We chose not to go through the complications and expense of  Singapore customs, quarantine, and immigration procedures with our boat. Instead, we motored a short way up the Santi River in the Johor province of Malaysia, just east of Singapore. From here we could make easy visits into Singapore by ferry and avoid the hassle. It proved to be a good strategy. We berthed at the Sebana Cove Resort. This is a "less-than-blazingly-successful" golf resort and hotel for the wealthy of Singapore and even more luxurious than our former home. We won't go into details except to say that the pool was great, we were in it every afternoon.
One of our objectives was to treat ourselves to a shopping spree in Singapore. We wanted to buy a high end DVD player and flat screen TV for the boat and we had long heard that Singapore was the place to indulge long repressed shopping urges, especially for things like clothes and electronics. Singapore produces an amazing diversity of manufactured products.

Active Light's berth across from Windwalker III at Sebana Cove.

We did not realize that Hotel 81 was a chain with about ten sites around Singapore. Our taxi driver, for some reason, took us to the Hotel 81 right in the middle of the "red light" district. Arriving around ten in the morning, the city is so clean and orderly, we couldn't discern anything awry, so we all trouped inside and booked a room. It was a good hotel, the staff was especially courteous and helpful to us, and by the time we learned where we were, we just all said, "Oh well" and enjoyed the sights, staying four days. It was interesting to watch negotiations between the "working girls" and their customers from the vantage of our seventh floor window at night. It was all so quiet and orderly, we suspected the presence of undercover police.
First thing we did next day was to spend the long afternoon at Sim Lim Square, where all the electronics merchants are centered. You can buy anything related to computer, radio, hi fi, or DVD, at this place, all the latest technology. There is tremendous quantity of goods and much competition among the vendors, but you need to know what you want. We looked and shopped for hours and finally settled on a Sharp flat screen TV and a JVC automobile DVD/CD/FM player to go with it. Our idea was to drive our oversize Bose hi fi speakers aboard Active Light  with the output from a high end car system stereo/DVD player. Products taken back to the hotel, we began to explore Singapore in earnest.

Day two was spent entirely at the Singapore Zoo. We hesitate to show pictures we took at a zoo, but we offer these three only of regional critters for special reasons. On our riverboat tour to see the orangutans in Kalimantan, we could never get a facial shot of the large male proboscis monkey. In the forest, they keep their backside turned to you as you approach. Here in the zoo, we suppose they have so much exposure to humans, we were able to get this shot. This fellow is a young male. The nose gets bigger as they age. The two orangutans below impressed us in that they seemed so lethargic and unhappy compared to the ones we saw in the forest. We say this in no way intending to criticize this well-designed, well-maintained zoo. Finally, this salt water crocodile was the first one we have seen since those in Steve Irwin's zoo last November back in Queensland. These critters presence, however, was always on our minds during this year's travel and was the major factor in keeping us out of the water.

The rest of that first trip was spent sampling the various Chinese sidewalk "eating houses" and shopping areas. We spent most of two days in Singapore's China Town district. We eventually made two more trips back to Singapore, the first of these involved the difficult task of demanding our money back from the vendor who sold us our JVC DVD player, since the unit did not perform as advertised. Amazingly enough, we ultimately prevailed and have yet another colorful memory in our memory banks. We bought a better Pioneer unit from another site and Neil spent one more entire day installing the unit on our boat. We are quite happy with our final result, though! We are now called the "Active Light Floating Home Entertainment Center"! On the last trip to Singapore, Nancy went with the Corleys while Neil stayed home polishing our Dickinson Antarctic diesel heating stove. It gets so little use here in the tropics. Nancy went to the famous Raffles Hotel and had tea and a Singapore Sling with the Corleys.

We always had our breakfast at this sidewalk "eating house".

After two weeks at Sebana Cove, we started up the Malacca Strait bound for the duty free island of Langkawi, our prescribed check-out port. We picked up a third boat, Nils and Biret aboard Elenor who wanted to travel with us for mutual safety in the reputedly dangerous passage. They are from Sweden and proved to be excellent traveling companions. We all dropped downriver one afternoon and got an early start with the tide next morning  to transit the busy Singapore Strait. We have never been in busier shipping lanes before. We dodged traffic, patrol boats, fishing boats, fishing nets, floating logs, disgusting debris and flotsam, and even jetsam was there too! We saw bigger LPG carriers and container ships than we knew were possible. Fishing boats came in three sizes, but the ones that worried us most were the pairs that towed a net in tandem between them. It was hard to tell how to avoid them and their shared net. We were both on watch all day long and attempted no night passages on this leg.

We will always remember the Malacca Strait passage as being hot! We almost always motoring, which made the cockpit even hotter. We were at first quite apprehensive about pirates, having heard rumors of boardings in the past. In fact, no one bothered us at all except fishing boats seemed to be magnetically attracted to Active Light. We think their crew were often just curious to get a good look at us. Perhaps ten years ago some imprudent yachtie's wife spent a morning sunbathing topless on the foredeck and these poor bored fellows were hoping for a reenactment of such event. In any case, it was not a pleasant passage. We had to do it and we did. The runs were often 50 to 60 nm in a day, anchor up at dawn, anchor down in an often marginal anchorage just before sunset. The current was frequently against us and the waters were really, really foul. We picked up something in our prop four times during this passage. When we got to Port Dickson, we were all ready for a break.

