Golden sake and waves of the Indian Ocean

Sitting in a restaurant in Kuta, Bali. Waves of the Indian Ocean rolling in at the beach across the street. I have just imported the last few pictures from my camera, so here is a little selection:


Kai brought me a bottle of sake with gold flakes in it. Somewhere between awesome and tacky. But the taste was great. And with the aid of some beer and whiskey, we also achieved the goal of getting awesomely drunk.


Afternoon smoko outside the office container.


Kai and Esther are working with slightly different tasks.


Esther and me on the ferry to Pulau Pangkor the other weekend. Kai is to my left, right outside the picture and he is snoring, buta mitai yo, kai-kun! Be relieved that I didn't publish the picture I took up your nostrils Kai!


Here is the entrance to the weird temple I mentioned in my blog after the first time I went to Pangkor. Esther and Kai were able to interpret the archaic Chinese text and told me it was dedicated to Kwanon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.


TV tower in Kuala Lumpur and in the background the Petronas Towers. Not too many years ago, they where the tallest buildings in the world.

Last Saturday evening was spent drinking in Lumut. I got on the bus to KL at midnight, with the scariest driver ever. Don't know if he was high, drunk or extremely tired, probably a combination. Buses here do have a bit of a bad rep. Anyway, I arrived in KL after four in the morning and spent a few hours at the bus terminal before a got on the airport couch. And now I am on Bali and it is time for some serious surfing!

Adventures of Erik the Inappropriate, Japanese Magic and Esther the Accountant

Sorry everyone, it's been a while since my latest update here. Sitting in the office container right now but have to leave in a little while, so this post is going to be a short one. And no pictures, haven't transferred them from my camera yet.

Loads of things have happened but let's start from the beginning, or more precisely from Saturday two weeks ago. That is when I received the following e-mail message from Kai Yamamoto:

"I came to Malaysia! And now in Kuala Lumpur. How do I see you do now?"

Kai was one of the deckies on Søren Larsen ("Japanese Magic"). He was interested in working with us on the Royal Albatross, but in the end we opted for more local crew, at lower cost. Anyhow, Kai was not really satisfied with sitting in Tokyo, picking his nose, drinking rum and turning down well paid jobs on tug boats. (Who wants to work on a vessel with no sails anyway?) So dude just jumped on a plane, one-way ticket, and showed up unannounced. He has been working here almost two weeks now, as a volunteer. It's been great fun! Last weekend we went to Pangkor Island together with Esther, to let the job stress melt away on the beach, in the shade of the palm trees. We have also spent a lot of time in the bars of Lumut and Ipoh. My room in the apartment, once my own hidden oasis, is now the local Chinese-Japanese hangout spot.

A couple of days after Kai's arrival, I resigned. I had been thinking of it for a while. Now that the decision is made, it feels good. Going back to school again to pursuit old opportunities... I have a one month notice and will probably stick around here until August 8. After that I am planning to travel around the region a little and visit Japan. It is so weird, when I last left my second home country, I reckoned I'd be back in a year or two. And now eleven years have passed.

And tomorrow evening, I am leaving Lumut for my long-planned holiday on Bali. Going to the big Shorinji Kempo World Taikai, where I will surf the waves of the Indian Ocean and get my butt kicked by my friends from Sweden.

http://www.shorinjikempo.or.jp/wsko/worldtaikai/index.html

Knocking a guy to the floor but getting ass kicked anyway...

I picked up Taekwondo a little while ago. Did a bit of a rocket career a guess, and went up for my first competition on Sunday last week, after only two weeks of training. Of course I got my ass kicked, but it was great fun anyway! The Shorinji Kempo which I usually do back home is pretty different. Taekwondo is a full contact sport, but only a small number of specific attacks will give you score. It favors fast and high kicks and lousy guard. Kempo on the other hand is not a sport, but a martial art, and anything goes as long as you you avoid hurting your partner during training.

