Said to be one of the most important shipping highways in the world, joining the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the Malacca Strait is surprisingly empty going down the coast of Malaysia which is what we are doing at the moment. Yesterday we saw a few anchored ships; fishing boats, far fewer than seen in Thailand, and annoying fishing floats with plastic bin bags instead of flags ready to fall into the water and kill turtles. We also saw lots of orange brown jelly fish much like those swimming UK waters. Up in Thailand they are harvested in their hundreds by open longtail boats, dried and shipped off to China where the collagen is used to treat arthritis, high blood pressure, bronchitis and is used as a cancer preventative medicine.

I’ve tried to persuade Chris of the joys of culinary jelly fish but he isn’t convinced, how about you?

It is 6.00 a.m. We anchored for the night 2 miles up the Burnam River on our way down from Pangkor to Klang from where we shall take a train to Kuala Lumpur so that we can visit the Chinese Embassy to arrange visas. The waters are very shallow in the Strait with never more than 5 meters all of yesterday, now we are at rest in a smooth 4 meters. We came here for shelter in case the wind blew up strongly in the night, we can’t sail at night because of all the fishing floats. It’s very flat along this part of the Malaysian coast much like East Anglia with the same thick east coast mud, very comforting when the anchor bites immediately. Gryphon II is about ¼ mile from the shore where there are 3 bird hotels for swiftlets to build their nests which will be collected for birds’ nest soup. The birds are just starting their calls, it was raucous when we arrived yesterday afternoon. The first of the fishing boats went out about an hour ago, life on the Burnam starts early.

We shall follow the good example, pull on our briefest togs, swallow some mango and weigh anchor, we have 60 miles to Klang so a long day today.