Phuket (pronouced Poo-ket).

Christmas was already behind us and 2011 was on the horizon. For us it was time to leave Phi Phi Don and set sail to the Island of Phuket, more precisely at the town of Chalong, where it is possible for us to resupply in fuel and food before leaving Thailand in direction of Sri-Lanka. After two days of grocery shopping and working on the boat, oil changes and inspection of the riggings, we wanted to visit the place a little. On this new-year’s eve we hired a taxi driver who took us across Chalong on board of his red “vehicule”. Of course, the ride in this 4-wheeled smurfette was more exciting than visiting the tourist sites themselves! Note: if you find that I look a bit sloppy with my unshaved beard it’s because I’m presently growing a beard and I’m still in the phase of looking like an homeless but in a couple of weeks it should look better.

Our first visit was to see the Big Buddha, which is visible from almost half the Island of Phuket. The 45m (145 feet) high marble covered statue was very impressive even though the construction of the site was not yet completed. A stairway is planned to provide access inside the statue and that, we can assume, should help the Buddhist followers to get closer to the Nirvana although I personally believe that taking a plane is a more efficient way, in terms of the height achieved, to do the same! Of course, here we assume that getting closer to the heavens means getting away from the center of the earth because if we climb inside the statue then for a Canadian, who is on the other side of the earth, we are in fact going down! All right, I guess I am asking too much for a philosophy developed at a time when the earth was flat! More seriously, look at the statue and can you determine the sex of Buddha? I am not an erudite on the question but I think that, although the first Buddha was indeed a man, he/she represents the ultimate state of a conscience or the state of a being at the end of the line of rebirths and in which case the sex of the being is not really important when presented in its spiritual representation. Wow, did I just say that?

On our way back from our visit of Buddha our driver suggested that we stop for an elephant ride! We thought we’d seen everything after climbing at the top of hill on board of his taxi propelled by a lawnmower engine but apparently Thailand had more for us to experience. Then hop we jumped on Mary’s back, a 21 years old elephant and already mother of a little 5 years old pachyderm, for a 1 hour ride in the surrounding trails. No doubts that an elephant ride is something special but let’s say that the beasts are not really driven to exhaustion by their owners. In the first half hour Mary made us cover the impressive distance of 500m (540 yards), which represents a speed of 1 kmh (0.6 mph) or, if you prefer, twice as slow as a human being walking at a comfortable pace! During the second half hour we simply came back on our steps. Of course, to attain this racing snail speed Mary had to stop once for her physiological needs, and God knows how impressive the needs of an elephant can be, three times to eat some bushes and twice to drink in the little water ponds along the trail! Well, we were not there to cross half of Thailand on the back of an elephant but it was still impressive to find a mean of transportation slower than a sailboat!
Finally, for our New Years Eve dinner we didn’t feel for something too exotic so we went to a little French restaurant, L’escale, in the hearth of Chalong where we enjoyed a very good magrès de canard, with the little sweet sauce, prepared by the French chef and owner of the restaurant who expatriated from his native France to offer his culinary talents in South Asia. After the meal, we came back to the dinghy but without realizing it we arrived at exactly midnight and as we put our feet in the little inflatable fireworks went off everywhere at the same time including on the pier just a few feet from us! It was really impressive to see but knowing that the guys lighting the rockets in question are far from being certified firework experts we quickly motored away in the middle of the water and far from the shores to watch the fireworks, which fired up in all directions we would look. We saw many fireworks in this trip but this one was really the most impressive.
Happy New Year 2011 to everyone and Danielle and I wish you Happiness, Health and Prosperity for the coming year.

Christmas Hollidays in Thailand.

When we arrived in Thailand we knew we would spend Christmas and New Years day here since the NE monsoons, required for crossing the Indian Ocean, don’t settle until January. So we stopped in Ko Phi Phi Don for almost two weeks to pay ourselves some “vacations”. We took a mooring ball in the main bay and this is the view we had for two weeks from the boat. Not bad isn’t it?