In the competition, I kept doing kicks that did not give me any score and I made all kinds of silly footwork that put me in ideal positions for attacks that I was not allowed to perform. It took a lot of effort not to use elbows, not to kick the groin, not to grab and throw, etc... And on one occasion I kind of accidentally knocked my opponent to the floor with a prohibited left hand jab. Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures from my own matches but I caught some of the other competitors on camera.



Most of the club members are kids and their competition filled the major part of the day. During training sessions, I have actually tried sparring against four-year olds. Quite an experience!



There were many girls in the competition. You don't usually associate muslim headscarfs with lightning speed kicks to the head. I like it!

Girl next door?

Pulau Pangkor is an island just about 10 - 15 nautical miles out from UniKL and a popular holiday place for local tourists. We went there last weekend. Knocked off around two in the afternoon on Saturday, so we arrived early in the evening and had roughly 24 hours to relax and enjoy.

"Pulau Pangkor is more of a girl-next-door island as opposed to the supermodels of the east coast and Langkawi"
Lonely Planets Southeast Asia on a shoestring

They are lying. Pangkor and Langkawi are both supermodels. Langkawi may be dressed to kill whereas Pangkor is more like lazy Saturday afternoon, at home doing the laundry, no makeup. Apart from that they could be twins. Look at the pictures and judge for yourself.

Phat as wave in the Pacific Ocean

Just passing on some info that reached me through FB and email.

Søren Larsen, the beautiful brigantine who was responsible for me leaving Sweden in the first place, has run into some trouble. She was scheduled to leave New Zealand around mid April for a three week voyage heading for Cook Islands, the first leg of her annual South Pacific itinerary. The ship hit a storm only a few days out from New Zealand and had to return due to severe leaks. Back to refit in the yard in Whangarei, and another month of hard work before the great adventure could start.

She set off again on May 29. This time things went fine for two days, then the weather started to deteriorate. Wind speeds reached gale force, touching a full blown storm. A ship like this is solid, and built to handle this type of conditions. But the sea can be a tricky bastard, it is not to be trusted. In the morning on 1st June, a while before watch handover, an unusually nasty wave hit the starboard side of Søren Larsen. The bulwark is made of solid oak planks, supported by timberheads coming up through the deck, doubled with reinforcing posts. The wave smashed about half of the starboard bulwark down flat on deck, leaving only the parts that are supported by the shrouds and their chainplates. It then proceeded over the deck, thrashing the entire deckhouse to total rubbish. People were in the deckhouse at the time. The galley is in the forward part of it and I was told that one of the cooks was actually washed overboard - and back on the ship again with the next wave! No one was seriously injured, a miracle to anyone who has seen the pictures of the ship after the accident.

After the accident the crew worked hard to cover the damaged parts with storm boards. The ship sent out a mayday message, it was escorted back to New Zealand by a large cargo ship and Coast Guard helicopters dropped down extra pumps. The ship and all the crew returned safely to Whangarei harbor a few days later and now she is scheduled for approximately four more months in refit. Sometimes things end up a bit rough...

For more details, have a look at the ships official web page:

http://news.sorenlarsen.co.nz/pebble/

Langkawi Permata Kedah - Langkawi, the Jewel of Kedah

Last Saturday was not only the Constitution Day of Sweden, it was also the birthday of the King of Malaysia. The nominal birthday anyway. The King is elected among the nine Sultans of Malaysia for a five year-term, so to the real birthday varies, but to avoid confusion it is always celebrated on the sixth of June.

The birthday of the King means national holiday, and that means the day off for the crew of the Albatross. On Thursday I asked Richard (Ulf being away), if I could take Friday off. Thursday evening, a little bit after midnight, I set off north bound in the Cutlery Drawer, the car which Ulf and I are renting. Fairly unplanned holiday trip, in other words. And just perfect!

