3rd September - YES we are leaving... - money changers - birds

Wednesday 3^rd September

I’m not quite saying Are we there yet??

But…we still haven’t left Kudat… Any minute now we will be sailing away!  By 1pm yesterday we were ready to go but…we looked out over the sea wall and there were white caps…big waves…a howling gale.  So we stayed put.

Birds on a ware

I had a small adventure at midday.  Pete was totally exhausted from changing the oil in both engines- a hotter, dirtier, sweatier job you could hardly imagine – so I offered to go all by myself to a money changer.  We have realised that we will actually need Philippines pesos before we get anywhere near an ATM.  I just seems a bit foolhardy to arrive in a new country without a single peso/ringgit/dollar/whatever to your name. I had a nice ride into town, with the wind in my hair, and stopped in the center of the old town to get my bearings.  I am no very good at listening to directions… Near the Ria Hotel blah blah turn left blah around the corner blahblah blah said Haikal.  And Phil, our neighour, on SV Naiete, had only just given me very simple directions.  Past the Petronas station, find the Esso station just along the blah blah blah turn around blah diagonally blahbalh…The directions from both of them were good, and clear, it was just my processing of the info which was faulty.

TaxiPete

I was very lucky because there, striding down the street, was Taxi Pete, smiling radiantly.  He was very happy to escort me to the money changer – right in front of my nose, as it turned out.  But there were no signs at all that it was a money changing shop – it was in fact a haberdashery, run by an ancient Chinese Man, who rustled around in the back shelves and came up with a good exchange of ringgits/pesos for me.  I had my iPhone with me, with my currency conversion app at the ready, so I was able to show them that I knew how many Ps I should get for my Rs.  And I didn’t get ripped off at all.  But what did happen was…the shop began to fill with smiling young men, all fascinated to watch me handing over 600 ringgits on cold hard cash and receiving 8,000 pesos…in cold hard cash. 

Hmmm…I am not really very fearful but I suddenly occurred to me that I was a sitting duck.  Brainwave – Taxi Pete could take me back to the marina, with my bike neatly folded into the boot!  He was very  happy with this arrangement and regaled me with lurid stories of what would have happened to me and my cold hard cash had I not chosen to allow him to rescue me…

Close up these finches are SO lovely!

In the late afternoon I went for a stroll along the marina road, trying to get photos of the elusive little bronze finches we only ever see whizzing past at high speed.  I was successful – see above!  And I also captured a dear little shy bird darting along the grass, stopping every few steps to waggle its bottom frenetically. 

And in case it seems I NEVER have any fun… My project, should I choose to accept it, involves…sticking tiny little correction slips on 500 cards… I was so proud of my new cards.  They were done in Sandakan, with a dinky map on the back, and a new photo of 2XS in full sail.  And our new email addresses – the old cards were all no good and had to be chucked.  I saw the proofs, and found they had spelled my name incorrectly – Marguerit.  Not a problem!  With a merry laugh, we made sure it was all ticketyboo.  I had to rush into the shop on our very last morning in Sandakan to pick up the cards – they had been delayed because of the error.  I glanced at them, paid mu money, thanked the stony-faced shop owner effusively, and rushed back to the boat, to sail off into the wide blue yonder.  Well she was stony faced because the cards were wrong, weren’t they??  They had corrected the spelling of my actual name, but had put in wrongly in the email address - margueriet… Oh so annoying… But we have printed off 500 little slips for me to cut and paste, at my leisure…The fun never stops!