Halong Bay photos
position at 8:45 am: N20 57.5 latitude E107 3.55 longitude
(Bai Chay)
temperature: 59F, 90% humidity, cloudy but not foggy as it was Yesterday
distance since FLL: 21,035 miles
Today we woke up around 6am to be ready to sail out. It was about 50 degrees and misting again. But, without the heavy fog of yesterday's sail in. It was very windy and the water was really choppy. About 2 foot waves in what might be called a river vs. bay where we are docked. We did not sail out until about 7:30am, a half-hour delay. Most of the delay was caused by the fact that a freighter docked in front of us had its rope on top of ours and a coalition had to meet to work out the logistics of that. We sailed out about 10 miles. If the rocks were not in the way you could see Hong Gai and Bai Chay from our position. After we rounded the corner under the bridge the wind really calmed down and so did the waves. Good. Debbie was sweating the Junk ride already.
Debbie went to 8:15 Morning Stretch class. She said she could use a good stretch after 6 hours on the bus yesterday. She found out then that Jacquie had added Fat Burner Aerobics at 9am and Absolutely Abs at 10:15am. Now she had a real dilemma, if she had known about the classes yesterday morning she would never have booked a 3 hour Junk boat ride. Jacquie, and Peggy in class, encouraged her to take the Junk boat that it would be unique and she agreed. That is why she booked it. That and to avoid a sea day at anchor! But, still not wild about the thought of all that time on a small boat. At the end of stretch class, she could decide or not until after setting foot on the junk boat and she could bolt then if she needed to but would still miss classes.
Our tour was rescheduled while we were at breakfast in LaVeranda. It is now at 9:20am instead of 9am. We are in group 2. Group 2 wound up not being boarded on the Junk boat until about 10:10am. This was a great tour. We had a wonderful morning. The water was not glassy smooth, but the ride was not rough and bouncy either. It was OK. Debbie took a double dose of meclizine this morning and wore her Relief Band. Debbie started out in her big red parka, but Clay convinced her it had warmed up to about 70 degrees. Now she could see the temp outside was only 60, but let him convince her to just take a windbreaker. Big mistake. It was a chilly, windy morning. We boarded and went to the top, open-air deck of the Junk to ride. It would have been very pleasant if we had been better attired. It started raining near the end and we got under the covered area up top then. Inside it was set up with booths and a center aisle, like a diner. There were windows all around but you couldn't see much. Then there were the vendors. About an hour out, one of our fellow passengers came up and said Debbie was missing all the shopping and some guy's wife was spending all his money. Debbie went up and down after that. It was like a shopping party or something. They would bring out pearls, then embroidered T's, then embroidered bags, then silk robes, then men's shirts, then tablecloths, at one point she heard them say next was mah-jongg sets! The problem was that then everyone was watching the center aisle and completely missed the scenery through which we were sailing. Debbie did buy 2 things. But, mostly she was enjoying the scenery and the fact that she was riding on a Junk boat in the open-air and not enclosed and queasy. We saw lots of strange rocks, little fishing boats, a fishing village, a pearl farm, caves, and a couple of island temples. Between 11am and noon, as we were sailing back to Voyager, Debbie spotted a big white cruise ship sailing towards the unfinished bridge of Bai Chay/Hongai. We watched it until it turned the corner to the dock. It looked familiar and about the same size as Voyager, but it was distant. Debbie went down and asked the guide. He said it was Oceania's Nautica. He said it is sailing north as we sail south and this is where we cross. He said he had been down in Saigon doing guiding for them and the reason he was on Halong Bay today was for their tours this afternoon. (Remember that these tours just became available for us!) Debbie said, well so much for the low tide reason that we had to leave the dock at 7am and the guide just snickered behind his hand and shook his head. He said that Nautica was docking there now and had been scheduled to be there, so we could not be docked there until 3pm as originally scheduled no matter what.
We are very glad that we had the opportunity to do the Halong Bay Junk tour and would highly recommend it. Dress accordingly and do not be afraid to go for overkill. You could always take some off or put some on. Bring small bills of US dollars as there is shopping.
We stayed at anchor until 3pm waiting for the 1-hour tender return of the overnight guests to Hanoi. They had to be picked up by tender in Hongai. Because it was an hour tender ride, they are the only guests to tender here. No other tenders ran. Debbie was half-way watching and did not see the tender arrive. We assume that it did arrive because we started turning and sailed out at 3pm with no announcements or horn blowing. The interest and distraction of the afternoon was the beggars in boats. People were throwing them fruit, cokes, shampoo, etc. from their cabins. It went on for about an hour and seemed like a bad idea. The longer it went on the more of them showed up. It may have been going on all day. When the Junk boat returned to the tender gangway about noon today we got behind 3 small local boats with families aboard, as well as their laundry, and dogs. It was not clear why they were there then but apparently that is what they were doing. It was amazing that we did not have more little boats show up when word got out that it was like Halloween trick-or-treat time here around Voyager.
Debbie had 2 exercise classes to go to starting at 4:30pm. The Gulf of Tonkin seas were not smooth as before and once we left Halong Bay things started getting ugly. The later it got the rougher it got. Debbie's first class of Yoga/Pilates was hazardous. Everyone in the class fell at least once. Debbie toughed it out after earning her sea legs this morning. When she got back from class though she had had enough. Tonight is Informal and when Clay asked her where she wanted to go for dinner, she didn't. She studied the menus upstairs and down and decided that she would just as soon order a pizza and watch TV in the room. Well, so much for well laid plans. The pizza we got was just cheese, not 3-meat. The movie that was to start at 7pm on channel 11 and was the only one we had not seen never came on. Channel 11 just played static for the next hour. Debbie called and ordered a 3-meat pizza again and this time we got 2 of them. Oh, well. We tried and we won't go hungry anyway.
Tomorrow's Passages says that the expected high temperature in Da Nang is 64 degrees F with a quarter inch of rain expected. Not a great weather day. Also, it says that starting tomorrow they are having Casa D'Angelo in LaVeranda. Apparently, this is a Fort Lauderdale restaurant that is sharing some recipes. We will try it some night soon and report back. For now rough seas, may send us to bed early. At least we will be ashore tomorrow.
Halong Bay photos
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Day 61 - Monday Feb 27 Bai Chay on Halong Bay for Hanoi, Vietnam
Hanoi photos
position at 8:45 am: N20 57.5 latitude E107 3.55 longitude
(Bai Chay 100 miles by road E of Hanoi, Vietnam)
temperature: 59F, 100% humidity, foggy and misting
distance since FLL: 21,032 miles
We were up early this morning because we wanted to see the sail in to Halong Bay. It was lightly raining and foggy and visibility was poor. The water was just smooth grey slate. There are lots of small fishing boats around and larger house-type boats and some small freighters. It is frankly a little eerie.
