Crikey it’s almost Christmas! In this predominantly Muslim, tropical country the shopping malls are still kitted out with Christmas trees with artificial snow, reindeer and Christmas music so we have had warning that it’s almost upon us.
After arriving at the southern end of the island group we have moved around with a few days in marinas and some at anchor. To clear in with port officials, immigration and customs we made our way up to Kuah, the main town, and booked a couple of nights in the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club marina. This is within walking distance of the port and the main supermarket Billion. Quite cheap but not very good quality, it’s real saving grace are the chocolate and alcohol sections. They have a really good range of chocolates and the alcohol prices are low (Langkawi is duty free), 1lt of Bombay Sapphire for about £12, Gordon’s is cheaper but we splashed out. Now to find the tonic.
All the officialdom and shopping dealt with we headed off to the beach at the North end of Pulau Singa Besar.  We had been to a beach clean here last year with the rally to Langkawi so we knew it would be a good place to have a party. It is the 70 anniversary of the Ocean Cruising Club and as we are Roving Rear Commodores Sarah thought it our duty to organise a meet. There were a number of members come up north on this year's rally and we knew there were also a number of members sailing independently in the area. In the end there were 11 boats and 25 people on the beach. There is a shelter on the beach, and someone has built a barbecue so we made full use of the ‘facilities’.

We anchored off the beach for two nights, before and after the meet, and then made our way into Rebak marina. We had been invited to the Passage to Langkawi 2024 rally final dinner, anybody in the marina is invited and we knew two other couples who had been on the 2023 rally with us and were also here so made up a table. It was really good to do some catching up but also to talk to people interested in doing the Passage to the East rally which we were on this year.
We’ve been tracking our friends Inge and Thomas as they come south from Thailand and met them in an anchorage north of Rebak, Telaga. A very brief meeting as they needed to carry on to Kuah to clear into Malaysia. We had a walk on the beach and heard all about their travels. They continued south next day, and we went for a walk up to The Seven Waterfalls a trek we have done before. This time we went further on up the track to Blue Pool and had a quick swim, very refreshing and not cold. One change this year is that there is a now a charge to walk the track, entry gate, ticket office, the works.

Our new laptop, bought a few weeks ago, has stopped charging, which is most annoying. This meant we had to go to Kuah to find a computer shop as we wanted it sorted before we moved to a different country. We hadn’t stopped in the anchorage at Kuah before, but it was really good and in the NE monsoon season providing excellent shelter despite being very open.
We are now back in Telaga and will be here for Christmas, Inge and Thomas are on their way up, then we will move on to Thailand for the New Year.
Merry Christmas everyone.