Leaving one of the more beautiful overnight anchorages.

Aces and spaces, good and bad, a long hot, sweaty passage and then we found Admiral Marina in Port Dickson. If possible, it was even more luxurious and even less expensive than anything we had seen before. The pool here even had a waterfall, a slide, and the staff furnished free towels to all guests. The bar/restaurant served a great banana split. We all decided to take a bus trip to Malaysia's capitol, Kuala Lumpur. We took a two cabs early one morning with the Corleys and Elenor's crew into Port Dickson and hopped on an air conditioned bus to Kuala Lumpur. Two hours later, we were there.
We booked a room at the Swiss Inn and set out to explore. No third world city by any means, until last year it was the home of the world's tallest building, the all-stainless-steel twin towers. We found lots of interesting shops and enjoyed the sidewalk vendors on the locally famous Petaling Street Mall, where almost any brand you can buy will be guaranteed to be fake, . . . Nike, Rolex, Canon, Gucci, etc. It is a street of pirated DVDs, copied styles, and imitation labels. Much of it is very well made, but you must be careful. Return Policy is a joke here.
We shopped and shopped, and ate out every meal. People don't seem to do egg, coffee, and bacon breakfast in South East Asia, so Chinese food early in the morning continues to be very interesting. We booked tickets on one of those round-the-city tour busses. The bus was an hour late to pick us up, but the tour turned out to be good anyway.

Back in Port Dickson, we changed the motor oil for the second time this season, we are using the engine so much. We took on diesel in jerry cans and shoved off for the last leg to Langkawi. We decided to make an overnight because the distance was greater than you could cover in daylight hours. The trip began with light head winds, but by evening the logbook entry reads, "Just went through one hell of a frog strangler (an old Texas expression for rain squall). Not too much wind, 29 knots in a gust mostly around 20 knots, and frightening lightning." By midnight, Nancy writes of motoring in lessening rain and lightning and of picking up a large blue tarpaulin in the prop which we freed with the boat hook. At about two AM, however, it was Neil's watch, and we were motoring along at 2000 rpm when the engine came to an abrupt halt. Nancy was awake and on deck in a flash. Peering overboard with a floodlight, we found we were trailing a 15 foot fragment of heavy gill net firmly embedded in our prop. It had locked up the engine, we could not shift out of gear nor turn the prop. It was with considerable reluctance that Neil went overboard into the dark waters with his favorite filet knife, but once there he found a magical world of brilliance and darkness. Nancy shined our powerful spotlight over the side onto the fouled prop as he slashed away. The water was brilliantly clear with tiny sparkles from tiny micro-organisms. About four feet outside the arch of the light's beam, glaring blackness. Each time he came up for air, he would say, "Turn the light off, we don't want to attract anything!" Once the trailing net wrapped backwards brushing against Neil's thigh and he came up very quickly out of the water. Twenty minutes later we had just cleared the prop and Neil had climbed out of the dark water when Nancy cried, "Oh, look. There's a sea snake!" Had she spoken only a bit earlier it would have greatly assisted Neil's boarding. All in all, an interesting night.

Fortunately for us, the engine gear shift seemed to work again, we cautiously restarted the engine, our hearts in our throats. Windwalker III had caught up with us by now and was standing by, ever good friends and cruising companions. Putting the transmission in gear, there seemed to be no misalignment nor shimmy, so we motored cautiously on our way. A strong headwind filled in with the dawn, so we sailed closehauled on the starboard tack in to Langkawi Bay. It was a trip plagued with engine problems. Our friends on Windwalker III had two or three engine breakdowns during the passage also. We were all glad to make port.

We were in the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club marina for a week, resting and learning what we could about local berthing and repair facilities. Windwalker III decided to stay in Langkawi for several months to undergo extensive gel coat repairs while we went on to Phuket alone. Langkawi is a beautiful collection of islands with lots of tourist and diving activities. It is a duty free port and we stocked up on gin pretty well before Leaving.
The passage to Phuket was a single, non-memorable overnight leg of 120 nm. And oh yes, after sailing most of the way to there, our engine failed to start as we came up to anchor in Ao Chalong bay, so we had the practice of sailing through a crowded anchorage to our spot. Once at anchor, the engine glitch was easily fixed.
Rowing a long way to shore next morning, we spent most of the day waiting through the necessary customs and immigration steps, after which we took a walk to the local market and came back to the boat loaded with watermelons (tang moh), pomelos (song oh), delicious pineapple (saparoh), and this strange fruit, locally called a dragon fruit.

We haven't been here long enough to really tell you much about what Thailand is like. Our first and strongest impressions are that the people are extraordinarily friendly, the food is excellent and prices quite inexpensive. We confess to intentions of staying here for a year. We have a land mail address if you wish to write us, but be forewarned that although we would like to hear from you, articles other than letters should be sent Fed Ex or DHL as the mail service is not reliable. We will post pictures of our travels throughout the area in our next report. Our ship's radio is broken, so please use hotmail or the following land mail address:

Yacht Haven Marina
Attention yacht Active Light
141/2 Moo 2, Tumbul Maikhao
Amphur Talang
Phuket 83110, Thailand

Under full tropical marina-sitting canvas at Yacht Haven Marina.