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| An Indonesian Sunset |
(~920 miles S of Sandakan, Malaysia on the island of Borneo, our next port)
temperature: 84F, 90% humidity, partly cloudy
distance since FLL: 17,900 miles
The sea is still like glass and there was a georgeous sunrise to be seen this morning. Had an ordinary breakfast in LaVeranda with no chocolate croissants as expected. Debbie off to 9am aerobics. (This class was interrupted by Capt. Dag who normally does not broadcast into the exercise room for his morning "vords.")
Clay went up for his 2nd deck walk before breakfast and did 2 miles. Some of it went well. While he was up there, he met up with yesterday's elephant couple. Yesterday, when the woman was describing the elephant to Debbie. She also said she had to think of a name for it. Debbie told her to give it a few days, to get comfortable with it in their Voyager Suite and then she would find out its name. The woman told her it was regal, like royalty. Debbie told her she should ask our guide the Balinese word for king and queen then and when she figured out the gender, that could be the elephant's name. King is Raja and queen is Ratu. The woman told Clay today that the elephant's name is Ratu. When Clay informed Debbie, he told her that he was not surprised. He figured there were no male genitals on that carving. Also, some more things we learned from our guide is that there are 30 weeks of 7 days in the Balinese calendar and that they have major Hindu celebrations every 110 days or twice a year. He said that there are also major celebrations in each person's life. Like, at about 13, the tooth filing! They have to front 6 teeth from canine to canine filed off even. They do this to control 6 enemies in the body. Not sure what the 6 were but, like jealousy, envy, lust, greed, and drunkeness.
In his 9am annoucements, Captain Dag said he was bypassing the port of Sandakan, and instead sailing directly to Kota Kinabalu. He said he was doing this for safety reasons with respect to the route we would have to take to get to Sandakan. He said that Sandakan is not the problem. He is concerned about pirates. So, he said we would take a wider route that would keep us away from potential threats, and this would cause us to skip Sandakan. He said it was likely we would be in Kota Kinabalu after midday on the 18th but would spend an overnight. The Captainstressed that he did not think Sandakan was unsafe, but just the route to Sandakan posed what he deemed an unacceptable risk based on information he had received after we left LA. He said that the ship was on "red alert." He said he was worried about activity in the Zulu Sea. (Our map shows a Sulu Sea north of Borneo, between it and Manila. So, we see no way that this alteration keeps us out of the Sulu Sea.)
We had booked a 7-hour tour in Sandakan to see the Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabiliation park as well as a chance to see other wildlife in the area. Obviously, that won't happen. Guess we'll wait to hear from the Tour Desk.
Now when we got the latitude and longitude information off channel 3 on the TV this morning we could see that we were on the exact same route as before, heading towards the Sandakan, or eastern side, of Borneo and we were not routing around to the Kota Kinabalu, or western side, of Borneo. So we're not sure what the itinerary change buys us in routing safety. The big waterhose/nozzle is still below us in place on deck 5. We still cannot see anything that changes our risk factor since we perceived risk at Bali.
Of course, everyone knows that the US State Department has advised no non-essential travel to Indonesia, including Bali, on and off since 2000. Everyone has certainly heard about the Muslim extremist terrorist bombings in Bali. Most likely, everyone had followed the kidnapping of tourists including Americans from a dive resort island in this region in 2000 and its grisly ending. So, we knew if we were going on a World Cruise that we would have to be at risk of threat and we deemed it acceptable and assumed that RSSC had done its own research and had also deemed the risks acceptable. In any event, while ever aware of inherent risks, we have not worried about it until now. What information has come to Captain Dag between LA and now that could be more dire or direct threat than what had been previously published?
In Debbie's research from the public library last summer, she had photocopied a section from "Let's Go Southeast Asia 2005" about the Eastern part of Malaysian on the island of Borneo. A couple of days ago, when we were reading her CD of internet research as well as her photocopied library book sections, we had discussed terrorism and the many threats we might encounter. Knowing from our last trip in the Indian Ocean and through the Straits of Malacca that this is not a safe place to sail, if indeed there is one anywhere at all. Debbie had at that time, read to Clay a !Warning! section in this book (printed in 2004) that went like this, "Rebel separtist groups from Mindanao in the Philippines are the region's newest pirates; boatloads of armed men scout the seas surrounding the islands for boats with valuable cargo, including passengers. Rich foreign tourists, worth millions in ransom, are their most precious bounty. Though such events are very rare, exercise caution by traveling on regular ferries rather than small charters." She also had in her electronic files this from Frommer's Online: "Exercise Caution--In April 2000, 22 people, including 11 foreign tourists, were kidnapped from a dive resort on Sipadan Island off the east coast of Sabah. This would be the first of four incidents of kidnapping, mostly of Malaysian workers, in this area by the Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group in the southern Philippines with known links to Al-Qaeda. While Malaysia responded by placing security forces on 23 islands and six additional strategic locations, the U.S. Department of State still advises Americans to exercise caution when traveling in this area. Despite the warning, foreign visitor arrivals to Sipadan have doubled since the advisory was first issued."
Lunch was highly anticipated by Debbie. Pizza & Pasta buffet on the Pool Deck. It was a big disappointment. There were square, barely warmed sliced of pizza in the big paella pans. Three kinds. Pineapple, cheese and tuna. They have a pasta station at all the buffets, but not, alas, this one. There were 3 baked macaroni dishes in chafing pans. Cheese tortellini in tomato, rigatoni in creamy bolognese, and shells in mushroom sauce. Skipped dessert and the heat and humidity and came back to the cabin to check channel 3 on TV. At noon, Freddie had announced our postion and we were making good time leaving the Java Sea and entering the strait. He gave a name but we could not understand it. Our atlas shows it as Selat Makasar. After lunch, the ship stopped. We lost water. We lost air conditioning. Finally, the Captain came over the speakers into our cabins and announced that there was a minor technical glitch and a problem with a short in a circuit board and that they were testing and trying to find a way to fix it. He made 2 separate announcements and each time told us not to worry, that we were not in danger. Right! Now, tell us not to worry! After you tell us we are on red alert and the ship is not under power! What the heck??
Debbie went off to afternoon exercise classes from 3:30pm to 5:30pm. We traveled from 6 to 10 knots until 5pm. Sometime between 5 and 5:30pm we got back up to full speed, or 19 knots. During this time, they also turned off power, water and AC to different sections of the ship intermittently. All in all, a very exciting day. Don't vorry.
Nothing appeals on the menus tonight and it is Informal. We plan to go to LaVeranda. LaVeranda is back to the Mediterrean Bistro.
There has been a lot of trash visible in the sea today, more so than any day we can remember. Also, Jamie made an annoucement that any passengers who have not crossed the equator at sea, and who would like to participate in a King Neptune ceremony tomorrow afternoon to please sign up at the reception desk.
There was a special sunset this evening showing a very rosy sky. After dinner, we walked on deck 12 to look at the night sky. We saw lightning at a distance on both sides of the ship. On the port side, the lightning was pink, the same color as the sunset.
LaVeranda was serving osso bucco this evening instead of lobster bouillabaisse they showed on TV and our in-room menu. So Clay was pleasantly surprised.
