Magnolious Malaysia

Published: 07 August 2020

After months of transiting the enormously dispersed and most diverse country of Indonesia, with its 17,000 islands and one of the rare remaining destinations in the world where a cruiser can see little to no influence of the modern world, we were exhausted in every which way by the time we reached Malaysia; mentally, physically and emotionally, a culmination of a number of factors.

Firstly, we’d basically been continuously on the move for sixteen weeks since arriving in Debut, our Port of Entry, never mind the weeks it had taken us to reach Thursday Island in Australia from Port Macquarie. With the exception of a few weeks here and there, where we stopped to enjoy the areas of Indonesia that we wanted to see, we hadn’t stopped for more than an overnight anywhere. It had been a very long, arduous sailing season in an extremely difficult and dangerous sailing environment, yet full of the most diverse experiences and encounters along the way, together with the most spectacular sceneries, magnificent snorkelling adventures and fabulous cultural exposures.

Secondly, the deterioration of Elaine’s health having been exposed to a population that was extremely unhealthy, given that most lived in completely unsanitary conditions and most suffered from chest complaints due to the smoke from the fires that burnt continuously. In fact, in all our travels, we had never experienced toilet facilities like those we saw in Indonesia and not a smidgen of soap to be found anywhere. Being forewarned by the Sail2Indonesia rally organisers would have afforded us the opportunity to give the local toilets, the local (coughing) population, the food and the drink, a wide berth. However, while we weren’t the only cruisers to fall victim to this aspect of Indonesia, with the entire fleet ending up with either chest infections, sore throats or food poisoning or, in many cases, all three, but in Elaine’s case, an additional severe UTI (Urinary Tract Infection), coupled with multiple bouts of food poisoning, no matter how careful we tried to be, this all spelt disaster for her autoimmune conditions and sent everything into free fall, making it extremely difficult to get her conditions back under control. This resulted in our decision to change our itinerary and head for Bali as quickly and as safely as possible to obtain medical care.  Unfortunately once we reached Bali and received care at the BIMC Hospital in Nusa Dua, a full physical examination and blood test results confirmed our worst fears; Elaine’s inflammatory indicators were the worst ever; in fact, seven times worse. With only a plan of action that would tide us over until we had the opportunity to access the medical services of Singapore, where a full reassessment had definitely become a priority, we set sail for Malaysia.

By Tuesday, 29^th October 2019, after clearing out on the Monday evening, we were up with the birds for our early morning departure; full of hope and thankful that we were eventually leaving Indonesia, which couldn’t have come soon enough, especially, since our arrival at Nongsa Marina and Resort, we could see the lights, across the Singapore Strait, beckoning us! Our first hurdle, however, once we were out of the marina, was running the gauntlet across one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, the Singapore Strait. But Lady Luck was with us and we really only had three cargo ships heading east and six heading west to deal with and all but one passed ahead of us. By 0700 we’d made it across the Strait without a cargo ship hitting us and as we meandered our way between the ships at anchor, we only had two more to deal with that were coming out of the anchorage areas. All in all, it wasn’t as hair-raising an experience as we had envisaged. The only opinion we have on this particular crossing was how useless the VHF radio Channel 16 proved to be, with everyone talking over everyone else as we listened. It was ridiculous!

By 0830 Indonesian time / 0930 Malaysian time, as we’d lost an hour, we were anchored at Tanjung Pengelih, a ferry dock and marina and a one-stop shop for clearing in to Malaysia using the government run CIQ facility which didn’t cost us a penny. Within an hour the very friendly and efficient staff had helped us complete Harbour Master clearance, Immigration and Customs. The strange thing was that there was no Biosecurity at all and no one came out to the yacht; we simply dinghied ashore and all the paperwork was handled in a single complex of offices, with an office we had to visit on each floor.

