Arrived in Phuket

The passage from Rebak Marina at Langkawi, Malaysia, to the anchorage of Ao Chalong in Thailand involved only 3 overnight anchorages. We would have loved to have taken a week for this short passage in order to fully enjoy the beauty of the many small islands that dot that part of the coastline. But our visas required that we officially clear into Thailand no later than December 6. We did manage to have lunch at the marina café with fellow Amel owners Don and Anne on S/V HARMONIE and catch up on their travels since we last saw them in Opua, New Zealand. Enjoyed seeing them again.

The marina was very calm at time of our departure. As we exited the channel the winds became stronger, and as we turned northward up the western side of the island there were 25 knot winds right on our nose, gusting to 30. We decided to head farther offshore to a small group of islands about 30 miles away and get away from the gusting land effect on the winds. On the way out towards those islands the wind seemed to die down so we switched back to our original destination. We ended up changing destinations 4 times that afternoon, ultimately ending up anchoring just around the tip of the island where we had originally planned to anchor. Our planned 15.8 mile trip turned into 31.6 miles, even though we were anchored less than a mile from the originally planned anchorage. It was a gusty night but really comfortable, anchored at latitude 06.32.755N longitude 098.38.052E on the western side of Ko Tarutao – the southernmost island of Thailand.

Wind and sea conditions were still pretty rough the next day, allowing us to sail 50% of the distance and motor-sail the remainder. Really a pretty good day on the water. Again we changed intended destinations 3 times. The wind was coming pretty strong from the NE and our originally planned anchorage would have been too exposed. Finally we decided to stop on the western side of Ko Lanta Yai, dropping the anchor at latitude 07.29.545N longitude 099.04.313E. Mileage covered on day 2 was 67 nautical miles.

Just as we were almost to the lee of the island, it sounded like a gunshot directly over our heads. Scared the living bee-Jesus out of us for a second!! Then the mainsail started flapping about and we realized that the outlhaul line was hanging loose. Obviously something had broken. Sea conditions were too rough to deal with it right then; best to deal with this in a calm anchorage. Luckily we were able to furl the sail back into the mast without it jamming. We motored to the anchorage and picked the farthest outside location to drop our hook. It was still far too windy to deal with a sail, so we enjoyed our second night at anchor in Thailand and delayed the repair until conditions were more favorable. The outhaul line had not broken; the whipping twine had simply failed due to UV damage. We had replaced the outhaul line in Grenada in June 2007. It is amazing how much damage the sun can cause.

Whipping mainsail outhaul on calm seas.

Winds were down substantially the next morning and the seas had completely flattened out. It was a positively glorious sail for the entire day. Since we were sailing flat with only the genoa and the mizzen sail, Bill was able to stand on the deck and replace the whipping twine. He decided this was the perfect opportunity to also replace the outhaul car and shackle with the spares that we had ordered from the Amel factory last summer. The entire repair was complete in less than 45 minutes and we were back to sailing with our normal 3 sails on a beautiful beam reach. The air temperature was only 83F, which is cool to us. This was the most perfect day of sailing that we have enjoyed in a long, long time.

Sections of the islands along this part of the coast of Thailand resemble the islands of Halong Bay in north Vietnam, except on a very minute scale.  It is like someone took a tiny pinch of the Halong Bay islands and dropped them into the coastal waters of southwestern Thailand ---- as if Halong Bay were stretched out at least 1000%.  

The smaller island on the right in this close-up photo looked like a sheep sitting down.  I could make out the eyes and nose/mouth of an animal.  The shape of the body resembled a sheep or lamb.  Instead of imagining images in clouds, I was imagining images in the island rock formations.   Those are good-sized tour boats moored next to the islands, so you can see the scale of the height of these stark rock islands.

