Monday, 6th July, 2009

After four days on passage we were ready for a good night's sleep on Tuesday night but Wednesday was spent on board all day trying to do a temporary fix on the end caps of the heat exchanger but basically to no avail so we rang Trans Diesel in Auckland for them to courier new ones up to us. We manage to run the motor for a short while to charge the batteries, all the while watching the water in the heat exchanger and topping it up. We have been rung today to say the end caps are in Kuching but even though we are a Yacht in Transit we are still having to pay Import duty of nearly 20%. If we had been in Brunei we would have been able to get them in duty free but we really can't move from here until we have them.

Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is spread out over almost 745,000 hectares. To the North are the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak while Brunei is nestled between the two. To the south is Kalimantan, which is part of Indonesia. Borneo has the world's oldest and second largest tropical rainforest. Borneo was once under the control of the Brunei Empire from the 15th to 17th century after which the British controlled the north and the Dutch the south. During WW11 the Japanese took over and then in the post war years Brunei reverted back to being under colonial control.
Now Malaysia, Brunie & Indonesia officially occupy the island.

Santubong is 5 miles up the Sarawak River which continues on to Kuching but because of a bridge there is no way that yachts can go up to Kuching. Kuching is about 30km from Santubong and takes 45 minutes by bus to get there so on Thursday morning we bussed into Kuching to have a look around. Kuching is the capital of Sarawak, a nice city and the cleanest city we have seen in Malaysia with a nice walkway along the waterfront. There are some lovely buildings and the State Legislature building is very impressive. There are certainly a lot of touristy shops along the waterfront but they are all virtually selling the same stuff. I do wonder how they make any money and they certainly were heavily stocked. Sarawak is 80% Chinese so that could explain the cleanliness of Kuching. Muslims are certainly in the minority here, but we still here the regular chanting from the mosque here in Santubong at various times during the day.

We arrived back in time to shower and change and be ashore at 5pm for a very low key welcoming reception with a light noodle & cakes snack. The Marine Department were in attendance so we were able to fill out the Harbour Master's forms which is something we are supposed to do at every port.

After the gathering a number of us went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner and while a little more expensive than we are used to paying was a beautiful meal.

Friday morning we had to be ashore at 7am and the Sarawak Tourism Board took us on a bus tour, which included the Semengoh Wildlife Centre and we were there in time for the orangutans morning feed time which is between 9 -10am. As they are not caged we had to wait awhile before several of them came out of the jungle and we were able to watch their antics etc. especially the big Granddaddy of them all, along with a couple of mothers and their babies.

From there we were taken to a Pottery factory and there was some nice pottery for sale and then on in to Kuching for a couple of hours to look around and have lunch. We were back in Santubong by 3pm.

Saturday morning several of us went into Kuching again to do the customs and immigration thing but it is a fair way out from the centre of the city so we ended up going in two taxis. Immigration appeared to be closed but the customs lady said we did not need to do immigration as we are still in Malaysia but we have a stamp out on our passport from Tioman. The rules seem to be different at every port so hopefully when we get to Miri we will have it all correct before going into Brunei. The main thing is we have the all important little yellow customs form. We did not have one of those from Langkawi to Danga Bay which was a bit of a worry.

Yesterday and today have been spent doing boat jobs, water runs etc. and last night we had Sunday roast (Australian lamb) on Baker Street along with Sherrye & Charles from Forza and it was lovely - we all sure enjoyed the lamb.

We have had some pretty big electrical storms since being here and most days at some stage it has rained. Coming back from Kuching on Saturday we had torrential rain but got back to here and it was dry although we got a bit of rain later but not like in Kuching. One good thing though it cooled the air and yesterday the temperature was very pleasant but it is certainly hotter today. There are crocodiles, sea snakes, lizards etc. in the river but as yet haven't seen any but some of the yachties have seen one or two crocs but they are further upstream than us.

This weekend is the Annual World Rainforest Music festival, with artists from all around the world, which is a few kilometres from here and most of us yachties are either going to all of it or one or two days. As Dave is not really in to music we have only bought tickets for the Sunday but after purchasing them discovered that the one and only NZ group (Moana and Tribe) are playing on Saturday. We plan to hire a motor bike for a few days and see a few more of the sights around here.