Malaysia - Kukup to Port Dickson

Selamat Datang

The first word we learned in Malaysian, ‘Selamat Datang’ means Welcome and is written everywhere you look – outside shops and offices, in the streets and on most documentation, and we did feel most welcome here with the one exception of our first stop, Kukup.

24 November 2005

After a long hard motor all day, out of Singapore and into the Malacca Strait we stopped for the night at the first available place, Kukup, not wanting to negotiate in the dark through the hundreds of floating fish traps. Kukup was an amazing little fishing village, all set on stilts. There were floating fish farms everywhere, the water an uninviting dark brown, the stench of dead fish and the noise of dozens of diesel generators overwhelming. The people, perhaps rather astonished to see us, were none too friendly and no one could point us to an anchorage, so we just anchored where we could. It wasn’t nice and boats kept roaring past, rocking the boat uncomfortably.

We remained on board and had our dinner in the pong and racket, and no sooner had all the generators switched off to a blissful silence for the night, than a disco started up on the shore and blasted away until the wee hours. A disco - in a place like this on a week night!  Weird pop music blaring and kids singing along. It was totally bizarre.  In the morning we pulled anchor and high tailed it out of there heading north up the strait.

Sailing in the Malacca Strait was stressful but less so than we’d expected. We kept to the right hand edge of the big ship lane, also trying to keep well away from the fishing boats that worked closer to shore. It was vital to keep a good watch all night and we ran all our lights as there tended to be rather a lot of fishing boats. The lights at night were really confusing; fishing boats sported either a red or a green or a white light, none of which had anything to do with navigation! They didn’t seem to bother with navigation lights.


However, without mishap, we arrived in Port Dickson about 50 miles north of Melaka (that’s how they spelled it), after a night outside the harbour, more or less waiting for dawn, punctuated by one nasty ‘Sumatra’ squall. It came shrieking in minutes and took me rather by surprise (my watch as usual!) and nearly laid us flat on our side. Coming into PD we scraped Forever’s bottom on some rocks, but no damage done.

Port Dickson town centre

After check in, we went on the hunt for Mike's pills and met a delightful Chinese Malaysian man called YP (Yew Peng) who managed a health store-cum-pharmacy-cum cafe. Intrigued by our life-style and the fact that we were looking for a place to settle, he felt we should make PD our new home and develop the food side of his cafe, specifically English food for the yachting community. He took us firmly under his wing and made our visit really memorable. He drove us in his car on a day trip to Melaka - a fascinating old city.

Antique shop - bought a lucky green dragon

Touring the old town by rickshaw

On another occasion YP took us into the teeming, sophisticated metropolis of Kuala Lumpur.  Our time there was restricted by the hideous traffic, but it was interesting all the same.

 The Old China Cafe in Chinatown

He took us on a tour of the charming and very crowded Chinatown that evening and then for a delicious dinner in a street food court. It was great to be with a local who knew what was what - YP ordered all the food and it was just perfect.



We invited him to come for dinner on our boat one night – he’d been down to the harbour and seen Forever bouncing and rolling unhappily at anchor and the little dinghy sitting parked a long walk up the rocky beach – and he accepted but persuaded us to move into the marina for a day, offering to pay although we refused. We figured he couldn’t face the thought of the dinghy ride! We moved into Admiral Marina, personally very glad to do so as the anchorage off the town was uncomfortable and the weather deteriorating, and YP came to dinner. We intended to leave then, but he persuaded us to stay on a bit longer and insisted on paying for the marina for a whole week. This was no hardship as the marina was very well appointed with lovely gardens and a huge swimming pool we took advantage of.

 

Admiral Marina

I tried to get into the spirit of developing his cafe, and on his suggestion went there and cooked meals for him a few times. But with almost no actual yachting community, apart from us, and in a country where excellent food is available for a pittance on almost every street corner, I just couldn’t see his concept working – and English food, fer gawd’s sake!



Going in to his shop each day was great. I had the pleasure of using his washing machine to do all our laundry (it’s amazing what small things had become such luxuries for us!), and used his internet connection to catch up with emails. Our friendship with YP made this part of our trip really special, we had a grand time and got to see much more of the country than we normally managed. However, Port Dickson was not really the place we wanted to stop, so we resisted his attempts to keep us here and move on when our week at the marina was up. We wanted very much to get up to the north end of the Peninsular and into Thailand.