2014 and Beyond

We have been told by a number of people that cruising is boat maintenance in exotic places! That is certainly true for us recently. We are sitting in Langkawi waiting for a parcel of boat parts to arrive from the US. We ordered all the parts that have broken since we left Australia plus an AIS transponder which is now compulsory to go to Thailand. It was supposed to arrive a week ago but so far it has had a nice tour of India, China and Malaysia but has still not reached us! So we are using the time to catch up on all the boat jobs we have not done while enjoying ourselves in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Before all this work started we had the end of the Sail Malaysia rally. When we wrote our last blog we were on our way to Pangkor. This was probably the highlight of the rally. After a few days anchored off Pangkor Island we moved around to the marina for the festivities. The first day was a tour of Pangkor island which included a wonderful Chinese meal at a beach side restaurant. We also  watched some traditional boat building and visited a Chinese temple which was more like a theme park with a miniature great wall of china! After a few hours rest the evening meal started. This was at the marina and included lots more food and unlimited alcohol. Needless to say it was a good night. There was a karaoke where we discovered a few talented people amongst the group and the rest of us just sang out of key!  James, the manager of Pangkor is incredibly helpful and certainly provided the highlight of the rally. We even had 3 free nights in the marina while we were being entertained.

The following day we had a day trip to a town called Ipoh which has lots of old British colonial buildings. Lunch was provided again and then we were taken to see an art exhibition and given afternoon tea! This was all government organised so there was no alcohol for the day.

Next stop was Penang. We had a very good sail to Penang island, passed under the 2 very long bridges from the mainland and anchored off Georgetown.  We really enjoyed Georgetown. It is a  lovely old city and its nice just to wander around and look at all the old buildings. We did a walking tour of the town and took in quite a few of the sights and visited a large Buddhist temple out of town. This was very bizarre as it was full of tourist shops and again was more like a theme park than a temple. Penang is famous for a meal called Laksa. This is a sort of broth with noodles and was delicious, we had one every day while we were there and would definitely recommend it.

After a few days we sailed to Langkawi so that we could have time at anchor before the rally activities started. Wow! What a surprise Langkawi was as there are lots of little islands with steep limestone cliffs and its very pretty. The first night we anchored in a narrow gully between 2 islands which was like being in a fiord. We moved to a few different places mainly trying to get away from the tourist boats which zip around at high speed all day but we are getting used to them.

We booked into Rebak marina on Rebak island for a week at the end of the rally. The  marina invited us to a very nice reception where the wine and beer was flowing all evening. Then we had our last day trip around Langkawi. We were mainly taken to duty free shops (Langkawi is a duty free island) but also had afternoon tea provided by the Royal Langkawi yacht club. About an hour later we had dinner at a local restaurant and that was the end of the rally.

After the fun we started work on our very neglected boat. We stocked up on wine, beer and spirits (a litre of gin is £5!) and got ready for Christmas. Buying food for dinner was more difficult than buying alcohol. We joined with friends Sue and Stefan from Charlotte and Chris and Dave from CD for Christmas dinner. We all prepared part of the meal and we had a good party on Chapter Two. This followed the party on CD on Christmas Eve and then we had another Boxing Day party on Charlotte!

New Years eve was spent in Kuah town, the main town on Langkawi, with friends Sharon and Lindsay from Songlines 3 and Pauline and John from Our Odyssey. These are 2 Australian boats we met in Indonesia. Sharon and Lindsey like red wine, as do we, so much was consumed on New Years eve. We saw the New Year in for the first time in a few years and suffered the next day!

While we have been in Langkawi it has been nice to meet up with  friends Jan Bart and Monique. They crossed the Pacific with us on a boat called Victory. We had not seen them for over a year as they had sold Victory and brought a catamaran in Thailand. They are now on their new boat in Langkawi before heading east back through Malaysia.

Once our parcel arrives we will head to Thailand. Phuket is only 120 miles and the nearest Thai island is only 20 miles away. At that point, the work will stop and hopefully the fun will start again.