Day 57 - Wednesday Feb 23 Hong Kong Day 1

Hong Kong Day 1 photos

position at 67:30am: N121 31.11 latitude E114 38.43 longitude
(in the China Sea about 70 SE of Hong Kong, our next port)
temperature: 67F, 100% humidity, very windy 50-60 km/h from the starboard
distance since FLL: 20,436 miles

We awoke to some of our roughest seas and winds yet. The ride has been rougher and rougher since midmorning yesterday. This morning the seas are just roiling and our balcony window is soaking wet and streaming with the sea spray that is being tossed up here to deck 7. The wind is coming from the other side and straight on but we could hear it whistling through the doors and balcony. It must be really harsh on the other side of the ship! We are only traveling about 13 knots and hope that we make it to Hong Kong on time at noon. The headwind is about 50 miles per hour. This morning between 8:30am and 10am, we have to go to the Horizon Lounge for a compulsory body temperature check done by the ship's entertainment staff. We are not making this up. Truly.

We may not be as steady in our posting here over the next couple of weeks. In the next segment, we have only 4 sea days. One of those sea days, we will spend traveling across Cambodia from Vietnam to rejoin the group for the hotel overnight in Bangkok, Thailand. So, we will not have a lot of downtime on the computer for documenting our experiences and observations. Also, we do not know how easy Internet access may be during much of this busy port time. So, don't worry. If we don't post every 24 hours, it does NOT mean that we are dead, or disabled, or comatose, or too unhappy to post, or incapacitated in way other than just too much adventure. So calm down, keep yer britches on, take a deep breath and wait a while to hear from us. We will be posting as often as we reasonably can and apologize in advance to anyone inconvenienced by the delay in updates. Sorry.

This morning as we laid in bed deciding how to face the morning without being tossed about the cabin, we turned on Voyager Today. Jamie did not make a new one for today. But played scenes from past episodes and lots of scenes of videos from the ship and shore excursions since Sydney. It was a nice little reminisce, Debbie had seen a piece of a TV show like this at the end of the previous segment but it played on a different channel than Voyager Today. This is replacing Voyager Today for today anyway. In it there are several minutes of footage of families getting to visit their loved ones who has jobs on board the ship and they are all thanking RSSC and Capt. Dag and the Hotel Director for struggling with the local port & security authorities to make these crew' family visits possible. It was very moving. Then there is a clip of Captain Dag with the mayor of Manila and his cousin. Capt. Dag says that everyone owes the debt of gratitude to this woman who was on the ship, Antoinette Stubbs, who is a cousin of the mayor of Manila. He says that she contacted him and told him that he should talk to her cousin the mayor and maybe he could help. According to Capt. Dag on Voyager Today, he did help and his intervention made the visit possible. The mayor spoke on Voyager Today and expressed his gratitude that the Voyager had graced his city with a visit and he hoped for many more. (We are still not sure what was going on with the rash of cruise ship cancellations that the tour guide reported Manila had suffered in the last 2 weeks.)