Around 16:00 we arrived in Ao Chalong Bay (Phuket) and dropped anchor near Bill and Amy on S/V ESTRELLITA, at latitude 07.49.101N longitude 098.21.554E. Distance sailed this day was 58 nautical miles. Our dinghy was still inverted on the mizzen deck, so they popped over for a beer and to visit a bit. Then they treated us to dinner ashore and showed us around town a bit.

This was the first dinghy beach landing that we had done since the Marquesas in June 2008! I bet we are the only cruising couple who can make that statement. And that also was the last time either of us has been swimming in the ocean. We certainly will not be getting into the water here either, as there are large jellyfish everywhere.
Monday morning Bill and Amy picked us up in their dinghy and again took us ashore. The plan was to share a rental car for the day. First order of business for us was to get cleared into Thailand. The King's birthday was on Sunday, December 5 (and Happy Birthday to my very old friend Cordelia on that day also, if she is reading this), but the day was celebrated as a holiday by officials on Monday, December 6. So we had to pay overtime fees to clear in – 600 baht to Customs and 300 baht to Immigration. The Harbour Master did not hit us up for any fees. Bet that will happen when we clear out. 900 baht sounds like a lot, but that is less than $30 USD. We have paid a lot more than that to clear into some countries on regular days, so these were not exorbitant overtime fees.

Driving around the area proved that Phuket is much larger and more heavily populated than we had imagined. We stopped at the Royal Phuket Yacht Club where we will be berthed for awhile during our stay in this area. It is way too swank for me to enjoy -- not a cruiser type marina at all. We booked this marina based on advice from an Australian in Malaysia, and had to prepay for a full month. We advised the marina at the time we prepaid that we might want to stay only 10 days, and they agreed to refund any unused days after the initial 10 day period. So we are committed to stay there for at least 10 days if we want a refund for the other 20 days we have prepaid. After seeing this place, I am not at all happy about this situation; but it is what it is. So we will be moving to the marina in a few days.

So far we both really like this part of Thailand. There certainly is no dress code. This is a very touristy place, mostly for Europeans for some reason; and the clothing is skimpy and ultra casual. What a relief to be able to wear shorts and tank tops again without insulting anyone. I like Thailand!

Our SE Asia encounter with smugglers or drug traffickers

July 17, 2010

I am writing this while it is fresh in memory, but delaying publishing date of this blog entry until we are cleared out of Malaysia for the final time.  I am writing this blog to warn future travelers to be very aware at all times of what is happening around them, especially on trains and buses.

We took the overnight train from Bangkok on July 13, 2010 to Butterworth, Malaysia. At the last Thailand stop before reaching the Malaysian border, 2 women and a man wearing a blue train uniform shirt boarded the train carrying several large plastic bags. It is not unusual for passengers in this part of the world to carry their belongings in plastic garbage bags. Both women were dressed in long pants and long-sleeved tops and appeared to be somewhere in the 50 to 60 year age range.

Bill and I were sitting with Zachary and Elisabeth at one of the tables between 2 of our seats playing cards. One of the women started to sit in our other 2 seats across the aisle. We told her that these were our seats and she moved. We had booked 4 seats in coach #3 (berths 9, 10, 11 and 12) on this train and this afforded us 4 beds, upper and lower on each side of the train. These seats fold down at night and make into lower beds, and there are upper berths that fold down to become the upper beds. During the daytime, the upper berths are folded back up and securely locked into place by a porter with a key.

The woman then attempted to sit in another seat and the occupant there also told her to move out of his seat. She tried a third seat and was successful in finding an unoccupied seat that time. The second woman sat across the aisle from her. I did not notice where the man sat, simply assumed he was working somewhere on the train. These women very obviously did not have tickets for this train but I assumed they were family or friends of the man in the train uniform shirt and that he was letting them ride without paying the fare. None of my business.

