Hi Everyone,

  “The blow torch wasn’t cooking the pig leg!”  I should have let Randal read my email before I sent it instead of later. He guesses they were just burning off hair or, well, whatever they burn off.  But it wasn’t being cooked.  Randal grew up in the country where they grew/raised lots of their own food.  I grew up in the city with Stop & Shop and things that came wrapped and packaged or from cans.  Except fish which we bought fresh since we lived in New Bedford with its fishing industry. 

Sadly, the Red Sox did get cooked.  I’m still sad and probably will be till the Series is over and we can begin to look at next year though I’m sure the Sox front office has already started to do that.  RATS!!!

The weather is turning perfect here in Miri.  It was 78 degrees at 6 am this morning and the humidity has eased.  The seas are calming and we will be off before the end of the week. 

Ru

Doramac

Hi Everyone,

  For the past several days the Mari Marina has been full of boats.  They came to participate in the Miri to Kota Kinabalu Race, The Borneo Challenge.  Many of the cruisers we’d met in our travels were taking part and it was nice to see them while they were here.  Randal and I are heading in the opposite direction so we didn’t go along.  It’s a pretty informal race where sailboats sail and/or motor depending on the conditions.  Early this morning we biked over to see the race begin at 8:30 am.    I thought 14 boats participated: Randal said 30.  It was somewhere in between. 

Randal wishing we were going too!

The thing I love about this photo is that except for my bike, it looks totally fake.  It looks as if paper boats are stuck onto the top of the water and the tree is iffy too. 

After the boats left Randal and I biked into Miri center to go to the Sunday morning market to get some fruit and veggies.

This is actually just outside the fish market. 

Randal had gone in to look around.  But we were really just looking: we have enough in our freezer for now.  There are always a few vendors selling some produce here but there are really two big public markets that we go to.  One is just across the road and we usually go there go get cabbage and carrots for my cabbage/carrot salad.  Today we biked to one a few blocks away.  Behind it discovered a pork and chicken market.  Randal asked if I had my camera.  You could see whole pork heads (they were no longer pigs) with the ears still on them. And then there were the hoofs and legs hanging there.  When someone wanted to buy some the vendor took out a blow torch and cooked? it.  It seemed as if every conceivable part of the pig was there for sale.  I told Randal that butchered animal photos weren’t very popular among our blog readers so I skipped it.  It really is almost enough to make one a vegetarian.  Though the concept of not wasting anything is good.  When we bought our pork from the stationwagon man in Sungei Rengit it was past looking like it had ever been part of a pig; it just looked like ready to be cooked food. 

Next we walked our bikes the block over to the Zam Zam Islamic Restaurant for a roti cani.  Randal had an egg roti with a side dish of curried dipping sauce garnished with small pieces of what tasted like a slightly curried version of my mother’s pot roast.  I just sprinkled sugar on my plain roti and it tasted kind of like funnel cake, Islamic style.  The owner of ZZIR is a young man who runs it with his uncle.  They are from Pakistan not far from the border with India.  We like them and they like us.  That’s the way it should be.  Another favorite restaurant is Pete’s Deli, a 15 minute walk from the marina.  There you can get chicken pot pie, hamburgers, macaroni and cheese, apple crisp and ice cream, banana chocolate chip muffins and yogurt that they make.  The owner and his son are Chinese.  We like them, they like us.  Lots of school kids go there for lunch since it’s just across from a huge middle and high school complex. 

We biked back to the boat with our veggies and some frozen chicken breast and meat from another small market we’d tried once before.  We hadn’t been on the boat long when Randal spied some young adult aged kids looking at the boat.  He invited them in for a tour.  Their dad, who worked for the Marine Department had come to the marina.

Emy 20 , Azreen 15,  Randal 61,  Arzliey 11,  Fetty 18

Emy had been to university in Kuching and worked trouble shooting problems with radio station transmissions.  Azreen was a cousin and is still in school.  Arzlie is also in school.  Fetty just finished high school and wasn’t sure what her plans will be.  I hope I have it all right. 

Now I’m working on this email and Randal is plotting our course through West Malaysia.  We have signed up to do the West Malaysia Rally which is run by the same people who did our East Malaysia. Even though the rally chooses the stops, cruisers have to get themselves from each stop with their own skill and knowledge.  http://www.sailmalaysia.net/rally-info.html is the web site if you want to read ahead about it.  We had planned to go to most of the stops anyway so decided to just join on.  One of my favorite cruising friends Ken Jenkins from the boat Penache is also signed up for the rally.   Ken was actually parked next to us in Sebana Cove but it wasn’t until the East Malaysia rally that we really got to know him.  He’s cool. 

My Red Sox aren’t doing so well ( an understatement if there ever was one except that in the past they have come back from being even further behind!)  It certainly put me in a sad funk when they lost the second game.  Of course if you look at their pattern since 2004 they weren’t even supposed to make the playoffs this year.  2004 won the Series, 2005 got swept in the first round, 2006 didn’t make it at all, 2007 won the Series, 2008 lost in the second round ; so 2009 meant they weren’t even going to the playoffs.   But they are there and I WANT THEM TO WIN!!!!  

Now it’s time to make dinner.  Then we’ll read since the reception from our new TV dish isn’t so good.  Our neighbor boat said theirs wasn’t so good either.  Then we’ll go to sleep and start all over again tomorrow.