So, breakfast in LaVeranda after 7:30am. We both had a quick breakfast of cold cereal again and Debbie had peanut butter toast. We will report that there were NO Chocolate Croissants for those on CC watch! There was so much motion at the rear of the ship on deck 10, that it was like something out of a Marx Brothers movie. There is a little girl on here for the WC that is about 5 years old, she has 3 siblings on with her and her parents. She got sick while the Mom was at the buffet and one of her brothers ran with her for the restroom. From both their expressions, they did not make it all the way to the restroom in time. It was really rough. Debbie got caught swaying in place, afraid to move a foot, holding a bowl half-full of milk in one hand and a box of cereal in the other. Horst, one of the head waiters, saw her, but he couldn't move to help until the lurching subsided. When he got there, they were both laughing and shaking their heads. She didn't spill a drop. He asked if he could help, Debbie told him she didn't think so. He laughed some more and offered to just carry the bowl and she gladly let him. There is a man that lives down the hall from us named Terry. We ate dinner with him in Sydney on the Glass Island. Well, anyway, he always carries a small blue duffel bag with him. He carries on shore. He carries it around all day aboard ship. Today as we were stuck at our breakfast table, afraid to stay, afraid to go... Terry walked in LaVeranda. As he made his way down the tile walk by the wall, Debbie asked Clay if he knew what Terry carries around in the bag. Clay almost spit OJ on the table with laughter. No, Clay has never seen Terry open or remove anything from the bag. Debbie either. She doesn't think she has ever seen him without it, anywhere, anytime. Clay assures her Terry does not carry the bag in his tuxedo. Debbie is not sure. What could he be carrying around in that bag? Debbie believes it is a pet. She thinks it must be a ferret, in fact, a cat or dog would be too noisy. So, it must be a ferret. Clay says we will never know. (Some background here. The night we had dinner with Lars, the hotel director, he told us that a year or 2 ago, on one of the long cruises, there was a woman who took 2 flights and passed her bag through x-ray to board the ship as well and she had a chihuahua in her bag. They discovered it when she left the dog alone in the cabin and he had trashed it. We asked Lars if they made her put the dog off or if they put the woman and the dog off. He said, thank God, he was on vacation at the time and did not have to handle it, but no. RSSC left them both on for the duration of their cruise and when she vacated the cabin that they billed her account for the cost of replacing the entire interior that the dog had destroyed. Then they replaced the whole interior. He said they really had to replace everything in there. But, the real concern for the company had been how this woman had gotten a dog x-rayed 3 times without anyone noticing it!) Debbie thinks Terry is beating the system by always keeping the ferret with him. We were about 10-12 in line to have our temperatures taken. We get in line and Terry gets right behind us! Debbie turns to him and strokes his bag and says, Terry what do you always carry around with you in that bag? Terry laughs and pulls the bag back possessively and calls her "nosy." Clay agrees she is. Terry says, poor you. Debbie, I think you have a ferret. Terry, a what. You know, a ferret, a little furry pet. Terry doubles over in laughter. Debbie tells him to be careful. Terry, opens the bag and sadly he has some reading material, an old and new address book that his is copying over and some cigarettes. He rezips the bag almost all the way and starts stroking, cradling and talking to it. A woman 4 people back, calls out, "Terry, What have you got in that bag?" It is too funny for words. Such is the small, small world of the World Cruisers! We all had normal temperatures.

Debbie decides to tough out aerobic fat burners and is one of only 7 people to attend. About that many also come for basic yoga. By about 10:15am it calmed down. We literally turned a corner and entered the protection of the bay. Hooray! We will be tied up for 3 days now and no more pitching and tossing. Jacquie was telling Debbie that her cabin is on deck 3 and a little forward of the exercise room and that she could hear the ship catching air under the front hull last night and that it was a scary sound before she figured out what it must be based on the motion.

We both went up top for the sail in which due to the heavy fog was a little anticlimatic. We came to a full stop in front of the Intercontinental Hotel on the waterfront of Kowloon and the Capt. announced that he would thank us for our patience as we had Voyager photographed in the foreground of the Intercontinental Hotel. Several of the big camera photogs looked around surprised at where the photographer might be and that it was a poor day for it. Oh well, you take what you get.

Picked up pilot at 11:10am docked about 12:10pm. Not cleared yet at 1:15pm. Cleared about 1:18pm and off by 2pm. We are docked on the starboard side and the view is of the back side of a giant mall and higher up of the backs of billboards! We do at least have a view over water. We walked through a giant continuous mall to finally find an HSBC ATM and get some local currency and then to find out about buses and ferries. We had originally planned to go to Victoria Peak first thing, but the fog is so heavy that we can barely see the top of the peak from the ship, so deferred that for a hope of better weather conditions. Today is very comfortable, not too humid, nice breeze and about 70 degrees F. So, much cooler weather than we have been experiencing, but we like cool weather. So, we were very comfortable.

