September 2009 (updated 30th September)

Arrived back in Langkawi from KL with the last jobs to do on the boat looming drearily : first on the list will be a haulout at Rebak then a sail down to Penang to navigate through Indian bureaucracy in search of a visa. The south west monsoon having arrived late this year has decided to hang around with frequent onshore squalls and heavy rain here in Langkawi. It is due to turn around to the drier North East monsoon during October, none too soon for those of us having spent holed up for the wet season. In fact, Langkawi being out of the typhoon belt is sailable all year, but as often as not the wet season has little wind most of the time or brief periods of too much. We had a pleasant, relaxing stay in KL for four days after flying back from the Angkorian temples  in Cambodia after viewing info on the Thai weather website that Typhoon Ketsana was on its way across the South China sea and was moving in leaps and bounds towards Vietnam and Cambodia. To avoid being held up by possible flooding we made a snap decision to fly back 2 days early from Siem Reap rather than risking  taking a bus through the Mekong floodplains back to Phnom Penh.  Much of the low lying land in Cambodia was already at seasonal monsoonal saturation point. We were lucky as events played themselves out. Ketsana hit Central Vietnam just south of Danang and inundated many places that we had just passed through a week earlier, including the world heritage town of Hoi An. The storm did lesser but still sufficient damage as it affected the Northern half of Cambodia and the Southern half of Laos.

Stopped in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Southern Vietnam after 10 days in Vietnam and just about to bus it into Cambodia tomorrow. Have spent about a week each in Northern Thailand, Laos and Vietnam with a bit less left in Cambodia. Will be back in Langkawi by the 3rd October. We haven't spent long enough in each country to get much more than a snapshot comparison, but it has been fascinating to visit countries that were a household name not so long ago and see them in various stages of recovery after long and often terrible periods of war and privation. As usual, it is the natural places that have been the highlights. A day in Khao Yai national park not far from Bangkok was one of the best one day experiences we've had, with hours spent with a family of white handed gibbons, close encounters with a huge troupe of pig tailed macaques and a large male elephant that decided to hold the traffic up on the access road for ages. In Vietnam we spent several days visiting Cat Tien National Park 150 km North East of Saigon, a world away from the hustle and noise of Vietnam's urban areas.

August 2009  

The first two weeks were spent in Malaysian North Borneo (Sabah) and are described in more detail elsewhere. We arrived back in Rebak mid August and found the fridge was not working as well as it should, so we set about sorting this problem out . Our expected trip across the Indian Ocean and up the Red Sea into the Eastern Mediterranean later this year and early next year will be quite a test for all our equipment , so will be trying hard to get it into the best possible condition before leaving Langkawi.

Not for the first time we are amazed at the flexibility and diversity of services on Langkawi - a small place, but just about any thing you want or need can be found here or somebody can fix it! No wonder so many yachties end up using Langkawi as their base, sometimes for years.

One more overland trip this year will see us flying up to Bangkok on Air Asia, our passport to cheap air ticklets, and then up through Northern Thailand, down the Mekong to Luang Prabang in Laos and through the country into Cambodia. Our focus as always will be on nature, but inevitably we will be curious to see what is happening in this rapidly changing part of Indo-China.

Idly scrolling through googlemaps we discovered what looked like an old track system on Rebak island. We managed to find the overgrown entrance to the track on the North side of the channel leading up to the marina area and this led us up to the top ridge along an old gravelled road. A side track led down to a beach where  we saw four hairy nosed otters (not the same species that uses the marina - these are larger animals) feeding on quite large fish they had caught. The main track wound its way along the ridge top past large numbers of pitcher plants which we had not seen anywhere else on Langkawi and then back to the permanent pools used by Rebak's macaque troop. This was such a lovely track that we returned a few days later with six friends and found somebody had put up arrows showing the route!

Long tailed macaques - these bold and successful monkeys are found everywhere in Malaysia, but especially close to the coast; the Langkawi troupes frequent the rubbish skips and tourist hangouts, but on the quieter islands they show up on the beaches at low tide looking for extra protein.

