Pura vida...Evita's voyage to the Seven Seas

Eight months into the trip, and so far we have avoided long periods at sea. Honeymoon over now...

After our return from our land trip, we spent a couple more days in the marina in Phuket making final preparations. Between Langkawi and Phuket we seem to have done very little on the boat other than prepare ourselves for the sea voyages ahead, and it make me wonder what it all was that we spent so much time doing in Australia. But it's that old saying - cruising is all about fixing up your boat in exotic harbours. The preparations here have included

New spray hood (the leaky fabric was found out in the Indonesian rainstorms) New cockpit cushions (to replace the cheap and cheerful ones from Bali that couldn't stand the pace)
Remounting of alternator (my Langkawi band aid job needed some professional input)
Other electrical repairs on the engine (we now have a working tachometer for the first time since owning the boat)
Additional cabling to link up the new autopilot to the rest of the electronics
Installation of smart regulator for alternator
Fixing hatches
Replacement of remote microphone for VHF radio, so we can now converse from the helm (a huge improvement, and one we would have had in Australia had we been supplied with the right model in the first place)
Provisioning (a particular challenge in Thailand is trying to find food that has instructions in some intelligible form, because we can't guess Thai)

The final addition to the boat equipment was a gas barbeque at ridiculous expense. The rest of the family has run out of patience with the time it takes me to get damp charcoal hot enough to cook on so gas seems to be the answer. Unfortunately the option seems to be limited to US manufacturers (one in particular) which is very reasonably priced in the US, but shipping, duty and local margins more than double the cost. But thinking of all those fish we are going to catch (more of that later) it seemed the right thing to do.

We had a short daysail down to the island of Koh Racha Yai, about 10 mile off the south of Phuket, and on Monday 2nd we headed west, firstly across the Andaman Sea to the passage between Great Nicobar and the north of Sumatra, and then across the southern Bay of Bengal to Sri Lanka. The pilot books all say that the winds are usually light in the Andaman Sea, with the Bay of Bengal described as "all downhill". We weren't too concerned then to have to run the engine for the first 15 hours or so in very light winds, and then to make quite slow progress in winds of 8-10kts for the next day or so. The light winds meant that for the first time since before we arrived in Australia we were able to fly our cruising chute.

We saw quite a number of ships heading for the Malacca Straits, a couple of which would have come a little close for comfort had we not called them on the VHF. Such are the rules of the sea that these 900ft long tankers will change course to avoid a toy boat like ours. I love it when it works like that though.

The wind did pick up once we had passed Great Nicobar on the third day, and from that point we sailed all the way to Sri Lanka. What a welcome change that is from all that motorsailing through SE Asia. The seas were reasonably benign, apart from a few hours on the fourth or fifth day, when the wind mixed it up with some current and we ended up with some really nasty short waves, a pair of which combined to give us a good whack at one point, tipping litres of water into our open hatches and sending stuff flying across the saloon downstairs.

Mostly though it was plain sailing - winds generally 10-15kts on the starboard beam or quarter, reasonably flat seas, fine weather and a full moon. You can't ask for much more really. We even beat our all time 24 hour mileage on day 6 by one mile, hitting the heady (for us) height of 168 miles or 7 knots. The good winds meant that we got here in 8 days, after thinking we would take 9 or even 10; a night time entry into Galle is not allowed, so at one time we were on a race against time to get here before nightfall (the consequences of a narrow failure would have been a very frustrating night killing time in the waters just offshore, dodging the fishing boats) but the 20-25kts we got last night meant that we were here in plenty of time.

This was the first passage with our new satellite phone, which enabled us to download GRIB weather files at sea. What a revelation that was - suddenly we were not sailing blind! Although as I said the weather was pretty good, after we got the whack in the stronger winds it was good to be able to find out that we only had to wait 12 hours for some calmer conditions.

We fished all the way here - by which I mean we put a line out. I think we must have been unkind to fishes at some time in the past, as they have no interest at all in the lures I am offering them. Not one bite did we get. We had reconciled ourselves to catching nothing in Indonesia and the rest of SE Asia, close to the coast where there are so many fishermen, but this was the open ocean, several hundred miles offshore. It is all the more galling when you read the pilot books that talk of sailors getting bored of eating fish. What are we doing wrong...?

