Parlay - Where's Parlay

17/5/16 Kuala Pahang. We anchor at Kuala Pahang for the night on our way to Cukai. We saw 2 flags indicating that there was a net on the seabed but we couldn’t find the 3rd flag and we thought we were being very careful to anchor away from the flags but when the fishermen were pulling up their net it was stuck so they asked us to pull up our anchor a little bit, it came up with the chain tangled in the net. I think he was as surprised as we were to see how knotted it was, they tried to untangle it with no luck. Because the net was half in his boat and attached to our anchor chain, the chances of his boat damaging our boat was great so the fishermen had no alternative but to cut the net away from the chain. They weren’t very happy with us and after they left Ray cut away what was left on the chain he returned the sinkers back to the fisherman with some money as compensation. The fishermen were grateful for the money and offered us what they could, which was a stingray, as we have never cooked stingray we declined the offer, with international relationships restored we slept well that night, the next morning to Cukai.

18/5/16 Cukai. We anchored up the river across from the centre of town. There are shops, supermarkets and lots of places to eat. There are some trendy café’s and a morning market every day. The population are mainly Muslim; we are anchored not far from the Mosque so I woke up to do my yoga with the call to pray every morning around 4am. It’s actually a nice way to start off the day, if the person praying can sing well.
We have discovered on our travels thru S/E Asia that most people of the Muslim religion in this area do not touch dogs or anything a dog has been using, it doesn’t mean they dislike dogs but if they do happen to touch a dog they have to do a very involved cleansing ritual at the Mosque. While saying this we have to keep in mind that there are different Muslim religion similar to how we have different Christian religions, you know what I mean; Catholic, Church of Scotland and the evil Westboro Baptist Church. So I am not sure if this is the case with all the different Muslim religions.
This is how we know this area in Cukai is mainly Muslim as there are thousands of cats and no dog/dingo population to keep the numbers down. The animal lovers put food out each evening, big mixes of rice, chicken and vegetables for the cats and kitten to eat. The cats also beg around the restaurants, in Malaysia a lot of people eat out and socialize each night. They often give the cats and kittens the scraps, and of course the cats and kittens forage at the wet market each morning and eat what they can get from the fishmongers/butchers or off the floor.
In the 4 days we spent in Cukai we only saw one dog, a German Shephard cross watch dog, he was a very friendly dog as he doesn’t have to be mean as no-one goes near him anyway. When we came to town with our little white fluffy dog in a basket people were interested. Some would just look with disapproval, others with curiosity and some people would approach being very careful not to stand too close and have a discussion of where we came from and information about Whiskey. The funny part of it is the cats were the same; some would just look and stare with disapproval, others just watch and others would approach Whiskey for a sniff. Whiskey enjoyed herself, she felt like a celebrity. We will have to come back to this town as Whiskey enjoyed it as we did, next we went to Terengganu.

Kuala Terengganu. We went to Terengganu stopping at some islands on the way, which were all beautiful and at one island we anchored with 16 boats that had local tourist squid jigging they left by 10pm to go back to the mainland giving us an anchorage to ourselves, it was interesting to watch.
Kuala Terengganu is where we had to clear out of Malaysia before going to Thailand. We went into the marina office and they told us we could have any berth that was vacant so we pick one and moved into the berth. Day one we sorted out the clearances, and then the next days we had freedom to explore. We went to explore China Town, the Museum and took Whiskey for a dinghy ride to see the Crystal Mosque; we didn’t take her off the boat very much at this port so this dinghy ride was her big day out. We also went to the Islamic Family Centre and Fun Park to see the miniatures of the famous Mosques from around the world, unfortunately this was closed. We noticed that there was a big group of people at the Islamic Convention Centre and decided to go and have a look to see what all the excitement was about, after walking around for awhile we realized it was a Career’s Day for the girls and boys from the local high schools. They had a music band either promoting the university music department or giving us inspiration, we aren’t really sure but they were pretty good so we decide to stay and have some morning tea and be entertained. We decided not to go and see the elephants that have been gathered from the wild to “save them”, which is debatable in itself as we I don’t think it is appropriate for wild elephants to be trained to do circus acts and interact with the general paying public so we left that tour out.

The river in Terengganu leaves a nasty looking brown stain on everything, I was told that this is from the pollution but with the amount of large lizards (they look like our water monitors) swimming in the river I doubt if that is the case, I think it maybe tannin from the sap of trees am looking forward to coming back to Terengganu and hiring a car to explore the surrounding areas.

Picture; Recycling at it's best; old TV as an anchor