Just after 8am when we were scheduled to be docked, and we still could not see anything, the Captain announced over the loudspeakers that we were sailing in Halong Bay and due to "um...traffic" that our arrival would be delayed by at least an hour. Now, we are fairly observant and the only "um...traffic" the Capt. could possibly be referring to is the 2 guys we stopped to pick up about 6:45am this morning before we got in the thick of the rocks for which Halong Bay is famous. Capt. Dag said all excursions would proceed as planned just later than scheduled after we are cleared to go ashore. Then, he said he had been informed that we have to leave the dock in Bai Chay (if that is actually where we are now, he was not really clear about that) at 7am tomorrow instead of 3pm. He said that meant that the Hong Gai walking excursion was cancelled. He said we should get more information later. Let's hope. Roger has emphasized that if you want to travel in this part of the world and on ships that you have to be very flexible and willing to just enjoy whatever comes your way and that if you are inflexible that you should travel some other way. We guess. But, hey, we have said since day one of booking this that we are just on for the ride and so we are.
Wherever it is we are getting ready to dock is a much larger town than we had been prepared for, but then again it is not clear that anyone aboard Voyager has ever been to this new place with the dock before. It extends for quite a distance on either side of a gap with an unfinished bridge between the 2 sides. There are ferries running back and forth.
We have been warned of heavy traffic, pressing throngs and hordes of abjectly impoverished people begging and desperate stealing. Hopefully, it will not actually be as bad as all that, but we will know first-hand shortly.
We have brought all the ferry traffic to a standstill while we sail through. We are actually sailing through the gap in the incompleted bridge! Good thing it is not finished! The bridge had a clearance of 50m according to a sign on it and Voyager slipped under the bridge with 5-10 feet to spare. The new dock facilities are on the other side of the bridge. It is a good-sized container facility beyond a petroleum facility. We are heading for a stretch of concrete just past the containers based on the buses parked there. We are an hour late now and still not yet docked, much less cleared which apparently is even trickier.
We all have an immigration card that we are to have with us at all times and it will be stamped each time we leave and reboard the ship. We are still awaiting information on how we leave Vietnam through Cambodia which we are doing on an RSSC ship's excursion. Clay asked at the Tour Desk yesterday and was told we should expect documents any day now.
The Captain is spinning the ship in place again and we will be docked on the starboard side. Our port side view will be across the bay. We just got a cancellation letter for the walking tour. The letter states that we must leave the dock in Hong Gai at 7am. It appears between the information in Capt. Dag's 8am announcement and this letter, that we will NOT be able to leave the ship tomorrow at all unless we sign up for the Halong Bay by Junk tour. We still do not know where we are now. The letter says we are in Hon Gai and in Hongai. It says tomorrow morning we will sail and anchor approximately 2 hours away from Hong Gai. Like we said, we are just on for the ride, we're going where they're going, whether we know where we are or not. Sorry, for those trying to really map us out. We don't know. Just back from the Tour Desk to sign us up for the Junk boat tour of Halong Bay tomorrow. We hate to have a sea day anchored 10-miles out and doing nothing when we are this close to a new country, also hate to bob around in a tiny boat.... Anyway, asked where we are. We are docked in Bai Chay. It is on the left side of the unfinished bridge as we sailed in and Hongai is on the right. They are still running a complimentary shuttle to Bai Chay for people staying aboard today. A good part of the Vietnamese Army was boarding while Debbie was down there. We hope to clear soon and so will go on downstairs. It is just before 10am. Here is our tour description:
==============
Duration: 10 Hours.
Seated, Wheelchair.
Though it takes a long drive of over 3 hours to reach the nation's capital, Hanoi is a city not to be missed. Boasting glorious French colonial architecture and numerous lakes, the city is the jewel in Vietnam's crown, a little known blend of east and west with bicycle cluttered streets and a nation of people reluctant to join the frenetic atmosphere of their southern counterpart. You will arrive in Hanoi's imposing Ba Dinh Square which is dominated by the impressive marble and granite tomb where the father of the country lies in state. Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum is closed on Mondays and Fridays and the last visits are scheduled at 10:00am during the remainder of the week.
Leaving your coach, you will make a walking tour of the area around the mausoleum. Note that an interior visit will not be possible, but the building itself makes for a memorable photograph. Continuing your walk, you will next pass the former French Governor's Residence and the tranquil lotus ponds at the entrance to Ho Chi Minh's Cottage. In stark contrast to the neighboring residence, this cottage is a simple teak building designed in harmony with the surroundings and in the style of the ethnic hill tribe homes. Further on, you will come to the rebuilt 'One Pillar Pagoda', its origins shrouded in legend. Then, rejoining your coach you will continue your discovery of Vietnam's capital.
Next you will visit the Temple of Literature, dating from 1070 it is dedicated to Confucianism. In 1076, Vietnam's first national university was built next to the temple. Enjoy walking through the tranquil five walled courtyards and see the pavilion where 'men of letters' once recited their poetry.
After a buffet lunch of local delicacies at the Hanoi Sheraton hotel restaurant, your drive continues past the Hoan Kiem Lake where you will see a tiny island in the middle of the lake and on which is perched, the Ngoc Son pagoda. The lake is also known as the Lake of the Restored Sword, and you will hear the legend that is the origin of this name.
Next visit the former prison for the American pilots during the Vietnam war. You will see where current Senator, John McCain and the ex Ambassador to Vietnam, Douglas B. Peterson, were imprisoned after being shot down.
Finally go to the ancient quarter or 36 streets district. The streets here were named after the tradesman that worked in them - such as Tin Street, Paper Street or Silk Street. There will then be time for you to explore onfoot and do some shopping prior to the return drive to the ship.
Please note: The order of sites visited may vary. The drive to Hanoi is long and can be in excess of 3 hours, depending on traffic. Shopping time will be limited.
Tour price: $135
==============
Whew! We are back. It was a long day. We got in line to exit the ship at the forward elevators, the line went around the atrium, through a maze of chairs in the Voyager Lounge, out by Compass Rose and back to the other side of the Main Atrium to get out the door. There was an extra step today. We each had to have our immigration cards stamped by a Vietnamese Army officer before we could leave the ship. (There were officers in the same spot when we returned to the ship but they did not look at us or the cards we have to carry.) We got unlucky in the bus draw again today. We went out in the gray drizzle and the first 4 or so buses were for the same tour as ours but instead of the Hanoi Hilton, it spends an extra 30 minutes shopping. So, we were told to walk on down to bus 7 and higher. We got to bus 7 which looked full already and were told to board it. We did. Roger and the brochure both state this is an 18-person tour and there were already over 20 people in there. We took 2 seats. (Hey, we are planning to spend 6 hours in these seats today and paying first-class fare for it.) Our bus wound up having 28 people on it. The problem was that we got the slacker bus. The guide did not guide. He talked on the bus about the Vietnamese language mostly (He seemed to have a thing for Vietnamese language homophones, if you say it this way it means good morning, if you say it this way it means chicken soup... he had a bunch of them! All of them of no use to any of us.) and the peoples' condition now vs. 10-20 years in the past. But, once he let us off the bus each time, it was here is so and so, be back at this time. Then he was gone. You would see him again when it was time to get back on the bus. All the other buses had their guides with them in a group and they were telling them about things of interest and we have no idea what we saw. He did speak in front of Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, so they must have video surveillance there or something. Also, about 1/3 of the way to Hanoi, we drove through a coal mining town and the windows were just covered with black mud. At the first stop and at the second stop, we saw the driver and helper from each bus out washing all the windows on the buses. All but our bus. They washed the front window for the driver, and the next 2 windows down the sides but never touched the rest of them. All our picture taking was out the windows and you could barely see out our bus' windows. Unlike all the other buses, which had sparkling clean windows. Our guys had the same window washing gear and the same amount of time, they were just lazy. We don't know whether the guide was just lazy too, or he was balking at doing any guiding off the bus because the group was so much larger than what had been contracted and it is a lot harder to lead and speak to 28 than to 18.
