We took off running yesterday, our first day at the marina. After breakfast, I started work on cleaning the anchor and chain. When we pulled it up in Jason's Bay, I didn't take the time to clean the mud, sand and stuff off the anchor. When we dropped it just east of Singapore for the night, it was a big ball of mud. Not a surprise that we dragged a bit during the night. The point of the anchor couldn't set in the sand on the bottom. Now, I had a hose with a really powerful stream of water to help get it off. I unhooked the chain on deck and the anchor zipped off the bow heading straight for the bottom in front of the boat. No prodding needed to get it going there was so much mud on it. We started the engine to give us the power to bring it back up. With hose and a brush attached to the boat hook, I slowly brought it up 5 feet at a time scrubbing all the way. I had to use the point of the boat hook to get the goo off the anchor it was so thick. We even pulled Zephyr forward so I could use a thick scratchy pad on the anchor to get the last off. Once this was done, I then had to scrub down the deck to get all the mud off it. I went from the bow all the way to the stern and gave the deck a thorough scrub down. Meanwhile Tracy was below giving the inside a good cleaning.
Once that job was done, we took off for one of the local grocery stores--Mydin, about 8 kilometers away. We picked up the cab at the Trader Hotel here at the marina and paid double the normal fare(unknown to us at the time) to get to the store. Mydin was a great store with a ton of fresh fruits and veggies. Meats and fish were abundant, both fresh and frozen. Heck, they even had a "tasting" counter like at Costco for some fried chicken filets. Being on a Sunday and in the late morning, it was packed with all 15 cashiers open and lines 8 shoppers deep at most of them. Took us 20 minutes to just get to a cashier and that was a faster line than most. Food is much cheaper here than in either Brunei or on Borneo. Mainland gets it food faster and easier than on the islands and the freight to get it here is cheaper. We found most of what we needed. We tried to get our internet dongle recharged but it will need a new SIMM card as it's out of date. Cost--$138 ringgits or $42US for a ten gig usage card. They required our passports to get the cards processed and since we didn't have them, we will have to go back another day. The Marina has internet but it doesn't seem to work down at the boats. It's quite fast up at the club house.
We had lunch at the food court along with all the locals. Lots of different stalls to choose from and we decided to try the Tandoori stall. A nice chunk of chicken, soup, a mint dip(very mild) for the chicken and a garlic nan all for $11.50 ringitts($3.50US). Cokes were just .60US a can and it came with ICE!!! All in all, we spent about $8.00 for both of us to have a very nice lunch. We walked out to the main street and found a cab that took us back to the marina for less than half of what we paid to get there.
Once back at the marina and with all the food we bought stowed, we gathered up all our laundry(just about all the clothes we owned) and headed for the laundry room. They have two washers and two dryers with only one of the washers working so it was going to take a while to get through everything. It requires $4.00 ringgits a load of wash and $4.00 ringitts for a dry(about $1.20 per load) but it can only take specific coins and the office was out of them. I'd stopped in earlier in the day and had one of the office woman go to the machines to get me tokens so we would be prepared. As it was, I got more of these .50 ringitt coins when we went to the market and at one of the restaurants here at the marina. The last load came out shortly after 1900 and we headed back to Zephyr for snacks. Before we left the restaurant area, I stopped in and asked if they would sell me some ice. No problem. A nice big bag(more than we could use) was just 3 ringitts--less than a dollar. We could have ice with our drinks on board!!! Cokes at the marina run $6 ringgits or $1.82US per can plus a 5% tax and a 10% service fee. We bought a case of cokes at the store for just $28 ringitts or just over $8.50US. Much cheaper to have them that way than at the restaurant at the marina. We were set for the night especially after Tracy downloaded the first show of the new season of Survivor!