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01/05/25 Thurs. Arrived in Manila in the early hours, got a taxi to the hotel. Check in was at 1200, but the girl on the desk said "as a senior, you can check in early" - not quite sure I like that but hey, we were tired! Had some breakfast and went to bed for a few hours.
During our stay, we went to a couple of malls to wander around the shops, visited Ana's family in Valenzuela and did other touristy things. I contacted Penuwasa and asked if my chain had arrived - it hadn't.
13/05.25 Tues. Time to go home! We packed up our meagre belongings and got a taxi to the airport even though we were well ahead of check in time. Ate in the airport, checked in, wandered around and finally to the departure lounge. Flight delayed 40 minutes!
14/05/25 Weds. Arrived KK at 0100 hrs and ran into immigration problems. They let me through without any question (and sent me out of the airport) but they kept Ana for another hour and were going to send her back on the next flight. They didn't believe she was on a boat, even though she had photos, the ship registration papers, signed affidavit from solicitor, crew lists from Kudat and a return flight ticket for next month. Eventually they let her through but said she would have to leave after 30 days. They do have a problem with Filipinos! Checked into Cititel Express somewhat later than expected, grabbed some fish and chips across the road before turning in for the rest of the night.
21/05/25 Weds. My chain arrived, after I had been chasing the supplier for a few days. The story was that the shipping company had lost the container documents, then Customs forgot to give my chain back after customs clearance. 61 days to deliver! All good.
22/05/25 Thurs. Collected the chain from Penuwasa, put it in the dinghy and took it to the boat - it's 80 metres long, so weighs in at around 120Kg, so not as easy as it sounds!
26/05/25 Mon. With all the chain stowed in the chain locker, (I didn't have the expected 'pyramid' problem) I've shackled on the anchor today, and burnt my feet in the process of coming back to the cockpit! Over the last week, it's been very hot on deck, too hot to go barefoot so I should have known better! Temperature inside the boat has been a constant 36/37oC (98/99oF), so you can imagine the outside temperature.
27/05/25 Tues. Some of you will know that I am having problems with my website since returning from Manila, hence this unorthodox adding of May to the April log (now back where it should be on another page!) I'm spending hours between jobs trying to solve the problem but getting nowhere. While we were away, there were five Windows updates which I installed before trying to update my site, so I wondered if one of those had caused the issue.
The site is written using Microsoft Office Frontpage 2003, it's old and clunky but serves my purpose. Each month I start a new page on the log, which involves copying the previous months HTML code and pasting it into a new page. I then upload it through Filezilla (a FTP server) to Heart Internet (the site host). The problem is........each time I click on 'code' to copy it, the Frontpage program crashes. On the very odd occasion that it doesn't, the code page is empty! I've uninstalled each Windows update, restarting the PC after each action with no success. I've re-installed them, restarting after each, same result. I've uninstalled Frontpage and reinstalled it (4 times) and still the fault remains. I guess the next plan is to install Frontpage on another computer, download the entire site to that pc and try again. That is going to take ages to do! If the problem still remains, then it's the end of the road for my site!
29/05/25 Thurs. I think it's the end .........Windows 11 does not like Frontpage, so getting another computer will not make it work. The only option now is to start again with a WordPress site, but I know nothing about building one and I'm a bit long in the tooth to go learning new computer language! I will try to find out and start another site but it won't be one that I like, having got used to the formatting of Frontpage.
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