Misty scene in the Danum valley after heavy rain

The "Nepenthes" track rediscovered on Rebak's ridge top uncover's other interesting items!

 

July 2009

The first part of July was spent sweating it out at Rebak marina, doing boring boat chores. We have not installed air conditioning like most of the marina residents, as we are not here long enough to justify it, but the downside is coping with the calm conditions inside the marina - we scurry into the swimming pool and the air conditioned library most afternoons. Our new stove arrived from California within 4 days of ordering it, which seemed incredible efficiency and we have installed new navigation instruments in the saloon including a little pink computer (Geoff's birthday present).

Like many of the other grotty yachties we follow wherever Air Asia takes us - flights to many places in Asia so cheap that the long distance bus companies are going broke! Our trip to Malaysian (North) Borneo is described in more detail on the link - Sarawak in the last two weeks of July and Sabah in the first two weeks of August. This trip was definitely going to be nature oriented with visits to three orang utan rehabilitation centres and six national parks or conservation areas.

George at Matang

Proboscis monkey, Bako

Happy at play, Matang

June 2009  

In Penang on the way back to Langkawi at the end of June after a short trip to Taman Negara and the Cameron Highlands. We chose the main entry point into Taman Negara via Jerantut and Kuala Tembeling which meant a three hour trip on along boat up the Tembeling river. Opposite the park headquarters is the scruffy and bustling little kampong where most of the visitors stay and the mini tourist industry created around the park operates from. We set up camp at the edge of the jungle on the Mutiara resort campsite, which was a lot more appealing : we could listen to the weird and wonderful noises from the jungle during the night. We stayed three days and walked for hours up some pretty rugged tracks in beautiful untouched forest. Most of the visitors seem to avoid any exertion and restricted their activities to sitting in boats, which suited us fine. We were able to hear both species of gibbons: siamangs and white handed, calling each morning, although were surprised to find the macaques and langurs which are normally quite tame elsewhere in Malaysia very shy. We surprised a deer on one of the tracks and found recent elephant droppings in a bamboo grove and a tapir's print in soft mud : as is so often the case in these rainforest areas seeing actual large mammals is pretty rare! On our last night a huge wild, male pig strolled right past the end of our tent, waking us up. 

We took a direct bus through the bottom end of Kelantan to Gua Musang and then up to the Cameron Highlands, which predictably had grown enormously more developed than on our last visits thirty years ago. Many of the valleys had been deforested and vegetable gardens occupied every conceivable space. We were still able to find lovely walks up hills and down valleys in relatively cool conditions well away from the bustling highland communities. On our third day we climbed up to 2000m Mount Brinchang : about as high as it gets in peninsular Malaysia : the highest mountain is only a hundred metres or more higher. The clear, blue sky, cool breeze and tree ferns in the montane forest could have been easily in New Zealand, although we came across pitcher plants, bamboo, wild rhododendrons and, lower down, tea plantations, which put us squarely back in Asia!

Our next trip takes us to Sarawak and Sabah in Malaysian North Borneo.

Pitcher plant, Cameron Highlands

Huge, buttressed tree, Taman Negara

Boh tea plantation, Cameron Highlands

 

