Day 60 - Sunday Feb 26 At Sea

Day 60 photos

position at 10am: N20 26.520 latitude E111 24.140 longitude
(325 miles east of Hong Gai, our next port)
temperature: 65F, 98% humidity
distance since FLL: 20,733 miles

We had smooth, smooth seas overnight and got a good night's sleep. Clay was up early and walked 4 miles on deck before 7am. Debbie slept in until after 7am. Since it is Sunday, we had breakfast after 8am in Compass Rose. No chocolate croissants. Debbie started with a bowl of raspberries and then had Eggs Benedict and was informed that she could have that with champagne and caviar if she wanted because it was the special today. No Thanks! Clay had 2 eggs over easy with sausage and toast. Today marks the halfway point! We are halfway through the World Cruise.

Clay went to Roger's port talk at 8:45am. Debbie went to aerobics at 9am. Debbie sprayed more clothes with permethrin this morning to get ready for the tropics of SE Asia. For lunch, they were having a fish BBQ on the Pool Deck but we did not go. We returned to CR and had sandwiches. We skipped dessert and came back to the cabin to eat Clay's Maltesers. Debbie worked on catching up on the journal and Clay napped. At 3:30pm, Debbie went back to exercise, Pilates Mat and Basic Yoga. During the afternoon, we cruised through dozens of fishing nets. These nets were stretched between 2 barrel size floats, and these floats were very close to the ship (one float hit the ship on the port side just under our balcony). In the afternoon, Vietnam Passenger's Landing card were delivered to our cabin. We need to carry with us all the time. It will be stamped each time we leave the ship in a different place. Debbie was in exercise class on the other side of the ship at the time and reported seeing the same thing off the starboard side at the same time. At 6pm, we had the Block Party for this segment. Lots of Chinese silk was in evidence. We have 2 new sets of neighbors across the hall, but only one cabin came out to introduce themselves. They are from Texarkana, TX.

Some catching up since not much to report on a very calm and smooth sea day. We sailed overnight in the South China Sea, in the morning we entered Hainan Strait, and now we are in the Gulf of Tonkin.

We have not scanned and posted menus in weeks. Clay just couldn't sit with his foot down due to the swelling he was still getting from the sprain. Unfortunately, for scanning purposes, now we will be very busy with port days for a couple of weeks. We have not forgotten and our inattention to the food aspect does not reflect anything other than our own conditions and focus. Hopefully, we will get caught up with this aspect of our posting because the menus have not been repeating, which was the reason we stopped posting them once before.

Some news on the next port. We will not use Hong Gai. It is a tender port. Instead we will use Bai Chay which has a new pier where we will dock. RSSC will run a complimentary shuttle bus between the pier and the small port town of Bai Chay. Hanoi, which is the reason for this call, is expected to be between 2 and 3 hours drive away. It used to be 3 hours but Roger says work is complete on the highway and he hopes it will be closer to 2 1/2 hours this time. Roger says that Bai Chay is a simple port town but shows the local color of Vietnam. We are booked on a 10 1/2 hour tour to Hanoi tomorrow. We do not sail until 3pm on the next day. So, we added a tour at the Tour Desk. They actually added another one. It was a junk ride on Halong Bay. Debbie balked at any more boat rides. The other was a morning walk in Hong Gai. Since we will not be in Hong Gai anymore we have to be bused there. The bus apparently has to go on a ferry to get to Hong Gai from Bai Chay. (Which we did not know until days after we booked the morning walk! So, a boat ride with a bus!) Roger warned that we have to get off the bus and walk onto the ferry, then the bus will drive on, then the ferry will sail, when we reach the other side of whatever water it is, then the bus will drive off and we will walk up to rejoin it. Roger in his port talk warned that there was not much to see in Hong Gai, and that the guide would not talk to us because there was nothing to tell us about what we would see. He said there is a local market there and warned that it is not for the squeamish. He confessed that the odor made him gag last October. There is a stop at a coffee house at the end of the walk. Roger said that last October, most guests on the tour refused to enter the coffee house and just returned to the bus. This is all very heartening. Ah well, it is only a $16 tour and we just did it for something to do that day before we learned that we were docking in a different place entirely. Also, as far as we know the Night on the Water - Halong Bay fishing on a traditional junk was cancelled. We tried to sign Clay up for that back in December and again each month up to 4 days ago. The problem was that they never had single pricing, only double bunk bed pricing. Last we heard they only had Clay and a single woman interested but they still did not have single pricing because they did not think they had enough interest. Clay asked 4 days ago and Jeff told him RSSC had cancelled it because they could not guarantee the safety of the vessel. According to Roger's tour talk, the junks that they will use the next morning though are very nice and safe and equipped with all the life preservers. Also, they cancelled the Flightseeing over Halong Bay by Helicopter Tours. Roger said that the Vietnamese government had commandeered all the helicopters for that day. He said it had never happened in the 11 years he had been in this business and he did not know what was going on, but that it is a communist country and if they want all the helicopters in the country for official use for one day, that is what happens. After dinner tonight we learned that the weather forecast for tomorrow is 60 to 65 degrees F, partly cloudy and 60% chance of rain. Not quite the weather that we were expecting, but we like cool, so that will work for us.

We also stopped by TGIFridays after dinner. They had a menu outside. It was not something that could be photographed due to the layout and glass frame. It has been years since we were in a TGIFridays, so we cannot comment on whether the dishes were the same. There seemed there to be more selection than there has been to date in Latitudes. Historically, there was a fixed menu at Latitudes, no matter if it was Indochine, Polynesian, or Outback Aussie. They served one appetizer, one soup, one salad, 3 tiny entrees and dessert. This menu appeared to have a few choices of appetizer, soups, and several choices of entrees. We will be going for our turn on March 1, so we'll report more on this later.

Day 60 photos