We thought we would be bored during the Christmas period away from our families and the snow but it turned out we had quite a blast. Phi Phi Don is a tourist place that was completely wiped out during the Tsunami, in the middle of the decade, but as you can see is now quite rebuilt. For us it really started on my birthday on Dec 23rd when we decided to go have a nice dinner in a restaurant on the beach front with candles, the wine, the drinks and everything. It was very nice and in the evening we went to the “Reggae” bar where they presented fights of Thai Kick Boxing. Sorry we didn’t bring the camera that night so we can’t show you what it was like. But in the bar there was a ring and they would offer a free “bucket” to anyone who wanted to fight for fun. Many went and it was indeed fun, at least most of the time as some guys where a bit rough but nothing to be too worried about. Then at one point two real fighters showed up on the ring; they wear gloves and short, no other protection gears. They were pretty small but incredibly fast, which is a characteristic of Thai Kick Boxing as far as I know. After the fight the fighters would go in the crowd to shake hands and collect whatever money people would give them. After a few more amateur fights two other real fighters came up. These guys were much nastier than the first two and during the fight they would kick themselves outside the ring or thrown on the floor in near KO state after being kicked in the face at full force by the opponent. Do I need to say that you need to be flexible like hell to kick someone in the face? I must admit that this was not as fun as the first fight, which was much more technical, with a level of aggressiveness that made the whole crowd a bit uncomfortable. At the end the winner, who was by far the most aggressive, even took the large aluminum saucer they used to prevent the water, they pour on their heads, from wetting the entire ring between the rounds, and hit his opponent with it! The crowd started to shout its disapproval especially Danielle who was shouting “LOOSER!” repetitively to that killer oblivious of the fact that I wouldn’t last 6 seconds against him should he get angry about us! By then we were getting pretty drunk and decided to leave. We walked back to the beach where we left the dinghy to find it completely filled with water and sand as the huge tide came up a bit higher than we expected! Of course since our alcohol level in our blood would have blown any alcotest to the roof we started to laugh out loud like two kids while trying to bale the water out of the boat. We finally managed to put the boat back in the water in a floatable condition and zigzagged our way between the boats, real or imaginary, along the way. Let’s say that it took us about twenty minutes to cover the few hundred meters from the shore to Chocobo and we both arrived completely naked and swimming back while pulling the dinghy behind us. I leave it to your imagination to figure out what happened in between but like we say; what happened in Phi Phi Don stays in Phi Phi Don! After refreshing ourselves a few minutes in the water we climbed back on the boat and felt something that disappeared long time ago in Canada; it’s called freedom!

But then we still had Christmas coming despite our huge hangover, which took us two days to recover, and we went to enjoy a pretty amazing experience. This place, on the picture, sells what I would call piciexfoliation, where you basically put your feet and legs in fish tank filled with hundreds of tiny cleaning fishes eating all your dead skin for 20 minutes. We screamed our lungs out the first 10 seconds, not that it hurts at all, but because of the weird feeling coming from hundreds of little mouths sucking our legs! It was really fun and after our legs and feet were as smooth as a baby’s skin. As for Christmas night we booked a restaurant offering to the tourists a Christmas buffet of roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, ham, duck and even cranberries! The brown stuff on my pile of potatoes is actually gravy, which was pretty good I must say and if you think our plates where full you should have seen the one of the small women, about 90 lbs (40 Kg), who filled her plate with at least 1 ½ time what I put in mine! I’m not kidding some people are so greedy in front of an all-you-can-eat counter it’s unbelievable. Since we are 12 hours ahead of Canada we waited the next morning to call home to wish Merry Christmas using MSN Messenger with video and all. We were maybe at the other end of the world but with technology not that far after all. We had a few drinks that night but reasonably came back with all our cloths to the boat ;-)

The Beach.

If I tell you we can find Ma Ya Beach on Phi Phi Leh Island in Thailand this may not ring any bell but if I say “The Beach” featured in the movie of the same name starring Leonardo DiCaprio then it may be a different story. The movie is a bit old, it came out in 2000, but quite good so, if you haven’t seen it yet, go to the video store and rent it. We indeed went to that paradise beach and were wondering how in the world did they managed to empty it from the 500 or so tourists visiting the beach every day! Chances are that the tourist rush significantly increased after the movie came out and the place became the major economic drive of the area. We were maybe not on a deserted island lost in Asia but the place was still one of the most beautiful scenery we’ve seen so far; crystal clear water and powdery fine white sand you find nowhere else.

