In the heart of Vietnam

We left Da Lat on another sleeper bus heading for Buôn Ma Thuột. Once again we crossed a mountain pass before arriving in the coffee growing part of the central highlands and being unloaded on the edge of the city. Luckily we are travelling light so it was a nice four kilometer walk to our hotel in the backstreets. The room had its own private garden completely screened by bamboos and separated from the room only by huge windows. Each morning felt like waking up in a tropical garden.

Buôn Ma Thuột is definitely not a tourist destination for Europeans. We were back to being the exotic “white people” with people asking for photos and wanting to know where we came from – back to the film star feeling. We were out on the bikes and nearly got sucked in to a serious drinking party down one street. After a few photos we managed to escape and took another route home but this passed a kids birthday party where we were given beer in return for our rendition of Happy Birthday and “I’m a believer” via the monster karaoke system. We escaped this party to cycle off to “an appointment” that we invented just to get away 🙂 By day 3 the street vendors knew us and already had the grilled bananas or local pizza on the charcoal as we approached.

We visited a fantastic museum of coffee which combined stunning architecture with extremely interesting and informative displays. Money well spent. From the museum we saw a pagoda so walked that way and found a Buddhist temple with an English speaking monk who happily showed us around and answered all the questions we had been wanting to ask from all our temple visits.

The next bus was meant to leave at 06:00 so we were up at four. It eventually left at 08:30 and took 13 hours to reach Đà Nẵng. We were really glad that it was a sleeper bus and that Vietnam has fast mobile internet everywhere. We could dose, watch the scenery or use our phones to ensure that we didn’t get bored. 13 hours in a sleeper bus beats 7 hours in a plane every day.

In Đà Nẵng we slept a night then headed to nearby Hội An where we had booked a small hotel which only has 5 star reviews. It was a good choice as everything was perfect and the owner organised everything we mentioned. Suddenly we were back in a major tourist destination and the prices had all been adjusted accordingly. A fried banana that cost €0.30 in Buôn Ma Thuột was now €1.40 but the customers were no longer locals.

The town is an ancient seaport and (if you ignore the masses of people) very beautiful. Luckily the tourists are all concentrated in three streets and on two bridges. If you walk, bike or scooter two kilometers out of town you are back in to the friendly world of “real Vietnam”. The hotel had free bikes so twice we headed off in to the surrounding fields to overdose on countryside, temples and water buffalo. One day we also hired a motor scooter and visited the thousand year old temples at Mỹ Sơn. They were abandoned long ago and are ruins but still incredible. You can still see the amazing detail on the surviving carvings and, when you think “it was all like this” then you can only think “Wow!”

We were in Hội An for the Lunar New Year which meant that everything had been cleaned thoroughly and lit with lanterns and decorated with special trees representing the arrival of spring. It was like visiting Europe at Christmas, just as beautiful and just as hectic.

More pictures in our Google Album “Vietnam”.

Backpacking Vietnam

We have managed to reduce our minimalist boat life to super-minimalist backpacking. Together we have ten kilograms of stuff in our two rucsacs and that includes four kilograms of IT equipment so that we can work and blog.

We walked to the bus station in Ho-Chi-Minh-City and caught a bus for the six hour trip to Mũi Né on the coast. The bus was a sleeper bus which means that it carries 34 passengers and each of them has a small bed / seat to lie in. A great way to travel as you can doze half the journey away.

Mũi Né is a holiday village where the inhabitants of Ho-Chi-Minh-City go to escape the city at the weekend. There are hotels and restaurants all the way along the coast and luckily we had booked in the the Lac House which had five of five stars and all of them well earned. Mrs Lac and her sisters also own an amazing restaurant right next to the sea where the food is tasty and the waitresses are incredibly friendly. We ended up eating there every night and enjoying life as the waves broke on the stones below us (and we didn’t have to worry about how we were going to land the dinghy).

During the daytime we walked the fourteen kilometers out to the sand dunes to photograph Heidi “trekking through the desert” and then the next day we rented bikes to explore the coast and walk up a beautiful valley in the bed of the “fairy stream”. And of course we kept ourselves hydrated and full of energy by tasting all the incredible “street food”.

The next bus journey took all day and involved crossing the mountains to finally reach Dalat high in the Central Highlands at 1500 meters above sea level. We were among the oldest travelers on a bus full of young backpackers. They asked how we had reached Vietnam so we told them our seven year story and the reaction of one young lady was “You are so cool! Can you adopt me?”

