Day 34, Year 4: Frustrations in Paradise
Date: Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Weather: Partly Sunny Day
Location: Rebak Marina on Pulau Rebak Besar, Langkawi, Malaysia
Mark is making progress on the shower stall, but it has been frustrating. Getting out the old floor was a major and messy task. That is now done and he has the first layer of fiberglass on what will be the new floor. Progress is being made. I discovered that the storage area where I keep all of my extra sheets and pillow cases somehow got water in it since Singapore and all of the linens in plastic bags are now spotted with mildew. It will be a yucky job to try and clean that up and to figure
out how everything got damp in the first place. And then there are the communication problems from here. We have tried and retired to connect to Justin and Jo via Skype and have been thwarted at every attempt. This morning we called at the appointed time, but we had a terrible connection. We finally talked for a few minutes by having them call us on our cell phone via Skype. We don’t pay anything for incoming calls on our cell phone and Skype doesn’t cost them but about 2 cents a minute. That
was only minimally satisfactory, so we decided that when we go to the mainland tomorrow, we will try again in the morning from there. We got one glimpse of Justin via the camera and I do believe he has cut off his beard. I’ll have to report on that after “seeing” him tomorrow. To add to the communication frustrations, our cell phone has a very weak signal here and while I was working online this morning, the whole place lost all electricity and internet connection. And then there is the fact
the Winlink is offline. That has happened only once before in our three years of travel. It is off and on and we don’t know what is happening with that. It has been like this for two days now. All of this adds up and we are feeling a wee bit disconnected and frustrated. We had so hoped to connect with Mark’s family via Skype when they gather for Thanksgiving, but I’m not sure this is going to happen from here. And only saw glimpses of Sam on our last connect with him, so we really need to figure
this out.
Otherwise, things are fine. I keep working on naming photos-what a long and laborious job. But when I am done, I will have a complete record of our travels. So I don’t want to take shortcuts. I just have to keep plugging away. Tomorrow we will take the free ferry to the main island, rent a car and tour around the island. We haven’t officially checked in with the Harbor Master here as the one in Kuah wasn’t interested in dealing with this. So we will try again in Telega Harbor tomorrow. We
are still on a search for a Thanksgiving Day “chicken”-no turkeys here. The only chickens I have found so far still have feet and heads attached, even when frozen. I was reluctant to purchase one of those, but that might be my only choice!
