(Daniel) This morning we all woke up a bit later than yesterday, when Fie got up I went with him to the small café next door.  The café is basically a shed where the owners put out a few breakfasts wrapped in a banana leaves,  they wait until these are all sold before closing for the day.  Sometimes the place is closed before I wake up.  Other days, it stays open all day and closes when the sun sets.

This morning there was a small group of people, two men playing chess, another man drinking coffee on his own.  When Fie and I walked in, it was to some strange expressions, but the people soon returned to what they were doing.  The owner served us some coffees, and brought the tray of breakfasts from the chess players table to our own.  I took a bun while Fie opted for the banana skin breakfast, this consisted of a pudding which looked like it started out as rice, in side was a sweet sticky substance, which I think was coconut.  We discussed the 250km round trip off road journey to Kenyir Dam tomorrow.  I was feeling bad about my boat, through a series of coincidences the other day, I had not only lost the boat to some fishermen, but had also destroyed my engine beyond my own abilities to repair it.

Fie turned to the man who owned the café, and asked him in what appeared to be a very bad standard Malay for a boat mechanic. The man actually knew someone, and phoned a guy, who apparently would come right over.  I paid the bill, and walked back with Fie to get the engine from the porch.  A few minutes later a man arrived in a car.  He took a look at the engine and told us that it didn’t look good but that he would strip the engine down, and let us know how it looked later this evening.  Once again I didn’t ask the price, as I have now learned that to ask the price first would mean that the person doing the job will try to save as much time and expesnse as possible, whereas if you allow them to do the work first, and then ask how much it cost afterwards, honour dictates that they would have to give you a good price for trusting them.

With the engine now in expert hands, I decided to go back out to the area where we saw the shark yesterday, maybe I would get a few more fish before he turned up this time! Thomas, the two boys and I dragged the boat back down to the water, then we carried the engine down and fitted it to the before pushing out to sea, the craft with all of our fishing equipment inside and then starting the engine.  Actually, talking about fishing equipment, I don’t think that I have mentioned just how much fishing equipment these guys brought with them.  They must have thirty rods between them, and boxes and boxes of fishing tackle, bait that he uses, nets and anything else that you could possibly associate with fishing!  Fie has designed and built rod holders which are spring loaded, and so on a hard tug,  the line will strike for you, leaving you only to reel in the unfortunate fish.   (At night he lines up four or five rods like this, but still doesn’t seem to have any more luck than the rest of us!)

Anyway, we were driving out to the rocks where I swam yesterday, Fie had elected to stay and man the radio again, I think that he either can’t swim, or he doesn’t like the sea too much.  In my experience Asians aren’t the best sailors!  As anyone who has taken a ferry boat in Asia will agree with, it is always the Local people who are seasick when the water gets rough!

When we arrived at the rocks, the others put in lines to try and catch fish using squid as bait. I dived in and loaded the spear gun, shooting a small red snapper almost immediately.  But my luck ran out then, as I didn’t get a chance at another fish until about an hour later when I shot another small snapper before injuring my fingers on each hand.  This was because the gun misfired when the elastic didn’t catch properly in its seat on the spear.  I gave up then, frustrated and sore.  The boys had caught some small grouper, which meant that we had enough for lunch anyway.  So we turned around and headed back to the beach.

Over lunch I discussed my boat again.  Fie, who was probably getting a bit sick of moaning said that we should go and ask for it back.  I didn’t like the idea, but decided that I would offer the boys some money for it’s return.  We jumped into Fie’s Truck, and drove back to the beach where I had given the boat away two days before as payment to a baying group of fishermen who had rescued my craft from the waves in my absence.  As I said before I was in the Wolf, stuck up to my axles in the soft sand about 2km up the beach trying to return and recover the craft.

The boys were nowhere to be seen, but there were a few old fisherman around, who we approached and asked if they knew who the boys were.  They certainly knew of the incident yesterday,  and it was apparently big news!  I have grown immune to embarrassment from this kind of thing, used to an audience now from having thousands of people stand around watching me at work during the journey this far.

The men told us that the boys all hung around at the restaurant on the corner, so we drove around  there, apparently the boys lived across the road, the man was even able to point out the house where we could find them. I felt a mix of hope and fear.  It seemed as if my boat was within my grasp again, but some of the boys were quite rough looking, and I had no idea how they would take our request.

As we walked in to the porch area in front of the small house an old lady came out, she was dressed only in a long sarong and looked to be around 65, although she could have been much younger, (I feel confident that she won’t read this!)  The old lady listened to Fie, and then pointed at the two young boys sitting underneath the house, which was on low stilts.  Rather than let us talk to them, they ushered us over to a seat, where the mother, Father and two boys came and sat with us.  It seemed as if the two boys were already in the mothers bad books, as she barked at them to explain.  They told the story, and I could see that they gave a true rendition of events.  The mother looked happy about something, and told the father something.

