the final 24 hours in our approach to Batam, the last Indonesian port of call, we motored through thunderstorms with powerful rain and lighting.
We spent 2 days at Batam, before checking out and embarking across the Malacca strait to Singapore, one of the busiest shipping channels in the world between Malaysia and Indonesia. We could see the high rise buildings of Singapore a mere 15 miles in the distance. From the snapshot shown above of our computer screen, you can see just how busy it is. The AIS system tracks the many ships in our radius; most of whom are moving in a north south direction along the strait; we are the red boat and the ships are signified by the green triangles. At this point we had not yet crossed over but we managed to do so without incident.
Our day began with breakfast while still in Indonesia, lunch was haphazardly consumed while dodging ships in the Malacca strait, and we sat down to dinner in Singapore.
And so we find ourselves in a completely unfamiliar territory: Singapore is a big, modern super clean city with more shopping malls than we ever seen, and shops containing items that we can little afford but which are free to browse. Construction and development seem to be omnipresent, the heat and humidity is more intense here than anywhere else, but entrance to any conceivable building has one yearning for a sweater after a mere 30 minutes when the high powered air conditioning churns out cold air. On Magnum, temperatures inside reach about 95 degrees, and drives us to a macrobiotic diet because its just too hot to cook anything.
We're enjoying our short time here; school is undertaken in the coolness of the club office each morning. The marina is part of a private club whose top class facilities we are entitled to avail of; located on desirable Sentosa Island a short distance from the city by free shuttle bus. Checking into Singapore was by the far the most efficient we experienced in any country: an immigration boat comes alongside, handing out a fishing net in which papers are deposited and processed in about 10 minutes, and voila Welcome to Singpore. Tomorrow we leave for Malaysia.
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