Ole Georgetown on Penang, Malaysia

We took a walk around Old Georgetown here on Penang. Some of the sights are below. A sign on a busy street saying "no street food vendor carts. Hahaha!

Then there was this confused prickly-pear and ocatilla. Don't know if it is an oriental one or just too close to the equator.

Trinda found a hat that doubles as a paper fan.

And Grace is ready to defend us against the pirates at the old Fort Cornwallis.

Our last trip to Singapore included lunch again.

Ahh... but not this lunch! We ate Indian food across the street from this!   They also had "Pig's Organ Soup" and Trotter stew (pig's feet).

Trinda is fascinated with the toilets here...that's her foot for scale. She calls it a 'squatter'.

Singapore across the strait, from the top of my mast in Danga Bay Marina.

Looking north from Dang Bay

Our second trip to Singapore included lunch in Old China Town with Greg and Grace.

A temple at the end of China street. Trinda, Greg and Grace lower right.

It is way over time for an update here! So I'll try. Some of these were posted on FB, but here again. At the Sunday market in Kuching I saw the bananas. Mostly in this part of the world we do NOT se "Chiquita Bananas" but smaller. These beauties are the largest I have seen.

Sunday market - Kuching, Malaysia (Borneo)

Before we left Kuching, we went to the 'Cultral Village'.

Our first visit to Singapore included a visit to the top of the Sands Hotel. Three buildings with a 'boat' on top.

Top of the Sands Hotel, Singapore with really large ferris wheel in the back.

The infinity pool on top

Part of the new botanical gardens park and part of Singapore Strait.

Tuba River

We Checked out of Porto Princesa and went on south toward Malaysia. The wind came up so we sat in the mouth of the river at Tuba River for a few days waiting for the weather to get better. As you can see this was not much of a town, just a squatter village by the barge loading area. There is a very large nickel  mine a few miles inland. They ship the raw ore out and refine it elsewhere.

As you could guess, Trinda got bored here.

7 New Wonders of Nature

While we were in Porto Princesa we took a tour to one of the "New 7 Wonders of Nature". This is the Underground River. It is a river that has eaten a path under a limestone mountain for about 8 kilometres. 4.5 Km is navigable. Our ride on a small paddle boat was only 45 minutes, about 1.5 Km into the cave. I took lots of photos inside, but the new cheep Kodak didn't think much of the dark. Twas a nice day all in all. Included in the tour was a 1.5 hour ride each way in a 9 passenger van, this time with less than 9 in it! Beautiful scenery and an all-you-can-eat buffet. What more could you ask for.

Nothing like Carlsbad though.

Larry & Trinda waiting for our banghka to take us to the cave opening.

The mouth of the river/cave.

The only photo that came out, the mouth of the cave, exiting.

In the waiting area, with signs all around and the guide saying not to feed the animals, this little monkey was enjoying  a banana.

While he was sitting on the rope, guess what Trinda did. Yep she jerked the rope! Really excited the little bugger. I thought he was really going to come after her for a minute.

While at Porto del Sol watching Denny get ready to leave, we took a dinghy ride up the river with Greg and Grace. We went about 4 miles up the river. It was completely enclosed by mangroves. Very nice ride.

Greg and Grave. Greg is the one who sent me the plans for the dinghy.

A house on the river.

After Porto del Sol we went to the old leper colony at Culion. We took a tour of the museum there. It was closed as a leper colony in the 80's. A nice clean small village now.

The emblem on the hill is made of white painted rocks. The hospital is the buildings center, up from the beach.

The grammer here is NOT the same standard as in the states, but Trinda had to pose by this sign while we waited for the museum to open.

Then last week on our way to Puerto Princesa we discovered an anomaly in the charted position of a reef! There was a seaweed farm in the bay we were planning to anchor in. They tie 6 or 8 buoys together then drop ropes down with the seaweed on them. And do this all over the bay. There were hundreds of buoys that we could not sail over for fear of catching one of the ropes on the prop. We had a track from the GPS of a friend who had successfully anchored here a few weeks ago, missing all the buoys. But the local security guy insisted we follow him safely through the buoys, so we did. Just past the buoys he said "OK. Just go that way and pointed vaguely to the back of the bay. I decided we should go back to the track we had been following. I left a good 200 yards to go around the marked coral reef between me and the track. Then bump, bump BUMP! and the boat stopped. It was the middle of the out going high tide of the day. Within minutes the boat was too far out of the water to pull it off. So we sat there and gradually leaned over. It took 12 hours to go down and come back up. About 9 in the morning we floated off.

Trinda demonstrating the angle we spent most of the night.

The horizon is supposed to be level with the solar panels!