We couldn’t go with Chocobo as the bay is relatively small and shallow so we did like everybody else and moored at the neighbor island of Phi Phi Don and hired one of these Long Tail Boats who took us at Ma Ya Beach as well as other places around the island. Of course the name of the boat comes from the long propeller shaft that allows them to maneuver in very shallow waters. We walked a bit on the island but unfortunately the scenes of the village and especially the ones in the marijuana field were shot somewhere else as the island is made only of high peeks surrounding the bay with barely any flat area. We so much wanted to see … the village! As for a shark attack you need to actually go somewhere else to get one as the local reef sharks are as dangerous as a cow in a hay field. By the way, the name of the island, Phi Phi Leh, is pronounced “pee-pee-lay” and no I’m not kidding!

Arrived in Thailand

We arrived in Pulau Bunting, Thailand from Kuah, Langkawi, Malaysia after a bumpy ride of only 25 nautical miles but that was good enough for one day in those conditions. We are on our way to Phuket, Thailand where we will proceed with our official clearance in the country. To get to Phuket we need to do day hoppings by jumping from one island to the other and anchoring during the night since sailing overnight in the area is nearly impossible.

We love fishing nets in Malaysia

We are on our way along the Malaysian coast through the Strait of Malacca and unfortunately we don’t have much time to visit this part of our route. We must be underway every day that the weather permits it and since we can only sail during the day our progress is very slow. Two reasons prevent us from sailing during the night. The first reason is the weather and every evening or so we get severe thunderstorms which are really not ideal while sailing in pitch dark! But the main reason is the Malaysian fishing fleet. Fishing boats are everywhere and we need to have a very close watch while on the way to avoid them but mostly their fishing gears. On the picture you can see a large fishing boat with a huge floating net, these are easy to deal with as they move slowly and the nets are pretty obvious. The problem for a sailboat comes from the small ones. These little wooden boats, about 25 feet in length, drop nets staying just below the surface and are fishing everywhere by dozens. You really don’t want to be a fish in the area that’s for sure. They also leave hundreds of fishing cages scattered everywhere and marked only by a little flag and when I say “little” I mean it. In fact the flag is usually made of a small wood stick floating on 2 plastic bottles and mounted with a square flag that so deteriorated that they look like the surrender white flags during the Napoleonian wars after two weeks of battles.

But the best story happened just after we left Pulau Bunting an island that offered us a good shelter against the daily thunderstorms prevailing in the area. In front of us was a line of fishing boats, maybe 20 of them, all seeming to fight for the same school of fish. We proceeded cautiously trying to evaluate the erratic driving of the fishermen and to stay as far away from them as we could. At one point one of the boats came in our direction and turned at the last minute to pass us at our stern. We were at that moment motorsailing, which means that one engine was running but both sails were fully open and even though the wind was weak we were still sailing and our maneuverability very limited. As I was looking at the fishing boat passing just right behind us one of the fishermen then pointed ahead of Chocobo urging me to look. Another fishing boat was sailing at full speed toward us at angle and I had to put the engine quickly in neutral to avoid a collision. Putting the engine in neutral significantly reduced our speed and was enough to let the fishing boat pass but we were still sailing full sails open! I was looking at the boat sailing away from us and wondering what exactly this guy was doing. In less than two seconds the horror jumped at me; they were dropping a fishing net!!! The bunch of morons passed at full speed right in front of a sailboat and dropped their 300 feet (100m) long net. Of course we caught the net as we were yelling at them to stop and not to start pulling the net. Danielle rushed to lower the sails in order to stop the boat but without turning the boat into the wind this can be quite a challenge. Nevertheless, she managed to do it while I was trying to spot the net and see where it was tangled. The fishing boat came behind us as we were trying to assess how the net was tangled and how to release it. One of the guys on the fishing boat shouted to us to put the propellers in reverse. Of course, how come I didn’t think about this myself? The best thing to do when you have a line tangled in your propeller is to spin it even more! Geez how can someone be so stupid and yet be allowed to breath. Then another of the geniuses on board suggested that we cut it, and of course was oblivious of the fact that this net was what would bring the food on his table the next week. But by then Danielle and I had had a couple of minutes to assess the situation and at the same time we said “we have to dive!”. I was quickly putting my swimming suit and grabbing my mask and snorkeler while Danielle was setting a line for me to hold in case there was a current under the boat. I jumped and fortunately the net’s top cable was simply sitting on top of the propeller blades and all I had to do was to release it from the two propellers and free we were. We waited a minute to let the net sink and to be sure it was out of range, waved goodbye to our bunch of monkeys on the fishing boat then engaged the propeller and off we were. Now, the exact reason why the guy went dropping his net right in front of us is still unclear but the fact is that this happened in a region that was well known for piracy not so long ago and the fact that pirates attacking the small yachts were usually fishermen trying to round up their ends of the month a little! Well this struck me only way after the events and honestly we never felt treated in any way during the whole time; we only felt victims of blunt stupidity!