Sri Lanka is not set up for cruising boats. By all accounts there are few natural anchorages, and in any case the rules are very restrictive, limiting boats to just four or five ports. None appears ideal; we chose Galle which is on the SW coast, and has been the favourite option of cruisers for some time. There is a marina under construction so next year all might be better. For now we have to make do with a flimsy floating pontoon, which moves with the constant surging from the swell that enters the harbour, to which we tie our stern while the bow is held off using the anchor. Boats move all over the place, and we are told that it is calm today. Just to add to the delights, we are next door to the commercial dock where they are unloading a cement load, so the air is full of cement powder.

As soon as we arrived, we had a stream of official visitors - Navy, health, customs, immigration - so that we didn't have time to properly moor the boat. And we paid the price when the surges crunched the self steering gear against the pontoon. Other than two bent stainless steel pins - which took an age to get out - I don't think there was any damage.

We are still hoping to get off the boat and see something of the island, but need to find a way to secure the boat.

We have been waiting for another land excursion since the moment we got off the plane in Bali and, luckily, we have just finished one and it was the most exciting one out of the two...

I have three things that I liked the most on the land trip that we did, each coming from three different places: Bangkok, Lao and Cambodia.

1: First, I'm going to say that in Bangkok the thing that I enjoyed the most was probably the boat trip down the river to a floating market where we saw tons of fishes that we got to feed. I had something called a Pancake which had bits of egg sprinkled on the top. On the way back from the boat trip we saw tons of monitor lizards lying around lazily in the sun...

2: Laos. In Laos the most incredible thing that we did was, of course,visiting the elephant farm where we got to feed and ride the elephants. When I found out what they were feeding them and how much they were feeding them, my jaw dropped because they were feeding them the trunks of bannana tree, the elephants would eat up to 10% of their body weight in one day. They weigh up to 3.5 tons so that would be 350kg in ONE day. They ate for 20hrs SO they could only sleep for four hours ink one day.We were allowed to go to the famous Mekong river and ride on the elephants back.

3: Cambodia...
In Cambodia the thing that I liked the most was Angkor Wat because we could run around in the ruined temples looking at different reliefs and many different statues of Budda and Vishnu.

When we came back from the long land trip all we did was provisioning, provisioning, provisioning for the 10 day trip for Sri Lanka i am doomed because Paula has got about 10 kilos of noodles- i hate them!!!

If this is Saturday it must be Cambodia... Our whistlestop tour of SE Asia continues. We took the quick option for the transit from Laos to Cambodia and flew from Luang Prabang to Siem Reap, the nearest town to Angkor Wat, the site of one of the world's great archeological sites.

Angkor Wat is apparently the biggest religious building in the world. It was built in the 12th century by the kings of the Khmer people, and because of the religious conversions that took place - from Hinduism to Buddhism and back again - includes elements from both religions. The temple is vast, and has been extensively restored, although that is a mammoth task, especially for a country with the limited resources of Cambodia.

Angkor Wat is only the beginning. There are a huge number of other temples, palaces, reservoirs and other buildings in various states of decay and restoration scattered around the area. I once read (imagined?) that these temples were the inspiration for the backdrop to `I wanna be like you` in the Jungle Book movie. True or not, some of the more overgrown temples - and there are some where the twisted tree roots growing out of centuries old walls are a spectacle in themselves - look very much like the movie.

We spent the best part of two days exploring some of the various sites in the area. For the casually interested such as us, this was probably enough, although those with a greater archeological interest could easily spend a week or more here without repeating.

As with Luang Prabang in Laos, Angkor is a big tourist center, which has led to the creation of this western oasis in the middle of Siem Reap centered on Pub Street. Cambodia's tragic history is better known than that of Laos, and recovery is slow - not assisted, by all accounts, by the current government which ranks up there with Zimbabwe in the good governance stakes - so this concentration of things western is somewhat incongruous. There is more visible poverty here than anywhere else we have been on our trip this far. The situation for many people is made worse by the effect of missing limbs resulting from the war and the Khmer Rouge times. Although people are on the surface very friendly, underneath there is desperation. We saw this when we made the mistake of agreeing to go with the wrong tuktuk driver; the argument with the other driver who thought he had rights over us came very quickly to blows.

As well as the ancient, we saw something of modern day Cambodia, when we visited a village on Tonle Sap, a big lake which both takes water from, and gives water to, the Mekong River. The village liberally floats on the lake, with the houses being pulled up onto the land in the wet season. The people live from fishing, in what is apparently one of the richest fishing grounds in the world, but it is a hard life. The lake was very calm when we visited, but the number of orphans in the village gave some indication of the dangers involved in fishing in the wet season. Also, to our pampered taste, the thought of eating fish from the muddy waters, complete with whatever else the village chucks into the lake is hardly appealing.

