THAILAND BABY!!!

Woo yeah baby 28 miles out of Malaysia and we were unofficially in Thailand! After 3 days of some beautiful anchorages, we arrived in Phuket - Ao Chalong.Clearance formalities took all of 10minutes in the one stop shop (immigration, customs and harbour master are all in the same building).
Things that were straight away different from Malaysia

were
1. the people seemed more free (not many muslims) and

happy smiling and showing their emotions more.
2. there are tsunami evacuaion route signs everywhere where there are tourists

3.clearer water

4. Many more tourists, many russians and europeans

This is what the Thai flag looks like

 If the below photo looks cliche its probably because Igot my inspiration from the hoards of russian tourists who flock to Thailand each year. It appears they come here with their intent to take poser shots of each other throughout their holiday break, they are pretty good at it actually, some even get their kit out.. but that just aint me. They kept Dudley busy with his binoculars!! perv....

Ta Chai Simalin Islands Thailand

At Tachai, Simalin Islands

What a breath of fresh air Thailand is, as soon as we arrived from Langkawi Malaysia we were like, why were we there for so long when we have this to explore!!

Freedom Bay, a few bays south of hectic Patong

Having sundowners on the beach

Duds catching squid - so the lure does work!

Patong Beach sunchairs everywhere

On the west coast of Thailand we anchored next to a thai naval base and from there took our pushbikes 26km to where you can swim, trek, and wash the elephants, our Guide couldnt speak a word of English so we didnt learn too much, however there was a young guy who worked there and at the end he told us a fair bit. A young (9years old)Elephant named Coco Channel (apparantly all Europeans love this elephant), was dancing, and swaying side to side, she looked like she was really enjoying herself! She kissed me, the Young boy wiped her trunk first and then it was like the sound of a vacuumn cleaner as she came for my cheek!!
We got told the food elephants eat passes straight through them as soon as they ingest, so they need to eat a shit load of food each day to survive. The guide has a pick he takes with him and uses it to hurry the elephant along by putting the sharp end right by her ear, it must be the most sensitive part of their thick skin. They have a chain around their neck when they are walking, and when they do no work they are chained by one of their legs.. poor elephants...but they look well cared for.
The part we enjoyed the most was bare back riding the elephant without the guide, but it was also fun to sit on those bench seats with a thai safety belt ( a piece of rope) over our waists!

feeding him a banana and you can see the pick that is used

Feet touching his tough skin

The guy had to pull me close to get a kiss with Coco Channel!

Dudley really enjoying kisses from Coco Channel

No Weeing in the pool!! So he does it beside the pool instead haha

aye!! No pooing in the pool eeeewwww!!

washing Mr Elephant, I was scared he was going to stand on me..

As you can see we had alot of fun with the elephants.

From the Thai Naval base we went out to the Similan Islands, a group of 11 Islands in the Andaman Sea, about 75km off the cosat of Thailand.

It was established as a national park in 1982, present day, it is a marine national park. Effectively all this means is that yachties and tourists who come here have to pay a fee to the governement, We had to pay 800baht for 5days about 25AUD.

People are not supposed to fish here, however we saw abandoned fishing nets everywhere while snorkelling, and the reef has been dynamited, its soooo obvious,  there are hardly no big fish swimming anywhere here, however we were lucky to spot a big family of parrot fish. There are many beautiful swim thrus and there are big boulders to swim around....



Duds rockclimbing underwater



A beautiful curious turtle came up to the boat and we were able to pat him on the head and swim holding on to him. When anchored in the Similans we were apprached by Thai navy officials whose job it was to do turtle research. They stay at this Island for 6 week rotations to observe the turtles coming to the beach and lay their eggs. The officials then collect all the eggs and take them to a nursery far away on the mainland, and when the turtles hatch and are strong enough they send them back out in the wild only to be caught by fisherman.. hows that for interfering with mother nature. The funny thing is these Thai navy officials had a bag

of all sorts of different fish, all caught in the marine park by the fisherman not anchored far from us 'he wants

ciggarettes' they exclaim (for the fish and money of course), we say NO to the fish and NO to the smokes and ask why the hell is he allowed to fish in a marine national park and with a big mofo net!! His reply was 'oh its selective'. WOW that makes it alright then!!



Amazing Koh Similan, sweet spot for a mooring

We found  a mooring in this cute wee bay, and there was a big water pipe with fresh water running constantly out of it, we had seen the dive boats come and fill up here when we were kayaking around. It was great to have all the water we wanted!. We washed the boat down, did the washing and the tanks were full!

The waterhose running straight to our tanks!

There are many liveaboard dive charters that go out to the Similans. They all seemed to love diving below Baikal (probably because we had the only bit of reef under our mooring worth looking at). Anyway, we were watching them with their guide, as they were going along the bottom they were holding onto the beautiful coral and we watched it snap off in their hand while they were busy taking pictures with their other hand...and the guide , the PROFESSIONAL GUIDE was watching all this unfold and didnt do a thing about it. WE saw this happen multiple times. Oh well I guess in the future everyone else will just be looking at hhhhmmmmmm nothing! Because there will be nothing left to look at!

Melaka Straits to Langkawi December 2011 - January 2012

Melaka, an historical town we visited a 2 1/2 hr bus ride from Johor Bahru (southern Malaysia)  has interesting Portuguese, Spanish and Chinese history.
Melaka was one of the busiest ports in the world but has long since silted up, so we can no longer get keel boats up the river.

Entrance to Melaka River

Dudley in an old Dutch Church


The Dutch introduced these bricks (made of well burned clay) during their reign in Melaka. The Dutch era was from 1641 until the early British era in 1800 .Just walking around the place there are remanants of the past with bricks from the Spanish era, Portuguese era and so on. We also walked past an archaeological site which is only now being uncovered.


