by Judy Handley | Nov 16, 2008 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 4 |
Day 25, Year 4: Second Day in Melaka
Date: Sunday, November 16, 2008
Weather: Beautiful, Sunny Day, but HOT
Location: Admiral Marina, Port Dickson, Malaysia
Can you know more about something but understand it less? I think you can, because today we visited a Buddhist temple (yes, another one), and a gentleman took us under his wing and tried to explain the religion to us. I got as far as understanding that first came Taosim, then Confusionism, and then Buddhism (I think.). And then I understood that there our four essential elements-energy, soil, air, and water. But then I got lost when the gentleman tried to explain Guanyin, the Goddess of Compassion, with eighteen arms. This is a modern Qianshou version of this Goddess and she is way out of my comprehension range. Mark and I have both decided that we have to take a good comparative religion course when we get home. And we might have to take it twice to even begin to get a bit of understanding. But our visit at the Guanyin Temple today was at least a start for Buddhism.
We slept in this morning and then went to breakfast at the Baba House Caf� since breakfast came with the room. We then started a marathon walk to visit every temple and mosque in the historic district of Melaka. The first stop was right beside where our car was parked. Buddhist monks were chanting for someone who had died. When we returned to the car six hours later, they were still chanting. We visited the newest temple, the oldest temple, and a mosque with a meru roof stacked similar to those of Balinese Hindu architecture. Dutch tiles were seen in many of the temples. Melaka’s multicultural development is expressed in the architecture and building materials of all of her buildings. After the temple and mosque tour, we hiked back across the river to the Maritime and Naval Museum. Either we were tired or this museum just didn’t measure up, but we did see some interesting replicas of local vessels and of the trading ships that made Melaka a port of call. The Portuguese replicas looked just like the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. This reminded us that we still hadn’t found the Portuguese part of town, so a gentleman in the museum gave us directions and we went to get our car and headed out once again to find Medan Portugis. This time we were successful, but we have to admit that we were a little disappointed. Portuguese Square looks like any other shopping square and the architecture in the area was not impressive. Country music was blaring from a speaker stacked on a bicycle in the entrance to the Square and the Restoran de Lisbon served decent Chili Prawns but nothing spectacular. So the Portuguese heritage in Melaka is not its shining star.
We drove back to Port Dickson a different way than we drove down to Melaka and we drove through miles of palm oil plantations. It felt good to get home and start thinking about where we are going next. We will leave here late tomorrow morning and head for Penang, two days and nights from here. We will spend just one day there and then do a long day-sail to Langkawi. We will be there for just a day or two before we will be hauled out of the water to do a much needed bottom paint job. Once that
is done, we can enjoy the Langkawi area until mid-December when our friends Kevin and Claire arrive and we all head for Thailand. So on we go.
by Judy Handley | Nov 15, 2008 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 4 |
Day 24, Year 4: Tour of Melaka
Date: Saturday, November 15, 2008
Weather: Pouring Rain AM; Overcast in Afternoon
Location: Admiral Marina, Port Dickson, Malaysia
Once a coveted seaport, Melaka is now a tourist destination showing off its multicultural background. Prior to the 1400’s, it was just a Malay fishing village. But it was then discovered by a rogue Hindu prince, Parameswara, who fled Java and was living the life of a pirate in Temasek (now Singapore). At that time, Temasek was part of the Thai empire and it didn’t take the Siamese long to realize that Parameswara needed to be removed from Temasek. This led the Hindu prince to flee to Melaka and he built the fishing village into a favored port for traders from all over the East. Then the real trouble began for Melaka. The traders from China, India, Portugal, the Netherlands, and England all laid claim to this port for periods of time over the next 500 years. And each of these countries brought with them the influences of their religions. Although Malaysia as been an Islamic state since the mid 1400’s, the influences of the Buddists, the Hindus, and the Catholics are seen everywhere in Melaka as mosques, temples, and churches stand side by side. Once Singapore became the areas main trading port, Melaka’s importance dwindled. Then its true wealth as a tourist destination was discovered.