The highway is in good shape and complete, but only 2 lanes. It is Highway 1A. The guide said it was 170km to Hanoi. It took exactly 3 hours. We arrived just in time for 1-2pm lunch at the Sheraton. There was not gridlocked traffic like we had heard about anywhere. There was just slow traffic. The guide said in every village the speed limit is 35km. Plus, there are scooters and bicycles on the highway, in any event it was slow going.
It seemed to be mostly rice paddies from here to there. It was scenic. There seemed to be lots of new construction going on and the guide talked about how other countries were investing here with long term leases on land.
First stop in Hanoi since we were 2 hours late leaving was lunch at the Sheraton. It was a good buffet and we had an hour there. They served pork and beef and shrimp fried rice with a variety of vegetables and salads and spring rolls, sweet corn soup and dinner rolls.Then a few minutes drive to Ho's mausoleum, a few minutes walk past it and on the the One Tree Pagoda, then back on the bus. We drove a few more minutes and circled a large walled park as the guide told us about the Temple of Literature inside. Then he pointed the gate out to us and told us to go wander in there and come back in 40 minutes. Groans on the bus. Now, he did not guide us and we don't know whether he was just lazy or whether he was balking because the group was too large for him to speak to outdoors. But, there was also a problem with the group. A large percentage of them was ready to drive back after lunch. This just keeps happening to us. Why would people sign up for an 8 or 11 hour tour and then ask mid-way through when they could go back to the ship? They thought that 40 minutes was too long there. He told them there were some shops in there. Well, there were, but... Back on the bus. Our windows were still dirty and all the other buses came with their clean windows so people could actually sightsee from the bus and we could barely see out! He told us some about the Hanoi Hilton and then pointed it out from the bus. He let us out and told us when to be back again. He told us to follow the signs through. We listened in on several other guides. It was a grim place and much larger then we expected. We had been told that only a small portion of the facility had been preserved, but what we saw was not a small place. Back on the bus, the guide wanted to have a vote whether to drive straight back to the ship now or sightsee the remainder of the tour from the bus. We finally spoke up. We can't sightsee through these filthy windows. The guide said he did not think people wanted to walk. Yes, we do because we can't see anything or take any pictures otherwise. He balked at taking us shopping. (He told us, the name of the tour is "... without shopping" and apparently he did not get the memo that Roger said this tour had 1 hour shopping and the "...with shopping" tour had 1.5 hours of shopping. He said we would get lost and he could not guide us all together, etc. The RSSC rep on our bus, a distinguished gent, finally intervened and told the guide he should stick to the tour brochure description and take us out walking and those who did not want to walk could sit on the bus while it went somewhere else before picking the walkers back up. This brought groans about missed dining plans, etc. and the gent told them they knew when they got on the bus it was a 10.5 hour tour and it did not matter that we had left the ship 2 hours late. That was how we felt about it, too. So, the guide in a huff, pulled up his hood and raced through the streets. Literally, raced. Literally, through the streets. He did not walk on a single sidewalk even when it would have have been possible and safer. After he had gone a few blocks and no one had gotten lost or stepped into a shop or been picked off by traffic he did slow to a reasonable pace for the group to stay together, but he did not provide any commentary, or step onto a sidewalk. He did make sure after that though that all the group was able to cross the street without risking their lives. We walked past other groups in stores shopping and on pedicabs and leaving the Water Puppet Theater. We don't know what they booked but we wished we had!
We got back between 8:30 and 9pm. We got back to the ship exactly 3 hours after leaving Hanoi, so even with less traffic on the highway the time it took was the same. We had a stop at the same large souvenir shop as on the way into Hanoi, with lots of toilets, going in both directions. That added about 40 minutes to the total travel time, too. We are glad that we took the opportunity to do this. But, we were not happy with the quality of our tour here and it was a long drive for little reward no matter what the quality. We did not find conditions in Hanoi to be as dire as Roger had warned, but then we spent very little time out. We were mostly on the bus or in the hotel. So, it may be bad but we did not see it.
Weirdest sight of the day: A motorbike loaded with 4 big live pigs that was parked on the highway shoulder, while the driver peed by the side of the road! Clay was too slow with his camera to get that even through dirty windows. We saw it and still can't imagine how many strong men it would take to get 4 big pigs trussed up and stacked crosswise like that. Much less how you would have it so balanced that you could park it on a kickstand while 4 adults pigs wiggled around.
Hanoi photos
position at 8:45 am: N20 57.5 latitude E107 3.55 longitude
(Bai Chay 100 miles by road E of Hanoi, Vietnam)
temperature: 59F, 100% humidity, foggy and misting
distance since FLL: 21,032 miles
We were up early this morning because we wanted to see the sail in to Halong Bay. It was lightly raining and foggy and visibility was poor. The water was just smooth grey slate. There are lots of small fishing boats around and larger house-type boats and some small freighters. It is frankly a little eerie.
Just after 8am when we were scheduled to be docked, and we still could not see anything, the Captain announced over the loudspeakers that we were sailing in Halong Bay and due to "um...traffic" that our arrival would be delayed by at least an hour. Now, we are fairly observant and the only "um...traffic" the Capt. could possibly be referring to is the 2 guys we stopped to pick up about 6:45am this morning before we got in the thick of the rocks for which Halong Bay is famous. Capt. Dag said all excursions would proceed as planned just later than scheduled after we are cleared to go ashore. Then, he said he had been informed that we have to leave the dock in Bai Chay (if that is actually where we are now, he was not really clear about that) at 7am tomorrow instead of 3pm. He said that meant that the Hong Gai walking excursion was cancelled. He said we should get more information later. Let's hope. Roger has emphasized that if you want to travel in this part of the world and on ships that you have to be very flexible and willing to just enjoy whatever comes your way and that if you are inflexible that you should travel some other way. We guess. But, hey, we have said since day one of booking this that we are just on for the ride and so we are.
Wherever it is we are getting ready to dock is a much larger town than we had been prepared for, but then again it is not clear that anyone aboard Voyager has ever been to this new place with the dock before. It extends for quite a distance on either side of a gap with an unfinished bridge between the 2 sides. There are ferries running back and forth.
We have been warned of heavy traffic, pressing throngs and hordes of abjectly impoverished people begging and desperate stealing. Hopefully, it will not actually be as bad as all that, but we will know first-hand shortly.
We have brought all the ferry traffic to a standstill while we sail through. We are actually sailing through the gap in the incompleted bridge! Good thing it is not finished! The bridge had a clearance of 50m according to a sign on it and Voyager slipped under the bridge with 5-10 feet to spare. The new dock facilities are on the other side of the bridge. It is a good-sized container facility beyond a petroleum facility. We are heading for a stretch of concrete just past the containers based on the buses parked there. We are an hour late now and still not yet docked, much less cleared which apparently is even trickier.
