Of Samosas and hospitals
29 March 2012 | Maya Bandar (or Bundar)
Feb 24-26
I hate these early starts (Henry likes them), but it makes so much sense to get under way early, ensuring a lunchtime arrival and the opportunity to explore the local town. The recommended anchorage in Maya Banda looked idyllic (white sand, blue water, coconut palms) but was exposed to the NNE winds and surrounded by coral reef, and was untenable as an overnight anchorage. So, Rascal and Dreamcatcher spent about an hour wandering through this expansive harbour and finally dropped the hook near the ship dock. Not a terrific outlook, but behind us was quite pretty - water and mangrove covered islands. Gavin had discovered an excellent landing point that didn't require getting wet up to thigh level: we tied on to a very rusty old coast guard boat that clearly hadn't gone anywhere for some time, were able to walk across that onto a large floating pontoon, then a leap across the water to some concrete steps on to the large ship dock. All a bit agricultural, and close to life-threatening at night, but nice not to get wet. Unfortunately, by the time we'd done this two or three times, the white canvas cover on Rascal's dinghy was filthy with rusty footprints. We all liked Maya Bandar: it is the official capital of the North Andaman region and thus peppered with official residences and administrative offices, and cleaner than other towns we'd seen. The Indians love their bureaucracy and we were "accosted" on the dock on our first arrival by some bloke who said he was a policeman and wanted all our details. He had no uniform, badge, no ledger book (and they love their ledger books!). Anyway, after about 30 mins of him hand writing down everything that we had already told Port Control (don't these guys talk to each other?!) we were allowed to explore the town. It was very pleasant (by Indian standards) and we found several vegetable sellers and samosa cookers. We did discover a great restaurant (the only one in town) and dined there both nights, it was soooo good! And inexpensive. The concept of a restaurant as we know it, is very new in this part of the world. Fortunately this place was run by a lovely Burmese couple who understood good food and tried their best to deliver an excellent meal. The notion of a bar is also embryonic, as is the notion of keeping drinks cold. The Kingfisher beers were cool but not cold: perhaps some of this had to do with the power black-outs Maya Bandar experienced while we were there. The other thing we discovered is that these northern Andamanians don't believe in light beer: every beer available is a strong 8.8% alcohol Kingfisher - we all got knocked on our butts the first couple of drink rounds! But we did enjoy this town of about 10,000 people. We were committed to sail one more port north to Port Cornelius, the next morning but Henry had an awful inflammation develop in his ankle, was in a lot of pain and running a fever. This was from an injury sustained during the Phang Na Bay regatta 3 weeks prior that had never healed properly and had now developed in to septicaemia. So, off we went to the Maya Bandar hospital. What an experience - a 30 bed untidy but clean hospital with queues of Indians at every window and door. One had to queue for a paper slip which then entitled one to join the queue to see the doctor. The doctor's door was left open, no privacy, and we were escorted in while he was tending to the prior patient. Of course, we stuck out like sore thumbs, being foreigners and were quickly queue-jumped by the Indian hospital administrators to first served. We found this unnecessary and embarrassing as we were quite prepared to wait our turn and did not wish to be seen as being superior to the locals. Nevertheless they insisted on ushering Henry in first to see a very smart doctor, who recommended an x-ray, anti-biotics and all the things we expected. It was a positive and ultra-interesting experience to be in the grips of an Indian hospital, in one of the remotest island groups of the world. We tried to pay but were assured several times it was not necessary as it was a "Government Hospital" and that all services and medications were free. So, consultation, x-ray and drugs, for nothing, and out in under an hour. We celebrated with some Indian spicy donuts and a lovely noodle lunch aboard Rascal and then sent Henry to bed to recover for the rest of the day.
Pic shows Gavin tying up the dink on the rust-bucket prior to getting on the wharf