Langkawi

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Marie & Crister

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Puteri Harbor pool

Malay Fisher

Two beautiful sisters

Malacca

Malacca

Malacca

Flee Market Malacca

Port Dickson

Happy Hour

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Hindu temple

We have now been close to a week in Langkawi, the Malaysian island close to the Thai border. As this is a major sailing destination and we are at the start of the dry, North East Monsoon season, we are surrounded by more sailing boats since leaving the Caribbean more than a year ago. We made the 450 nm sail from south Malaysia/Singapore in two steps. First we sailed 150 miles to Port Dickson. Fair but light winds with some challenging fishing boats even though we kept close to the main shipping lanes.
We stayed two nights in Admiral Marina and Leisure Club. Spent a day in the interesting town of Melaka/Melacca. Impressive history of Portuguese, Dutch, British, Japanese colonial rules with well preserved buildings. At the marina we once again experienced scary thunderstorms and lightning. A new 62 feet Yacht on the other side of our pontoon got a direct hit destroying basically everything electric including wiring. Another yacht had a direct hit. We managed to disconnect shore power and put laptops, tablets, phones, chart plotter in the oven and in the microwave. As the nearest lightning was less than 30 meters from our berth I guess we were lucky but I can guarantee it was a rather frightening hit. Only damage is our VHF Antenna splitter is gone…

After a 300 nm, two night sail we arrived in Langkawi. Always nice to visit places you been to before, the difference is we now are here with our sailing yacht. The Island has had a lot of further development since we were here 12 years ago. Malaysia is clearly one of the Asian Tiger economies that (together with Indonesia) are picking up the leadership from China and India. 12 years ago we stayed in a rain-forest reserve with 15 bungalows. A few months ago, Ritz-Carlton Langkawi opened their 5 star resort on the same premises we stayed at, but with a huge change into 5 star luxury. The number of rooms/bungalows are now 120, there are 3 great restaurants, a huge spa treatment area, the most expensive bungalows with three bedrooms have private infinity pools and cost you 7000-8000 USD a night. I believe a simpler, single room bungalow is a more “modest” 500 USD a night.

We are now anchored outside Kuah, the main town, waiting for our Thai visas, fixing a few broken things and enjoying the lovely Malaysian hospitality. Last night we spent 3 hours eating our way along a 1k long night market with hundreds of food stalls. Eva’s infected hand is now almost ok. Scary though how small wounds quickly develop in to dangerous infections. Not sure a similar infection treated in a Swedish hospital had been treated as effective. Getting hold of antibiotics in Sweden requires a “near death” status.