Penang

We love spending some time in a city after months of islands, small villages, and beaches.  Georgetown, the main city of the island of Penang is vibrant, and full of surprises.  Every street an unexpected mixture of old and new, crumbling and well maintained, up market shops next to tiny filthy workshops.

This marina is fairly typical of the city.  It has a wonderful central position between the cruise ship dock and the busy ferry hub to the mainland.  Only a decade or so old, it was built on a grand scale and has excellent facilities,  including a comfortable air conditioned lounge with flat screen TV and lovely solid wood locally made tables and chairs.   However from the start the actual berths have had problems.  There is no protective wall, and too much wash from the 24 hr ferries coming and going, too much fast ebb and flow of the tide, and silting up.  About half of the docking piers are no longer usable – pieces have come adrift and are tied up with rope.  Only the outermost ends have enough depth, and even so, at spring tides all boats sit on the mud at low tide.

But it has position, and we have had a wonderful few days here exploring the city.  The only really touristy thing we have done was to take a bus to the base of the funicular railway going up the near vertical slope to a colonial hill station built by the British in the late 1700s.     Indian prisoners were used to cut horse trails up the hill and there are still a few of the original bungalows.  Wonderful views, definitely a few degrees cooler, and some lush tropical flowers and trees.  But rather full of tourists, restaurants, craft shops and golf buggies for those not wanting to explore on foot.

Most other days we have walked the city on foot.  There is an Indian area, a Chinatown and many streets with Malay, Chinese and Indian shops mixed up together.  There are ornate Chinese and Thai Hindu and Buddist temples and many shops selling shrines, and everything required for the little shrines in each house and store.  Yesterday evening we walked past a mosque with groups of white clad muslim men chatting outside after prayers.  The British of course set up Anglican churches, attractive white buildings set in green lawns.

Georgetown is a World Heritage Site, and many colonial era buildings have been beautifully restored – as government departments, banks and company headquarters and houses.  But many haven’t, and it is sad to see buildings almost past repair.  They are not abandoned though, little shops below, and people living above with electric cables trailing everywhere, and great streaks of damp down the walls.  

As we found out in Kumar, swiflet nests for birds nest soup are a very valuable business, and the upper floors of many buildings have been mostly illegally boarded up and converted to nesting buildings.  The swifts like a moist atmosphere so the rooms are sprayed with mist continually which doesn’t help the state of the walls, and causes problems of damp for those living in other parts of the building.   There are also quite legal and well maintained ‘swiftlet houses’ which have been properly adapted, and many have been in use for decades; but the rapid proliferation of illegal ones is causing health problems including an increase in the rat population.  Difficult to control when a kilo of birds nest can fetch anything from US$700 to 3,000.

Whenever we are in town we have a hunt for a few things we need for the boat.  This time we have been successful in in finding a bulb for the diving torch which we were told was obsolete in Australia.  (Maybe it is, but these little shops have stock that has probably been sitting there for years).  We have bought some strong PVC to make a rain catcher.  That shop was run by a very beautiful young Indian man with kohl make up around his eyes, a white turban, and chunky rings on every finger.  He also runs a perfume business and gave us free samples.  The plastic was cut (by one of his minions) out on the pavement, there was no room in the shop which already had a sewing machine, a desk, and the rolls of plastic in an area about 6 ft by 10.  In another shop selling hardware each assistant had an abacus, and used it.  There was a calculator as well, but evidently only used for converting metric to feet and inches and vv.   The shop selling sewing haberdashery had little drawers like an old fashioned pharmacy containing wrappers of pins, needles, press studs etc.  A wonderful Aladdin’s cave for me.  And in front of the shop a large bowl of mangoes for sale off the owner’s tree.

The pavement is only incidentally used for walking along.  There are shoe menders, coconut shredders, people mending everything from TV’s to motor bikes.   Nothing is thrown away here (except plastic wrappers, another story), and little workshops have spare parts old and new somewhere in their depths.   There are shops selling sari silk, gold jewellery, dried fish, enormous piles of eggs (one pile of egg crates measured about 6 foot square, and  G said he was tempted to take a running jump into the middle of it!), plastic flowers, lots of mobile phones.   And lots and lots of eating places.

People eat out in Penang, breakfast lunch and dinner. A couple of gas rings attached to a propane bottle with a table to put out the bowls and trays of food when cooked make a kitchen – no health and hygiene laws here, and the washing up facilities are often a cold tap and a bowl of water with the plates left to dry on chairs or a bit of wall.   It may be Indian, Chinese, Malay, or western, and is nearly always delicious.   We have eaten at a night food market.  A huge covered area of tables and chairs is surrounded by dozens of little food stalls selling a huge variety of food.  You order what you want, give your table number, and wait for it to arrive.  Then you pay.  So you can try dishes from lots of different stalls, and stay as long as you like.  Just need the appetite! And it is cheap.  No tax, no tipping no service charge.  In a hotel or up-market restaurant you would get china plates and serviettes and a table that doesn’t wobble, but it is doubtful that the food would be any tastier.

