Circumnavigation!

With a couple more weeks until Helen joins me in Malaysia, I set off on Aroha to explore Langkawi island and its surroundings.  It seemed like a reasonable target to circumnavigate this island.

We only travelled about thirty miles from the Thai island of Koh Lipe when we came to Langkawi earlier this year.  It’s not a long way, but of course it’s a different country.  Coming from the young island-country of Aotearoa New Zealand, it’s always entertained me how borders in other parts of the world exist, and indeed change over time.  This northern part of Malaysia has at times been occupied by Thailand, so even though the official language changes, elements of culture, food and religion flow from one country to the next. In many respects Malaysia’s not a huge departure from our previous three seasons cruising in Thailand.

Most of the sea floor south of the border is a fine muddy silt – it makes anchoring secure but messy – often ending up with smelly mud on the foredeck when recovering the anchor.  That element is quite a change from the Thai coast, which offers great visibility and snorkelling.  Broadly speaking, the best snorkelling I’ve found so far in this part of Malaysia corresponds to the worst snorkelling I’ve seen in Thailand.

Whilst the sediment gives the water a pretty, light green hue, which looks great in photos, it’s a bit disconcerting that you have no visual indication of the depth from onboard.  One metre looks just like ten metres depth.  The charts are pretty inaccurate too – I’m currently anchored in about six meters of water, even though the chart says we should be sitting on a sand bank.

On my way up the east coast, I enjoyed a couple of days bobbing around a pretty anchorage in a protected basin between two small islands.  It’s not uncommon at anchor to be pushed to and fro by the gentle movement of the tide. In this particular anchorage, the rising tide carried Aroha to the end of the basin with a weak 4G signal. The outgoing tide carried us to the opposite end, which was just within range for Thailand mobile to ask if I wanted to use their data roaming!  I’m far too cheap to use data roaming, so for a few days my Netflix downloads were in sync with the orbit of the moon!

The morning and evening golden hours have become my favourite times of the day.  Even though the actual sunrises and sunsets are quite quick this close to the equator, the hour or two of daylight at each end of the day are magical.  It helps too that it’s cooler at that time – the middle of the day can get a bit warm and I usually plan to be off the boat then – exploring in George (our dinghy) or snorkelling.

I’m pretty sure the tidal flushing is the main driver for the number of fish farms around.  I’ve never been a fan of fish farms – the density at which the fish are kept necessitates loading them up with drugs and antibiotics.  In this part of the world, it seems that overfishing of the sea has made them a practical necessity. As the saying goes, we’ll stop using straws to save the fish, but we’ll keep eating the fish.

I dropped by in George to check out a nearby fish farm, just in time for the afternoon feeding.  A large wooden work boat pulled up and fed the pen first with pellets (presumably the supplements and drugs needed to keep the fish healthy) and then chopped up fish.  I was surprised that the fish was on ice – I didn’t think the penned fish would mind if their fish supper was a little fizzy.

The farms are connected to the sea floor and each other by long, thick ropes, which can make navigating around them in Aroha a little hairy.

I’ve come to love Thai food over our past seasons cruising their coast. Malaysia has a more diverse cultural makeup consisting of Malays, Chinese, and Indians, which inevitably brings a diverse cuisine. I think I’ve put my christmas pounds on in advance of the season. My favourite places are the cheap restaurants where the food is arranged in glass cases – so you can literally “point and pick”.  I think that’s the tourist nickname for them.  For those a little squeamish about food hygiene, if you go at busy times then you can be pretty certain that the food is freshly prepared and hygienic.

I moved up the coast a little to Langkawi’s main tourist area, anchoring amongst the mangroves in a geopark.  It’s popular for good reason – the dense forest cascades down to mangrove-lined inlets, the wildlife is prolific, and the tourist touch is relatively light.  The speeding fishing boats are replaced by speeding tourist ones, but they always share a friendly wave that seems to be the standard between seafarers the world over.  It feels like we look out for each other, no matter the reason we’re on the water.

My friend Nico joined me for a week, as we continued around the north and west of Langkwai, with frequent stops searching (with limited success) for better snorkelling, and hiking to waterfalls and cool freshwater pools.  The pools feel chilly compared to the thirty-degree sea temperature, but I’m sure are a few notches above the current eleven-degree sea temperature at home in Devon!

I’d noticed a few polite raised eyebrows when I spoke about our “unashamedly unambitious” season’s plans with fellow cruisers, and now that I’ve completed a circumnavigation I understand why.  You could “do” Langkwai in two weeks cruising, so taking ten weeks is quite a sedate pace indeed.  The admiral will be back on board by the next blog, where we’ll be revisiting favourite places and no doubt discovering new ones.  Merry Christmas!

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