We all have an immigration card that we are to have with us at all times and it will be stamped each time we leave and reboard the ship. We are still awaiting information on how we leave Vietnam through Cambodia which we are doing on an RSSC ship's excursion. Clay asked at the Tour Desk yesterday and was told we should expect documents any day now.
The Captain is spinning the ship in place again and we will be docked on the starboard side. Our port side view will be across the bay. We just got a cancellation letter for the walking tour. The letter states that we must leave the dock in Hong Gai at 7am. It appears between the information in Capt. Dag's 8am announcement and this letter, that we will NOT be able to leave the ship tomorrow at all unless we sign up for the Halong Bay by Junk tour. We still do not know where we are now. The letter says we are in Hon Gai and in Hongai. It says tomorrow morning we will sail and anchor approximately 2 hours away from Hong Gai. Like we said, we are just on for the ride, we're going where they're going, whether we know where we are or not. Sorry, for those trying to really map us out. We don't know. Just back from the Tour Desk to sign us up for the Junk boat tour of Halong Bay tomorrow. We hate to have a sea day anchored 10-miles out and doing nothing when we are this close to a new country, also hate to bob around in a tiny boat.... Anyway, asked where we are. We are docked in Bai Chay. It is on the left side of the unfinished bridge as we sailed in and Hongai is on the right. They are still running a complimentary shuttle to Bai Chay for people staying aboard today. A good part of the Vietnamese Army was boarding while Debbie was down there. We hope to clear soon and so will go on downstairs. It is just before 10am. Here is our tour description:
==============
Duration: 10 Hours.
Seated, Wheelchair.
Though it takes a long drive of over 3 hours to reach the nation's capital, Hanoi is a city not to be missed. Boasting glorious French colonial architecture and numerous lakes, the city is the jewel in Vietnam's crown, a little known blend of east and west with bicycle cluttered streets and a nation of people reluctant to join the frenetic atmosphere of their southern counterpart. You will arrive in Hanoi's imposing Ba Dinh Square which is dominated by the impressive marble and granite tomb where the father of the country lies in state. Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum is closed on Mondays and Fridays and the last visits are scheduled at 10:00am during the remainder of the week.
Leaving your coach, you will make a walking tour of the area around the mausoleum. Note that an interior visit will not be possible, but the building itself makes for a memorable photograph. Continuing your walk, you will next pass the former French Governor's Residence and the tranquil lotus ponds at the entrance to Ho Chi Minh's Cottage. In stark contrast to the neighboring residence, this cottage is a simple teak building designed in harmony with the surroundings and in the style of the ethnic hill tribe homes. Further on, you will come to the rebuilt 'One Pillar Pagoda', its origins shrouded in legend. Then, rejoining your coach you will continue your discovery of Vietnam's capital.
Next you will visit the Temple of Literature, dating from 1070 it is dedicated to Confucianism. In 1076, Vietnam's first national university was built next to the temple. Enjoy walking through the tranquil five walled courtyards and see the pavilion where 'men of letters' once recited their poetry.
After a buffet lunch of local delicacies at the Hanoi Sheraton hotel restaurant, your drive continues past the Hoan Kiem Lake where you will see a tiny island in the middle of the lake and on which is perched, the Ngoc Son pagoda. The lake is also known as the Lake of the Restored Sword, and you will hear the legend that is the origin of this name.
Next visit the former prison for the American pilots during the Vietnam war. You will see where current Senator, John McCain and the ex Ambassador to Vietnam, Douglas B. Peterson, were imprisoned after being shot down.
Finally go to the ancient quarter or 36 streets district. The streets here were named after the tradesman that worked in them - such as Tin Street, Paper Street or Silk Street. There will then be time for you to explore onfoot and do some shopping prior to the return drive to the ship.
Please note: The order of sites visited may vary. The drive to Hanoi is long and can be in excess of 3 hours, depending on traffic. Shopping time will be limited.
Tour price: $135
==============
Whew! We are back. It was a long day. We got in line to exit the ship at the forward elevators, the line went around the atrium, through a maze of chairs in the Voyager Lounge, out by Compass Rose and back to the other side of the Main Atrium to get out the door. There was an extra step today. We each had to have our immigration cards stamped by a Vietnamese Army officer before we could leave the ship. (There were officers in the same spot when we returned to the ship but they did not look at us or the cards we have to carry.) We got unlucky in the bus draw again today. We went out in the gray drizzle and the first 4 or so buses were for the same tour as ours but instead of the Hanoi Hilton, it spends an extra 30 minutes shopping. So, we were told to walk on down to bus 7 and higher. We got to bus 7 which looked full already and were told to board it. We did. Roger and the brochure both state this is an 18-person tour and there were already over 20 people in there. We took 2 seats. (Hey, we are planning to spend 6 hours in these seats today and paying first-class fare for it.) Our bus wound up having 28 people on it. The problem was that we got the slacker bus. The guide did not guide. He talked on the bus about the Vietnamese language mostly (He seemed to have a thing for Vietnamese language homophones, if you say it this way it means good morning, if you say it this way it means chicken soup... he had a bunch of them! All of them of no use to any of us.) and the peoples' condition now vs. 10-20 years in the past. But, once he let us off the bus each time, it was here is so and so, be back at this time. Then he was gone. You would see him again when it was time to get back on the bus. All the other buses had their guides with them in a group and they were telling them about things of interest and we have no idea what we saw. He did speak in front of Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, so they must have video surveillance there or something. Also, about 1/3 of the way to Hanoi, we drove through a coal mining town and the windows were just covered with black mud. At the first stop and at the second stop, we saw the driver and helper from each bus out washing all the windows on the buses. All but our bus. They washed the front window for the driver, and the next 2 windows down the sides but never touched the rest of them. All our picture taking was out the windows and you could barely see out our bus' windows. Unlike all the other buses, which had sparkling clean windows. Our guys had the same window washing gear and the same amount of time, they were just lazy. We don't know whether the guide was just lazy too, or he was balking at doing any guiding off the bus because the group was so much larger than what had been contracted and it is a lot harder to lead and speak to 28 than to 18.
The highway is in good shape and complete, but only 2 lanes. It is Highway 1A. The guide said it was 170km to Hanoi. It took exactly 3 hours. We arrived just in time for 1-2pm lunch at the Sheraton. There was not gridlocked traffic like we had heard about anywhere. There was just slow traffic. The guide said in every village the speed limit is 35km. Plus, there are scooters and bicycles on the highway, in any event it was slow going.
It seemed to be mostly rice paddies from here to there. It was scenic. There seemed to be lots of new construction going on and the guide talked about how other countries were investing here with long term leases on land.
