We've been here a week and a lot has been going on. The marina provides free shuttle services every Tuesday evening to the Gelang Patah night market. This is a huge market with unbelievable amounts of fresh vegetables, fruits, stuff to eat, and incidentals (I bought a new waterproof watch for $3USD - we'll have to see how long it lasts!). We came back loaded with fresh stuff. The cafe here serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, but no alcoholic beverages. There's a small library here called the Chart Room, with hundreds of books and many charts available for copy, trade or take away. It's comfortable and air conditioned; we spend a bit of time there...Every Thursday, a free shuttle goes to one of several nearby shopping malls (your choice at Jusco Bukit Indah); these are very large and rival most of those we're used to in the USA. I forgot to mention the marina does the clearing in paperwork for Customs, then transports everyone to Immigration for electronic fingerprinting and passport stamps. Meanwhile, several of our friends on nearby boats have either left for their home countries or have gone to Singapore for sight seeing. More friends arrived in the last couple of days; we hadn't seen Gary & Tara from Pursuit IV for a couple of years; Leu Cat (Dave and Mary Margaret) showed up, and Fred and Cha Cha of Manufaktum are here. We've met our neighbors on Tovo, a French couple we spoke with over the VHF but hadn't met until their arrival here. So, a bit of socializing takes place at cruisers happy hour in the late afternoon. We've dried out sails, cleaned the deck and SS, and even put up our boat awning, something we haven't taken out since we last used it in Guatemala! We have noticed many cruisers are arriving with a variety of boat related issues: generator problems, engine turbo problems, one boat with a failed transmission (he was towed for over 300 nm by another cruiser!); refrigerator problems....it just goes on and on. Unfortunately, in this part of the world at this time of year, motoring is the norm. Yesterday, we topped off with 260L of diesel (2.85RM/L); the boat boys used their high pressure transfer pump to transfer fuel into our filter....no drama, and no lugging around heavy jerry jugs. On the weather front, we're getting heavy thunderstorms with lightening on a daily basis now; they're as impressive as those in Florida. Tomorrow we leave for our Singapore jaunt; more about that later. Meanwhile, Sue has posted more picture albums of Indonesia (she's got a few more to go!)....enjoy!
Pic: Sunrise from our cockpit
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