During our day hopping we stopped for the night in Port Klang, Malaysia, which appears to be probably the largest cargo port in Malaysia. It was far from the dimensions of Singapore but still quite impressive. Have a look at the large container ships being unloaded by the giant container cranes. I am sure you didn’t think it was possible to fit that many containers on a boat hey? Note, by the way, that the containers are simply sitting there untied on the ship. What do you think happens when one this big guy gets caught in a huge storm? But again the best part came later. Just after the first docks we turned into a side river and anchored in what appeared to be the stinkiest place we’ve ever anchored. The stench was so bad that Danielle had a hard time to sleep while I slept like a baby. Apparently, I have no problem sleeping over a dump. Obviously, the smell was coming by the untreated sewage waters released by the surrounding industries and towns not caring much about that costly concept of environment protection. Note however that Malaysia is poor, very poor and talking about environment protection is easy from a guys coming from a country where the average family revenue is about $60K/year! Anyway we had no choice but to stay there since it was sunset and we had no time to find another place to anchor.

The only place we really stopped in Malaysia was the town of Kuah on the Island of Langkawi where they somehow erected a giant statue of an eagle as the main landmark of the very crowded but also very roomy harbor. We took a few days to stretch our legs in the city streets and markets since we hadn’t go ashore since Puteri eleven days ago and all our muscles started to feel like jello! Of course, we enjoyed the delicious and very cheap food the many restaurants had to offer. Indeed, with $7.00 to $18.00 for the two of us we could enjoy Thai, Indian or Malaysian meals that mix curry, ginger and chili in ways only Asians can do. We also went to McDonalds once but to our defense for this culinary offence in this kingdom of spices, which is South-East Asia, I must say that we were on a hurry and just went for what fast-food stands for! Another aspect of our life in Indonesia and Malaysia is the daily Muslim call for the prayer. I don’t know if I mentioned it before but Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world. Bali may be mostly Hindu but the rest of the country is definitively Muslim and Malaysia is the same, just smaller in population. This beautiful mosque happens to be very close to the shore and like every mosque they have loud speakers to make all the followers to hear the prayer, which as you know happens five times a day. I am not sure if the call is made in Arabic or in Bahasa but it sure sounded Arabic to me. Nevertheless, if you never heard a Muslim call for prayer before let’s say that it sounds like a long song where words are stretched in a slow and harmonious complain. One thing about this call from the mosques is that we are not sure exactly how they chose who sings in the speakers. Here in Langkawi the guy from the nearby mosque was quite a good singer and Danielle and I enjoyed hearing him every day. However, in some remote islands of Indonesia the Imam or whoever was yelling in the microphone from the temple sounded more like an old rooster with a hangover trying to still impress after it was long overdue! I mean, seriously, some were so bad that it would be a valid reason for the entire village to change faith just to stop hearing the guy five times a day!