We tired of playing cards and Elisabeth and I moved across the aisle to our correct seats. From this seat I was facing the first woman who was sitting in the next set of seats toward the middle of the train from our seats. I only noticed her because she pulled out a brush and make-up and was freshening up. Then she pulled out a black headscarf like the kind commonly worn by Muslim women in Malaysia. I pointed out to Elisabeth that the woman must have been shopping in Thailand and didn't wear her scarf, but now that she was going home to Malaysia that she was covering up again. Certainly implied to us that wearing the headscarf was not her choice if she took it off when outside Malaysia.

Very soon the train stopped at the Thailand/Malaysia border. All passengers were required to disembark carrying all their luggage and belongings. Soon our passports were stamped out of Thailand and we walked to the opposite end of the building and were stamped into Malaysia. While the passengers were clearing out of one country and into the other, the train moved one train length forward --- from Thailand and into Malaysia. All passengers completed the Malaysian formalities with Customs and Immigration and again boarded the train and moved to their ticketed seats. All very normal procedures.

About half-hour later the porter came to our seats and unlocked one of our upper berths. Actually, he first came and unlatched the safety straps and put the key into place to unlock it; but he looked down the train and saw something and stopped his actions and walked away. I had Zachary re-latch the safety straps. Several minutes later the porter returned and unlatched the safety straps again and used his key to open the berth. He folded the upper berth partially down and removed a bed pillow and one of the large plastic garbage bags that the women had brought aboard. We recognized the bag because of its color and shape. The porter re-locked the upper berth in place and re-latched the safety straps and walked away with the plastic bag to the toilet area at the end of our coach.

This struck us as very strange and our antennae went up. There was plenty of room for that bag to have been stored beneath any number of seats, including the seats where the women were sitting. They brought it aboard and then it was hidden in our berth without our knowledge. Why? That bag was not inside our berth when the bed was folded up a few hours earlier. That was most definitely not our bag; we had no plastic garbage bags on this trip. That bag was not inside our berth when we got off the train to clear out of Thailand. Yet it was locked inside our berth when the train moved forward into Malaysia. That short time period was the only time that we had not been physically present in our seats beneath that upper berth. Why was this bag locked in our berth?

We watched the porter do the same thing at another berth. We again recognized the plastic bag by its color and shape as being one of the ones brought aboard by the 2 women . That berth was also occupied by a westerner, not an Asian. Very strange that 2 bags had been hidden in berths occupied by 2 westerners during the time the train cleared into Malaysia and the passengers were clearing Customs.

By this time both Bill and I were closely watching the porter and the 2 women and the man in the blue train uniform shirt and trying to figure out exactly what was going on. The porter placed both the large plastic garbage bags near the toilet area of our coach. One of the women walked to that area and pulled out one of the metal ladders that were stored in a slot under a steel cabinet near the sinks open to the aisle area. The ladder had several rungs. Behind the farthest rung was a third plastic bag. She removed it and placed it with the other 2 bags that the porter had taken from the locked berths. Bill walked to the toilet and got a good look at the bags on the floor. Each was filled with plastic wrapped "bricks" or rectangles approximately 10"X5"X4". The plastic wrapped on each brick was a dark tan or light brown in color and it was not possible to see the contents.

Both women changed headscarves to different colors than the ones they had worn when they cleared into Malaysia.

To sum up so far: 2 women and a man dressed as a train employee boarded the train without tickets at the final stop in Thailand before reaching the Malaysian border; the women changed their appearance/clothing to appear Muslim and cleared into Malaysia; large plastic bags filled with bricks of something were hidden inside 2 locked berths ticketed to western travelers and another plastic bag filled with the same bricks had been hidden inside a metal ladder slot; the women again changed their appearance/clothing to different colors.

The train continued toward our final destination. About an hour passed and the train again stopped at a small terminal before our final destination. The two women, the man in the uniform shirt and several other people exited the train with a total of about 8 plastic garbage bags.