Everyone had warned us that it was cold and the first evening, as soon as the sun set, we bought two warm jumpers with hoods. Dalat is also a tourist destination mainly for locals but also a few Europeans. We started each morning with a coffee looking across the flowering gardens and pine forests and then put on the walking shoes and visited a monastery, a temple, lakes and the night market. We wandered the back streets stopping for coffee and street food to sit and watch the passers by and practice our two Vietnamese expressions – “Xin chào” (hello) and “cảm ơn” (thank you). Everyone was impressed that we were so multilingual and we were equally impressed with how friendly everyone was to foreigners with three words of Vietnamese.

Welcome to Vietnam; Ho-Chi-Minh-City

It is now eleven days since we landed at Ho-Chi-Minh airport and entered Vietnam with a hotel booked for three days, three weeks of time available and no plan. We have done so much, seen so much and met so many friendly people since then that it seems like a life time ago.

We took a Grab (like Uber for Australians and like a cheap, friendly, quick, safe taxi for Germans) from the airport to the hotel and since there we have walked everywhere except for journeys over 100 kilometers. We are in training for climbing a 3000 meter mountain in summer. Walking has the advantage that you meet loads of people and find hundreds of places you would miss in a car. You need to learn to cross the road when you are on foot. The principle is easy. Choose a spot and start walking across the two, four or six lanes and KEEP GOING at a constant speed. The scooters, cars, Grabs and trucks will swerve right or left to pass just in front or behind you. Buses will not swerve so time the crossing without buses. It is easy but the first few days I was holding Heidi tight and muttering to myself “don’t stop. don’t stop, don’t …” Now I just hold Heidi tight.

We spent the first four days in Ho-Chi-Minh-City (Saigon) and walked for hours and hours. We ticked off the tourist sights and took photographs of everything and anything and then deleted ninety percent. A selection of the best pictures are in an album at Google Photos. We walked around and saw the huge financial center tower so we headed over there and took the elevator to the 49th floor to enjoy the view. From up there we saw a park with a statue so walked that way and found Ho-Chi-Minh himself beaming down on us in the middle of the city. On the way home we heard a sound check for a concert so that night we went and watched the biggest, loudest, brightest coca-cola advertisement I have ever seen complete with all the local star singers.

After a few days, it was time to move on so we decided that “tomorrow’s project” was finding out how to book transport and get around. That evening we picked up some food from a market stall and sat next to two Estonian ladies. They have been travelling Asia for a few months so we quickly installed the 12GO app that allows you to book any transport to anywhere and Getlin gave us her WhatsApp number to answer any questions about using it. That left “tomorrow” free.

Next to our hotel was a tiny cafe which was just an alleyway between two houses but the owner was extremely friendly and the coffee was good. All day there were girls and young ladies there posing for pictures in their traditional dresses – Áo dài. Apparently it is a famous location as it looks so traditional so girls come from all over the city, do their make-up, don their dress and take pictures. What they can do, we can do; so we trekked across the city to a shop that a lady recommended, bought Heidi an Ao Dai, drank a fruit juice while it was altered to fit, walked back via a Zen Buddhist temple, dressed Heidi up and then went photo-shooting at the cafe. The owner, who just smiled and laughed at the young girls, insisted on a photo with the “European Supermodel”.

Singapore Cat Sitting

We no longer own a boat so, after seven years of not worrying about stuff like this, we needed somewhere to live. Luckily friends from Germany are living in Johor Bahru in Malaysia so we turned up on their doorstep, begged a weeks accommodation and filled one of their suitcases with clothing before they left for Christmas in Germany. Thank you Johanna and Kevin!

Next we took a taxi to Singapore and moved in to an appartment in downtown Singapore. The flat was ours for three weeks over Christmas and New Year in return for looking after two cats, feeding the fish and watering the plants. Not a bad deal at all. Thank you Anne & Christoph.

You may think that after our six weeks in Singapore a few months ago we would have seen everything. That just shows that you have never been to Singapore which has interesting places, events and people around every corner. Last time we were living in a house out in the jungle and needed our bikes to go most places. This time we were living in the middle of the city and could walk everywhere and if we ended up too far from home, there was a bus stop and an underground station just round the corner.

One day we were in the middle of a housing estate and decided to take the lift to the top floor of a 43 floor appartment block to look at the view which was incredible. We then read that there was another housing estate with a 500 meter long sky garden on the roof above the fiftieth floor so we visited that next. We received a tip that the CapitaSpring building had a garden at 280 meters and a vertical garden on three floors at about a hundred meters. We spent a few hours there as it offers such amazing views down on to Singapore and the gardens are so relaxing. Definitely a “must do” in Singapore.