Hi All,

  Randal and I now have television.  Randal and I now have a satellite dish which is why we finally have television.   Buying satellite service when you live on a boat and aren’t always in any one place very long had been impossible so far.  Here in Miri they seem to understand that even though cruisers move around, they are good customers who will maintain the service which subsidizes the real cost of the satellite dish hardware.  A cruiser here in the marina sent us to the shop he had used.  We biked there all excited and heard, “no have.”  “Never had.”  Hmm and RATS!  Then we biked over to our favorite hardware shop and asked their advice.  We were given the card of a satellite dish dealer and Randal called.  We also biked over to a second dish service storefront at the Mall.   They too were helpful but needed our passport to set up service.  We planned to return the next day but the first service called and that afternoon came to the boat to see us and set us up.  The next evening, Saturday, Peter and his wife Lena came with the dish to get us all connected. She had just come along to keep Peter company.   It took several hours of juggling wires and testing the best combination to get the best reception.  While Randal and Peter worked Lena and I talked.  Lena teaches piano and was very interesting to talk with.  At one point she had to drive home to feed their dog Lucky.  Finally everything was finished and they were able to go off for their Autumn Moon Festival celebration.  They were a lovely couple and it was more like making friends than having a satellite dish installed.  And now the Sox better win it all because we can get ESPN and they have the playoffs listed on the schedule.  We bought the Sports, Learning, and News channels.  We paid for a year’s service when we installed the dish so that’s all taken care of.  The total cost for the dish and 12 months service was $367 just about a dollar a day.  Hopefully we’ll be able to use the dish even outside Malaysia; Peter did say they were expanding their service but we will be in Malaysia through November anyway.

Peter and Lena

In December they will be going of to the US to visit LA, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam.  They are connected to Amway and the entire company of 700 people will be going!

They had been to the US before.  But Lena was saying that since 9/11 it is more difficult to get a VISA.  They had wanted to drive the short way to Brunei to get a visa there, but since they are Malaysians and Brunei is a different country they must go to Kuching in Malaysia instead.  That means a flight there and back and perhaps an overnight stay.  Too bad paperwork makes things so complicated.  We encounter paperwork too even changing from one city to another if they are in different provinces of Malaysia. 

We do take it down when we make a passage and it can only be used at a marina.   At anchor the boat moves too much which interferes with the reception.  Apparently according to the Astro literature, rain also interrupts reception. 

Ru

DoraMac

Hi Everyone,

  I received a few emails asking if the horrible weather in the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia was effecting us.  No and Yes.  No, we are not being flooded and we are in safe marina.  But yes it has effected our travel plans a bit.  We can’t/won’t leave Miri for Sebana Cove until the waves calm down in the South China Sea.  Another super typhoon is supposed to hit the Philippines and that might cause us to have high winds even here in the marina.  During the last storm we did have strong enough winds that Randal put an extra line out to the dock to hold us steadier. The waves outside the marina that hit the beach next to us are pretty big: too big for us to want to mess with.  So we’ll stay here and wait it out. We knew the weather for crossing changes in mid-October so sort of factored it in.  For the most part our weather here is sunny and hot.   Yesterday cruiser friends came from Kota Kinabalu.  Their passage was bouncy but okay.  But just before they left the marina in KK had taken a hit. The fuel and pumpout station dock was uprooted and blown ashore and one boat broke lose so things did get a bit wild there.  Miri is a bit more protected with a spit of land between us and the sea.  We are supposed to be in The Land Below the Wind here in (Borneo) Malaysia after all.

  We have been thinking about our friends in the Philippines. Our friend and webmaster Audrey emailed that Olongapo had flooded very badly even weeks ago from heavy rains.  Our friend Carol who lives in Manila said her home in Manila was surviving the storm.  Yesterday I met a young man at the Miri Library who is from the Philippines.  He has come here to work as many Filipinos do because there is too little work in the Philippines.  He had studied to be a history teacher and was very articulate and sweet.  So was his K-9 dog Oscar.  (At least I think I have the dog’s name right.)  Chris’  family lives near the Philippines’ largest lake, Laguna de Bay 13 miles southeast of Manila.  He had called home and the family home had been flooded but they all seemed to be ok.  We certainly hope that all of our friends in the Philippines are safe and will continue to stay safe. 

Chris and Oscar.  Oscar is 7 years old and she is very calm.  Chris was working just outside the library and I stopped to talk because of the dog.  A very nice young man.

The library is the building in the back of the photo.  The small open-sided building on the right is where I met Chris and Oscar escaping the intense mid-day heat. 

It was school vacation and there were lots of students in the library sort of doing work but things were quiet because the computers were downstairs in a different room.  It was nice to see all of them actually and having all of those people in the room seemed to keep it from being as freezing as in my past visits.  On my way home I saw these two young boys taking advantage of one of the several pools that surround the library plaza area.  Can you see the hands making peace signs poking out of the water?  When the young boy surfaced he asked if I wanted to trade a ringgit for a dollar seeming to imply he’d give me the dollar though I’m sure he meant the other way around.  I told him that would be a bad deal since the dollar was worth more.  He knew he hadn’t a prayer I’d swap so he just smiled and waved as I walked away.  And come to think of it I only had ringits with me and no dollars which I do usually carry.  I really do like the library and spent 3 hours looking through art books, sketch books and books about Islamic law relating to women.  Wish I had a library card.  The collection isn’t large but it is very well thought out, up to date, “liberal” in its views and the books are in very good condition.  There is an older “circulating” public library about as far from where I am standing as the new library.  The plaza is sort of in the middle.  The old library is colder, noisier and they don’t let you bring in your back pack.  The art collection isn’t as good either though the staff is very friendly and helpful and very public library oriented.  The problem with both is that they are an hour walk from the boat.  If they were closer I’d go every day.  I walk because I’m not sure about leaving my bike though I think next time I will bike because there is a food stand just outside the door and a guard just inside the door so maybe my bike will be safe. 

So that’s it.  Thanks for thinking about us. 

Ru

DoraMac