I left the Cutlery Drawer in Georgetown, Pulau Penang, and took the early morning ferry over to Pulau Langkawi. Driving to Georgetown was an interesting experience. A lot of really old-school trucks (retarded slow!) out on winding roads in the middle of the night. Little rural looking towns and villages, with small night open eateries catering to the truck drivers. And as I approached Georgetown, the road turned into a toll highway, buildings got more and more citylike and all of a sudden i was on a huge six lane bridge crossing the strait to Pulau Penang, big complexes of highrises and skyscrapers standing tall on both sides of the bridge ahead. The central part of Georgetown has a lot of character, with old colonial buildings and intense nightlife. I fell asleep after four o'clock in the morning, in the dodgiest hotel room ever. Two hours of sleep, and then the morning ferry.



Two and a half day in Langkawi was spent scuba diving, swimming in a waterfall and talking the nights away on the beach. One main goal for the weekend was to have loads of good time and another was to relax and charge up the batteries. I succeeded beyond expectations with the first goal, but shamefully abandoned the second one without even giving it a try. The high season for westerners is over, but I still managed to speak a fair amount of Swedish during the weekend, and also a wee little bit of Japanese. It was school holiday however, and the Kings birthday on top of that, so a lot of Malaysian tourists visited the island. It is also the beginning of the Arabian tourist season and I have never ever before seen so many women dressed in cover-all burqas. Interesting sight on a tropical beach resort.




Gecko Guesthouse at night, view from the front of my room. Friendly budget place with a super cozy garden, pretty worn rooms, and a lot of globetrotting backpacker travelers.


Afternoon on Pantai Cenang. This is a five minute walk from Gecko Guesthouse, at holiday walking speed. It is the location of Babylon, the reggae bar where I spent most of the late evening hours.



Me in the water on Saturday. Diving in Langkawi is not very spectacular, compared to the few other places I have tried. But to me it was just marvelous this time, hovering around weightless again, blowing bubbles among colorful corals, after more than four years without leaving the surface.



Well, fish...



And more fish...


...and a shark!


But not very big.



Pulau Payar, this is the marine reserve island where the diving took place.



Fishermen outside Kuah harbour.



Bear. No, dog.



Me and Bren in Seven Wells Waterfall. She is from Peru/USA. Globetrotting architect/pedagogue/backpacker, sort of.



Last picture this time shows the sunset over Cenang Beach, as seen from Babylon, kind of the epicenter of the past weekend.

Welcome onboard the Royal Albatross!

We went up the slip last Monday. It was quite interesting. Captain Ulf is on leave, enjoying spring in Sweden, so our project manager, Richard Lamble, was going to take care of the operation. A little while before we started moving, he informed me that he would be leading from the shore, and that I was to be in charge on the ship. Windy is like ten or twenty times heavier than anything I have ever handled before. Luckily, to assist me I had Kenneth who is an experienced sailor and who speaks English, plus six Malaysian welders who didn't. No experience of any boats at all, and not a single word to communicate with. It was great fun!

Other things that happened this week include the taking down of the masts. Quite an easy job with a large crane. Feels good to have that crap down. Next time they come up, they will be shiny and ship shape. And it is not going to be a suicide mission any longer to climb them. Things that didn't happen this week was ordering of material. It is weird how lousy many suppliers are at actually selling the stuff they provide. I told one company over a week ago, that we had decided to order from them, and asked for a final quote including shipment. They still haven't been able to produce that, although I have been in touch with them a couple of times. Another place has had their email account too full to receive anything for over a week. It is a real hassle to find all the material for a genuine traditional rigging in this part of the world.

We have now officially changed name by the way. Windy is no longer Windy, she is now known as Royal Albatross. Yeah, I know it sounds a bit tacky, but it is actually the name of a species of albatross. Google it. It is just a big bird that flies a lot over big waters. Not such a bad name really*.


There she is, 200 tons of steel resting peacefully on the slip.


Looking forward from under the ship, facing the winch house. Note the wing keel. Makes her underwater body look like a retarded seal from outer space, but it is probably good for both stability and for reducing leeway. Plus you can slip up without any side stanchions or other supports.


Main saloon under the poop deck. Unusual layout with a little touch of the Pirates of the Caribbean. Haven't the welders done a marvelous work? Imagine this with lit chandeliers, classical music and cocktails!


And they have done absolute magic to the beautiful windows, too!