Malaysia

Shots around Malaysia in no particular order:

Buddist Temple in Melaka with offerings

Biggest buildings in Kuala Lumpur

Historic Fort in Melaka

Learning about how to make "Birds Nesr Soup"
It's sweetish and served for dessert!

Buying Batik artwork on silk in Melaka

Moslem school kids cut up with Chuck and Julia from Pacific Star, IP350

Malaysia is not as pristine as Singapore but a damnsight cleaner and richer than Indonesia so we are ready to like it here for a while. We plan to leave the boat in Langkawi while we travel and work on sprucing it back to shipshape!

We came to Johor the first of November, for the start of the Malaysia Rally but quickly went our own direction and pace, sailing NW up the Mallaca Straights, one of the busiest ship traffic locations in the world. We stayed in the barge lane missing all the fishing nets that are layed continously in 30' or less depth.

Our first stop was the historic town of Melaca with forts, museums, churches and old rebuilt squares to roam around. Next we stopped at Port Dickson where we left the boat for 5 days to visit the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur...means "muddy confluence". We did the usual big city stuff: shopping, museums, architecture, gardens. It was pretty OK but quite cheap!

After that we sailed straight for Langkawi, a group of touristy resort islands in the Andaman Sea. They are dutyfree and the water is much bluer than the muddy Straights. There are several marinas and yacht services. First we get 7 new batteries, a charger for shore power, a "fixed" or a "new" fridge, canvas repaired, new cockpit cushions and lots of scrubbing of mildew from all over this tub!!! I'll call it by name when it looks "schoonery" again!

We plan to visit Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, China and even come home for a while, hopefully in spring. Good news is we bought a small AC unit cuz this weather is really hot and now we can sleep and work better.

We will also get physicals and renew prescriptions here, so hopefully we are in good enuf shape to keep doing this cruising stuff. We do have the net here at the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club, so keep in touch.

Back to making the maintainence list...haven't begun work yet.

Singapore

We can only hit the high points in Singapore. We stayed 3 weeks and just loved being in a big city again. We shopped....shopping is a marathon activity here...and saw all the museums. We toured around Little India and Chinatown with friends who met us coming in from Malaysia. We stayed in Raffles Marina, the most luxurious marina we have ever been in but very reasonable.

Singapore is immaculate and quite refreshing after Indonesia with all the polluted water.

We really loved the most wonderful tropical Botanic Gardens we have ever seen and the Bird Park was also quite remarable. The Zoo was just soso!

We had to get new passports so that's why it took a while but it was no problem...except the minor one...the heat...whew...quite warm here. Tried to stay gone until 6pm when it cools down.

In Nov we are on to Malaysia with the start of the rally that we really are just drifting with in the straights of Malaka until we get to Langkawi near Thailand. That's when the water gets nice and clear again and we look forward to it.