Happy New Year and all that jazz. My new year was pretty quiet, kinda downtime between bangkok and here. Here is a place called Pelau Rebak, a small island totally devoted to a marina just off Pelau Langkawi below the Thai-Malay border. Pelau is the word for island incidentally in Bahasa Malay, which further incidentally is really similar to bahasa Indonesia so
I can say a little bit more than "hello", "thank you" and "no worries" which is kinda nice.
Going back a little bit in time, I spent Xmas with some nice folks just out of BKK. Nordine, my chef flatmate in BKK spent five hours roasting a turkey at the request of some mutual friends and we had a pretty typical eating and drinking too much day. Unfortunately I had to work Xmas Eve and Boxing Day but the Thais, for some reason unbeknown to me, get the two days before and New Years day off, which considering the two days before this are the weekend
amount to a five day holiday and lots of people heading out of BKK on friday evening. Instead I got paid and quit my job and left on the Sunday evening, the earliest I could get a train ticket south. I went down to Koh Phang Ngan, the most popular backpacker island in the gulf of Thailand, and headed up to Than Noi Pan, one of the beaches up the north east of the
island to hang out with my mate Andy and some of his friends for New Year.
Lots of storms and rains meant I piked on the Haad Rin major party option cause I was lame and didn't want to get stranded away from my bed in the middle of the night and pouring rain. Besides I was still trying to chill out and slow down from the hectic BKK pace and wasn't up for a big party. A couple of days later and a few swims across the bay and I bailed and came down
to malaysia.
The deal: I'm going sailing with a rich yankee lawyer called Leslie on his really nice boat up to Phuket, back in Thailand. I think I've hinted to a few people but have been scared off jinxing myself cause it all seemed really uncertain until I finally arrived. His boat just came down off the dry dock and in return for really nice food and alcohol I'm helping clean up the boat whilst he goes off and placates clients back home via the laptop I'm currently sitting on wired up to the bar; a carlsberg next to me cause they've run out of tiger. It's so nice to have real beer again
after the crap in Thailand. Yesterday we got the stove and the motor working, which meant real coffee in the mornings (i'm carrying Lao and Balinese with me, yum) and a motor out of the harbour yesterday for the first time. Tomorrow we get the rig happening, and if nothing goes wrong will spend the next couple of days sailing around the island checking that everything works before heading up the coast.
So life at the moment is pretty damn nice. In fact I think I'm in paradise. I'm singing for my supper, but the food is good and the environment around the west coast of the Thai-Malay peninsular is stunningly beautiful, lots of limestone cliffs, aqua water and fishers hanging out trying to foul the prop with their nets. So this is January for me! Hmmm, life's tough.