Then for the long trip back to Phuket. The first leg - Siem Reap to Bangkok - was advertised as 8 hours, but took 12, the last two of which we spent driving around Bangkok with a driver who had got lost, one of the other passengers navigating using a mobile phone. A familiar Bangkok story, but a bus driver? Hasn't he driven the route before? After that we gave the kids the option of stopping the night in Bangkok, but they wanted to carry on, so on then for 12 hours to Phuket and Evita. In the end the 12 hours took 15, but how were we to know...?

So ends another holiday from a holiday. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the excursion; the kids are now keen backpackers and Raul is already planning his gap year. They coped very well with the punishing schedule of bus journeys, and rarely was `when are we going to get there` heard. It was a shame we didn't have a bit more time. With just 10 days we ended up confining ourselves to the main centres which were all so busy, but with a bit more time we could have got away from some of the crowds.

Now back to work for a few more days preparing the boat for our longest passage in a long time. And back to school for the younger members of the crew.

In order to catch the winds to take us to Sri Lanka our SE Asian excursion is much shorter than we had originally envisaged. We wanted to get a flavour of a few different places which left us with quite an ambitious schedule with a lot of ground to cover. Certainly a huge step up from our normal snail's pace.

So, on the fourth day after leaving the boat we crossed the border from Thailand to Laos. Laos is a small country, but the holder of one very unfortunate record, being (per capita) the country that has been bombed more than any other...in a war that was never even acknowledged. In its `secret` war in the 1970s, the US dropped more bombs on Laos than were dropped in the Second World War. The 2 million tonnes dropped equate to 700kg of explosives for every person living in the country! How long must it take for a country and its people to recover from that?

It does bring a smile to my face, and perhaps it is a tribute to the resilience of the people, to note that in spite of all that (the bombs were after all dropped to save the world from the evils of communism) the hammer and sickle flag is still widely seen across the Peoples Democratic Republic of Laos.

Our first stop was in Vang Vieng, about 4 hours north of the capital, Vientiene, where we crossed the border. This is located in a beautiful area surrounded by limestone mountains, similar to those that form the islands in Phangnga Bay in Thailand, and those that appear on so many Chinese plates. These craggy hills are riddled with caves which we had fun exploring, while trying to ensure that the kids` enthusiasm didn't take them so far in that they couldn't find their way back out! We also had a good time exploring the surrounding countryside by bike along dirt roads, which reminded us how little we actually use our legs in our water borne life.

The focal point of our trip to Laos was the city of Luang Prabang, which lies a further 4 hours from Vang Veing. In contrast to the trip up from the border, this journey was an experience in itself; the driver was clearly in a rush to get home as he raced over these naroow and very windy roads through the mountains. It was one of those times when you just have to trust that he has probably driven the same road in the same way many times before, and so the probability is that he (and we) will survive this one. Thankfully we did.

Luang Prabang is home to many active Buddhist monasteries, and is situated in the mountains at the confluence of the Nam Kahn and Mekong rivers. There are also many buildings dating back to the French colonial period and all is remarkably well preserved or restored. It really is a beautiful place to spend a few days. The only downside is, as with everywhere else as attractive in this part of the world, it is overrun with tourists. The time this was most evident was at the morning alms giving, when the monks file out of the monasteries and collect offerings of food from the townspeople. This ritual has been turned into a spectacle with busloads of tourists brought in at 6 in the morning and sold food by vendors to pass to the monks. You could the see the irritation on the faces of some of the older monks as they filed past the lined up visitors.

But we were there with the rest of them. Much though we would like to be, of course we have no right to be the only ones.

Other than wandering the streets and visiting the monasteries and palaces, we had a great grip to an elephant camp a little way out of town. We had been a bit concerned that we would find overworked and underfed animals, but were pleasantly surprised to find what appears to be the opposite. In any case, given that these animals were previously employed in logging camps, you have to say they have a much better life now. We fed them, rode around the camp on them, and then the highlight, rode them into their bath in the river. As long as they keep their trunk up, they can breathe while completely submerged - unlike the riders who had a few nervous moments wondering how far down they would go!

With Evita safely moored up in a marina on the east coast of Phuket, we packed our backpacks and hit the road. First stage was an overnight bus ride to Bangkok. We went on the so-called VIP service, which is a double decker bus with only three seats across. A good night`s sleep you might think. Wrong. VIPs in Thailand obviously like to live in fridges, something for which we - in our shorts flip-flops and t-shirts were ill equipped. They do provide thin airline style blankets, but that wasn't much against the cold.