May 2009    

Arrived back on the boat at the end of May after a 1100 km cycle ride that took us up almost the entire Eastern coast of Western Malaysia and back over the central mountain chain. The whole trip became quite a mission as it was very hot every day and we had never attempted a long distance cycle ride of this type in a non western country before. We started and ended in Langkawi, cycling to Alor Star, the capital of Kedah state, then taking the train down to Kluang in Johor, cycling over to the East coast at Mersing, then up North, following the coastline closely through the states of Pahang and Terengganu to Kelantan and back to the west coast via the East West highway reaching over 1000m twice. We dipped over the border into Thailand's Yala province for a short time before cycling back into Kedah. We met only 5 other Europeans in our three and a half week trip - surprisingly, all were cyclists, three from N.Z. and the other two from Australia. For the most part we visited very ordinary Malaysian towns and villages and our ability to speak Malay improved a lot as we continued. The two main highlights were the passages over the hilly central areas - not the coast ! Both these hilly areas had a lot of beautiful jungle and despite the ever busy highway traffic we were able to hear and see quite a lot of wildlife. We were surprised to hear gibbons calling nearly everywhere there was a sizable area of jungle in Johor and were able to watch one couple very close to the roadside. On the East West highway we passed through about 70 km of the Royal Belum / Temenggor rainforest area and saw a lot of wild elephant influence (more on link). Sadly, logging trucks were rumbling along beside us loaded with trees from the 130 million year old forest that we were travelling through. Yesterday, we learnt that two people had been arrested at the Thai border with 5 tiger skins in their car. With only an approximate 500 tigers remaining on the Malaysian side of the peninsula that represents a loss of 1% in a single reported incident. There's little we can do about it  but there are people and organisations in Malaysia who do care and are continually trying to negotiate with the government to protect more of it's last remaining areas of wilderness. Surprisingly, Thailand. Malaysia's less affluent neighbour does not allow any deforestation of native trees, is opening more national parks annually and has a much more conscious effort to provide opportunities for it's own population to visit it's wild areas and learn about conservation. Our next trip to the peninsular is going to be by public transport, after the school holidays are over in mid June, when we will visit Taman Negara, Malaysia's oldest national park and the Cameron Highlands.

Padi green, back in Kedah after 1100km

 

Trengganu river at Kuala Trengganu : mosque and fishing boats

April 2009

Saraoni now ensconsed in Rebak marina on the western side of Langkawi. The boat will be here more or less until the end of September, although we will be taking off for adventures throughout South East Asia for most of that time, making brief trips back to the boat from time to time. We have re vamped our rusty "cheapo" Aussie bikes and are settting off on a 1100 km trip from the bottom of he peninsula (just North of Singapore) back to Langkawi which should take three to four weeks. We will also be looking for wildlife in Taman Negara : Malaysia's largest conserved wild area and a place that we could not visit on previous trips to Malaysia because these all seemed to coincide with the wet season. A month in Sarawak, Brunei and Sabah (Northern Borneo) and a month or so in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia which we haven't researched yet. All this sounds expensive, but transport, hotels and food are all very cheap by western standards and we will be camping wherever we can. We have been living off a single year's Australian teaching income for the last three years and still have one more year's "teaching" savings left. One year's work therefore has provided three year's holiday (if what we do most of the time can be considered a holiday) !

Here in Rebak it's hard to imagine the value for money we are getting. For about $ 80 - 90 Aussie ( 40 pounds sterling) a week we have a safe place for the boat with a walk on / off pontoon, power and water, a huge lounge and recreation area, large areas of jungle with hornbills and eagles, swimming pool with free towels and a pool bar, beach, restaurant, free internet, mosquitos, 35oC heat, whiffy Malaysian plumbing and a free ferry over to the main island of Langkawi (Rebak is on an island): actually, the place is a bit of a ghetto as it's attached to an isolated resort, but we haven't seen any guests yet and we don't think all this cheap luxury will get on our nerves as we won't be here most of the time to use it!

The last month has see us wandering around Langkawi between one safe anchorage and another : the wind has been all over the place with plenty of thunderstorms and squalls, but seems to have settled into a westerly monsoon pattern now. Langkawi is a bit like New Zealand's Bay of Islands ; a lot of excellent anchorages all very close together, although the water is much siltier and the wind strength is less useful for sailing : too much or more likely, too little, most of the time.  We spent a lot of time in the "hole in the wall" : a network of mangrove lined channels carved between towering limestone walls in Eastern Langkawi, part of the Kilim River system -  the waterways stretch for dozens of miles and we explored caves, tunnels and an extended waterway system that took us right through to the North coast.

"Hole in the wall" moorings in the Kilim creek waterway system on the East coast of Langkawi : many people leave their boats here when they fly "home" - wherever in the world that is. In this particular creek there are two fish farms and a floating restaurant. Five miles further up the creek through a tunnel and lots of mangroves you emerge on Langkawi's North coast.