There is no doubt in our minds that smuggling was going on before our eyes. And there were obviously many people involved including some train employees. We have no idea if authorities were involved. We do not know what they were smuggling, but suspect drugs. The penalties for trafficking drugs and smuggling varies by country, in Malaysia that sentence is death.

We cannot help thinking about what would have happened to us or the other traveler if the officials had found those bags hidden in our upper berths. We intend to write a letter to the US Embassy in Malaysia, including photographs of the people involved. We could not forgive ourselves if we let this go unreported and another American is caught unaware. I remember reading about an American young woman who was arrested in one of the SE Asian countries for drug smuggling and she insisted that she knew nothing about any drugs. Like most people, I figured she was guilty since the drugs were in her bags. Now I am not so certain of her guilt. This could happen to anyone. It could also happen in the USA with transportation workers using your luggage to transport drugs from one airport to another. Really scary to think about the possibilities.

Profiling grandmothers for drug trafficking may be a good thing, especially if they are, or are pretending to be, Muslim.

I will not complain the next time I see a grandmotherly type singled out by TSA.

August 3, 2010  Update

Last night Bill met with a special drug enforcement task force in Johor Bahru.  Someone we know and trust put Bill in contact with the leader of this task force.   They were aware of this smuggling ring but have not been able to identify the players.  They were very appreciative of the photos the Bill had managed to get.  They had no idea that older people were transporting this stuff but they did know that some train employees had to be involved in some way.  They said these folks are smuggling heroin into Thailand from Tehran and then into Malaysia.  The photos will help them identify the players.  And our description of how the smuggling process was handled at the border also helps. 

Back to Malaysia and off to Thailand

All 3 flights from Houston back to Langkawi were on time and totally uneventful.  Neither of us was selected for the new TSA full-body image screening or pat-down, although the new circular x-ray machine stood ominously on our left as we went through the regular metal-detector line.  I do hope the TSA is profiling to some extent.  There were 3 men standing inside an elevated booth overlooking the incoming passengers patiently waiting their turns for screening.  TSA should be able to profile by neuro-linguistics programming to see which passengers warrant additional screening methods; the profiling does not need to be done by race or physical appearance.

We arrived at the Houston airport well before 08:00 on Monday morning, and arrived back at the marina 40 hours later -- which would have been Tuesday afternoon Houston time but due to crossing back over the International Dateline was Wednesday afternoon for us.  Lost that day going home and gained it back when we returned.   Thankfully, 6 of those 40 hours of travel time were spent in a room at the Transit Hotel in Changi Airport in Singapore.  I was more grateful for this than Bill because he slept a lot on the longest flight while I watched 7 movies.

The Transit Hotel is the greatest business we have encountered in a long time.  Thanks much to Bill and Amy on S/V ESTRELLITA for telling us about it.  The Transit Hotels are located inside the airport behind the first layer of security.  Arriving passengers do not clear Immigration and Customs into Singapore and DO NOT COLLECT THEIR CHECKED LUGGAGE.  Oh man, what a time saver and energy saver that service proved to be!!  We had checked 4 bags packed to the full allowable limits for international travel on the Continental and United Airlines flights, but those airlines do not interline with Malaysian Airlines.  That meant we should have collected the bags in Singapore and transported them to another terminal and re-checked them with Malaysian Airlines.  We also each had 2 carry-on bags.  Lugging 8 bags between terminals after flying 2 long flights and being dead tired was not something either of us wanted to do.  The Transit Hotel was the perfect solution.  We had looked at this hotel on our outward bound trip on October 27 and reserved a room for 6 hours beginning midnight December 1.  The hotel rents rooms for 1 hour, 3 hours or 6 hours only and it books up WELL in advance, so reservations are a must.  The hotel handles notifying the arrival airline to send your checked luggage to Lost Luggage department.  After our 6-hour stay in the hotel, we were instructed to proceed to the Transit Lounge in the proper terminal for our Malaysian Airlines departing flight.  There the clerk produced boarding passes for us and re-checked our luggage -- without us having to collect our bags.  The bonus feature doing this is that Malaysian Airlines did not charge us for excess weight since they had no idea how heavy our bags were as the counter clerk in the Transit Lounge never saw our bags.   Continental and United allowed 50 pounds per bag on international travel; but Malaysian Airlines allowed only 20 kilograms (44 pounds) TOTAL per passenger.  Our combined 4 bags were 110 pounds over that limit and we fully expected to pay the additional baggage fees.  It was a nice surprise that saved us a bit of money.    The hotel cost $76 SGD (about $55 USD) and that was considerably less than we expected to pay for excess baggage fees for this final flight.  Future travelers take note.  This worked beautifully.