Our arrival provided some comedy. After 12 hours on the bus, we got a taxi to our hotel, but once the driver had found the general area, he had no idea where the hotel was. We must have spent 40 minutes driving round and round in circles, asking every other taxi and tuktuk driver but we got nowhere. In the end it was down to the Johnny Foreigners with a phone.

Our hotel was close to Khaosan Road, a street familiar to anybody who has ever backpacked in SE Asia. To my mind it was little changed since the last time I was here, in the late 1980s - grimy, noisy and with very little to do with Thailand. It is well located though, in the old part of town close to most points of interest in the city. The other thing it offers is western options for breakfast - most of the family do pretty well in avoiding burgers and pizzas for lunch and dinner, but we have not yet got into rice porridge for breakfast. Banana pancakes anybody?

We saw the main sights in the old town. Unfortunately we were there over the weekend so the Grand Palace was just a sea of people. It reminded me a little of a Saturday afternoon in IKEA, shuffling around at other people's pace. It is all very impressive and striking, but the crowds, and the heat, meant that we didn't stay too long.

More impressive, maybe because in contrast to the palace they are still in use, were some of the Wats, the Buddhist temples. The largest of these was Wat Pho, which houses an enormous gold reclining Buddha. This temple is also a centre for Thai massage, which gave us a chance to contrast there experts with the beach practitioners. And there was a difference - it relaxed parts I didn't know needed relaxing, and without a Granny walking on my back!

We spent one evening in Chinatown in the crowds in the run up to the Chinese New Year. If you have ever wondered where the worlds shark population is going, here is the answer. Every second restaurant seemed to specialise in shark's fin soup, and those that didn't were specialists in birds nest soup. Sharks fin seems to some kind of glutinous cartilage. Although I didn't ask for it, I suspect some of it ended up in my mixed seafood dinner (and if that's what it was, I do not understand the fuss). Birds nest is another thing we have failed to understand. It seems like the nest is made from the spit of the birds (there are no twigs involved), which is then dissolved into a liquid. Takes all sorts I guess; maybe OK for the birds, whose nests are farmed, but definitely not for the sharks.

One of the highlights of the three days we spent in the city was a trip we took along the klongs, or canals, on the west side of the Chao Phraya river which runs through Bangkok. The river itself is very busy, with regular passenger ferries vying for space with small long tail boat and huge barges shifting stuff up and down river. I was happy to be passenger rather than captain of our long tail as our boatman negotiated his way through the crowded and very choppy waters of the main river. The klongs themselves, though, were quite a contrast - narrower, semi rural and much quieter - at least until one of the longtail boats came through with its noisy engine and producing so much wash that you do wonder how sustainable the banks are.

Bangkok has a reputation of having some of the worlds worst traffic, and I can't really say we saw anything that would contradict this. The air is also terrible. Most of the time we used tuktuks - motorised tricycles - to get around, which are a great way to see the city, but there's no fresh air there (although it would be the same air inside an air conditioned taxi I guess).

We struggled to find the best Thai food while in the city, although one of the delights that was readily available was fresh fruit, and in particular the Durian. I have mentioned this before - reputedly the fruit that looks like s**t, smells like s**t, but tastes like heaven. I would dispute the aesthetics, but the other two are pretty accurate, especially the taste. I even managed to convert the boys to it, although the girls are holding out. I didn't help the campaign there by taking some surplus back to the hotel one evening. The smell led to it being banished to the air conditioning unit outside the window, where it was forgotten by me, but found by some squirrels. If it smelled bad before, time in the sun, and the activities of the local rodents made it even worse.

We left Bangkok after three days, and headed north on the sleeper train to Nong Khai, near to the border with Laos. As a way of traveling, this is far better than VIP bus - proper beds, a/c set at a reasonable level, and no meal stop at midnight.

We have been in Thailand for over three weeks now and we can't stop thinking about the contrast with Malaysia. The main thing is we can't seem to get around the number of tourist everywhere even though apparently in the last two years there has been a massive drop in their numbers due to the political unrest, so can't imagine what it would have been like before... still the scenery its to die for and the pristine beaches with amazingly clear waters and the cuisine and friendly people just easily explains the country's popularity....you just can't have it all I guess.

After Ian's blog, we visited Koh Phi Phi where Leonardo Di Caprio's "The Beach" was filmed. We knew it was going to be busy but nothing prepared us for what we saw...tons of roasting foreign flesh and masses of speeding boats with no consideration for other vessels. Still we made it ashore and after strolling round for a bit found some very happy tourists filming themselves in all sunbathing positions inside Evita's tender...I couldn't help but smile but the kids were outraged..."how dare they!!"