Otters basking in the sun on the banks of one of the "hole in the wall" creeks. Macaques, squirrels, bats, kingfishers, herons, white bellied sea eagles and brahminy kites (helang kawi : the birds that give their name to the island group) are the other animals commonly seen in these limestone creeks.

 

1st April : Just arrived back in Telaga Harbour, Langkawi Island, after two months in Thai waters. The trip took 10 days stopping overnight at island anchorages, where there was some lovely clear water to undertake some diving with our new hookah unit. Meanwhile, at the Butang Islands 30 Km from Langkawi, a husband and wife were robbed on their yacht, "Mr Bean", while at anchor and a day away from Langkawi. The man was killed and thrown overboard after a struggle, while his wife was forced to take the boat to Tarutao island 20 miles to the East, where she escaped after the men left in their dinghy. We passed through the Butang group two or three days later with two other yachts, unaware that the assault had taken place there and that the man's body was still unrecovered. The three young, supposedly Burmese fishermen involved in the incident were picked up by Thai police quite quickly and the man's body found a few days later. Reports about the obviously bungled robbery seem conflicting, but quite a few yachties have been affected as they knew the couple involved quite well. From Kupang in Indonesia right up to the Burmese border we have personally never felt unsafe and have got quite lax about theft as people have been remarkably honest throughout. Many yachties leave their yachts open everywhere - something that we would never do in Whangarei or other parts of New Zealand or Australia.

A light North East breeze propels us back to Malaysia (Langkawi in the distance) from Thailand's Butang group.

 

Telaga is much the same as we left it, calm and peaceful. Daily showers now have filled the waterfalls and made the landscape lush and green again. Most of the tourists have gone and there is an off season feel about the island, although there is no sign of the monsoon showing up just yet. We have booked the boat into Rebak marina from the beginning of May and will be travelling inland until the end of September off and on with frequent forays back to make the boat ready for its trip across the North Indian Ocean in late December.

Rain squall over Mount Manchinchang behind the calm waters of Telaga harbour.

 

 

March 2009  

Have cleared customs out of Phuket and will be heading back to Langkawi, Malaysia, tomorrow. Only 120 miles, but will take a week or so to cover the distance, doglegging from one island to another the same way we came up in January. The wind, naturally, is now forecast to come from the South to South East for the next week, i.e. from the general direction of Langkawi! The seasons have certainly been on the change here in the Andaman Sea. The North East trade wind, which should be the prevailing wind through from November to the end of March disappeared in any useful form in early February and we have had very variable but mostly light winds as well as almost daily thunderstorms, some heavy. Two boats sunk just off Phuket in one squall - one a dive boat with 30 people on board returning from the Similan islands about a week after our return trip. 7 people drowned, 6 of them European tourists, so quite a local tragedy and definitely odd weather for this time of year.

We put the boat in Ao Po marina on Phuket's North East Coast and pottered off up towards Bangkok in a little red rented Daihatsu loaded to the gunwales with camping gear and food. We stopped in cool, jungled Khao Sok national park (gibbons), Kuiburi and Kaen Krachan national parks on the Burmese border (many elephants, prints of many other large animals including tiger close to our campsite, gaur and deer), Khao Sam Roi Yod on the Gulf of Thailand (wetlands, water birds and mosquitos) and Laem Son back on the Andaman coast.

It was fascinating to wander round the Thai interior as we got a totally different impression of Thailand than that around the Phuket fleshpots. North of the South Thailand coastal Moslem strongholds, Buddhist influence increased and every building seemed to have two or four spirit houses laden with garlands of flowers, flowers, fruit and other offerings outside. Apparently this is to keep mischievous spirits from entering peope's real houses, though we couldn't see the link between this and Buddhism. Modern  Thailand seems to consist of many layers - third, second and first world layers all jumbled up together. Nobody seemed to walk anywhere and there was little sign of public transport except large, modern air conditioned inter city coaches and plenty of new, shiny cars, Toyota Hilux utes and four wheel drive cars with tinted windows.  Roads were good, and nearly everywhere paved, and Thai drivers polite and quite slow by Australasian standards although motorbike riders seem to tempt fate all the time. We passed the narrowest part of Thailand - only 11 km wide between the Gulf of Thailand to the East and the mountainous burmese border to the West - and the isthmus of Kra - the narrowest part of the Malay peninsula just North of Ranong.