First stop in Hanoi since we were 2 hours late leaving was lunch at the Sheraton. It was a good buffet and we had an hour there. They served pork and beef and shrimp fried rice with a variety of vegetables and salads and spring rolls, sweet corn soup and dinner rolls.Then a few minutes drive to Ho's mausoleum, a few minutes walk past it and on the the One Tree Pagoda, then back on the bus. We drove a few more minutes and circled a large walled park as the guide told us about the Temple of Literature inside. Then he pointed the gate out to us and told us to go wander in there and come back in 40 minutes. Groans on the bus. Now, he did not guide us and we don't know whether he was just lazy or whether he was balking because the group was too large for him to speak to outdoors. But, there was also a problem with the group. A large percentage of them was ready to drive back after lunch. This just keeps happening to us. Why would people sign up for an 8 or 11 hour tour and then ask mid-way through when they could go back to the ship? They thought that 40 minutes was too long there. He told them there were some shops in there. Well, there were, but... Back on the bus. Our windows were still dirty and all the other buses came with their clean windows so people could actually sightsee from the bus and we could barely see out! He told us some about the Hanoi Hilton and then pointed it out from the bus. He let us out and told us when to be back again. He told us to follow the signs through. We listened in on several other guides. It was a grim place and much larger then we expected. We had been told that only a small portion of the facility had been preserved, but what we saw was not a small place. Back on the bus, the guide wanted to have a vote whether to drive straight back to the ship now or sightsee the remainder of the tour from the bus. We finally spoke up. We can't sightsee through these filthy windows. The guide said he did not think people wanted to walk. Yes, we do because we can't see anything or take any pictures otherwise. He balked at taking us shopping. (He told us, the name of the tour is "... without shopping" and apparently he did not get the memo that Roger said this tour had 1 hour shopping and the "...with shopping" tour had 1.5 hours of shopping. He said we would get lost and he could not guide us all together, etc. The RSSC rep on our bus, a distinguished gent, finally intervened and told the guide he should stick to the tour brochure description and take us out walking and those who did not want to walk could sit on the bus while it went somewhere else before picking the walkers back up. This brought groans about missed dining plans, etc. and the gent told them they knew when they got on the bus it was a 10.5 hour tour and it did not matter that we had left the ship 2 hours late. That was how we felt about it, too. So, the guide in a huff, pulled up his hood and raced through the streets. Literally, raced. Literally, through the streets. He did not walk on a single sidewalk even when it would have have been possible and safer. After he had gone a few blocks and no one had gotten lost or stepped into a shop or been picked off by traffic he did slow to a reasonable pace for the group to stay together, but he did not provide any commentary, or step onto a sidewalk. He did make sure after that though that all the group was able to cross the street without risking their lives. We walked past other groups in stores shopping and on pedicabs and leaving the Water Puppet Theater. We don't know what they booked but we wished we had!
We got back between 8:30 and 9pm. We got back to the ship exactly 3 hours after leaving Hanoi, so even with less traffic on the highway the time it took was the same. We had a stop at the same large souvenir shop as on the way into Hanoi, with lots of toilets, going in both directions. That added about 40 minutes to the total travel time, too. We are glad that we took the opportunity to do this. But, we were not happy with the quality of our tour here and it was a long drive for little reward no matter what the quality. We did not find conditions in Hanoi to be as dire as Roger had warned, but then we spent very little time out. We were mostly on the bus or in the hotel. So, it may be bad but we did not see it.
Weirdest sight of the day: A motorbike loaded with 4 big live pigs that was parked on the highway shoulder, while the driver peed by the side of the road! Clay was too slow with his camera to get that even through dirty windows. We saw it and still can't imagine how many strong men it would take to get 4 big pigs trussed up and stacked crosswise like that. Much less how you would have it so balanced that you could park it on a kickstand while 4 adults pigs wiggled around.
Hanoi photos
Sunday, February 26, 2006
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
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
Day 59 - Saturday Feb 25 Hong Kong Day 3
Hong Kong Day 3 photos
position at 6:30am: N22 17.48 latitude E114 09.55 longitude
(Hong Kong)
temperature: 61F, 98% humidity, cloudy and foggy
distance since FLL: 20,509 miles
Our last day in Hong Kong began with a leisurely Compass Rose breakfast. Today we are doing museums in Kowloon and most of them do not open until 10 am. We left the ship around 9:15am and got the No. 2 bus at the Star Ferry to go to the Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb Museum. This tomb was found in 1955 while excavating for an apartment complex. It is dated from the Eastern Han Dynasty, roughly AD25-220. Since the find was relatively recent, we thought this would be an interesting visit. It turns out that it was, but even more interesting was the Lei Cheng Garden next to it. Our bus instructions said to get off on Tonkin St. This was not very helpful as the bus drove a couple miles at least on Tonkin with several stops. (Also, we did not have any map that went that far out into the suburbs! We knew it was in the Lei Cheung UK Resettlement Estate, described as a large block of towering apartment buildings, but that did not help much either. We knew it was in the Sham Shui Po part of town, but again without a map of that section, we didn't really know where we were going or how far it was off the edge of the best map that we had.) But, thanks to Debbie asking the very helpful bus driver for help, we were dropped off at the first stop after the bus had turned off Tonkin.
She had a HKTB brochure that gave the name in Chinese and he looked at that and grunted and pointed her back behind the line. We sat and tried to get out at the next bus stop near the MTR stop since we had walking directions from there as well. He closed the doors on Debbie and shouted NO and waved her back to her seat. We sat down until he hollered for her at the next stop and gestured across and over this side street Po On Road. We walked back to the corner cross walk and then entered the walled garden from the Po On Rd. side. After we wandered around in there, we found an attendant in a guard booth on the Tonkin St. side who directed us to walk out of Lei Cheng Uk Estate - Han Garden and to find the Tomb Museum next door on the other side of the wall of the garden (and actually on Tonkin). (This was not really as complicated or nervewracking as it sounds!)
The garden was beautiful and just delightful. Locals were out 'airing out' their song birds and doing Tai Chi. There were ponds with fish and turtles in them, rock sculptures, pagodas, bridges and more. Check out the pictures. As far as the museum went, the tomb was still intact and you could view into it. It had 4 rooms laid out in a X-shape, and you could see a video describing the work and how they did things. They did not have any of the items found in the tomb displayed there, only pictures. But later in the day, we saw the actual items in the Hong Kong Museum of History. We spent maybe an hour in the museum and the adjacent garden, and then caught bus 2 back to the Star Ferry terminal. While waiting for the bus, a local asked us if we needed any help :). (How did they know we were not from around here?) There was a hanging duck restaurant right at the bus stop where we waited. This gave us plenty of time to study the window display. Some things were recognizable, and some things weren't. And, some of the things you thought you recognized, but you cannot believe anyone would display much less buy and eat (a sphincter?).
At the Ferry Terminal, we needed some change. So, we stopped in a bakery and bought a Red Bean Paste Bun for 3 HKD, breaking a 20 to get change. We took the bun with us on bus 5 up to the Hong Kong Museum (getting off right at the Ramada Inn and walking over a pedestrian overpass). The History Museum and Science Museum are in back-to-back buildings there. Before going in to the museums, we stopped outside and ate our bun. (It was yummy!)
