Malaysia: The next leg of the journey..

Suddenly we were in Malaysia - one of those places, a bit like Indonesia, I knew absolutely nothing about - thank you, Wikipedia, I am now morbidly interested in the history of this beautiful country! 

Malaysia—previously known as Malaya—had been under British rule as a Crown Colony since about 1826.

During the Second World War, it was occupied by Japan until 1946, when control was returned to Britain. The years following the war, leading up to Malaysia’s independence in 1957, were marked by some of the most intense violence and conflict in the country’s history.

Known as the Malayan emergency, the fighting was primarily between communist pro-independence fighters of Malaya who wanted to establish a communist state and the Malayan Federation, which was against communism and wanted to protect British economic/colonial interests. Troops were supported from Great Britain, Australia, the Gurkhas, New Zealand, Kenya, Fiji and Rhodesia. 

In 1957, Malaysia gained independence and later merged with Borneo, Sarawak and Singapore. 

Later on, Singapore and Malaysia parted ways, and since 1965, Singapore has been an independent country

Located just north of the equator in South East Asia, Malaya, now Malaysia, consists of two main regions—Peninsular Malaysia (Directly above Singapore ) and East Malaysia, also known as Malaysian Borneo — the two regions are separated by the South China Sea and have some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. 

I think we all know there is a huge amount of sea traffic coming from China, not only my rather extensive delivery from Temu, but deep-sea tankers and cargo ships carrying, apparently, around 15 million barrels of oil per day. 

The photo below shows our AIS — Automatic Identification System — basically air traffic control for boats. Almost every vessel out there, from huge tankers to tiny fishing boats, transmits its position on one of these devices, and this is the picture you will get.

It means ports can see who’s coming and going, and more importantly, for us anyway, boats can see each other.

Even when we’re miles offshore with nothing but horizon in every direction, the AIS will send an alarm to say there’s a ship within three miles. Before we can even see it, we know exactly where it is, which way it’s heading, and whether we need to tweak our course. Here is a picture of us trying to cross the Singapore straits to get from Indonesia to Malaysia....We are the red boat, and all the little triangles are pretty huge tankers....

We entered Malaysia via a place called Johor Bahru (Or JB as the locals call it)

It is over the river, but just a few miles north of Singapore. To get here, there is no way of avoiding the Singapore Straits. One of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. It genuinely felt like the nautical version of the M25 at rush hour. I was wetting myself.

My husband switched into full pilot mode without missing a beat — glued to the VHF radio, calmly weaving us through the madness like it was a Sunday sail.

I decided my talents were not required and clearly better used elsewhere - I went below deck and decided to make some fishcakes. Like you do. 

I did brave the deck once or twice, but the sight of those floating skyscrapers charging by sent me scuttling straight back to the  galley