House hunting in Iskander: A seakayaking microadventure in search of a home

Oct 27

If you are struggling to convince your wife or partner to join you on a microadventure, I have a solution for you.

Recently, together with my wife Stephanie we paddled 27km along the coast of Southern Malaysia. This is the longest one-day trip we have undertaken so far in our Seaeagle FastTrack inflatable kayak (christened the ‘Divorce Machine’). Stephanie loved the trip and hardly seemed to realize just how long we had been on the water. How did I convince her to come with me and why did she seem to cope with 5 hours of paddling so easily? The main reason was that I had told her we were ‘house hunting’ and she could choose a property of her liking during the paddle.

For those reading this who may not be aware of the Iskander project, lets just say it is an enormous area of development in Southern Malaysia bordering with Singapore. Billions of dollars of local and foreign investment are pouring into this area as it attempts to leverage itself off its strategic location, right next to Singapore. Singapore has a scarcity of land and the associated soaring real estate prices, mean that the spill-over into Iskander area in Malaysia with its abundance of land, much lower costs and favorable exchange rate make it an attractive alternative for business and also individuals to live and work. You can read more about Iskander here.

This was our first ‘house hunting’ microadventure and it turned out to be very good fun. Every house/building/fish farm and apartment we paddled past we discussed the style and the location and if we thought we would like to live there or not. We left from the beautiful Puteri Harbour with its million dollar condominium projects and paddled up past small fishing villages, fish farms and reclamation projects to the enourmous new condominium project called ‘Danga Bay’. Over 9000 seafront condominium units are being built, in this one development over the next 3 years.

During our paddle schools of fish jumped out of the water beside our boat, the currents swirled in confusing directions, the sun beat down mercilessly and in the distance we saw huge tropical thunderstorms sweep over the Island of Singapore. After three hours we finally found our dream house located on Danga Island. You can see it in the photo’s below. We called it ‘The White House’. One thing I had neglected to tell Stephanie was our budget constraints. Some post-trip research shows the property prices on Danga Island range from RM15 Million to RM30 Million. Oh well, dreams are free. That evening we were safely back in our small apartment in Singapore, feeling comfortable and content and proving that you don’t need million dollar sea front properties to be happy. All the same, it was a great excuse to go for a paddle. Happy microadventuring and enjoy the photo’s below!