30th July, 2009

How time flies when one is busy and since my last update we have had a few dramas which I shall endeavour to enlighten you all with but first there are a few more activities before we had the dramas.

Following on from the Belawai River, Deja Vue 111 and us moved further upstream the next morning and stopped for lunch until the tide and current turned so we could venture further upstream with the current and tide and anchored off a place called Daru and that night we had sundowners on Catchus and then dinner on board Deja Vue.
Next morning we paid a visit to the local school - 22 pupils and 11 teachers - how is that for a teacher/pupil ratio!! All 11 teachers were not there as some were away on a course but the school seemed to be reasonably well equipped and every kid had a computer, even though they were old. The nearest big town is Sibu which is a three hour boat ride!! Most of the people live in a long house which is a very interesting arrangement. The houses are all joined together (like 40 Houses together) with one continuous verandah which is the meeting place for all the inhabitants. It was a fishing village but is not really now, grow a few vegetables and eke out a subsistence living.

After visiting the village we up anchored and headed out once again to the South China Sea along with a few other rally boats that we had caught up with. Most of them then headed up the Igan River for the night but it was too shallow for us to get in so we anchored a little further north of the river along with three other boats and had a vey roly night so the consensus was that we would carry on and do an overnighter to Miri. Ended up motor sailing most of the way, along with dodging fishing nets, oil rigs and numerous logs - not easy at night though so we occasionally heard the odd bang which was obviously a log. Finally tied up in Miri Marina just before 2pm on 19th July. The entrance to the marina is very shallow and as we came in not that long before low tide there were some heart stopping moments and we just scraped through with 1.7m of water!!

That night I had a ring from Katanne 11 who were still a couple of days away wondering if a planned trip on 21st to the Niah Caves was still on and as nobody seemed to know much about it I decided on the Monday morning I better find out. We could have done an organised tour for 289RM (included lunch, guide & entrance fee (8RM) but that was not an option so I ended up organizing a bus and driver to take us for 36RM each with no frills and we pay for the extras. We ended up having to get a bigger bus and all toll had 41 of us on it. We did this trip on the Wednesday (22nd), left at 7.30am and were back at 4pm. Once at the entrance to the Niah Caves National Park we had a 4.5km walk into and through the caves and they were amazing. Underneath the Park's limestone seal is the Great Cave which is one of the world's largest caves and is strung with a network of bamboo poles enabling Penan workers to collect swiftlet nests, the key ingredient in birds-nest soup! Humans have lived around the caves for 40,000 years. There were very faint outlines of rock art and small canoe like coffins within the greenish walls of what is called the Painted Cave which indicates it was once a burial ground. There was plenty of guano around and we saw several men carrying sacks of it out of the caves, obviously selling it to make a living.

That night after our trip we were hosted by the owner of the marina to a fabulous dinner at what is called the Marina Restaurant - a lovely typical looking Malay house but built on a bigger scale. Once dinner was served we were even treated to free beer!

Miri is a prosperous city with it's proceeds from oil and logging and we did a bit of cycling around the town. Thursday we did our customs and immigration clearance, stocked up on fruit and veges and then the Marina owner hosted us to another fabulous dinner at his hotel which he also owns and he only looks as though he is in his thirties! We thought the previous night's dinner was pretty good but this one was even better, although there was no beer put on for us this time. We had the meal outside and all tables were laid with linen tablecloths and serviettes and all the chairs had covers. It was also Lloyd on Deja Vue's 70th birthday so several of the fleet did a few skits which was highly entertaining and had the crowd in raptures and Lloyd got quite emotional when he came to make his speech. Lloyd is solo sailing but he has had a young Australian girl, Kathy as crew since leaving Terengganu and she has proved to be really good value and has mixed in well with all of us. She has been travelling around the world for years and has been in Malaysia for quite awhile and speaks the language so she does come in very handy at times!

We left Miri Marina at 5.30am on Friday, 24th July and will tell you more about that trip in the next instalment as we are getting low on power and need to turn the computer off.