We arrived in the pouring rain and spent our first hour touring one of the main streets in the historic district under ponchos and umbrellas, stopping to take photos of the wonderful Chinese traditional homes now serving as hotels, museums, and shops. We stopped for a proper Baba-Nyonya (Malay Chinese) lunch and then crossed the river to see Stadthuys, the imposing barn-red town hall built by the Dutch. Stadthuys is thought to be the oldest Dutch building in this part of the world, and right next door is the matching red Christ Church. Christ Church is currently being renovated, but the workers gladly welcomed us inside to take a look at the 15 meter long ceiling beams, each cut from a single tree. We then followed the masses of people walking up the hill to the ruins of St. Paul’s. There were large groups of Hindu and Muslim school children visiting, as well as huge numbers of Islamic Malaysians. When we walked down from St. Paul’s to what is left of the old Portugese fortress A’Famosa and looked back, the streams of people looked like a pilgrimage moving steadily uphill to St. Paul’s. We then walked just a few hundred feet to the Sultanate Palace, a wooden structure built in the Malay tradition using no nails. It is a fascinating museum showing the influences of the traders from all over the world on this little town. We walked past other memorials and museums, visited an old Dutch cemetery, made a quick stop at St. Francis Xavier’s still functioning catholic church before walking back across the river. We then made a quick dash back across town to where we had parked our car and started a three-hour marathon search for the Medan Portugis, the Portuguese part of town, and a place to spend the night. Three hours later we arrived back where we had started and found a room in The Baba House, a traditional Chinese home turned hotel. We never did find Medan Portugis, but we saw a lot of Melaka as we drove around hunting for this elusive destination. We ended the evening by taking a ride in one of the many, highly decorated and bedecked with lights, trishaws, taking a walk down the crowded Jonker’s night market, and finally relaxing with dinner and a few beers at The Geographer’s Cafe. We didn’t have a fantastic Portuguese meal, but we enjoyed the street cafe atmosphere and live music American style. John Denver’s “Almost Heaven, West Virginia” has made it to Melaka. Maybe tomorrow we’ll find Medan Portugis and have a late seafood lunch before returning to Port
Dickson.
by Judy Handley | Nov 14, 2008 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 4 |
Day 23, Year 4: Love Those Asian Elephants
Date: Friday, November 14, 2008
Weather: Sunshine Mixed with Pouring Rain
Location: Admiral Marina, Port Dickson, Malaysia
It was a long and tiring day, but it was totally worth it to be see the Asian elephants at the Kuala Gandah Elephant Centre. The drive there took us four, not three, hours but that did include a stop for lunch. We drove north through the center of the Malaysian peninsula and enjoyed seeing the countryside. Most of it has been developed into palm oil plantations, and although they are beautiful and productive, these plantations are the very thing that has put the Asian elephant on the critically endangered species list. So it was very special to be able to spend an afternoon with them “up close and personal” as they say on the Centre brochure. When we arrived it was absolutely pouring rain, so we headed to the visitor center to view a video explaining the issues affecting wild elephants, their dwindling habitat, and relocation efforts. But our plan was foiled by a faulty video projector. So we, and a number of other people, waited out the rain under cover. On Fridays, 2:45 pm is feeding
time, and right on cue, the rains stopped and the sun came out. We tromped through the mud to go see the elephants in their enclosed pasture area. There were six elephants in the enclosure. Cek Mek and Mek Bunga, the Centre’s oldest citizens at fifty, were there, along with Mentopian, a thirty-five year old female from Myanmar and Abot, a teenager from Johor Bahru at the southern tip of the peninsula. These elephants are well trained and are used to capture the wild elephants that have to be brought to the Centre. We watched the elephants in their enclosure, watched the guides mount the elephants and ride them out to the river where they bathed them, and then we got to feed them (watermelon and papaya), pet them, and go for rides on their backs. Asian elephants are much smaller than their African counterparts. And because of that, they seem much more approachable. I still jumped back a few times when I would put a piece of fruit on an elephant’s tongue and the mouth started to close. But after a few tries, you learn that they are gentle and not going to take off your hand! And since half of the visitors today were under the age of ten, those of us “over ten” had to look brave. As the last activity, we were all invited to join the elephants in the river. Due to the rains, the river was muddy, the water level was high, and the there was quite a current. Mark and I decided to skip this last activity and spent the time watching a baby elephant with her trainer. She was a real cutie but had quite bellow. Once acclimated, she will be translocated to the national forest. Just as in Borneo with the orangutans, even the national forest is threatened with logging, but it seems the government here has better control of logging in a national forest than was true in Indonesia. For the elephants’ survival, let’s certainly hope so.