Arrived in Malaysia

We arrived at Puteri Marina in Malaysia after simply crossing the Johor Strait from Singapore, a short 7 miles ride. We stopped here simply to clear in the country and to refuel before attacking the Strait of Malacca as the fuel is much cheaper in Malaysia than Singapore; $0.83/liter instead of $1.09/liter. Our plan is to day hop from here to Langkawi, Malaysia through the Strait of Malacca, which is well known for two things; pirates and no wind. The good news about pirates is that this was mainly an issues in the 80’s or beginning of the 90’s and involved mainly large cargo ships for which large ransoms were demanded. Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia joined together and seem to have cleaned the area so we are not too worried about that. Anyway after all boat expenses we had in Australia and Singapore we could maybe pay them $3.96 for our lives since this is about what we have left in our pockets. Oh wait, even better we will give them the boat so they will become totally broke after a few months of trying to keep it in working order! As for the wind, as far as we know, the authorities have not done anything about that ;-) so we will have to motor our way up toward Thailand but since fuel is relatively cheap in the area it is no biggy.

A glimpse of Singapore.

Although we spent over 11 days in Singapore we didn’t do anything special really. We first started by getting a new refrigerator unit and replenishing our meat since we lost most of the one we bought in Australia. But the very day we got the new unit in place we decided to have a quiet evening and just sit down to watch a movie. Danielle turns on the TV but oh surprise the screen stays black! We tried another time, then another, no success the nice flat screen TV we bought only 2 years ago had died probably by suicide to relief itself from the unbearable heat and humidity level of this area of the world. So we went all over the city to find a new television that would actually fit in the enclosure we have for it, that would work on 120V and support NTSC, which is the signal encoding standard in North America because of course in Singapore and in most of Asia the power voltage is 240V and the encoding is PAL! But don’t worry, if we could find diesel in Benoa we can find a TV in Singapore!

So off we went in this Mecca of shopping which is Singapore. Jurong Point, Sim Lim Square or Orchard Road now have no secrets to us. It is simply impressive how many shopping centers this city has and this really made us wonder who in the world buys all this stuff? Anyhow, we found our TV and other stuff we needed and cannot be found anywhere in the underdeveloped surrounding countries. But Singapore is not only about shopping it is about eating. Food is everywhere and it is cheap; usually under $10 for two meals! We filled up our refrigerator but it was really cheaper to eat outside especially with meat being quite pricy at the grocery store. Danielle sure enjoyed the local food but at one point just needed to go back to “occidental” food such as fish&chips and club sandwiches. As for me, I just couldn’t get tired of noodle soups, mee gorengs (fried noodles with tons of stuff and spices in it), dumplings and all the good stuff Asia can offer.

Singapore is obviously a clean, developed and modern city and one if its beauty is the subway or MRT as they call it, which is a very modern rail system running over and underground. Public transport is the always the best place to take the time to look at what people look like and Singapore appears to be a very cosmopolitan city with mostly slim people coming from all over Asia mainly China but also Indonesia, Malaysia, India and all the other countries finishing by “a” in the region.

Other than sinking our retirement fund with refrigeration units and TV sets we also wanted to see what Singapore had to offer to tourists. We sure went to Little India, Chinatown and the Colonial district to admire the unique architecture but there are two things we didn’t do and wanted to. The first one was to see the city at night, which is apparently quite unique. But what the travel guides forget to tell you went recommending visits is that in Singapore in the evening it rains! No I should say it pours in biblical proportion as if the heavens had suddenly liquefied and decided to fall on the city all at the same time! When it rains here you can literally take a shower, which I actually did once on the front deck of the boat! So, needless to say that our trial for a night visit was washed away by the weather. The second thing we wanted to see was the Singapore Zoo but again weather was not with us. As we arrived at the MRT station for the zoo the rain was rumbling the city like the Niagara on the tourists in their tour boat. We simply stayed in the train and stepped out in Chinatown, which is actually quite a paradox. You see, Singapore is by a large majority populated by Chinese immigrants who came here over the last centuries. Therefore, can anyone explain to me what does a Chinatown mean in a Chinese city??? After that I am certain that if we even go to Beijing we would find a Chinatown district!

Here you can see Chocobo moored at Raffles Marina and behind is the majestic replica of a true Spanish galleon called Andalucia with guns and all who just arrived a couple days after us. This boat was by far the most beautiful boat we saw during our trip. Here you can see Danielle changing the line holding the trampolines at the bow and we were amused to see that during the whole week Andalucia was beside us the entire crew was buzzing doing what? Fixing their boat of course, this is obviously what the sailing life is all about!