Hi Everyone,
For the past several days the Mari Marina has been full of boats. They came to participate in the Miri to Kota Kinabalu Race, The Borneo Challenge. Many of the cruisers we’d met in our travels were taking part and it was nice to see them while they were here. Randal and I are heading in the opposite direction so we didn’t go along. It’s a pretty informal race where sailboats sail and/or motor depending on the conditions. Early this morning we biked over to see the race begin at 8:30 am. I thought 14 boats participated: Randal said 30. It was somewhere in between.
Randal wishing we were going too!
The thing I love about this photo is that except for my bike, it looks totally fake. It looks as if paper boats are stuck onto the top of the water and the tree is iffy too.
After the boats left Randal and I biked into Miri center to go to the Sunday morning market to get some fruit and veggies.
This is actually just outside the fish market.
Randal had gone in to look around. But we were really just looking: we have enough in our freezer for now. There are always a few vendors selling some produce here but there are really two big public markets that we go to. One is just across the road and we usually go there go get cabbage and carrots for my cabbage/carrot salad. Today we biked to one a few blocks away. Behind it discovered a pork and chicken market. Randal asked if I had my camera. You could see whole pork heads (they were no longer pigs) with the ears still on them. And then there were the hoofs and legs hanging there. When someone wanted to buy some the vendor took out a blow torch and cooked? it. It seemed as if every conceivable part of the pig was there for sale. I told Randal that butchered animal photos weren’t very popular among our blog readers so I skipped it. It really is almost enough to make one a vegetarian. Though the concept of not wasting anything is good. When we bought our pork from the stationwagon man in Sungei Rengit it was past looking like it had ever been part of a pig; it just looked like ready to be cooked food.
Next we walked our bikes the block over to the Zam Zam Islamic Restaurant for a roti cani. Randal had an egg roti with a side dish of curried dipping sauce garnished with small pieces of what tasted like a slightly curried version of my mother’s pot roast. I just sprinkled sugar on my plain roti and it tasted kind of like funnel cake, Islamic style. The owner of ZZIR is a young man who runs it with his uncle. They are from Pakistan not far from the border with India. We like them and they like us. That’s the way it should be. Another favorite restaurant is Pete’s Deli, a 15 minute walk from the marina. There you can get chicken pot pie, hamburgers, macaroni and cheese, apple crisp and ice cream, banana chocolate chip muffins and yogurt that they make. The owner and his son are Chinese. We like them, they like us. Lots of school kids go there for lunch since it’s just across from a huge middle and high school complex.
We biked back to the boat with our veggies and some frozen chicken breast and meat from another small market we’d tried once before. We hadn’t been on the boat long when Randal spied some young adult aged kids looking at the boat. He invited them in for a tour. Their dad, who worked for the Marine Department had come to the marina.
Emy 20 , Azreen 15, Randal 61, Arzliey 11, Fetty 18
Emy had been to university in Kuching and worked trouble shooting problems with radio station transmissions. Azreen was a cousin and is still in school. Arzlie is also in school. Fetty just finished high school and wasn’t sure what her plans will be. I hope I have it all right.
Now I’m working on this email and Randal is plotting our course through West Malaysia. We have signed up to do the West Malaysia Rally which is run by the same people who did our East Malaysia. Even though the rally chooses the stops, cruisers have to get themselves from each stop with their own skill and knowledge. http://www.sailmalaysia.net/rally-info.html is the web site if you want to read ahead about it. We had planned to go to most of the stops anyway so decided to just join on. One of my favorite cruising friends Ken Jenkins from the boat Penache is also signed up for the rally. Ken was actually parked next to us in Sebana Cove but it wasn’t until the East Malaysia rally that we really got to know him. He’s cool.
My Red Sox aren’t doing so well ( an understatement if there ever was one except that in the past they have come back from being even further behind!) It certainly put me in a sad funk when they lost the second game. Of course if you look at their pattern since 2004 they weren’t even supposed to make the playoffs this year. 2004 won the Series, 2005 got swept in the first round, 2006 didn’t make it at all, 2007 won the Series, 2008 lost in the second round ; so 2009 meant they weren’t even going to the playoffs. But they are there and I WANT THEM TO WIN!!!!
Now it’s time to make dinner. Then we’ll read since the reception from our new TV dish isn’t so good. Our neighbor boat said theirs wasn’t so good either. Then we’ll go to sleep and start all over again tomorrow.