One of my favorite
lines in the movie Dances With Wolves takes
places when Lieutenant John Dunbar (played by Kevin Costner) is traveling west
with Timmons, the meatheaded mule train driver (played by Robert Pastorelli)
come across a human skeleton. Timmons looks at the skeleton, snorts and says,
“There’s probably folks back home saying, ‘Why don’t he write?’”
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Hoisting the Malaysia Courtesy Flag |
Ruthie and I have covered quite a few miles since my last
post although a fraction of them were aboard Rutea. The passage from Singapore to Malaysia, although intense, was
only 24 hours long. It was intense
because we were at the narrowest part of the Malacca Straits and the constant
stream of heavy freighter traffic required us to be on our toes. Just outside of the Vessel Traffic Separation
(VTS) channels were thousands of unlit small fishing boats. Throw in the random squall with heavy
lightning and you’ve got the perfect recipe for a sleepless night. Regardless, we pulled into Admiral Marina, a Southern California marina look-alike, the next morning
without incident and we did the check-in cha-cha without our nerves getting too
frayed despite our lack of sleep. There
were a couple of boats there that we knew and that evening we all got together
for elbow-bending exercises at the bar that overlooks the marina. The following night all of us got together
again and took a couple of taxis to a Mexican restaurant (really? A Mexican restaurant in Malaysia? Yup.) where the food was not very good but
even our Aussie friends enjoyed the party atmosphere that seems unique to
Mexican restaurants. The main benefit,
though, was meeting the taxi driver, who we hired the next day to take us on a
tour of Melaka City, a 100km from the marina.
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Oldest Mosque in Malaysia |
Since it received it’s World Heritage Site designation in
2008, Melaka City
has exploded with tourism but we still found it’s Chinatown
and old Portuguese part to be filled with almost a kind of mysticism – one
could tell that there was a lot more going on than met the eye but even the
façade was fascinating. We also saw
Muslim and Hindu temples – its probably as close as Ruthie will ever come to
wearing a Burqa but she was required to wearing a covering while in the
mosque. By the end of the day we came to
the realization that we probably should have spent two or even three days in Melaka City
but we had a schedule to keep so we made it back to the ship and departed a few
days later for Marina Island Pangkor.
It was another 150-mile passage from Port Dickson (Admiral
Marina) to Marina Island, a man-made island between the Malay peninsula
and the predominately-resort island
of Pangkor. I was very disappointed when we arrived and
despite the fact that we had made reservations months in advance to stay here,
I immediately jumped on the internet to see if we could find someplace
else. First of all, the slip to which we
were assigned was way too small – Rutea’s
ass stuck way out into the fairway and the finger barely made it to her
midship. The docks were made of extruded
aluminum which is far better suited to being on a calm lake somewhere as
opposed to being on the edge of the Indian Ocean. There are almost no facilities – the showers
share the small stall with the toilet (there’s only cold water but in a place
as hot as Malaysia,
who’d want hot water anyway?) and there’s only three stalls – two of which have
western-style toilets but one has the eastern style. On one of the doors is a sign that says
‘Women’ but men are just as likely to use it.
In fact, its very obvious who has used the toilet last if you can see footprints
on the toilet rim where someone has squatted.
While being in the slip was less than ideal, when we were
hauled out was even worse. Because our
refrigeration system uses ocean water for cooling, once we were hauled out
meant no refrigeration. Nor could you
use the toilets on board. Or the sinks,
although we did shove a hose up the galley sink drain throughhull and put a
bucket underneath it so we could at least wash our hands. The marina rented us a 12’ stepladder but
advised us to pull it up on deck at night to discourage rats from climbing
aboard. The marina yard itself is dirt
and weeds – with the ebb and flow of boats there are usually around 20-25 boats
propped up with various types of homemade stands.
It wasn’t until we had been on the hard for a few days that
I began to relax and even start to appreciate the place. I spoke with several boat owners who said
they had had work done in quite a few places in southeast Asia and found
Pangkor to be the best. This was
reassuring to me. We finally got a
meeting with Jimmy, a local contractor who is known for his fantastic spray
painting abilities. This too was
reassuring that we were able to find a highly-skilled craftsman with whom we
could have an intelligent conversation about complex issues relating to boat
maintenance. Furthermore, we met Jo,
another contractor, who was also able to give us confidence that anything we
hired him to do would be done correctly.
Other than hauling boats in and out of the water, the marina offers no
services.
We didn’t have too much time to complain, though, as we
needed to get ready for our trip back to California. This trip had been planned for a long time as
we had even gone as far as to buy a dehumidifier while we were still in
Australia to attempt to keep the boat dry and mold-free while we were gone (its
so hot and humid here that mold can grow on almost anything). Unfortunately, the unit died when we plugged
it in. This just left us hoping for the
best.
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Ian and Sean |
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Ruthie's Birthday Party |
Our trip home was wonderful, starting with a traditional Thanksgiving and quickly built to a crescendo when our
son, Ian, married his partner, Sean, in San
Francisco. My
sister hosted the wedding itself at her spectacular home It was a terrific weekend and its unlikely
that anyone who attended will forget about it anytime soon. My congratulations go out to them one more
time. I took a way-too-short trip down
to La Paz, BCS
to see my brother on his boat. Our
family spent Christmas together for the first time in three years and we
enjoyed a low-key but delicious New Year’s Eve.
Our two-month stay in San Diego was
capped by a 60th birthday party for Ruthie, where friends and family
from all up and down the west coast of North America
traveled thousands of miles to celebrate with her.
Loaded down with six large pieces of luggage, each weighing
on average 30 kilos, we carried a not-too-small chandlery of boat parts with us
back to Malaysia. I had rehearsed in my mind the arguments I
was going to have with the Malay Customs officials on why we didn’t have to pay
import duty on thousands of dollars worth of boat parts but it was time poorly
spent as the Customs officials didn’t even glance at us as we made our way
through that portion of the airport.
Maybe it was because it was 0400 in the morning? Rutea
was in great shape when we returned but the work that we had contracted to be
done while we were gone had barely gotten started. This was blamed on bad weather. A further delay was blamed on Chinese New
Year where almost everything in the country shuts down for a week. Of course, we had plenty to do, our days
filled with boat chores and whining about living on the hard.
To make things a little easier on us, we went in with some
friends on the rental of a small car.
Our half share of the rental was RM175.00 (about US$60) for two weeks
and this felt like a pretty significant expense, especially if you saw or drove
the car. You would have thought that the
Malay builders of the car might have checked to see if the name they chose for
the car had a different meaning in some other language and, who knows, they may
have done so but they still chose to name the car after a deer found in
Malaysia called a Kancil, pronounced
‘cancel’. To me, ‘cancel’ and ‘reject’
are almost synonymous. Still, it means
we can run errands without having to rent one of the marina's motor scooters
(even with both of us wearing backpacks, you can only carry so much on a motor
scooter) and it means since we don’t have to walk to go out for dinner (which
we do most nights), we don’t arrive at a restaurant soaked in sweat.
Enough whinging! Rutea is suppose
to splash on the 13th of February and we hope to get underway
shortly thereafter, making our way north to Thailand. It will be such a relief to be back in the
water!