At midday on Friday 28th April I left my flat in Liverpool after a great month spent with friends and family in Liverpool, Wirral, Swindon and Milan to begin the journey back to Malaysia. From Lime Street I caught a train to Manchester Airport for my connecting flight to London. Luckily (for me at least) it wasn’t too hot and sticky a day because I was pulling a suitcase weighing 22kg, containing not only the usual clothes and toiletries, but also several items Paul needed for the boat and a fair few food items, including packets of vegan cheese and jars of peanut butter. It was a relief to check it in at Manchester where I wouldn’t see it again until it was time to collect it from Kuala Lumpur Airport the following day. It was late afternoon local time on Saturday 29th April when Paul met me after a 12 hour flight from Heathrow. My body clock was still on British time where it was mid-morning, and I hadn’t slept much on the plane so it was disorienting to say the least, especially when we went for dinner when I’d not long had breakfast on the plane! Still it felt good to be back ‘home’ and to see Paul again. I had been looking forward to being back on board Sister Midnight and seeing her new berth right on the southern tip of Peninsular Malaysia. There was one more flight to do before that, however. From KL we had to fly to Johor Bahru, a journey of about 45 minutes, but this flight was delayed for an hour and was followed by a 30 minute taxi ride from the airport to the marina, so it wasn’t until the early hours of Sunday morning that my journey back to SE Asia came to an end. Walking along the pontoons in the dark I felt the residue of the day’s heat and it struck me that the journey had taken me from the comfort of a hot water bottle and heavy duvet at night in England and brought me instead to the relief of cooling fans and cold showers. Paul had added another fan to the boat in my absence which is set up to rotate above us like a ceiling fan to circulate the air more effectively.
I hadn’t been able to see much of my surroundings the night before, and when I woke up I almost expected to see the familiar sight of Langkawi’s Royal Yacht Club from the last time I’d woken up on the boat. Talking to Paul and reading his blog posts about Puteri (pronounced Pootree) I was prepared to be unimpressed because he’d been fairly noncommittal in his descriptions. It had looked pretty enough all lit up in the darkness, and the short walk through the marina reception had revealed a clean, newish building leading out to a courtyard with bars, palm trees and benches overlooking the harbour. From the cockpit, viewing it all in the light of day, I was pleasantly surprised to see a hive of activity in the marina complex and resort. Music was playing from a stage on the second storey of a shopping mall where activities for children were in full swing by the sound of it. The marina was full of people who would be taking part in the Sail Malaysia ‘Passage to the East’ Rally the following week, and the associated festivities had culminated on Saturday night with a jazz festival (I wasn’t too disappointed to have missed that ;)). It was a bank holiday weekend here in Malaysia too so visitors had come to stroll around the complex and have their photos taken against the harbour background. The semicircle of land around the public marina is taken up with attractive blocks of serviced apartments and a huge hotel, the marina clubhouse with its services and facilities (including a library), and several smart-looking bars, coffee shops and restaurants.
The floor above, accessed by an escalator, is signposted as a shopping boulevard. I saw all this as we took a walk around so that I could get my bearings. Paul was right to state that the shops aren’t much to get excited about. They are mostly retail outlets for designer brands and a string of shops and stalls selling children’s toys, clothes and sweets. Quite a few units in the mall are still waiting to be sold. Hello Kitty is very popular here – there is a ‘land’ devoted to her somewhere close by and the hotel offers trips to nearby Legoland. The convenience store on the ground floor sells plenty of chocolate, crisps, and fizzy drinks but little else. Still the atmosphere was good and everywhere is very clean and well maintained. It’s a fairly new resort so it’s still being developed but it seems to be a popular destination for daytrippers at weekends and holidays already. Staff, especially the gate guards, are very friendly according to Paul. They are employed to let marina patrons in and out of the pontoons, but they also spend a lot of time blowing whistles to tell people not to stand on the marina walls. It’s a long drop down into the murky water but it’s a popular place to pose for photos and naturally, children can’t resist climbing them even though there’s a play area right next to them.
It was too hot to linger outside for long – it will take me a while to become reacclimatised to the heat and humidity I expect. It feels a lot more humid here than it did in Langkawi, but it is the height of summer and we’re that bit closer to the equator. Most of Sunday was spent unpacking and sleeping off more of the jet lag. Early in the evening we went to a shop inside the ferry terminal which is a short walk from the marina, to get some bread. Thunder was crashing around us and it had grown very dark. Paul told me storms are frequent here but they are over quite quickly. There were some interesting sculptures made out of bamboo in the green areas next to the path, and a quirky swing that I was keen to have a go on but it was full of people and we needed to get back to the boat before the rain fell. I did get to go on it a few days later though as the pic below shows (it looks better than it actually was).
On Monday I still felt very lethargic and only felt up to doing a bit more unpacking, looking up information relating to Singapore and Raffles Hotel on the internet, and lounging by the fans dozing or reading. In the evening we went for dinner in one of the waterside restaurants called The Olive Kitchen, although it specialised in Indian cuisine with not an olive in sight. TV screens were showing music videos featuring songs from The Eagles, Pink Floyd and The Bee Gees. Paul wasn’t impressed but I loved it, and the food was good too. Back on the boat I packed a small bag ready for our visit to Singapore, the third and smallest South East Asian country on our journey so far.
