Deep Water Soloing Langkawi

Deep Water Soloing (DWS): The art of climbing without the protection of a rope over water deep enough to (hopefully) safely facilitate your falling/jumping into it at any point of the climb.

Julian finally showed his jetlagged face, and we could move on from Langkawi towards Thailand. ..but first: some climbing. ...And even before that: getting out to the boat. This proved interesting as the onshore wind was quite strong. So strong that we had no chance of launching the dinghy, especially without getting all of Julians luggage wet. To complicate matters a wee bit the boat were not exactly in a protected anchorage. She was pitching violently in the swell and since our anchorchain is a bit worn (to the point of leaving about 100 grams of flaking rust on deck pr. 30 metres chain/pr. anchoring) we decided we needed to move the boat anyway. And with no chance of launching the dinghy it was decided that I should swim the 4-500 metres out through the waves. Luckily Julian had brought a diving mask as well as a pair of fins with him. That eased the trip, but it was still a bit on the interesting side.


Well off from Langkawi a few hours later than planned we went straight for this spot we'd found on our way to Langkawi. It is a sort of lagoon made up of limestone island with an endless number of possible bouldering routes. We stayed a few days climbing until the whining about sore hands (and in my and Egils case: sore muscles) became unbearable. A lot of the rock is pretty sharp, forcing the climber to sacrifice a fair amount of skin to do the route. Seven months on a sailboat have left Egil and me with nothing but a faint memory of any kind of physical qualities we were once in posession of, such as stamina or strength, so we headed on, gently massaging sore muscles.

We headed for the Langkawi capital of Kuah in a nice 14-16 knot blow, and reached it the same evening, right after nightfall. Mission: buy booze and cigarettes, take on diesel and water, drop off Øyvind, clear out of Malaysia. This was acomplished in full the day after arriving. I hopped off the sailboat to hop on to the ferry over to Thailand. The plan to go to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand to revisit the Thaiboxing (muay thai) gym I spent six weeks training with two years ago, to train a bit for a change and get my ass kicked around by small thais.

Egil and Julians plan was to sail on to Thailand, stop on some of the islands along the way, do some more climbing and generally pass the time as comfortably and good as they see fit. How that is going I have no idea at the time of writing, but I doubt they're having any trouble fulfilling any of those objectives.

A rush through the islands of Pankor, Pinang, Payar and Langkawi (yes, we're still talking Western Malaysia here!)

Pankor Island. Not much to report about Pankor really. We tried to buy some engine oil from the local fishing-boat suppliers, but they could only sell us the oil in 200 litre drums, and since having a five year supply of 15W-40 oil lashed to the foredeck would be somewhat cumbersome we decided to buy oil elsewhere.

Also we met up again with the french guys. We had a great barbeque-evening where we ate some self-caught sea-food and played guitar and drank a few beers. By the end of our stay in Pankor we had managed to lure the french into joining us for a couple of days. This was triple awesome, as we were then able to enjoy Mickael's guitar-playing, Mathilde's cooking and Nico and Mickael's advice on how to properly sail a boat. After seven months of continous sailing we were finally able to get ourselves some instruction...

After a few days of luxurious cruising with a huge crew allowing us to overdose on sleep and we made it Pinang/Georgetown where Nico and Mathilde took off on their own. Mickael stayed on and we reinforced the crew with Maxi from Argentina who contributed with a complete lack of sailing experience, a great deal of enthusiasm and heaps of bad jokes for our pool of dodgy humour. Then we took off to The Great Tax-Free Island of Langkawi, by way of The National Park Island of Payar, where we did a bit of freediving and Maxi got his first proper sailing lesson which abrubtly ended when the wind decided to terminate the ordeal by capsizing the sailing dinghy. This resulted in some hurt pride and some help from one of the diving companies in the area, great fun!

Langkawi. Tax-Free heaven. Stocked up on booze and cigarettes which we intend to bribe our way through Africa with. Other than that, we played cards in restaurants while waiting for the inevitable daily rainshowers to finish, played more guitar, drank some more and (in the case of Maxi and Øyvind) watched some Thaiboxing fights, this great asian blend of culture, sport and ultra-violence. Great show! We generally passed the time living life slowly, blending in with the crowds of backpackers roaming the place. That and waiting for the arrival of Julian, Egils companion on epic moped-trips through Europe, and more recently; from LA to Buenos Aires, Argentina. It's all covered in minuscule yet highly entertaining detail and inventive english on Mopeddagboken.blogspot.com

Malacca to Pankor, via Kuala Lumpur

So! We left Malacca after a little excursion overland to Kuala Lumpur. KL was another big city. When we first arrived in Singapore we were quite dazed by the sheer size and citiness of it all. Ever since we left New Zealand the tallest building we'd seen was about three storeyes, but we quickly adapted, and after a while grew tired of riding the subway just for the fun of it. So the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur didn't hold too much interest for us, apart from a good party and a session of indoor climbing that left our unfit bodies useless for anything physical for a good few days. The Petronas Towers were awesome though!

Right before catching the bus to KL we heard that "the french" were also going that way; Nico, Mathilde and Mickael are travelling together, and it so happens to be that two of them make their living as sailing teachers. Hmmm....

Anyway, we parasitically attached ourselves to them for the bus-ride and then we booked a room in same hostel as them. Before leaving KL we had made an appointment to meet them again further north, at Pankor Island.

We then bussed back to Malacca and set sail for Pankor, the trip to which was uneventful, save for Øyvind's five hour cataclysmic night-watch. Egil went to bed just as it started dripping a bit, then Øyvind spent five hours in a rain pouring as much as pouring rain can ever be expected to pour. The visibility was down to about 20 metres, and when the rain finally lifted (incidentally at about exactly the same time as Egil came back on watch!) We found ourselves surrounded by about 15, until now undetected, local fishing-boats.

Malacca

Malacca sum-up: After one powerfull index finger, a slum animal, some excellent cheap food and the sight of some MTV pimp-up-ride influence there was not much to see in this ancient Malaysian town.