The mighty Puteri Mahsuri

5 days after leaving Canada, I arrived on Langkawi Island, 30km from the boarder of Thailand and Malaysia. This Island is surrounded by 98 Islands in high tide and 103 in low tide. It is absolutely breath taking and the weather was a vast contrast to what I was used to in Canada.

I went there to work for the Malaysian Wilderness centre taking groups of Malaysian teenagers on 5 day OE coursess, but immediately got transferred to work / live onboard the ‘Puteri Mahsuri’ (a 70m long square rig tall sailing ship) for a month to teach the Royal Malaysian Navy and Ministry of Education Officials how to sail the ship on 5 and 10 day long courses.
















I was excited about the idea until I got onboard I realized a few things…
1) There were no other women onboard
2) There were 60 other dudes onboard
3) I was the only English speaking native
4) Everyone else were Muslim men; who are brought up to just socialize with the men and then eventually just marry the women – not actually be friends with them in the middle!!
5) Communication between me and the others would be virtually non existent.
6) This was a massive sailing ship which had 11 sails and 98 ropes, no winches and no modern equipment to help sail it.
7) I needed to learn everything about how to sail this monstrosity in 3 days before I would instruct my first group.
8) The person who taught me how to sail it could not speak much English and I definitely could not speak much Malay.
9) My students most likely would not speak much English either.
10) It was a Muslim ship so no alcohol was allowed onboard.
11) And the only time I could leave the ship was when the guys went to the Mosk for Friday prayers… if there was enough room for me on the support boat.















First month was hell – To sum it up I was super lonely, home sick, stranded and bored for an entire month - but I asked to stay on for another month so that I could attempt to make the most of it… the next month I made a huge effort to learn the language, become mates with the crew and students onboard, and learn as much as I could about sailing and Malay life.





It was one of the best months of my life. I absolutely loved it. I did not hold back for a second and made sure I was learning and speaking the language at every moment possible and talking to the guys constantly. Some of the crew felt like second brothers to me, I fell in love with the ship and couldn’t imagine going back to living on land.



Hey I even got a few marriage proposals!!!!






I lived onboard for a total of 103 day. It was the craziest, weirdest and most liberating experience of my life!!!