Singapore is (for some people) about earning lots of money and then spending it as ostentatiously as possible. Big handbags, expensive cars and designer labels are on the program so in the run up to Christmas the place went crazy. We took one walk up and down the main shopping street – Orchard Road – and decided we had seen enough Christmas. On Christmas Day we walked up the Singapore River away from the tourists and ate Greek pan bread for Christmas lunch.

New Year saw us down at the river for a drone show at eight o’clock. The drones danced to the music and created a variety of motifs and shapes with their multicolored lights. It was impressive and left me asking “how do you even start to program something like that?” We then made our way slowly through the crowds to the harbour where we and another half a million people watched the fountains dancing, the lasers beaming and then the fireworks exploding. The music had a bass that made the floor move. 500 000 people from all over Asia and the only disturbance reported was a fight in the poshest hotel in town 🙂

We visited temples, museums, the botanical gardens, light shows, dancing fountains, the jungle, Little China, Little India, markets & parks and walked 14 km along an old railway line. We were not bored and, walking everywhere, got pretty fit between feeding the cats and the fish.

And now for something completely different

We officially no longer own a boat and are no longer sailors.

The broker Rachel Robertson in Langkawi has sold Artemis. Rachel found a buyer, negotiated the price that we had hoped for, calmed us down as necessary and completed the transaction in 2024. What more could we have asked for?

Rachel showed Artemis to the new owner while we were in Thailand and thought she was tidy, clean and well presented then. The sale was subject to an inspection by a marine surveyor and the four days before the inspection were spent getting ready for the “one chance to make a good impression”. Heidi only knows one level of cleanliness which is just a bit better than spotless. On inspection day Rachel was very impressed and the surveyor kept on saying “I have never seen a boat this clean, I have never seen a motor this clean, I have never seen ….” He even mentioned the cleanliness of the boat in his final report which also confirmed that Artemis was in top condition for a boat of her experience.

A few days later, on 10 December, we locked Artemis up, gave Rachel the key and took the ferry and then the plane to Johor Bahru with our 80 kg of belongings. Heidi shed a few tears and I felt sad to be leaving our boat after she has safely brought us three quarters of the way around the world and carried us to so many magical places. However we carry the memories with us and no one can take them from us.

The question every one is asking is “Now that it is finished, are you sad?” and the honest answer is “No!” The last seven years have been magical and I would not have wanted to miss them. While others have spent those years dreaming of living their dreams, we were doing it. We have visited unbelievable places, met incredible people and experienced indescribable wonders of nature. Now we are excited by the next section of our lives and are so busy planning and organizing that we don’t have time to be sad. As I write this we are in downtown Singapore “cat sitting” and after that we are planning a few weeks in the Asian mountains. We are too busy looking forwards to have time to miss what we had. And we are still fascinated by warm water showers and washing machines.

Both of us are looking forward to working again. Heidi starts her dream job at the doctors in Pfronten in the middle of February and I am looking forward to meeting my consulting clients face to face. We know people our age who are looking forward to their retirement and we are excited to be working again. Funny what a difference seven years at sea make.

4 boxes, 2 bags and two rucsacs. Thats it!

In summary we don’t feel that we are at the end of something but rather at the start of the rest of our lives.

Busy going nowhere

If you want to sell a boat then all you really need is a good broker and patience. Luckily, if you have been out sailing for over six years one thing you are good at is being patient. While Rachel is working on selling Artemis, we are gently exploring the 99 islands of the archipelago. Some days we sail, some days we wander around on land and some days we just alternate “office work” and swimming. When you are anchored off a tiny island behind a small island at the far end of Malaysia you get really good at chilling.

Michael, Christin and Maxime flew up from Singapore for a days sailing which was great fun. In the evening we anchored off their hotel to join them for dinner and after the meal crossed the flat sea back to Artemis and bed. At 04:00 a storm came raging in and drove huge waves which ripped the anchor out and threatened to drive us back on to the beach. Heidi ran up to the bow and started trying to pull in the anchor while I tried to hold the boat in to the wind and make progress forwards. Heidi was hampered by being constantly drenched by the waves but after each wave she appeared again dripping salt water but still pulling in chain. After half an hour we had the anchor on board and managed to claw our way out to sea. The dinghy disappeared during the fun but Maxime and Michael found it washed on to the beach. To quote our favourite saying: “No one hurt and no serious damage. A good day sailing!”

The next visitors were Johanna and Kevin who visited us for almost an entire week. They are working six months at the other end of Malaysia but managed to get a week off to join us. We had a fantastic time with them and enjoyed every minute of their company. Within two days they knew how to prepare the boat for sailing and we hardly touched the tiller while they were here. It was like a sailing holiday! You can read Johanna’s blog here.