The Changi Airport is hands-down the best airport in the entire world.  For a number of years this airport has been rated number one worldwide, and it fully deserves that rating.  There are orchid gardens and fern gardens, free movies, free wifi, numerous "Zone Experiences" throughout the terminals where one can relax in comfy upholstered chairs.  We caught up on sports on a 12-foot sports screen and then watched National Geographic shows on the 2-D televisions and animated movie clips on the 3-D televisions.  There was also a 3-D online game playing section, but we old folks skipped that delight.   The restaurant selections and fast-food selections are great throughout the main 3 terminals.  The Budget Terminal does not share in these travel conveniences, but we were not in the Budget Terminal on this trip.  The best feature of the Changi Airport is that the secondary security screening takes place at each gate rather than blocking the entire gate wing areas.  Doing it this way does entail using a lot more metal-detectors and security agents, but it prevents that God-awful time-consuming long line backed up at all other airports.

The boat was in great shape upon our return.  Thanks again to Bill & Amy on S/V ESTRELLITA and Michael & Linda on S/V B'SHERET for receiving our re-galvanized anchor chain and loading it back onto our boat during our absence.  I unpacked the bags and stowed things away while Bill did the usual work above deck to put the boat back into sailing shape after our long absence.   We split a pizza at the marina cafe for an early dinner and Bill was asleep by 19:30.  About 3 hours later I also crashed into bed.  I think sleeping for a few hours in the Singapore airport to break up the return trip was a really good idea and helped us  quickly adjust back to local time with less jet lag.

Thursday morning we rented a car to drive into Kuah and formally clear out of Malaysia.  On our return flight yesterday we met another American couple who were returning to their boat after an 8-month absence.  Their boat is in the boatyard.  They did not rent an air-conditioner to keep out the humidity and they returned to a boat filled with mildew.  So the wife shared our rental car while the husband spent the day cleaning the interior of their boat.  She was in search of proper cleaning products and bleach to try and salvage some of the fabric items inside their boat.  Gosh, I am so glad we used disposable de-humidifier things that absorbed moisture and left water collected inside small plastic pails.  Our boat had no mildew or mold whatsoever.

While at a supermarket in downtown Kuah we ran into a couple we had last seen in Trinidad in September 2006.  They transited the Panama Canal one year ahead of us.  We had kept in touch via email but quickly lost contact.  We assumed they were now well ahead of us.  So we were literally floored when we ran into Tony & Linda of S/V AMAZING GRACE today.  They are anchored near Kuah and will be going to Phuket soon.  So hopefully we will see them again in Thailand later this month.  We very much enjoyed Tony & Linda's company in Grenada and Trinidad back in 2006 and are delighted to encounter them again.  Later we returned to the marina and discovered S/V HARMONIE berthed just down the dock from us.  We last saw Don & Anne in New Zealand when they sailed away towards Fiji during early May 2009 and were surprised to find them here in Langkawi.  HARMONIE is another Amel exactly like ours. That now makes 5 Amel Super Maramus in Rebak, plus 1 older regular Maramu model.  There are more Amels in this marina than any other brand of boat.  Not a bad showing for a company that only builds 30 to 35 yachts per year.

