Four nationalities onboard Sophia

We arrived back in Langkawi (Malaysia) the first week of April and spent just over a week there before we got new visitors, yeah, we love visitors. For the first time it was Phil's visitors, his cousin Cassie and her boy friend Pablo. We are now four nationalities on Sophia: New Zealand, Danish, Australian and Argentinean, which to me is pretty cool.

Immediately we sailed back to Thailand with them. Langkawi is nice and there's lots of beautiful anchorages, but one thing Langkawi unfortunatley lacks, is clear water. Koh Lipe just 5 hours north is much better. We will probably just hang around the Butang group (which Koh Lipe is part of) and then head back to Langkawi.

During our week in Langkawi, we didn't do a whole lot of interesting and exciting stuff, hence no blog post. Both Phil and I did some sewing, Phil a sail, I some clothes and various other things. Langkawi is cruiser central and right now most are finishing up in Thailand and heading south as it's chance-over season and the SW monsoon will kick in some time in May. It meant lots of our friends were already there, or turning up, so good times were had. I'll let the photos do the rest of the talking. Especially the underwater photos taken with the new camera, I love it already!

sunset over Telaga harbour on Langkawi, lots of cruising boats gathered there at the moment

all the cruising kids had their own fire on the beach

yeah, back to rotis in Malaysia

and cheap beer, Carlsberg makes these skol, less than 50 cents per beer :-)

I made new tops for the Nalukai girls, here Phoebe sporting hers

Phil and Argentinean Pablo

Phil's cousin Cassie (classic mistake of underestimating sun on the first day) and I at Lipe

it's a good street dog life on Lipe

and back to Thailand's curries

March's cruising costs for Thailand

I knew it was going to be an expensive month already at the beginning of the month when I ordered a new underwater camera and a new kindle on amazon. Unfortunately our underwater camera has give up, been too deep (over 10 m)  too often I'm afraid. The new one is good to 15 meters, so hopefully that should be fine, if not is supposed to warm me I'm going too deep. Phil killed my kindle when he put a knee onto the screen, ups. It's very hard to be without a kindle, we LOVE them.

All up we spent NZ$ 2477 for the month of March, definitely one of the more expensive months. Two big shopping trips (with car hire) didn't really help either, although we did get some yummy things we have been missing, e,g. falaffel mix, lollies and sour cream to name a few.

We spent a lot on boat bits as well, specifically $404 on winch service and repair. It took them two goes to get it fixed, and over two weeks, not very impressive, but at least the winch is finally working now and we're happy to be able to move around again.