Of course, the toilet got blocked and stopped working when we had guests on board. I love sailing but am not going to miss the seven hours of “boat yoga” as you twist and sweat in a tiny space to reach piping that has been designed to be fixed by an experienced gynecologist. Luckily we were in a marina that day so the “guest crew” were given a day off to walk the jungle and test the swimming pool. I really think boat designers should have to repair the boats that they design.

Our Malaysian visa was running out after 90 days and we needed a new one. The procedure is easy. Leave the country. Wait. Return. We left on a ferry heading to Thailand, waited five days on the paradise island of Koh Lipe and then caught the ferry back. Koh Lipe advertises as the perfect destination for couples which is code for “nothing happens here”. We walked most of the tracks on the 2 km² island, swam in the see through sea, ate, drank and slept. There are worse ways to get a visa. Photos are at our Google Album but don’t look as it will only make you jealous.

One Year and One Day in Asia

Exactly one year and one day ago we arrived in Saumlaki and therefore in Asia. After two years in Australia, it was a mild shock to enter Asia through the back door. My first impressions were:

  • I had no idea which side of the road is correct (after two days on the back of a motorbike).
  • I have never had so much paper money and never given out thousands per hour.
  • I have never had so many pieces of unintelligible paper pushed under my nose to be signed and stamped.
  • Every single person we met needed a photo of us and everyone was incredibly friendly.
  • There was fast Internet everywhere, even fishing hamlets on sticks had fast Internet.

From Saumlaki we worked our way north. It was like being a film star. Everywhere we landed, we were followed by children and everyone wanted a photo with us. We said yes to the first person and then there was a group photo and then a photo with the whole village. Everyone said hello and everyone laughed at our nine words of Indonesian.

Eventually we reached Papua which was also a friendly place. Someone in town killed someone else and so the opposing families declared war for a week or so and others were injured before the army got things under control. We stayed at home at night so were totally safe. Further west everyone was surprised as they all think Papuans still eat people.

We have seen some incredible places the last seven years but Wayag is unbelievably breathtaking. We spent over a week there and Michael flew out from Germany to help us celebrate Christmas and New Year.

Sulawesi was interesting. It was difficult sailing but very friendly people. We sheltered from the rain under a roof and a door opened and we were invited in for a coffee. Another time we walked past a restaurant and were invited for lunch – free lunch because we were invited.

We fought against tides all the way to Lombok. We had no wind or wind against us and once got whacked by the side of a mini tornado that ripped the traveler apart. Eventually we ran out of diesel and had to beg some off a passing fishing boat. By the time we reached the island we had decided to wait three months for the weather to turn. That gave us plenty of time to meet people, for great cycling trips and a quick holiday in Germany.

Once the wind was going the right way we sailed downwind to Singapore stopping off at a few islands full of friendly locals and great scenery. On these remote islands it was like being back in Papua with the cry of “Mister Mister Photo Photo?”

Singapore is definitely a country that needs more than a few days to explore and understand so we were really lucky that Michael and Christine lent us their house for six weeks. 700 kilometers with the bikes ensured that we saw not just “the sights” but also the hidden corners.

The west coast of Malaysia was a long slog. There was not much wind, hundreds of fishing boats and very few safe anchorages but we used every piece of wind we could find and eventually reached Langkawi and the end of our journey.

Asia was partying with locals on remote islands with no electricity and the incredible underground railway network in Singapore where everything “just works”. It was stunning scenery and mountains of plastic rubbish. It was volcanoes and jungles. But mainly it was a stream of friendly, smiling people.

Langkawi Impressions

We were anchored off an uninhabited island and went to the shore looking for a fresh water pipe that we had heard ran out at the beach. We found the pipe and a group of fishermen, their wives and children. We said “Hello!” They said “Hello! Would you like some food?” Heidi explained that we had no money but they just laughed and told us that they were there for a picnic and we were invited.

Our picnic hosts

You can catch a cab to the bottom of the mountain, then take the gondola to the top and join all the other tourists taking photos of the view. Or you can walk to the road-head and then hike up in to the mountains and cool off at a selection of waterfalls. We chose the second option. The jungle is hot and humid now, during the rainy season, which makes the walking a warm exercise. The good news is that the stream water feels so much more refreshing.

On the way down we found a slide through the rocks which looked interesting but was a little too exciting at the bottom where a whirlpool spun you round so that you needed help to escape.

Our route is at Alltrails.