The History Museum tracks the history of Hong Kong for 6,000. It has an entrance fee of 10HKD (~1.4USD), and you can rent audioguides for another 10HKD. Doing this one museum could be an all day effort, especially if you listen to all the audioguide entries and see all the videos in the museum. We listened to about a third of the audioguide selections and spent more than 3 hours there. They had ancient glass items and gold items displayed, a life-size victorian-era streetscape with intact shops in it, A life-size fishing junk boat that you could go on, a piece of Hong Kong Harborfront from the Victorian Era complete with boats docked and anchored, 10-meter high bun towers for Taoist festivals, a Hakka peasant family dwelling, and primitive peoples living on sand beaches, WWII occupation, .... It went on and on. Much of it was stunning and as a whole it was mind-boggling. We went through old Hong Kong, up and down stairs, just as we had yesterday in the real place, but this time with out traffic and children interviewing us! It was just like being there, but without the sensory assault (though they did have sound playing at a lesser volume that put you in a mind of the real thing!). If you are interested in the history of Hong Kong, this is where you want to go. Even if you are not interested in history, it is all enclosed and climate controlled, it is handicap accessible and visually and auditorially stimulating. It is all excellently done, designed, laid out and signed in English. There are lots of places to sit and take it all in. It was one of the best museums we have ever visited. It is all here, including the relics from the Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb that we visited in the morning. We bought a couple of items in the gift shop and asked the saleswoman if there was a place close by where we could eat some Dim Sum. (Yes, believe it or not, Debbie was willing to give it another try!) Well, the clerk glanced at her watch (it was about 2:40pm) and then wrote down in both English and Chinese, the name of 2 restaurants and said they were side by side right across the street. It turned out that it was right across the street in front of the Science Museum, but Debbie spotted it as we did a 360 degree aerial survey from atop the overhead footbridge looking for it. We went to the basement one first since she told us to go to the basement. Once down there, they told us they were closed. It looked like they were setting up for a private banquet or something. The woman told us we could come back after 6pm. Uh, no thanks. We went upstairs to the other, Chiu Chow, and we ate there and it was good. A much different experience than the day before at more or less the same price. Lunch was winding down but there were still 4 or 5 tables of families eating a Saturday Dim Sum and they were all Chinese. We were given hot clothes to wash our hands with and we saw no one using tea to wash dishes. All these were good signs. We ordered essentially the same thing we did yesterday, but today the food that came out was what we ordered and more or less what we expected. There was a surprise or two, but they actually turned out to be pleasant surprises. We ordered golden fried dumplings and these turned out to be a dessert-type dumpling with sesame seeds and peanuts inside the dumpling with a little sweet syrup also. Quite delicious. The fried rice noodle and beef satay that we ordered was an enormous serving and it came so long after the rest of the dishes that we thought it had been ignored, so we ate it last and could not finish it all. At the end when we requested the bill, they served us 4 tiny, tiny, thimble-sized bowls of what looked like tea on a tiny tray. It was boiling hot and very bitter. We did try it, but it was not to our taste. Debbie later read in our guidebook that this was indeed a special tea of Chiu Chow cuisine, and most non-locals found it too strong.
After our lunch, we caught the 5 bus back to the Star Ferry Terminal and then walked over to the Hong Kong Art Museum, about a 5 minute walk. The entrance fee is $10HKD. As the name suggests, the museum shows exclusively Chinese works, both modern and ancient. In particular, the ancient pieces in glass and gold are noteworthy and make the visit worth the time and effort. The museum also has a area where you can do your own paper pressings of Chinese glyphs for things like luck, and fortune, etc. We did a set of these as souvenirs. We also were able to pick up little cheat sheet that gave the years for each of the dynasties here. This way, when something was said to be from the Qing Dynasty, we could put a year range to that piece. It took an hour or so to go through the highlights of this museum. It was finally raining when we left the art museum. This morning and early afternoon has been the clearest and greatest visibility since we arrived. We could clearly see the top of Victoria Peak from Kowloon, but we had already been up there and did not go back up. It was about 6:00pm when we got back to the mall where our ship is docked. We stopped by the Optical Shop and picked up Clay's new glasses and were at dinner in Compass Rose by 6:45pm. After dinner, Debbie did 2 loads of laundry and mercifully had the place completely to herself. Clay had about $35HKD left on him and went back out to the mall. Was the money just burning a hole in his pocket? No, there were Malteasers over there. He could not rest without having all the maltballs he could afford. Clay has a bad chocolate malted milkball jones!
In the vein of having local entertainers on this trip, there was a dixieland jazz band. Apparently, Jamie and Dag are big dixieland jazz fans and found a bar near the pier called Ned Kelly's Last Stand (same name as the band) and invited them to the ship to perform. So, at 6:30pm the band played on the staircase in the Main Atrium. They could be heard in Compass Rose and played for about an hour.
The ship left on time, just after 11pm. Good bye to Hong Kong. We had a fantastic time there and really wish we had more sea days for recovering! Oh, well. One sea day and then we start touring in Vietnam.
Hong Kong Day 3 photos
position at 6:30am: N22 17.48 latitude E114 09.55 longitude
(Hong Kong)
temperature: 61F, 98% humidity, cloudy and foggy
distance since FLL: 20,509 miles
Our last day in Hong Kong began with a leisurely Compass Rose breakfast. Today we are doing museums in Kowloon and most of them do not open until 10 am. We left the ship around 9:15am and got the No. 2 bus at the Star Ferry to go to the Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb Museum. This tomb was found in 1955 while excavating for an apartment complex. It is dated from the Eastern Han Dynasty, roughly AD25-220. Since the find was relatively recent, we thought this would be an interesting visit. It turns out that it was, but even more interesting was the Lei Cheng Garden next to it. Our bus instructions said to get off on Tonkin St. This was not very helpful as the bus drove a couple miles at least on Tonkin with several stops. (Also, we did not have any map that went that far out into the suburbs! We knew it was in the Lei Cheung UK Resettlement Estate, described as a large block of towering apartment buildings, but that did not help much either. We knew it was in the Sham Shui Po part of town, but again without a map of that section, we didn't really know where we were going or how far it was off the edge of the best map that we had.) But, thanks to Debbie asking the very helpful bus driver for help, we were dropped off at the first stop after the bus had turned off Tonkin.
She had a HKTB brochure that gave the name in Chinese and he looked at that and grunted and pointed her back behind the line. We sat and tried to get out at the next bus stop near the MTR stop since we had walking directions from there as well. He closed the doors on Debbie and shouted NO and waved her back to her seat. We sat down until he hollered for her at the next stop and gestured across and over this side street Po On Road. We walked back to the corner cross walk and then entered the walled garden from the Po On Rd. side. After we wandered around in there, we found an attendant in a guard booth on the Tonkin St. side who directed us to walk out of Lei Cheng Uk Estate - Han Garden and to find the Tomb Museum next door on the other side of the wall of the garden (and actually on Tonkin). (This was not really as complicated or nervewracking as it sounds!)
