Kuala Lumpur

Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur (not my picture)

We took a long Grab ride into Kuala Lumpur, or KL as the locals call it. This is the capital city of Malaysia with about 1.8 million people. We treated ourselves to a luxury hotel stay at The Hotel Majestic. Good location, good food, good service all for less than a usd$100 a day for the room. We played tourist for two days, hitting the National Museum, Central Market, Hindu shrine and the Bird Park.

The Batu Caves are 272 steps adorned with a statute and some caves. It was a brutally hot walk up the steps and since I was looking at my feet the whole way up the steps were clearly the focus of my visit.

The big, shiny, gold guy to the right of the multicolored steps is Lord Murugan. He watches over the city at a height of 140ft. This statute of he Lord is apparently the tallest of all Lord Murugan statues. Notice the tourist in the foreground with a face mask carefully protecting his chin from the coronavirus.

Once you get to the top of the external steps you get to negotiate a few more flights of stairs and you are inside the well lit caves with their temple.

It wouldn't be a Hindu temple without monkeys. We saw this guy hightail over to a tourist who was holding a small, blue plastic bag. He leaped up her leg and tore the bag away from her. Once 20 feet away he carefully ripped the bag open and took off with this, nice juicy apple.

We wandered around the Central Market till Chris found her prey -- the handmade Batik cloth store. This very helpful and energetic lady was full of knowledge about Malaysian batiks. Chris is holding one of the wooden printing blocks.We now have some more Batik cloth onboard for later artistic endeavors.

The Kuala Lumpur Bird Park is one of the largest free-flight bird parks in the world. It's home to 3,000 birds on 21 acres.

A crested something.

The owl exhibit was really good. A sleepy Buffy Fish-owl.

They let a few, wee, monkeys into the Bird Park too. 

There are a lot if these evil peacocks in the park. Birds that feel the need to endless scream Help, Help! all night can't be considered cute.

We took another Grab back to Port Dickson, paid our marina bill and took off the next day for two hops to Pangkor. The anchorage above is in the Sembilan Islands near Pangkor. This is the first nice looking islands we've anchored off of since we've been in Malaysia.

Next day had us heading into Pangkor along with this typical Malaysian fishing boat.

We decided to stay in Pangkor Marina to get a few more boat projects done. We took off the mainsail and had the sail-maker pick it up. He took me over to the sail-loft and we laid out the sail on his large loft platform. A few minor repairs and some extra stitching on the batten pockets and she'll be ready to cross another ocean.

Also had Marus come down and spend 2.5 days with his worker polishing the hull and deck, and the stainless. They did a great job-- Georgia's a very pretty girl now.

We also took apart some cabinetry so we could torque the chain plate bolts, making sure they are a good and secure for holding up the mast.

In a day or so we will start heading further north in Malaysia, with plans to stop in Penang and Langkawi.

Paul

Broke Free from the Marina - Kinda

 We've finally broken free from our home away from home in Puteri Habour Marina, Malaysia.

After returning from the US, we'd gotten pretty comfortable there. It's easy and cheap to get around with a Grab (Asian version of Uber/Lyft). This is the only marina we'e been in his entire trip that we actually used the air conditioner. It is pretty brutally hot here.

Got a few boat projects completed, The most important was getting the fridge working again. After a few false starts I managed to get a 13kg (30lb) canister of R134a refrigerant. That's enough to refill our refrigerator/freezer compressor about 19 times, but it was the only size I could find. Now she's humming along and bringing the cooling plate nicely down to 6*F.

We are a cruising boat, not a marina queen so it was definitely time to for us to start moving again. It is always difficult when you have to say good bye to old and new friends. We managed to hang out with Carrie and Owen and family, old sailor friends from Washington who are now living here, while we were here. Last time we saw them was in La Paz, Mexico in 2011. They teach at the Raffles American School here. And we also spent a lot of time and a few beers with Heather and Steve off the British boat Foo. No doubt we'll catch back up somewhere.

After passing under the Second Link bridge in the photo at the top we were back in the busy shipping lanes and ship anchorage off Singapore. Each of the green triangles above is a large ship. The ones with red lines pointing off them are traveling in the Malacca Strait shipping lanes. The ones with no line off them are at anchor, some waiting to load, some to unload and many just waiting for orders on where to go next.

After two days of motoring up the Malacca Straits with night stops at Pulau Pisar and Pulau Besar we arrived at Port Dickson and Admiral Marina. This is the part where we kinda broke free from the marina, as we are back in one now. We decided to stop here for awhile because it is within about an hour drive from the historic town of Malacca (or Melacca or Malaka or Melaka) and the capital city Kuala Lumpur.

We took a usd$25 Grab for the hour+ drive into the old part of Malacca. This is the area of old Dutch architecture and Chinese shops.

We hit a few museums and old family homes. This is the entry way to the baba and nyonya home. The downtown house for a wealthy plantation owner in the late 1800's. Interesting two story house to walk through although picture taking was allowed inside. The home is still used by the extended family multiple times a year to honor the family ancestors.

A blind kid making some marvelous music on a local string instrument.

The city is divided by the Malacca River with nice walks along its edge.

The rivers edge has nice tourist walks, but you do have to be a little careful who you step in front of.

Here is the view from the towns hilltop looking out over the Malacca Straits. This is the view that the local Malays would have seen as the Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, British and Japanese invaded over the centuries. There's a good history museum that takes you through each of the occupations: Melaka History and Ethnography Museum.

Tomorrow we are off to stay in Kuala Lumpur, or as the locals call it KL, for a few days.

Paul