While shopping in Kuah a Muslim woman store clerk wished me a Merry Christmas.  That was a very nice gesture and exemplifies that not all followers of Islam are fanatics.  This was a nice experience just as we are leaving this country.

We are officially cleared out of Malaysia, stating that we would depart at 23:00 Thursday night.   Bill will kit up with scuba tank and dive to clean the prop this morning.  Assuming all goes well and he finds no problems below the water line, then we hope to depart the marina this afternoon and sail the short distance of 16 miles to the southernmost island of Thailand.  We are looking forward to anchoring out for the next 4 nights before entering a marina in Phuket.

Please, please, please let the fishermen not be as prevalent in Thai waters as they were along  the Malaysian coast.  I want to enjoy sailing for the next few days.

Thanksgiving

One of our many blessings this year for which we were thankful was being able to spend Thanksgiving Day with family.  It was five years ago that we last had this opportunity.  Usually we fly home for the Christmas holidays; this year our trip home was earlier in order that we can sail to Phuket in December and await monsoon winds to send us to points farther west.  We will miss Christmas with the family this year, but were fortunate to instead spend Thanksgiving Day with extended family.

Tuesday we drove out in the countryside to visit friends at their new smaller ranch.  The autumn leaves with the purples, reds, oranges and all shades of yellow mixed with the evergreens were beautiful on the rolling hills.  New is a relative term, as our friends have lived there for over 4 years; but this is the first opportunity we have had to see their new property.  And a lovely property it is!  Barbara and Bob previously owned a large ranch near Waco that backed up along the Brazos River (usually dry bed area)  to the President George W. Bush ranch in Crawford.  That was also beautiful country -- which required much more work.  Barbara and Bob sold the large spread while Bush was still in office and downsized to a "mere" 15 acres farther east.  In many parts of the country 15 acres would be considered a nice size, but Bob feels confined by too-close neighbors after living on his larger ranch.  I prefer the smaller place.  Who needs all that work with cows and horses and tree clearing and all the other chores attendant to a large ranch.  The smaller place is very comfortable and very pretty country.  The main home is beautiful and comfortable, and the huge covered back porch overlooks the swimming pool, two more smaller houses and horse pasture and that round thing that is used when training horses (can you tell by that description what a city gal I am?)  I hope they are happy in this home for many years.  Their 13-year-old grandson Jake lives with them and he enjoys the local school and church.  It is just a great place to live.  One thing I had forgotten is how very many Baptist churches are in rural Texas.  All religious denominations were well represented in the small towns, but Baptist still predominates.

Bob treated us to a delicious traditional chicken-fried steak dinner at a local cafe.  We couldn't even remember the last time we had eaten chicken-fried steak and cream gravy.  How very cowboy Texas all the other patrons looked!  I miss these down-to-earth people who frankly speak their minds yet are the most kind-hearted and generous folks to be encountered anywhere on this planet.  Bob and Barbara and Jake are lucky to live where they do.


Thursday morning we drove to College Station for Thanksgiving Day celebration with Bill's brother Theo and his family.  Bill's sister Helene and her adult children and grandson drove down from north of Dallas, and his brother John drove up from Houston.  Our 2 sons and their families also drove up from Houston.  So there was quite a houseful of Rouses gathered around 2 televisions for the annual rivalry football game of University of Texas vs. Texas A&M.   Thank God the game was in Austin this year so we did not have to contend with the crowds and traffic.  Every person at our Thanksgiving celebration was an Aggie or Aggie supporter except for one nephew who has not yet learned the true way of life and supports the Teasips.  Needless to say we gave him a hard time when the Aggies beat TU that night.