On the way home, we thought we were taking a short-cut, but in actuality; we ended up on the expressway going around Kuala Lumpur. It was six lanes of bumper to bumper traffic going at a snail’s pace. I felt like I was trying to drive from Boston to Cape Cod on summer holiday weekend. But we did get to see Kuala Lumpur (affectionately referred to as KL by the locals here) from the highway. It is a city of almost two million people and miles of tall buildings in not so great shape. Singapore
has set a new standard for squeaky clean cities for us and KL just didn’t measure up. But we can say that we spent two hours in traffic there on a rainy, rainy afternoon. As the sun set, the rains really started coming down and stayed that way all the way back to Port Dickson. We were shocked when we got to the marina to find that it hadn’t rained here at all.
Tomorrow we head south to Melaka. But first it is definitely time for a good’s night rest.
by Judy Handley | Nov 13, 2008 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 4 |
Day 22, Year 4: Slight Change in Plans
Date: Thursday, November 13, 2008
Weather: Overcast with Periods of Sprinkles
Location: Admiral Marina, Port Dickson, Malaysia
In last night’s log I said that I hoped we would be exploring inland Malaysia by this time tonight, but that didn’t happen. But by this time tomorrow night, we definitely will have visited the Kuala Gandah Elephant Centre and be back here on Windbird poised for a trip to Melaka the next morning. The change in plans happened totally by accident. After a frustrating morning dealing with the battery charger, we got ready to head to Kuala Lumpur. We thought that going to the “big city” and renting a car there to go to the elephant sanctuary was the way to go. So we got ready to go, packed all our gear and headed out. But on our way out, we remembered that we were supposed to stop in the marina office to let them swipe our credit card. We couldn’t do this yesterday as the woman in the office had the day off. Well, Veronica is a wealth of information and we were very sorry that we had not remembered to come to the office first thing in the morning to have her verify our credit. She explained to us that renting a small car is a much easier way of traveling about the country than taking the bus and taxis, and in the end, is almost as cheap. So we reserved a car for tomorrow morning, went back to Windbird, and regained our day.
Now I’ll go back a bit and talk about the battery charger problem. We bought the new battery charger in Singapore and hooked it up yesterday. It was working great, but then Mark unplugged it so he could run the extension cord a different way. Uh oh, he forgot to turn the charger off before unplugging it. And when he plugged it back in, there was a power surge and it blew the fuse in the plug-in and destroyed the controller in the charger. But he didn’t know when he went to bed last night that it was just the controller that was blown. He thought he had blown the entire charger. It was a mostly sleepless night for him as he was so upset over the problem. But his trials this morning proved successful. The charger works fine and controls itself. We just can’t read the information without his newly Singapore purchased ampmeter and his digital volt meter. These meters are showing totally acceptable limits that our new “very expensive” Singapore purchased batteries can accept. So all is well, but we had quite a scare thinking that we might have damaged the batteries. So by noon today, we had sorted this out and were ready to leave. That’s when we met Veronica in the office and changed our plans. I spent the afternoon doing laundry and Mark spent the afternoon fixing the attachment on one of our solar panels that broke when he tried adjusting the angle of the panel. There’s always something to keep you busy on a boat.
So tomorrow morning we will drive to Port Dickson to check-out of this port. You must leave within 24 hours, but we are going to stretch that considerably. We won’t leave until Monday morning, but if we don’t check out in the morning, we wouldn’t be able to leave until Tuesday. So “shhhh”-don’t tell anyone that we are checking out a little early. We will then drive about three hours north and west to the Kuala Gandah Elephant Centre. This is a sanctuary for elephants that have had to be removed from their “homelands” that have been taken over by palm oil plantations. It is totally against the law to kill an elephant here, so when the plantation owners find that all of the new trees they have planted had been destroyed overnight by angry elephants, they call the Centre to have the elephants transplanted. The elephants are brought to the sanctuary, and once they are calmed down, they are then transplanted to the national forest. The sanctuary is a great place to get to feed, ride, and actually bathe the elephants in the river. We’ll get a little wet in the process, but it sounds like great fun. Asian elephants are found in northern Borneo, Malaysia, Thailand, and then on north through Cambodia and Viet Nam. We hope to see them again in northern Thailand, but just in case plans change, we thought we should have the experience here. We will probably drive back to Admiral Marina tomorrow night and then travel on south to Melaka the next morning. Since we are now not taking a
bus to Kuala Lumpur, we will not get to see that city. But it is just that, a great big city. It does have the tallest twin towers left standing in the world, but there are lots of pictures of those, so I think we can live without experiencing that city for ourselves.
