"Arctracer" Letters

Port Klang, Malaysia, Dec 2005

We've been in Port Klang since Monday - tied up to a dock with a fast current in the river here and a "jingo" boat that collects people every hour to take them ashore. A couple of days ago we took a bus to the capital of Kuala Lumpur. Nina got extra pages in her visa and Jerry ordered a new visa that will be at the American Embassy on the 12th of December. We don't plan to stay in this area until the 12th as there are lots of big Indonesian boats up river from us who keep shuffling around and coming very close to where we're "parked" - attempting to maneuver 60+ foot boats with one Chinese engine. Scary at times to watch them! When the weather clears we' ll sail farther north either to Lumut on the mainland or Pinang (Penang) - an island just off the mainland where there is supposed to be good provisioning before more ocean crossings. We'll take public transportation from one of those places back to Kuala Lumpur to pick up Jerry's passport.

We saw quite a bit of Malaysian scenery during our 1.5 hour journeys on the bus and train. There are many high rise apartments like the ones we saw in Singapore. It was amazing to see many KFC and McDonald's restaurants and 7-Eleven Stores. Again we found public transportation in this country wonderful and cheap - less than $1 US each way for each of us. We had a list of 5 DVDs we wanted in Chinatown and they had them all, so we'll be watching them before too much longer. It's been very cloudy and rainy lately so we haven't had enough electricity to watch them yet. On the huge highways they had separate lanes for the motorcycles - much different from Bali where the motorcycles passed on both sides of the taxis on double lane highways and single-lane highways.

We just discovered that they have free wireless Internet ashore, so Jerry has gone to town to find the right plugs for here as they are different from those of the US, Australia, or New Zealand. We can't access it from the boat, but there's a lounge ashore where everyone goes with their computers.