Back
at sea today after two days visiting in Malaysia. We left the busy Malacca
Straits Traffic Lane to berth for our first visit to Malaysia at Port Kelang.
Tours from here set out very early for Kuala Lumpur, and passengers didn’t get
back till after Sailing Time at 5.30pm. Of course we didn’t sail till they got
back –very tired after such a long, busy day.
There
was virtually nothing at Port Kelang so we (Bruce and I) took our new
wheelchair on the shuttle to the huge shopping centre twenty minutes away at
Kelang. When I say ‘huge’ – I mean ‘HUGE’.
I have never seen one as big, and I’ve seen a lot of shopping centres.
Avenues of shops and stalls stretched further than the eye could see on four
floors – with lots of twists and turns. It was very easy to get lost. Lifts
were tucked off the main drag just here and there, and when I took a lift up or
down I was never where I thought I would be.
We
explored a large supermarket where we found fruits we had never seen before in
the fresh food department, and Bruce went off to buy his obligatory two bottles
of ‘red’ in the liquor store down the back. I talked to some ladies
demonstrating instant coffee. This came
in capsules with milk and sugar already incorporated, and you just added hot
water. Samples- especially the ‘Hazelnut’ variety - tasted quite good but I had
misgivings about the ‘milk’ which must be that ‘whitening’ powder.
After
lunch I left Bruce sitting somewhere and went off wheeling myself in the chair
to explore a bit. That’s when I really got lost. Up in a lift, along a bit, and
down in another lift. In all that time the only thing I saw that I’d like to
buy was an iPad cover on a stall. I had my trusty ‘Australia Post Pay-as-you-go
Visa Card’ with only A$200.00 on it so I had no misgivings about using it. But
– the stall-girl could only take cash, and I had none. Off I went again.
No idea where I
was. Starting to feel desperate, and thinking if this went on I’d maybe miss
the ship. Asking people for directions to stores I remembered passing. No help.
Really feeling quite desperate. Then in the distance I saw him in his blue Hawaiian
shirt – a stand-out among the less colourful crowd. (Where had all these people come from in this
area that seemed far from anywhere?)
Bruce had found some massage chairs where you got a very relaxing three
minute work-out for only 1RM note (a Malayan Ringitt – worth a bit over A$0.30c). He wanted me to have a go too, and I relaxed at
last as I was pummelled and massaged by the chair.
Overnight we
sailed in a Northerly direction up the Mallacca Strait to the Island of
Langkawi by the next morning. We docked at the end of a very long causeway a
few metres wide to the land at the other end. Buses for the excursions were
waiting at the other end, but the weather was overcast and humid. From our
cabin balcony we saw the passengers heading to the buses along the causeway as
the rain began to pour down. Thunder and lightning and more rain. Very wet
people. The buses began to crawl along the causeway and line up at the ship’s
end of it.
We decided we
didn’t need to go ashore in the wet as we had no excursion, and the shuttle
didn’t go very far along the coast to an aquarium of some kind.
We had a quiet
day on board and even missed the Clint Eastwood afternoon movie which started
at 1.30 instead of the usual 2.30. So a quiet day of reading and afternoon tea
in the really good light at a table under a window in the Horizon Court on Deck
14.
Our friends at
table confirmed what we thought about touring in the rain and wet everywhere.
They were late back and didn’t even manage lunch all day.
We thought our
quiet day of sitting on the balcony and reading was pretty good.
Now four days at
sea on the way to Mumbai.
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