Back in Houston on Friday afternoon for our final weekend before flying back to the boat in Malaysia.  No Black Friday shopping for us.  Instead we helped our son and grandson decorate their Christmas tree.  That was much more enjoyable than fighting crowds in shopping malls buying things we do not need.  This afternoon we are visiting a gym in Houston to give the young Chinese Kung Fu master a photograph of his parents, whom we met at their home in the Hutong in Beijing when we visited China last May.  This will be a complete surprise to him;  we promised his parents to give him this photo.  Tonight we will visit once again with friends in far west suburban Houston.   Our final night will be spent with our younger son Aaron and his family, and Aaron will drop us at the airport on his way into town for work early Monday morning.   Our flights will take us from Houston to Tokyo to Singapore, crossing back over the International Dateline and jumping forward one day.  We reserved the Transit Hotel inside the Singapore airport for 6 hours, arriving Tuesday night at midnight.  I cannot remember having previously paid for a hotel room by the hour, so this is a first for us.  Then our final flight from Singapore to Langkawi departs around 11:00 Wednesday morning.  Here is hoping all 3 flights are on schedule.

This month visiting home was busy and enjoyable.  Now we are ready to get back to the boat and get moving again!

Should receive at least one renewed license

Miracle of miracles; it now looks like we will receive Bill's renewed captains license before our departure back to the boat in Malaysia. And, believe it or not, the USCG is MAILING his new license! That is a big change in procedure. In the past we were required to pick up the licenses in person; they refused to mail them or FedEx to our home address even if we paid for that service. It was personal pick-up only. Now that the USCG has agreed to mail the renewed licenses, that solves our problem with their delay in processing my renewal application. If we at least have Bill's new license, we can make-do with my current license that expires May 2011. My new license should be mailed to our home address after we have left the States, and we can get it by one means or another at a later date -- as long as Bill has his license. Only one of us is required to have proof of competency to operate a sailing vessel when we clear into Greece next May or June.

Our new Certificate of Documentation for the boat also recently arrived in the mail. Our Documentation expired in March 2011 (it renews annually). But Egypt is one of those countries that requires current Documentation and actually checks the date of expiry on the certificate. We should arrive in Eqypt between mid-March and early April; so it was important that we obtain a new Certificate of Documentation. Thankfully, the National Vessel Documentation Center is pretty lenient about dates of renewal and allows one to renew early. We obtained the renewal form online and faxed it in shortly after arriving in Houston. Less than two weeks later the new Certificate arrived in the mail. The new Documentation expires November 2011. Now we will not have a problem with any country next year regarding date of expiry of Documentation. We will have cleared into Turkey for the winter well before Nov 2011, so this renewal date works much better with our usual annual December trip home.

Today we returned the Nook e-book reader that we had purchased last week. We both liked reading books on it, but there was a problem with the WiFi connection going off and on while downloading new books. It probably was simply a defective WiFi controller on the particular Nook unit we had, but that discouraged us from wanting a replacement. Maybe there will be improvements and we will buy another one during our home visit next year. We also looked at the Sony reader today, but prefer the Nook. The Kindle will not work for us because it is not possible to purchase books for the Kindle internationally -- or so we have read. We know the Kindle is supposedly the superior e-book reader on the market today, but it makes no sense to own a reader for which we could only purchase new books whenever we are physically within the USA. With the Nook there is an application that allows one to purchase a book onto your computer, and then load it into the Nook. We could do this anywhere in the world with internet access. Supposedly one cannot do this with the Kindle. The idea of less bulk with an e-book reader is appealing because of the very limited storage space on a boat -- and less weight on a boat is always a good thing.

After returning the Nook for full refund, I purchased even more books. I have a small carry-on bag filled with 30 books, mostly paperbacks but at least half-dozen heavier hardbacks. Hopefully my bag will not be weighed at the airport in Singapore because I am certain it exceeds the weight limit allowed by Malaysian Airlines for carry-on baggage.

Looking forward to visiting with family on Thanksgiving Day. And hoping we will be able to make it to visit our friend's new ranch next Friday. A day or two at a Texas ranch with long time friends would be the perfect final weekend for this trip home before we head back to our life on the sea.