We do eat on the boat too – caught a good kingfish on the way here, and invited friends in the marina to share it with us or we would have been eating it all week!  This particular couple are old friends from the Pacific crossing, and we stayed on their boat in South Island New Zealand when we were travelling around by car.  Good to catch up with them.

Our few days here has extended into a week, and we are not in a hurry to leave but we know we have to do some hard work stripping antifouling off the hull in the boat yard before flying out at the end of May so will have to move on next week. Also the water in the marina is warm and polluted and if we stay too long the barnacles on the propeller will be giant sized and we won’t get anywhere.

Circumnavigating Langkawi

A circumnavigation of the island of Langkawi  (Malaysia) has surpassed our expectations.  Nowhere near as crowded or built up as Phuket, and it has a lot to offer.  On the minus side the water isn’t clear so we haven’t been swimming much; cloudy water tends to have more little jelly fish which give nettle-like prickles.  G has been in to do his regular clean-up of the propeller which in this warm water has grown pea-sized barnacles in just a couple of weeks.  The hull’s antifouling works well, but we haven’t yet found anything that stays on the prop for more than a week or two.

We have done a lot of dinghy exploration.  On the east coast of the island is an inlet known as The Hole in the Wall.  A narrow entrance between cliffs broadens to a sheltered anchorage with lots of mangrove channels off it.  The combination of mangroves and steep forested cliffs and rocky outcrops is a haven for wildlife.  The large white breasted sea eagle is the emblem of the island, and there are lots around, very recognisable with their bright reddish brown backs.  They glide in circles in the thermals then suddenly swoop down to pick up fish in their claws with hardly a splash.   They do get fed for the benefit of tourists, a practice we don’t really approve of, but seeing a dozen or more swooping for little bits of fish is quite a sight.

There are monkeys living in the jungle growth, and in the evenings at low tide they came down to the little bit of rocky beach near our boat to pick at shells on the rocks,  using sticks as levers. 

We had read that it was possible to dinghy through a passage to a bay on the north side of the island, a cut having been made in the rock to connect bits of waterways.   On the way it passed right through a cave and the first time we attempted it the tide was very low and still going out and we didn’t want to get stranded, the second time it was too high and we couldn’t get through the cave,  (spring tides at the moment).     Third time better calculated, and we got as far as the cut then decided to turn back as we were getting low on fuel.   The last bit was covered the other day when we had moved round to the northerly bay.  Tick that one off now!

The whole area is a wonderful breeding ground for fish and sea life in general, and there are quite a few fish farms, mostly with small floating restaurants attached which cater for the lunchtime launch tour visits.  We arranged to eat ‘dinner’ at one, but at 5.30 as he was closing at 6o’clock.  Had a group of customs men as company, their patrol boat tied up next to our little dinghy –  two huge outboards making ours look very puny.  We are pretty close to the Thai border, and have noticed radar on lighthouses too.   The prawns we had with fried rice were large, fresh, sweet and delicious but we had to eat fairly quickly as an extremely dark and ominous cloud was looming and thunder and lightning were getting closer.    Back to the boat to close hatches and let out more anchor chain …….but nothing much happened.  A few loud crashes of thunder, some wind, and not enough rain to collect.            

The wet season will soon be here, and most evenings we get a bit of rain.  Have been collecting enough to wash clothes but haven’t had a real downpour for a while.  It is hot and humid most of the time, and a cloudy day is welcome.  Our on board thermometer doesn’t ever go above 26C but we reckon it is more like 34C most days.    In fact the last bucket filling downpour was a couple of weeks ago and accompanied by a squall.  We have had no high winds for weeks, and suddenly had 40 knots blowing.  Left it too late for taking down the sun awning, and we had to cut the lines as it was getting more ripped every second.  What a mess.  It took us days and quite a lot of new fabric to patch it and get it in working order again.  Would have been quicker and easier to have made a new one, we didn’t realise how weak the original fabric was getting, no doubt the next time the wind blows hard it will be the old fabric that goes.   We have a heavy duty (and heavy weight) sewing machine on board which is definitely not user friendly and needs regular maintenance and adjustment.  But, it does the job and we are getting to know each other better so hassles and frustrations are getting fewer.  Made in Taiwan to a design at least 50 yrs old!

Langkawi is a duty free island, so tourists stream in from at home and abroad to buy electrical goods, perfume, clothes and china from the main town, Kuah.  Lots of Russians as evidently there are good value package holidays to Thailand and Malaysia.  Where we are at the moment, anchored off a new marina complex, there is even a Russian restaurant, and menus at other upmarket eating places are written in Russian as well as English.

Once a bay, quite marshy and low lying with a small fishing village, Telaga has been dredged to make a marina, and the ground removed used to construct two small islands to form protection, leaving a sheltered lagoon for anchoring.   As with many places visited, it looks as though original plans were a lot larger than final construction, and there are large areas of ground that were presumably meant for hotels and holiday flats.   An area has been built for the fishing boats, and there is still a small village at one end of the bay with cheap local restaurants.