We took the Star Ferry over to Hong Kong from Kowloon. It was $2.20HKD for first class. We had to turn back the first time because we only had $500HKD notes from the ATM and he would not take any $100 or larger. We walked back through the building and stopped at a money changer/Western Union store and they broke on of the bills for us. Back again and only about a minute wait for the next ferry. (The sign said 7 minute wait the whole time!) The top of the ferry is enclosed and even sitting in the front row, you can only see out the side windows because there are no windows directly out the front. It is enclosed. It was still a fun and scenic ride. We got on and off in about 10 minutes. Debbie read the bus signs out front of the terminal while Clay ate an ice cream cone that he had to buy to get more small bills and change for the bus. Debbie pointed Clay across the street and we read the sign for the bus 260, the express bus to Stanley Market. We met a couple of British couples while we were there and they were taking the bus too. One couple had never taken it before and another couple had about a year ago. The fare was $10.60HKD from the ferry terminal all the way to the Stanley Market. We got on the top deck of a very nice and air conditioned double decker bus and got the left-hand front row. It was like the bus ride from Harry Potter when the Night Bus comes for him and squeezes through tight spots and makes impossible turns! It was amazing. We thought we were going to die a few times. Then, the bus went through a tunnel at Aberdeen and went it came out we started hurtling along a cliffside road reminiscent of the Amalfi Coast drive. We promised ourselves that we would take the 973 bus back since it takes about 1 1/2 hours and skips the tunnel. We also promised ourselves that we would sit in the same seats since they would overlook the side of the cliffs on the way back. Double-decker! We spent about 2.5 to 3 hours there. It was fun and interesting. We got over all the souvenir and gift buying pressure for Hong Kong, anything else will just be gravy on that front now. Most of the real heavy lifting is over here. Now we had a full lecture onboard about shopping in Hong Kong and Roger spoke briefly on it in his port talk. We had been assured that bargaining was required. Maybe they didn't get the memo out at Stanley Market or else things have changed. We had heard that the bargains were not as great anywhere in HK as they had been in past years, but that bargaining was still de rigeur. Well, not today. We did get everyone to come off the prices of the things we bought, but we only bought about half of what we tried to buy because when we tried to bargain the response was always that it was posted at the "sale" price and already marked down 30% or 40%. Of course, most everything we wanted we just went to another stall and bought it at the price we were willing to pay. It was just annoying. We don't have any complaints about the prices of what we bought, but they were not taking 50% off anything, even if you were willing to buy a dozen at at time!

We started back up the road to the bus terminus just as we started seeing Voyager passengers! It seems that it was part of a tour. We don't know how long they had there. But, several of them told us the pressure was on to hurry and get all their HK shopping done. (We checked the excursion book when we got back and they had a full 4 1/2s with a trip to Victoria Peak and a motorized sampan ride, so guess they did not have much free time in the Stanley Market. We did see Kenny Smiles cooling his heels in the DeliFrance.) So, back up to the bus terminus and we read signs until we found but 973 that skips the Aberdeen Tunnel and returns to Tsim Sha Tsui. We double-checked with the driver before boarding that he stopped at the Kowloon Star Ferry bus terminal and he said yes. The fare back on this bus was $13HKD. This ride was even more thrilling than the last one. The views over Repulse Bay were amazing and the little boats in Aberdeen. It got dark as we drove back to the ship. When we rounded the corner from Hong Kong University on the western end of the island and we could see the tall buildings along the harbor starting to light up for the evening.

Our one snafu of the day, was not getting off the bus in front of the Marco Polo Hotel and the Hard Rock Cafe. That would probably have been our shortest walk. If bus 973 was coming directly to the Star Ferry bus terminal then he must have meant to drive across to the east and come back. Because, it was one way into the turnaround complex there and the buses could not go there directly. (It is possible that the driver was right and he was going to stop there, but when he turned away from it, we rang and got off at the next stop which was not for 2 blocks and we walked back to the Ocean Terminal Mall. So, we did not stay on to find out.)

We were back for dinner and had thought to go out to the Kowloon Waterfront to see the lights across the harbor. But, we settled for a partial view from the top of the ship. (The ship that had the prime location was gone when we went on deck.) We had also thought to go to the Temple Street Night Market which is supposed to be about a 15-minute walk from here. But, we deferred that. We do not have a plan for tomorrow. We will wait and see how the visibility is and go from there. So, far we like Hong Kong very much. Most of the people we talked to today, spoke English and very well, including little kids so we have felt very comfortable here.

Hong Kong Day 1 photos