Long tailed macaque appreciating stone monkey head at a buddhist temple (wat) in Prachuap Khiri Khan. The spoilt, local monkey troupe showed many signs of urban affluenza!

Wild, male tusker having a dust bath near the Kuiburi ranger post, Central Thailand, only 10 km from the Burmese border.

Tiger paw mark in soft mud 100m from our Kaeng Krachan jungle campsite. On a walk down the stream from the campsite, there were many signs of large mammals, especially elephant, and our first night at the campsite was filled with elephant trumpeting, barking deer and outraged cries from the local langur colony.

 

February

This month has been full of discovery, sailing in Thai waters. Phang Nga bay is composed of myriads of islands, many of which are steep limestone towers with enclosed caves without roofs called 'hongs'. They can be entered by dinghy through often dark tunnels of up to 200 metres long which then reveal bushclad walls surrounded by inland tidal lakes. We spent 10 days exploring this area and then stopped at Ao Nang bay on the mainland, only to be greeted by thousands of multinational tourists revealing all on the beaches in the front of resorts.  In the last two weeks we sailed up the west coast of Phuket and then across to the Similan islands 60 km offshore. Dazzling clear waters greeted us and coral reefs with many fish to observe with our newly acquired dive equipment. We are now back in Phuket about to set off for the interior to look for wild elephants and gibbons.

Clear water and rich reef life in the Similan islands. This view is taken from the top of "Donald Duck" rock on Ko Paet. Saraoni is anchored middle rear in this picture getting it's underwater garden cleaned off by large parrot fish.

 

Inside the western hong at Ko Phanak, Phang Nga Bay. The small cave entrance at the other side of the hong shows the entrance to the 200 m tunnel to the outside of the island. We had to compete for space in the pitch dark tunnel with canoe loads of Italian girls in bikinis and emerged in the sunshine greeted by a troupe of macaques on the scrounge.

Saraoni anchored off Ko Hong, among the sheer, limestone outcrops of the Phang Nga Bay karst

 

January

Finally arrived in Ao Chalong bay, Phuket, after sailing for a week from Langkawi. The first day out the engine overheated badly and we had to return to Langkawi to fix the problem. We day sailed along the Thailand coast visiting Ko Tarutao, Ko Phetra, Ko Muk, Ko Lanta and Ko Phi Phi Don before arriving at Phuket. Most of the islands North of Tarutao were dramatic limestone outcrops with numerous cliffs and caves. We explored our first 'hong' at Ko Muk. This was accessed through a narrow cave entrance and an 80 m tunnel to the hong - an opening to the outside with a beach and jungle clad cliff. The new year had dawned for us anchored outside Rebak Marina off the coast of Langkawi. We attended a New Year's party at the marina to save us being on our own for the event. The next day we returned to Telaga Park and climbed up the mountain that overlooked the bay towering above us at 710m. We also went cycling in the area and swam in a pool at the base of a lovely waterfall. We slid down a natural waterfall slide (The Seven Wells) and went on quiet beach and bush walks in the search for wildlife as well as visiting the extremely cheap nasi kandar local cafe for roti, iced coffee.

The Langkawi to Phuket sailing route passes countless small and large islands  (called ko in Thai).

These are the Bulon islands just North of Ko Tarutao.

Ko Phetra, just North of the Bulons

 

Thai fishermen on the Andaman coast. Their boat, called a "longtail",  has it's propellor mounted at the end of a long shaft attached to a bare, basic diesel engine bolted to the back and makes it very noisy! Many of these small boats are owned by couples : both the man and woman seem to be equally involved in the fishing. They put out a long net for prawns or small sardine like fish strung between flagposts which float upright.  Sailing anywhere within 10 miles of the coast means keeping a sharp lookout for fish net flags, fishtraps, and plastic rubbish!