He said that we can give him anything that we like, and take the boat.  Fie handed him 500RM, about $15.  We took the boat and left.  As we walked away, I saw the mother take the money from the boys, and bark at them again.  They walked away, never having once looked at us!  I get a feeling that just as a series of coincidences allowed me to loose my boat another series, i.e whatever the boys had done wrong.  Had allowed me to get it back.  It sounds crazy, but on this trip I can really feel the ebb and flow of fortune, and see the patterns emerging in the way a make decisions.  I have abandoned superstition, as I have said many times before, but this is something else, something explainable, Karma.

The boat was still minus a floor, so we drove to a sawmill, and bought a large sheet of their a-grade ply.  I also picked up some spray laquer and longer screws.  We drove back with the wood where I measured and marked out the floor for cutting.  While I worked Fie came out and told me that the mechanic had phoned to say that engine was working, and ready to pick up.  The bill was around $5.  Fie and one of the boys agreed to go and get the engine.  (By the way I did know these guys names at the time, it’s just that I seem to have blocked them from my mind, now that I am in another country writing this!)

I started to cut out my new one piece boat floor, when the other young friend of Fie came out to help. This is the guy who hit the Wolf in the Jungle in Cameron.  He and I worked hard, sawing with my small handsaw from the toolkit.  It was not easy, we were forced to take turns, sawing until we became tired and then swapping to hold the wood while the other drained his energy cutting out the 2.5 metre boat floor.  Once we finished, I had to trim the wood again, and then spray the lacquer onto the wood to prevent it rotting from the sea water.  I put a border of Gaffer tape around the edge to reduce rubbing, and then screwed the bulkhead down into the floor to make the whole thing more rigid.  With the floor fitted, I inflated the boat.  It still held air, and the new floor popped into place perfectly as the sides became rigid.  The old floor had been made of five separate sections, which bent under pressure.  This new floor is completely rigid, which should make the boat much faster in the water.

Fie returned then with the engine, which we tested.  Then we packed the engine into the trailer, and took the boat into the house to pack later.  Everyone started packing their stuff away then, ready for our trip to Kenyir dam tomorrow.  Thomas made some light food, which we ate, at the table.  My laptop, which has worked perfectly for the entire trip so far was in the corner, playing some music.  I was also running a defrag on the memory card, which had corrupted and lost my photos from the  second attempt at the fallen tree in the jungle.  Someone had turned off the power at the socket which meant that the battery died then, while the machine was still running the defrag.  For the non techies among us, this is never a good thing.  I plugged the machine in straight away. And restarted.  It had stalled in the defrag, but started up ok, if a little slow.  I started the defrag again, and left the music playing.

I sat back down with my ear really starting to hurt.  The others just found this funny, probably happy that something was going against me, after I had caught all the fish we had been eating!  I could hear the music faltering, so I abandoned the defrag and restarted the machine again, this time it went into safe mode.  I have seen this before, it is a quick death.  I spent the next ten minutes going through a series of restarts, and attempts to go back to a previous restore point, but the whole thing died.  Hard drive failure.  I won’t go into how much the information on this machine means to me, but suffice to say that it contains the only copy of 5 years of photos, and everything that I have worked on for the Lone Wolf project.  Of course I had backed up the project files, but my photos, and almost as painful my music were all gone.  I tried to tell myself that I would sort it out in the right place, probably Thailand.  But felt really low at the prospect of loosing everything.  The diary entries which I had written for the last five days were also in the Outlook folder, and these would be a real pain to write again.

My bad mood was getting ugly, and we had to get up at 5am tomorrow, so as to get the whole day fishing at the dam.  I was lucky enough not to have too much to pack, but what had started as a nagging ear throbbing had started to turn nasty, so I lay down for a while.  I have a lot of experience with these ear infections, from my experience as a diver.  If they are ignored they can linger for ages.  I slept, until when the others had finished packing, they came and woke me up. 

My ear felt like hell, It was swollen, and I couldn’t hear through it.  The pain was incredible, much worse than I have experienced with an ear infection before.  I tried to explain to the others, but they didn’t understand.  They wanted to go to a café and get dinner.  I took some ice from the ice box, and made a pack.  I resigned myself to asking them to buy me some medicine, and bring it back with them.  I would have driven myself, but every move of my head sent spears through my brain.  They left, and I lay in pain for around three hours.  When the boys got back, they had been to a clinic, buying the best painkillers that they could find, as per my request.  I took them and one more for good measure,  then went straight to sleep on the ice pack hoping that the infection would be alright by tomorrow.

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