Heidi chipped a piece of a tooth so we visited Dr. Michelle the next day. She fixed the tooth and another one. A few days later she prepared a crown for Heidi. Neill was next and Dr. Boey did three hours of microsurgery on tooth roots and then the next day Dr. Michelle prepared a crown. The dentists practice is like a spaceship. Dr Boey worked with micro-drills through a microscope and Heidi could follow the whole operation on a computer screen. All our teeth were scanned with a 3D scanner and the 3D models were fired off to China where they are building our new crowns based on the scans. Amazing!

Time to get serious about life.

We have now reached Langkawi, a paradise off the coast of Malaysia, and this is where our journey on board Artemis will end. The Houthis attacks, the conflict in the Red Sea and the entire situation in the Middle East is escalating and, since we cannot find a boat insurance that will insure us after the Maldives, we have made the decision to offer our Artemis for sale here in Langkawi.

We have crossed the Atlantic and the Pacific together, made a brief detour into the Southern Ocean in Tasmania and have now arrived in the Indian Ocean. We have traveled to five continents, met friendly, helpful people everywhere and made friends for life. With 34350 nautical miles behind us we have sailed a distance equal to one and a half circumnavigations, but in reality we only made it three quarters of the way. The last six and a half years were fantastic and we enjoyed them to the full. Nobody can take away our experiences and our impressions and we are happy and grateful for this adventure.

Now a new chapter begins in our lives and we look forward to seeing our family and friends and are looking forward to work, life on land and, of course, new challenges.

A weekend sailing

It was Friday morning and we were anchored off an oil terminal without much of a view or anything planned. The weather forecast promised a possibilty of wind, a current that would sometimes help us along and the ever present risk of thunder showers so a good forecast for Malaysia.

We lifted the anchor and immediately put up the sails and were off sailing north west along the Malacca Straits. We enjoyed a cup of coffee in the cockpit while hand steering in the right direction. The Straits are about 30 miles wide here and there is no land to hit to the west until Indonesia. Life would be great if only there wasn’t a shipping motorway right down the middle of the straits that limits you to a four mile strip between the motorway and Malaysia. The four mile strip is where you try to sail and avoid the fishing boats, the tugs pulling massive barges and the occasional fishing net.

Just like every day, the sun went down at seven and things got more exciting. Then you are trying to avoid all the stuff by looking at different colored lights and working out what you are seeing. A red light should be a ships left side but can also be a fishing boat who got red lights cheap. A green light is a ships right side but sometimes they are cheap as well. A fast moving yellow flashing light could be a ferry but a slow moving one could be on fishing buoys. Tugs have three white lights above each other but often no lights on the barges they are towing or flashing christmas tree lights. A white light is a ship at anchor or a house on the near by shore or a fishing buoy.

Ideally we maintain a constant course and speed so that other vessels know what we are doing and can plan to avoid us. With the current pushing one way and the wind gusting another, we are sometimes the least reliable boat out there so have to be even more careful to try and keep out of the way of others.

Despite all the above challenges, we still managed to cook and enjoy a tasty evening meal and sleep on and off while the other one kept watch. We sailed to just before the entrance to the Klang River and would have arrived before dawn if it hadn’t have been for the storm. The first warning is always the approaching lightning and then when the black sky gets even blacker and the stars start to go out. We heeded the warning and took all the sail away except a tiny bit of the jib. Minutes later the howling wind hit us and drove large waves towards us. The rain was very cold so it was nice when a wave swamped the cockpit with warm seawater.

In such situations we have a standard plan. I take over the steering from our windvane while Heidi closes everything up and starts serious navigating. We were in the middle of an anchor field so there were ships everywhere. Using the AIS system Heidi could filter out all the anchored vessels and warn me which ones were moving and which way. She also kept us away from land and the few wrecks dotted around. She also supplied chocolate brain food. It was impossible to make any progress upwind so we just tried to remain heading in to the wind and lose as little of our previous progress as possible. The storm lasted nearly two hours and by the end we had lost two miles. As the storm moved on, the wind stopped and we motored back to the river and anchored around a bend to be better sheltered from the next storm. Unsurprisingly we slept a lot on Saturday.

On Sunday we were once again functioning humans so we sailed back down the river with the tide and turned in to the main channel. We were pleasently surprised to find that the current and the wind were both going our way. We sailed along the edge of the shipping channel and past what must be one of the biggest container terminals in the world. There are ships, tugs and pilot boats everywhere and rows of monster cranes unloading and loading ships. From our side of the channel, across the river it looked like the cranes were stacking lego blocks but each „block“ was a full size cargo container that could hold a folded up house. Amazing!

The current was (strangely) with us all afternoon so we finally reached the tiny islands of Angsa and Selatan which are some five miles from the mainland. The larger island has a lighthouse on top and we are anchored behind it and enjoying a relaxing Sunday evening after an exciting weekend of sailing.