Shopping for basic supplies has to be done in the main town, Kuah.   We hired an old car there (phone Musa who arrives the next morning with the car.  Pay 40 ringits (about £8) and the car is yours, to be left with doors open and the key under the mat the next morning.  No paperwork, and possibly no insurance.  We drove carefully.)  It would not have passed any roadworthy test but the air conditioning worked.  We needed diesel, and it is much cheaper at fuel stations than fuel docks. A long process though.  Fuel is subsidised, and you are not allowed to buy more than 30 litres at one time.  We needed 220 litres!  So we went to three fuel stations, one of which let us have 55 litres, so that was half the quantity.  Back to dinghy.  Back to boat.  Empty jerrycans into fuel tank.  Set off again.  You have to pay before getting fuel, and I had paid for the first round so G paid for the second and we repeated the performance.  As you can imagine it took us all morning.

Took the opportunity to go for a drive across the island in the afternoon, visiting a craft centre as I was keen to see some good quality batik.   Was very taken by hand painted floaty silk kaftans but ‘dry clean only’ was on the label, and common sense prevailed!  The cottons were all in rather garish colours.

 In Thailand we acquired an on board resident, a little gecko which seems to live in the boom and has a sort of laughing tweet, mainly in the evenings, and, seemingly, in answer to things we say.  Quite funny when we are playing cards and make winning or losing shouts!  We hope that he has an insatiable appetite for mosquitoes.  Our dictionary says that gecko is a Malaysian word, and mimics the sound they make.

Next stop Penang again as we travel south down the Malaysian coast.  We didn’t have long to explore this historic city on our last visit.  Will probably treat ourselves to a marina as it was an awfully long bus ride and walk from our previous anchorage.

Au Revoir Thailand

Time to leave but we plan to return to Thailand later in the year. It is very hot and humid now, and will remain so until the rains come in another month or so. In the wet season the prevailing winds change, and the whole of the west coast becomes untenable for anchoring – and of course it rains a lot.

At the moment there is very little wind. Yesterday we were moving from one anchorage to another in the same island group. Left after breakfast and arrived early afternoon having sailed the whole way, covering a distance of 9 nm! Average speed of a gentle stroll. Glassy smooth water, pleasant surroundings, and a 4 knot breeze behind us. Time to bake bread, put some polish on the gelcoat in the cockpit, read and do a couple of crosswords.

We are near the Malaysian border, in the Butang group of islands. Mainly uninhabited forested islands, but the little island of Koh Lipe where we are now, has been developed as a tourist base. Very low key, lots of backpackers and young families. The beach has small family run restaurants and juice bars with the usual massage places. Along a little sandy ‘shopping street’ are diving shops, tour operators (for boat trips), and small stores selling clothes, sandals, bags and basic foods.

There is no pressure to buy anywhere in Thailand, and no hawkers doing a hard sell on the beach. No loud music and no loud voices. Maybe the Buddhist philosophy, and certainly very peaceful. We sat at a table on the beach as the sun set, and watched the young children of the restaurant setting out the tables for the evening. A neat little girl of about 6 showing her rumbustuous 4 yr brother how to put a little plastic bowl of sand on each table, stick a candle into each, then cover them with a plastic bottle with top and bottom cut off. It was a generally sandy operation with everything landing on the beach several times. Finally they were given long handles forks to spike up any leaves that had fallen from the shady trees above.

While there a Thai man and his family returned from a fishing trip with a large baracuda he had caught. He had no idea what it was, and wanted the restaurant to prepare it for him. He had hoped to eat some as sushi but was persuaded very nicely that it was really a fish that needed cooking. We have had no luck fishing over the last few days of travelling. There are shoals of tiny fish that leap out of the water as they are chased by something larger; and we caught a vicious looking reef needle fish from the dinghy which has a long thin ‘beak’ full of sharp teeth. Were afraid to land it in our inflatable dinghy, so had to tow it back to the boat then unhook it with thick gloves and a pair of pliars.

We enjoyed spicy seafood and rice at the restaurant, then found that the tide had gone even further out than we had anticipated, and we had to row very carefully over and round the rocky fringing reef that we had motored over coming in. Spring tides at the moment, so higher and lower than at other times.

As I write this in the early morning, before the humidity and heat cause the sweat to drip all over the computer, the beach is preparing for the day. A large live-aboard dive boat is filling tanks, with someone cooking breakfast on the stern, and the passengers enjoying a lie in in hammocks on the deck. Unfortunately the long-tails are getting going too. I have mentioned these long wooden boats before, they are the ubiquitous form of transport by sea. Used for fishing, local transport, and for short distance tourist transport. And they make a noise. Their engines are open and have no silencers, they are as loud as pneumatic drills. Very damaging to the ears of those driving these boats day after day.

Next stop is Langkawi, over the border in Malaysia. Another change of SIM card in phone and internet dongle.