Afterwards we tried to lift the anchor which of course by now was wrapped around some dead coral so captain had to dive in to try and free it while we were trying to deter the speeding boats from crashing against him with our yelling. Just never a dull moment.

A very famous group of islands are in Phang Nga Bay. These are impressive limestone rock formations towering out of the sea with interesting caves which you can visit at low tide by dinghy or canoe. We did this with hundreds of other tourists who only stay for twenty minutes maximum at each place so we did manage to have some of the islands for ourselves in between the hoards of people. Plus everybody leaves at 4pm which means you can have the place for yourself then. You just have to try and avoid 10 to 4pm.

We met with some charter boats including some Russians in a big catamaran who always seemed to drop the anchor a bit too close to Evita for comfort. Now that we are much more experienced we look down on them forgetting all the times when we chartered boats ourselves in the Mediterranean and we still were learning (I particularly remember anchoring our charter boat in Croatia while having dinner and seeing it sailing past our bar...my brother and I carried on eating while the captain went to re anchor under stormy conditions....). Now we are wiser and we don't tend to loose control of the boat every time we anchor...most of the time...Still, we had lots of fun canoeing around this caves and having coconut throwing competitions on the beach.

We also managed to buy some succulent prawns and crabs from the local fishermen to roast on the BBQ. Their price was ridiculously low and their idea of a kilo turned out to be 1.5kg. so all happy here...

The scenery and the sunset were something out of this world but I'm sure the pictures will show this better than my words.

Another day we visited "James Bond Island" where the 1974 film "The Man with the Golden Gun" was filmed. You could possibly imagine every touristic trinket being sold here and still be short... but still the limestone cliffs and underground tunnels were impressive.

On one of this islands Ian and I decided to indulge in a typical Thai massage, and following our motto of doing it all as authentic as possible when asked how hard we wanted we said the hardest Thai way....that was a massage not to be forgotten easily...I thought I might not be able to move my neck muscles again but I still managed to laugh when out of the corner of my eye I saw Ian's masseur, a well built Thai grandma walking all over his back...that image made it easier to endure the following 60 minutes as well as I could without losing face which seems invaluable here. At the end it was worth it, every single muscle was pulled and stretched and we felt energized in some way...

Every night in the different anchorages we experienced very gusty winds from 5 to 35 knots due to the topography of the islands so we just kept our fingers crossed hopping our anchor would behave, and it did.

We are now in a marina in Phuket where we had to come in order to finish refitting the boat ready for our next sea crossing. We have a Volvo engineer who is at presently looking at our engine and alternator; we also have an electrician looking at some bits and bobs but the main worker here is captain Ian who has just been dealing with any and all technical problems on the boat magnificently and can learn to fit any odd parts or even install a whole new autopilot system by himself. I take my hat off to him who obviously can expect very little practical help from me as I struggle to even see my starboard from my port...thankfully Raul is proving an invaluable help. I know its just so easy to rely on him all the time but Ian won't trust me any longer unless I'm helped by first mate Raul, which of course suits me perfectly well....Thanks a lot first mate!!!

This morning again Ian had to climb up the mast to change the wind instruments but this time we had the whole marina plus the day boat tourist cheering for him and for my winching...I also had numerous offers of help to hoist him up the mast, which I declined as a captain's life is still far too precious.... Anyhow we were the morning clown entertainers...lets see what happens when he has to go again tomorrow. Hopefully our fan numbers will have dropped...

We will stay here just for another extra day or so while all the boat stuff gets sorted out and our idea is then to travel by land to Bangkok. We will ideally catch an overnight bus tomorrow and then travel further on to Laos and Cambodia if time allows us. We are all very excited to do some backpacking and leaving Evita behind for 10 days or so. Maybe having a TV to watch the news on....we haven't seen a TV since our last hotel stop back in Bali...also finding out about the world as our internet connection has been so random so far we struggle to catch up with the world news... every internet connection we have had we have to use just to update the blog!!!

On our previous posts we were still debating which route to take from Thailand and it seems that we are sticking to our original plan to travel via Sri Lanka. This was always by far my preferred route so I'm happy (Happy wife, happy captain, so they say...). The only drawback with this option is that once again we are in a rush and must make sure to leave Thailand before the end of February to get the optimum wind and weather conditions...Most boats we have met are leaving now towards Sri Lanka but we feel we have to first do some proper inland travel before moving on so watch this space!!!

Until next time...