Once back on Paw Paw we started the long meander up the Johor Strait, which wasn’t much more than a nautical mile or two wide, with Singapore to our port side and Malaysia to our starboard. We passed the Singaporean islands of Tekong and Ubin before seeing the main island. There was, however, a stark contrast between the coastlines of each country; Singapore was mostly lush green vegetation with a barbed wire fence running the full length, interspersed with multiple high-rise buildings and some new development, while Malaysia was very industrial, with a petrochemical plant, a number of cargo terminals, loading and unloading containers and all sorts of cargo from all over the world, including freezer and refrigerated containers, as well as numerous mussel and oyster farms. 

As we progressed further along the Strait, we started to see the high-rise buildings of various residential developments in Malaysia and downtown Johor Bahru, known as JB and the capital city of the southernmost Malaysian State, Johor. JB is connected to the island nation of Singapore via “the Causeway” with a CIQ checkpoint on either side, meant to provide easy movement between both countries. However, this was to close down in the months ahead. The Strait was also the location of the Senibong Cove marina, part of a luxury waterfront residential development, carved out of the mouth of the Lunchoo River, one of the five economic zones earmarked by the Malaysian government for infrastructure development and our home for the next few months. The reason we had chosen this particular location was primarily for the shorter distance via “the Causeway” to the hospital and clinic in Singapore for Elaine’s medical care, where we’d obtained appointments with a rheumatologist and a naturopathic physician, respectively, prior to our departure from Bali.

It was rather odd, though, that every ferry we saw as we came down the Strait was Indonesian flagged, but later learnt that there is a 3000-passenger-per-day ferry terminal near the Puteri Harbour Iskandar Marina, on the other side of “the Causeway” and the Tuas Second Link bridge, offering daily fast ferry links to the Indonesian islands of Batam and Bintan, used by migrant labourers working in Malaysia. This too was to close down, unbeknownst to anyone at the time.

Fortunately we had the tidal current with us and by 1400 we were tied up in our marina berth. However, our first impressions were not good, given the very poor assistance we received with our docklines, which definitely left much to be desired and had Roy swearing and cursing as we tried to explain that the lines needed to be cleated off and not just loosely held as Paw Paw veered this way and that. It was very bizarre! Then a cursory view of the surroundings from the helm station portrayed a completely deserted scene. Although there were yachts in the marina, they all seemed unoccupied and all the buildings along the waterfront seemed closed. It was at that point we had a “Bonaire moment”; that exact same feeling we had following our arrival in Bonaire in June 2014 after our friends, who’d crewed for us, had left. A feeling of being totally alone, miles from our loved ones and wondering what the hell we were doing. With that Elaine started to cry. Fortunately, as with Bonaire, things improved exponentially after that and, to this day, Bonaire is still one of our favourite destinations. We’d hoped Singapore and Malaysia held the same appeal, but after what we witnessed in Indonesia, we held our breath, nonetheless! 

It wasn’t until we spoke to the security guard afterwards, who had our access card to get on and off the dock, that we subsequently learnt it was a public holiday and that our two dockline helpers were, in fact, the security guard and the gardener, as the marina was actually closed, but the “skeleton staff” had been informed of our arrival. Who knew!

With further help from the security guard, however, we arranged a Grab, Malaysian’s equivalent of Uber. The security guard then proceeded to explain to the driver that we needed to get to an ATM, a mobile telephone store and a supermarket and that the driver would only be paid once we’d drawn a few Malaysian Ringgits. Turned out the driver knew exactly where to take us; a local shopping mall and within an hour we had money, local sim cards, a few groceries to tide us over and we were in another Grab taking us back to the marina. It’s fair to say, though, we were definitely relieved at our first sights of Malaysia outside the marina complex. We were, not only pleasantly surprised to find a clean, civilised, modern city with decent roads and highways, modern homes, beautiful gardens, restaurants, cafés, shops, etc, but the grounds and complex around the marina were also lovely and, by the time we returned to the marina, all the cafés and restaurants were open as well, with people enjoying sundowners or an early dinner at the various upmarket establishments. So, with that, dinner plans to eat onboard changed immediately and, instead, we enjoyed a “we got here drinks and dinner” at one of the restaurants, The Bierhaus. Things were definitely looking up! All in all, we could have been in any modern western country anywhere in the world, which was a far cry from Indonesia and certainly welcomed at this point!

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