The garden was beautiful and just delightful. Locals were out 'airing out' their song birds and doing Tai Chi. There were ponds with fish and turtles in them, rock sculptures, pagodas, bridges and more. Check out the pictures. As far as the museum went, the tomb was still intact and you could view into it. It had 4 rooms laid out in a X-shape, and you could see a video describing the work and how they did things. They did not have any of the items found in the tomb displayed there, only pictures. But later in the day, we saw the actual items in the Hong Kong Museum of History. We spent maybe an hour in the museum and the adjacent garden, and then caught bus 2 back to the Star Ferry terminal. While waiting for the bus, a local asked us if we needed any help :). (How did they know we were not from around here?) There was a hanging duck restaurant right at the bus stop where we waited. This gave us plenty of time to study the window display. Some things were recognizable, and some things weren't. And, some of the things you thought you recognized, but you cannot believe anyone would display much less buy and eat (a sphincter?).
At the Ferry Terminal, we needed some change. So, we stopped in a bakery and bought a Red Bean Paste Bun for 3 HKD, breaking a 20 to get change. We took the bun with us on bus 5 up to the Hong Kong Museum (getting off right at the Ramada Inn and walking over a pedestrian overpass). The History Museum and Science Museum are in back-to-back buildings there. Before going in to the museums, we stopped outside and ate our bun. (It was yummy!)
The History Museum tracks the history of Hong Kong for 6,000. It has an entrance fee of 10HKD (~1.4USD), and you can rent audioguides for another 10HKD. Doing this one museum could be an all day effort, especially if you listen to all the audioguide entries and see all the videos in the museum. We listened to about a third of the audioguide selections and spent more than 3 hours there. They had ancient glass items and gold items displayed, a life-size victorian-era streetscape with intact shops in it, A life-size fishing junk boat that you could go on, a piece of Hong Kong Harborfront from the Victorian Era complete with boats docked and anchored, 10-meter high bun towers for Taoist festivals, a Hakka peasant family dwelling, and primitive peoples living on sand beaches, WWII occupation, .... It went on and on. Much of it was stunning and as a whole it was mind-boggling. We went through old Hong Kong, up and down stairs, just as we had yesterday in the real place, but this time with out traffic and children interviewing us! It was just like being there, but without the sensory assault (though they did have sound playing at a lesser volume that put you in a mind of the real thing!). If you are interested in the history of Hong Kong, this is where you want to go. Even if you are not interested in history, it is all enclosed and climate controlled, it is handicap accessible and visually and auditorially stimulating. It is all excellently done, designed, laid out and signed in English. There are lots of places to sit and take it all in. It was one of the best museums we have ever visited. It is all here, including the relics from the Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb that we visited in the morning. We bought a couple of items in the gift shop and asked the saleswoman if there was a place close by where we could eat some Dim Sum. (Yes, believe it or not, Debbie was willing to give it another try!) Well, the clerk glanced at her watch (it was about 2:40pm) and then wrote down in both English and Chinese, the name of 2 restaurants and said they were side by side right across the street. It turned out that it was right across the street in front of the Science Museum, but Debbie spotted it as we did a 360 degree aerial survey from atop the overhead footbridge looking for it. We went to the basement one first since she told us to go to the basement. Once down there, they told us they were closed. It looked like they were setting up for a private banquet or something. The woman told us we could come back after 6pm. Uh, no thanks. We went upstairs to the other, Chiu Chow, and we ate there and it was good. A much different experience than the day before at more or less the same price. Lunch was winding down but there were still 4 or 5 tables of families eating a Saturday Dim Sum and they were all Chinese. We were given hot clothes to wash our hands with and we saw no one using tea to wash dishes. All these were good signs. We ordered essentially the same thing we did yesterday, but today the food that came out was what we ordered and more or less what we expected. There was a surprise or two, but they actually turned out to be pleasant surprises. We ordered golden fried dumplings and these turned out to be a dessert-type dumpling with sesame seeds and peanuts inside the dumpling with a little sweet syrup also. Quite delicious. The fried rice noodle and beef satay that we ordered was an enormous serving and it came so long after the rest of the dishes that we thought it had been ignored, so we ate it last and could not finish it all. At the end when we requested the bill, they served us 4 tiny, tiny, thimble-sized bowls of what looked like tea on a tiny tray. It was boiling hot and very bitter. We did try it, but it was not to our taste. Debbie later read in our guidebook that this was indeed a special tea of Chiu Chow cuisine, and most non-locals found it too strong.
After our lunch, we caught the 5 bus back to the Star Ferry Terminal and then walked over to the Hong Kong Art Museum, about a 5 minute walk. The entrance fee is $10HKD. As the name suggests, the museum shows exclusively Chinese works, both modern and ancient. In particular, the ancient pieces in glass and gold are noteworthy and make the visit worth the time and effort. The museum also has a area where you can do your own paper pressings of Chinese glyphs for things like luck, and fortune, etc. We did a set of these as souvenirs. We also were able to pick up little cheat sheet that gave the years for each of the dynasties here. This way, when something was said to be from the Qing Dynasty, we could put a year range to that piece. It took an hour or so to go through the highlights of this museum. It was finally raining when we left the art museum. This morning and early afternoon has been the clearest and greatest visibility since we arrived. We could clearly see the top of Victoria Peak from Kowloon, but we had already been up there and did not go back up. It was about 6:00pm when we got back to the mall where our ship is docked. We stopped by the Optical Shop and picked up Clay's new glasses and were at dinner in Compass Rose by 6:45pm. After dinner, Debbie did 2 loads of laundry and mercifully had the place completely to herself. Clay had about $35HKD left on him and went back out to the mall. Was the money just burning a hole in his pocket? No, there were Malteasers over there. He could not rest without having all the maltballs he could afford. Clay has a bad chocolate malted milkball jones!
In the vein of having local entertainers on this trip, there was a dixieland jazz band. Apparently, Jamie and Dag are big dixieland jazz fans and found a bar near the pier called Ned Kelly's Last Stand (same name as the band) and invited them to the ship to perform. So, at 6:30pm the band played on the staircase in the Main Atrium. They could be heard in Compass Rose and played for about an hour.
The ship left on time, just after 11pm. Good bye to Hong Kong. We had a fantastic time there and really wish we had more sea days for recovering! Oh, well. One sea day and then we start touring in Vietnam.
Hong Kong Day 3 photos
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Day 58 - Friday Feb 24 Hong Kong Day 2
Hong Kong Day 2 photos
position at 6:30am: N22 17.48 latitude E114 09.55 longitude
(Hong Kong)
temperature: 62F, 98% humidity
distance since FLL: 20,509 miles
Foodwise, the day started out great as there were chocolate croissants this morning. Breakfast was being served very early this morning (6 am) in LaVeranda since there were a lot of passengers disembarking today. We got up there about 7:45 and behold, there were croissants. But from there, the food story takes some expected turns later in the day causing great trauma in some parts.
Our goal for today was to go back to Hong Kong Island, take a long walk among all the buildings over there, looking at their general architecture. Then we would wander through several parts of the island, just taking in the sights. During this wandering, we would catch lunch somewhere, and then take the tram up to Victoria Peak. After that we would make it back to Kowloon, catch dinner on the ship, and the go out to see the light show and take in Temple Street Night Market. Believe it or not, we did all this and more today, even with the food trauma. Here are some of the details.