Lady selling her 'art' in the street

traditional old boat we had a look on



Typical malay long house



After 3 weeks in Johor Bahru it came time to move on. We stopped every day going through the melaka straits. It took us 16 days to get to Langkawi, the duty free island in north Malaysia ( the islands of Thailand are a mere four miles away!).
On the way to Langkawi we stopped at a few offshore islands including Pangkor.
What heaven it was to come here and be greeted by the most beautiful virgin rainforest we'd seen in a long time. The bird sounds were heavenly compared with incessant Muslim whining over the loud speakers in the villages, if you linger for long enough in the water the most amazing sight will behold you.. oh look at the monkeys crashing through the jungle, hear them calling each other as they reach from branch to branch! Up high the hornbills ans beautiful eagles soar above the rainforest as a plane passes by, probably on its way to Thailand.

The beautiful birds are all flying around and then just as the sun sets, they settle down for the night and you feel yourself getting goosebumps as you've been sitting in the water for it must be an hour just watching...
At night we went ashore to a resort where you can see the hornbills up close.for is left for them,they are cool colourful birds. We also explored inside the forest. There were concrete bungalows long forgotten, whichvthe forest reclaimed. Trees were growingvup through the floors, vines had found their way through the walls and big trees had also come crashing down on them.the bungalows we noticed the boxing around the concrete had never been removed which shows just how long they knew it was going to last.. and the steel reinforcing was far to close to the exterior concrete piles thus they were all rusting and concrete was crumbling l, this is common with all buildings we have seen so far on Malaysia.
on our way up the melaka straits we anchored just off melaka and bought a new dinghy (we traded our old one for a speargun) which has higher freeboard and is more stable than our old one. We kayaked the mile into shore and an hour later kayaked back out excitedly trailing our new dinghy behind. Although we hardly had to kayak, the current we fierce so we just ensured we were hearing in the right direction with our rudders.
Penang was another island off the coast off Malaysia,  connected by a 13 km long bridge, there appears to always be a traffic jam on it, there are also car ferries that come and go all day and finish about 10pm. We anchored off Georgetown in the ' junk anchorage ' where the Malay fishing/ cargo boats anchor. The currents were strong through there but we were well stuck in the mud. When we pulled the anchor up five days later there were used nappies, t-shirts and sacks that all had to be removed from the anchor!! Georgetown was founded 200 years ago and the city has some impressive collection of historic buildings representing penang's various ethnicities: Chinese,  Indian,  Arabs, Malays,  Achelnese, Siamese,  Burmese and Europeans. We went on a few rainforest walks. One was to a monkey beach where they were tablesucking tiger beer!!

walking around the sights of Penang

Alcoholic monkey doing the table suck after he spilt beer

Is there any beer left??

And we just generally walked around soaking up the atmosphere ( there were many preparations underway for chinese new year, decorations going up everywhere..)the bustling city.  I nearly got run over!
So far we have been in Langkawi 10 days, there are many islands to explore. We went to " lake of the pregnant maiden " legend tells childless maidens that venture into the lake will conceive thereafter, all due to some elf lady who married an earthly prince, gave birth to a baby who died 9 days later, the baby got buried on the lake then the elf blessed the waters. Depending on which tourist brochure you read...luckily I came out unscathed!

Lake of the pregnant maiden

There has also been many caves and waterfalls to explore as well as the stunning view from a skycar up a gondola of telaga harbour where Baikal was anchored.

On the Skywalk up the gondola

Steep drop off makes for a fun ride!!

Looking down from the skycab on the beautiful forest



Baikal anchored at Telaga Harbour, Langkawi



We had a wonderful day with debbie and Greg who came out sailing with us, we explored a cave with crept crawlies in it, managed to sail, I think they brought the wind with them, coz we haven't sailed much round these parts. Was intersting to note people who went in the cave after us had wetsuits, lifejackets and slk had torches whereas Debbie was barefoot and 6 months pregnant with no torch! Good on ya!

We ended the great day with cocktails and a scrumptious dinner on the beach watching the sun go down.

 went for a steep walk in the jungle to a great view and met some Chinese people who were walking and drinking beer on the way up! they offered us one at the top which was nice of them

steep climb to the top





Next stop THAILAND!!!

Singapore

Well Singapore was a great place for taking in all the things we had been deprived of for sooo long! skyscrapers....fancy buildings...shopping....people watching...to name a few.

Umbrella is great for stopping us overheating as well as for the afternoon downpours!

We also got a few things for the boat as this part of Malaysia is not so good for getting boat stuff.

There is a hotel and casino in  the building with the boat on it, costs 20bucks just for a view from the top!

If you like your brands then this mall is the place for you, I think it was called marina bay sands, some fancy pants name for a fancy pants mall, nice touch don't you think with the boat going down the river with nice blue water haha

all very la de da

 We also checked out Sentosa Island just off Singapore and went  to the Maritime Museum, which was really cool,  our mate from Belitung in Indonesia has the treasure from a ship wreck he discovered displayed here.

Replica of Bakau Wreck Found 1998 in the Karimata Strait between Sumatra and Borneo

This ship is a replica using traditional methods of the Bakau, the ship wreck was dated to the early 15th century, carrying diverse ceramic cargo from Thailand, China and Vietnam. Personal belongings of the crew were also found such as copper coins, bronze mirrors and even tweezers. This 600 year old ship is the oldest known ship to be equipped with cannons. The ship you see in the picture above was actually sailed to Singapore, the voyage that it once took was recreated I cant remember the route it took..

The boxes on each side of the ship is where the crew do their 'natural business'

Dudley being studious, learning about the many shipwrecks in se asia