REBAK ISLAND MALAYSIA

On the boat in the Marina





At Rebak marina waiting for the ferry





We are back in Rebak Marina, Langkawi,Malaysia after a 1,000 mile cruise around Malaysia and the off lying islands.
The south east monsoon season is coming to an end with daily showers and periods of bright sunshine. Last night at the Hard dock café which is a rectangular building open on two sides the wind came up and the rain came down in buckets, chairs were blown across the room as we huddled, shivering in a protected corner of the café.


When the rainstorm had passed the floor was swept and the tables mopped and the food arrived and we ate and chatted late in the evening.



The beginning of an evening storm







While at the marina it is the time for doing all of those little maintenance jobs. Yesterday was a typical day. Coffee at dawn, while enjoying the tranquility. Yachts sit peacefully on the mirror like surface of the water that is occasionally broken by the splashing of fish chasing a meal. Close by the boat, a sea Otter surfaced to look around. The dog like face, black nose, brown skin with whiskers and dark eyes peered over the horizon of the water, looked about ,took a breath and in an instant ducked its head and was gone again.


I too descended into the cabin to clean and put things away before beginning my English lesson to a 10 year old French girl on the yacht “Pollen”.


Describe in English what you are doing?



Tierry and Cathy with their two children Logan 12 and Nahelou 10 have been cruising from Reunion island Eastwards to Malaysia. The children work everyday on their correspondence lesson from France. The parents supervise the assignments in between undertaking maintenance jobs on the boat and exploring Asia.


The hour goes very quickly even with repetition and as few games in between. Today I wanted Nahelou to practice the sounds of the alphabet so she wrote down the letters practicing the correct pronunciation and then she had to think of an animal for every letter eg. A antelope, B Bat and so on. While she was thinking I began drawing various animals and she called out the name and then she wrote or tried to spell the name, eventually she did. Why do scientists make life difficult for kid by calling animals weird names like Rhinoceros and Hippopotamus.(spike and fatso would be easier)

Discussing homework

After another coffee and a chat with the parents I went back to our boat and began a number of tasks. Firstly I went to the marina office to pick up two gas cylinders that had been refilled and then began the long walk pushing a wheelbarrow back to the boat.
The gas cylinders get rusty at the bottom through water getting into the compartment.
I sandpapered the cylinders and sprayed them with anti rust paint, I did the anchor as well, washed off the solution allowed the items to dry in the sun before spraying them with yet another rust prevention paint.


By this time it was lunch time just a simple bowl of instant noodles and an ice cold mango and a beer to replace the body fluid sweated out of my system. Well that’s my story!

As it was quite hot at midday I retreated to the coolness of the cabin and read a few pages of a crime thriller set in Cornwall before dozing off.

Later in the afternoon I fiddled with some fittings on the boom trying to get some bolts loosened, just to check them.

Boy it was hot, so I walked to the swimming pool and plunged into the cool water and swam a few laps. The pool attendant handed me a towel and we chatted about Bangladesh and what he was going to do when his contract finished and he returned home.



Cooling off late in the afternoon



Around the pool were a number of couples from Saudi Arabia. The men sporting their designer T shirts and shorts while their wives are covered from head to toe in black, just a slit for their eyes that I cannot help looking at. They sit in chairs fiddling with their cell phones while their men attempt to swim.


On the ferry



When I get the opportunity I chat with the Saudi men. On guy Fahid told me he came from Riyad where he worked for a multinational company. He challenged me to a swimming race across the pool even though I was twice his age. Off we went and I beat him by almost half a length of the pool. He arrived at the other side of the pool puffing and panting . When he had recovered his breath he wanted a re match. He said that he would dive in and that I would start from the edge of the pool in the water.


I quickly figured out that he wanted to win. Off we went I slowed down stroke for stoke as I could see him just ahead of me. I let him win by a second. The poor bugger was exhausted, but happy that he had won. He looked pale as he went to lay on his chair where he stayed for an hour recovering while I had hardly raised a sweat. Swimming like many things is more a matter of technique than brute force


Most of the Europeans and Americans find the Saudi women in black quite confronting for them it is a mixture of fear and a lack of understanding .Many refer to them as” letter boxes”.

A lot of the Saudi couples are honeymooners.
The other day I was fascinated at this Saudi guy taking pictures of his wife completely in black with sun glasses. I tried to imagine the conversation back home when they were showing the pictures to the family. A black blob against the sea, another black blob leaning against a tree, a black blob sitting a dining table.
What would the family say “the sea is blue, The tree is tall, the dining room is elegant”

What would be the reference to the woman? That was a bad hair day!, your eyes look beautiful ! I cannot see the expression on you face but I guess that you were happy and now happy to be home with us…..! I do not know.


After the swimming race I stayed in the pool with a group of other people on boats from England, France Germany and the USA and chatted about world events and the current pirate situation in Yemen and Somalia and the cost of transporting a yacht on a ship to Europe.

The notice board in the laundry with udates on pirates

During the conversation I learned something a bout false teeth. A dentist was telling us that he made some dentures for a man but the man refused to pay. A week later the same man returned to get them adjusted as they were chaffing his gum. The dentist made the required adjustments and asked the guy to pay for the false teeth. The man again refused. The dentist stood his ground. “You can have the teeth when I receive the money. The client left in a rage saying “I will take you to court”

At the court both parties stated their case about ownership of the teeth.
The judge ruled that the dentures were part of the person and the dentist had no right to detain any part of a person. The client won the case. The dental board appealed but the court rejected their appeal ! So the false teeth are not an extra but part of the person.

By 6. 30 pm late afternoon was balmy and I returned to the boat for” happy hour”,a scotch and ice while I contemplated what to cook for dinner.
Tonight I am feeling lazy so it will be a lamb stew with carrots, tomato, ochra
Onion and Garlic cooked in beer. I normally would use red wine but I drank the last glass last night.
As usual I cooked too much, it was delicious even with out a glass of wine. I will put the leftovers in the freezer and have it tomorrow.

After the washing up I settled down to watch a movie on the computer. We have over 300 movies on an external hard drive but you have to go through a lot of crappy ones to find something stimulating and thought provoking.


I watched the “midnight meat train”. One of the worst movies ever made about some psychopath killing people on a near empty train and hanging them up like meat in a butcher shop before cutting them up and disposing them in the train tunnel.

I don’t know how people get money to make such trash. Maybe it was funded by a vegetarian!.

I could not watch all of the film as to me, it was disturbing. Even after I turned the film off I was haunted by the awful images. I had to get rid of them .I went back to the index A, B, C, Ah Crocodile Dundee.

I slept soundly not thinking of Crocodiles but contrasts between the out back of Australia and the crazy life some people have living in crowded cities like New York.

I felt content with my day at Rebak marina and happy living on my little boat “Jalan Jalan” doing odd jobs. Like Siddhartha (A character in a novel about Buddhism by Herman Hesse) who found his contentment as a ferry man after life as a , gambler womanizer, entrepreneur and power broker.