Day 48 - Tuesday Feb 14 At Sea Day 3

Day 48 photos

position at 7:00 am: S15 66.40 latitude E114 12.43 longitude
(~425 mile S of Bali, our next port)
temperature: 82F, 99% humidity, partly cloudy
distance since FLL: 17,253 miles

The ocean is still very calm. On deck, early this morning, it was warm and humid with just a little headwind.

The Indian Ocean has been kind to us so far. It is calm and as we remember it when we cruised from Capetown to Singapore in 2001. Debbie has decided that this is the only ocean she will even consider cruising again in the future. Not too limiting.

We have received several warnings that Radisson is off-loading their foreign exchange in Bali. This means that will no longer convert French Polynesian Francs, NZ$ or AU$. In the future, they will only handle US$ or Euros. It is not clear what this means as we travel through the Orient. In the port talk for Sandakan and Kota Kinabalu, Roger says that the US$ will not be generally accepted for purchases, so you will either have to use a credit card or convert the currency off the ship. Since we are using ship's tours for most of these locations, this may not affect us. But we will see how this goes. It is not clear you will find an ATM on every corner in the upcoming countries like we did in Sydney.

At breakfast this morning, the waitress asked if Debbie wanted peanut butter again. Debbie laughed and said no, that yesterday was just kind of a peanut butter day but she she did not need it today. It was the waitress' turn to laugh. She said when she finished working the breakfast shift yesterday, she asked for peanut butter in the crew mess and got some toast and made herself peanut butter toast for lunch. She said it had been a long time since she had one, and that it was Debbie's request that tickled her craving. She said she really loved it with thinly sliced bananas.

The tour manager, Roger, started doing live port presentations again after using a studio to prepare most of the recent presentations. He said this was due to popular demand. So, Clay went to one on Sandakan and Kota Kinabalu, the two stops coming up in East Malaysia on the island of Borneo. Clay got the impression that about the only way to get anything out of these stops was to use the ship tours, and to be ready to roll with the punches as these are very remote places and things may not go as expected. (IE, be sure to bring your own TP.) The things to see there are wildlife and remoteness. Clay is excited about it, even if it means hours in an un-air conditioned mini-bus.

The menus for Valentine's Day have been very disappointing to Debbie. There is no CHOCOLATE! (Not even in the croissants this morning!) What is up with that? She is already very worried about Easter now! There was a Rossini BBQ for lunch on the pool deck. What is a Rossini BBQ? Well, the definition in the Passages was that the chefs would grill filet mignon, foie gras, chicken drum stick and more with salads and sides. We went up to have a look. They were only grilling filet mignons at the time, not that we wanted that or anything else. There were baked potatoes, mixed cauliflower, broccoli and carrots and rice. There was bread and a salad bar. There was an enormous bowl of green peppercorn sauce. It was very hot and humid. We went in LaVeranda to check the buffet and specifically to check the desserts. There are two desserts on the Compass Rose menu for lunch today that Debbie wants. There is nothing else there she really cares about. They had a whole roasted Salmon in LaVeranda, but not the desserts Debbie wants. So, we went on down to Compass Rose. We both ordered sandwiches. The waiter said everyone in his area had ordered a sandwich and what was going on. Debbie smiled and said it must be too hot for anything else. That, or there aren't any really good sounding dishes being offered today. Debbie ordered 2 desserts. When the waiter brought them he looked at the table deciding where to put them. He had given her a small fork and a large spoon. She pushed them as far apart as they would go on the table and spread her arms. He put one down in the middle and looked some more. He finally laughed and moved the first plate to one side and put the other next to it. She liked both. Strawberry omelet with Fruit Sauce. It was a slice of sponge cake folded over pastry cream with 4 strawberry slices on it. The other was Hungarian Dobos Cake. It was sponge cake layered with chocolate cream topped with caramelized sugar. It was very good.

Debbie had a killer aerobics class this morning. Step with toning intervals. Then basic yoga. After lunch, she was not sure what she wanted to do. Take a nap or go to the 3 hard afternoon classes. There was another aerobic-type class to start. Circuit training. She has done this one once and did not really like it much. But, she figures while the seas are calm, she should take all the classes she can. She watched Roger's tour talk on TV and fell asleep, so that decided it. A nap. No classes this afternoon.

Tonight is formal night. We are neither very impressed with the Compass Rose menu for this evening, but Debbie says she has the perfect outfit for Valentine's Day. We dress up and go down to Compass Rose. All the women received a single long-stemmed red rose on entering the dining room. From the comments around us at lunch and dinner we were not the only ones less than impressed with the menus for the holiday. Both the main fish entrees at lunch and at dinner got a lot of questions and negative comments. We didn't have fish. Debbie got the Valentine's Day Delight for dessert. Now that sounds scary, but it was not too bad. We got a table for 2 by a window on the starboard side. We got the moon rise. It was a full moon and made a river of moonlight on the very smooth Indian Ocean. Debbie had cut her meclizine dose in half and had gone to dinner with NO sea bands. So, it was a good evening. Debbie says once again that this is the cruise she has been waiting for. We left the CR by the aft doors and walked past the Captain's table. Debbie pointed out that Dag was having ladies' night. Sure enough, Dag was the only man at a table of 10!

We got back to the room and each had one small red foil-wrapped chocolate heart on our pillows. Happy Valentine's Day!

We expect to arrive in Padang Bai, Bali an hour earlier than scheduled tomorrow according to tomorrow's Passages. But, breakfast will not be served any earlier according to the newsletter.

Day 48 photos