Day 21, Year 5: Trip to Kuah
Date: Monday, November 16, 2009
Weather: Same Pattern–Hot, Sunny Morning with Rains Beginning Midday
Location: Rebak Marina, Pulau Rebak, Langkawi, Malaysia
We stepped onto the Rebak ferry to the main island at 8:45 this morning. Cory and Barbara of Increscent Moon were with us and we shared the cost of renting a car for the day. I always feel like we are spending so much money when we rent a car, but actually it only costs us about $15US plus $3 in fuel for the day, and divided by two that is only $9US. But still you are driven to accomplish as much as you can in the time you have. So we did our comparison shopping for LPG (liquid propane gas) line, went to the wet market to buy fresh fruit and veggies, went to the warehouse to buy the cheapest beer and wine in town, went to get some of our Thailand information copied for Cory and Barbara, got new passport photos taken, did some grocery shopping, and on and on. It is amazing how much you can do in one six hour day. We even had time to stop by Telega Harbor on our way back to the Rebak ferry to show Cory and Barbara the boat cover Bud and Nita of Passage had made in Thailand last year. Cory and Barbara are planning to have a cover made for Increscent Moon and we were most impressed by the Stamoid cover Bud and Nita had made while in the Boat Lagoon last winter. The Stamoid logo is “We’ve got you covered.” But there is a problem. The polyester covered material does not breathe and therefore after only nine months, Bud and Nita’s beautiful cover is covered with mildew on the inside. The Thai workmanship is superb, but Cory and Barbara will have to figure out what material to use.
We arrived back in Rebak marina before 5:00 pm, stored away food we brought home, and went for a walk on the docks. We went to check on Shirena which is something we do every day or two while Robert and Tina are back home in Australia. We went to visit Judy and Dave on Freebird while we were out and checked in with Guy and Annika on Street Legal. Guy is running the radio net for those of us headed across the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea. We got an email from him when we got today saying that he was in Rebak Marina for a day before heading to Thailand, so we wanted to make sure we caught him. We made arrangements to talk with him in the morning before he leaves and then we came home to Windbird. The afternoon rains come and go, and today they extended on into the evening. So we walked home in the rain. It is now 10:00 pm here and it is still raining. The rain is great for the rice fields, but I’m looking forward to heading north to Thailand were the rains will cease. It is only a short distance away, but there is a definite line of demarcation between Malaysia and Thailand where the weather systems change.
We had a couple of successes today. We found the butane canisters for our little camp stove so I can cook and we found heavy duty fuel hose to replace the copper tubing that currently goes from our outside propane locker to our stove in the galley. Tomorrow we will begin to run the new fuel hose and then figure out how to start testing the system. We can get a new solenoid in Kuah but if the problem is really the sensor, we will have to order that and wait the two to three weeks here to receive it from the US. Our daughter wrote this morning to say that we are probably going to have to fix our Thanksgiving dinner on the grill and she is right about that. BUT at this point we don’t even have a way to use the grill independent of the entire system. I know we can work that out and we’ll do that in the next week. But I don’t think we can bake pumpkin pie on the grill, or is that possible . . .
 |
| 091116 Day 21 Malaysia–Kuah's Wet Market |
