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