by Judy Handley | Nov 12, 2008 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 4 |
Day 21, Year 4: Arrival in Port Dickson, Malaysia
Date: Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Weather: Partly Overcast Morning; Clear Afternoon; Winds 5 NE
Latitude: 02 degrees 28.563 minutes N
Longitude: 101 degrees 50.754 minutes E
Location: Admiral Marina, Port Dickson, Malaysia
We made it here safely with no encounters with pirates, floating logs, fishing nets, or big ships. And this is a good thing. We arrived in Admiral Marina before noon and by day’s end we had made the trip to Port Dickson to check in and be legal here in Malaysia. The marina is at least five miles from town, so we walked out to the four-lane highway and hailed a cab. Port Dickson is small town compared to Singapore, but there are four lane highways and lots of traffic on the road. Port Dickson
reminded us of Kupang; not quite as frenetically busy, but the aging buildings and type of stores were very similar. After our first day here, we would say that Malaysia has one foot in the modern world and one foot dragging behind in the third world. As we travel further north, it is our impression that the modern world takes over totally, but we shall see. Malaysia is a Muslim country, but there are also evidences of Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists as you walk through town. The marina here
is lovely but it was a bit of a let down after One15 in Singapore. At One15 we had transport to town for free every 30 minutes and never had to use our own towels. Here we have a pool and changing nice changing rooms, but it is a hike to the highway to get transportation that is not free and we have to supply our own towels. But the marina is lovely in the colonial tradition and we’ll just have to lower our standards just a bit from One15.
We are planning two trips from here, one to the coastal city of Melaka and the other to an inland elephant center. We had hoped to leave early in the morning for Melaka, but we are having difficulties with the new battery charger. Mark is working with that tonight and will continue in the morning, so we think we will finish checking this problem out in the morning and head for Kuala Lumpur in the afternoon and have our elephant experience the next day. Who knows what will really happen, but hopefully we will be exploring Malaysia by this time tomorrow night.
by Judy Handley | Nov 11, 2008 | Malaysia, Sailing Logs Year 4 |
Day 20, Year 4: Overnight from Singapore to Port Dickson, Malaysia
Date: Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Weather: Overcast; No Wind in the AM; Wind SE 10 Late Afternoon
Latitude: 01 degree 25.840 minutes N
Longitude: 103 degrees 15.125 minutes E
Location: Strait of Malacca
Miles to Go: 108
About a half an hour “Jed Goldstone” “Jo” “Justin Handley” “Patsy & Joe” “Heather Goldstone” ago, Mark and I looked at each and said, “Let’s just keep going.” We left One15 Marina this morning with the intention of stopping at Pisang Island tonight. It should have been an easy day trip being only 40 miles. But we have had all morning and early afternoon we had absolutely no wind and a current
against us part of the time. We are also going sloooower than usual because the prop and bottom need to be cleaned, again. But then at 3:30 pm, the wind started to blow just a little going in our direction and all of a sudden we had 2 knots of current with us, so that was the impetus for the decision to keep going. The reason not to do this is the amount of flotsam in the water, including logs, and the number of fishing boats with nets out. Hitting a log or a net in the middle of the night, or
at any other time of day, would be no fun at all. But we’re going to go for it and hope things work out for us.
Things were busy in the Singapore Straits this morning, but we didn’t have to cross the traffic lanes as we did coming in from Indonesia. We worked our way through the miles long anchorage area and just had to watch closely to see which boats were at anchor and which ones were on the move. The amount of plastic trash and diesel in the water was not a pretty sight. And add to that boards, coconuts, seaweed, and tree parts. Once we exited the Singapore Straits and entered the Strait of Malacca,
the traffic and the trash both became a bit more manageable. The Strait of Malacca is the narrow waterway between the Malaysian peninsula and Sumatra. It is about 25 miles wide, sometimes more, sometimes less, and the big ship traffic lanes run down the middle. All of the commercial traffic from the Med and the Middle East come this way to get to Asia, so it is a busy little piece of property. We are motorsailing close to the Malaysian coast, well out of the traffic lanes. A rogue barge or two
have come our way, but big ship traffic is not the fear. Just a few years ago, pirates from Sumatra were dreaded here, but recently the pirates have left the little guys alone and go only for the big ships. But just in case, when you travel here, you don’t go close to Sumatra. So we just need to avoid pirates, logs, fishing nets, and big ships. We will be watching carefully tonight!