We left the ship and made our way out of the Harbour Center mall to the street. This is about a 100-200 yd walk through part of this huge mall. Again, the only line of defense was the ship security station swiping your cabin card as you left and entered just outside the Coffee Corner. If there was any Hong Kong Security/Customs personnel around, they certainly were well hidden. (Forgot to report that when we returned to the ship last night we did not find any screening/x-rays, etc. We walked up the stairs to the gangway platform on the building, like a balcony on it, and just outside the door was a man. We were ready and showed him our keycards. He held out a handful of watches and asked, Rolex? We shook our heads and took 5 more steps to enter the gangway to the ship's side balcony. Washed our hands at the sanitizer and got our keycards swiped. The man with the Rolexes was less than 30 steps from the keycard swiper, but not in view due to the physical layout. Also, our high pressure hoses are gone here. We guess we are feeling pretty safe and secure here in Hong Kong.) Once outside, we walked another 100 yds to the Star Ferry building to catch the ferry across the harbor. Clay was ready this morning with currency of the proper sizes and we had no missteps in getting on the ferry. The ferry just goes back and forth, never turning around, so the seat backs flip back and forth like the seats on the street cars in New Orleans. After a quick ride and short walk out of the building, we found ourselves outside the ferry terminal on Hong Kong Island looking up at the sky line, getting our bearings and plotting our path to the points of interest we wanted to see. Our walking tour is loosely based on one or two walking tours that Debbie found online or in tour books in the library last summer as she was researching Hong Kong. She had printed them out for reference, but as we left the ship yesterday, there was a brochure display where we found a 3x8.5 booklet that detailed several of the ones we had printed, and we used the little booklet as our guide today as it was more convenient than the 8.5x11 loose sheets.
The HSBC building was easy to spot at about the 11 o'clock position as you walked out of the ferry terminal. This bank is one that handles the PLUS system that we can use as an ATM so it was an easy landmark for us to recognize and the building itself was equally unusual looking with its strut and ladder facade. The HSBC building is 'one of the most important buildings of 20th century architecture' according to our guidebook. The building is open underneath and supported by corner pylons. Everything is glass and metal and you can see the inner workings of the escalators and elevators that take you up and inside. It has as open-air ground-level atrium that goes up a couple of floors due to the fact that the harbor-facing side is built on lower ground than the other side. The really unusual thing is that the top of this open-air atrium is a curved glass ceiling, that appears to be the floor of the inside atrium above. So, we walked under this building to look up through the glass floor to see inside the building. It was indeed an unusual building. In front of the HSBC building is a open area called Statue Square. The land was purchased by HSBC and donated to the city with the proviso nothing could be built on it that would obscure the HSBC building from the harbor. Since HK is constantly reclaiming land, what is currently waterfront may not be waterfront in 20 years, and this is an attempt by HSBC to preserve the view to its building. Adjacent to the Statue Square to the east is the Legislative Counsel Building. It is a mix of Victorian and Chinese architecture, and was built in 1912 as the Supreme Court building. Now it is used as the advisory Legislative Counsel which now serves as a debate forum since 1997 where HK was ceded back to China.
Also, next to the HSBC building is the old BanK of China building which is an Art Deco building. This building was dwarfed when the HSBC building was put up. In the nature of HK competition, Bank of China decided to build a taller building close by that towers over the HSBC building. It was the first building built here to break the ridgeline of Victoria Peak. This new Back of China building appears to be constructed of triangular modules due to solid strips of building material that make their way up the building facade in triangular patterns. The BoC building has a public observation level on the 43rd floor, about half way up the building. We went up there to see the sights, but it was really foggy, so it was one of those 'on a clear day you can see" .... But even so, it was worth the elevator ride. The area around the BoC building had water gardens and they were trying to get the fish out of one side to do maintenance work. We saw a bank employee with rubber boots and a net trying to snag a few stragglers. We immediately commensurated with his plight from our expereice of trying to empty our small fish pond of fish before our long trip. (Animal lovers, don't worry. They were adopted by the goldfish pond of the City of Raleigh's Pullen Park and have a new, larger home.)
It was about 10:30am when we left our architecture walk to start on what is known as the Central and Western District walk from the Hong Kong Walks brochure. We sort of did it in reverse ending up at the Western Market instead of starting there. We also added a trip up the MidLevels Escalators which is not part of this 'official walk'. Here are just a few of the areas we hit. It took about 3 hours, not counting lunch, which Debbie is trying to block anyway. We first started out trying to locate the MidLevel Escalators which are about 1/2 mile long and move people down the hill from 6 to 10AM. Then their direction is reversed to move people up the hill the rest of the day. From our buildings tour, we walked west along Queens Road Central until we hit Wyndham St. which we followed uphill to catch the escalators. Along the escalator, there are steps leading back down the hill. On these steps are lots of little shops and restaurants. After the escalators, we started thinking about lunch. The escalators lead up to the Soho section of Hong Kong and Hollywood St. One guide book mentioned this was a good restaurant district, but we did not find anything that jumped out at us. Reading further in the guide book, we saw mention of lunch DimSum places and thought that might be good idea. (Wow, was that wrong!) So we continued on our walk taking in the stops and looking for a Dim Sum place. One stop was Man Mo Temple. It was build in 1847 and is the island's oldest Temple, and is dedicated to the gods of literature and war (Man and Mo). If you go into this temple, beware that you will be overwhelmed by 170 years of burning incense, so be prepared if you have any respiratory problems. It is completely overpowering. Another stop along the way was a browse along Upper Lascar Row aka Cat Street. These were little street stalls with souvenirs and antiques and other things. It was here we were first interviewed by middle school children, probably 12-14 years old. They were looking for English-speaking tourists to interview on local tourism in English. (Can't imagine why they picked us!) Anyway, this was the first of 4 such interviews we had throughout the day in various and far-ranging tourist locations. They were, literally, all over the place. But it was fun speaking with them in English which they were clearly learning. After being interviewed, they asked to photograph us with them. We obliged and took photos too. We continued our walk down the hill toward the bay, casually looking for a Dim Sum place. Well, in about 5 minutes, after a second interview by another group. Debbie spotted one. We looked inside and it was bright and large and spacious and had a lot of Chinese people in it, so we figured it would be as good as any. Well, we got seated in non-smoking at a table set up for 4 people, and were given a menu in English. We chose 5 dishes that we thought we knew what they were: steamed pork dumpling, BBQ Pork buns, glutinous rice in Lotus leaf, pork dumplings in soup, BBQ pork with rice noodles. Purposefully, we chose nothing we thought had any relation to seafood. We selected from an English language menu with item numbers on it. After a little effort, we thought we had communicated our choices to an order taker who checked them off on an order form by the numbers next to the English descriptions. We heard no English spoken in this place the whole time we were in there and we were the only Anglos in the place. At this point, Clay got up to go to the restroom (which turned out to be fine), but when he came back, there was a little old Chinese lady sitting at our table in front of Debbie. Evidently, the woman tried to sit there and was first run off by the wait staff in the restaurant. But as soon as the staff left, she was back and finally Debbie told her it was OK to sit there. As Debbie was waiting for Clay to return, the old lady pulled the paper wrapper off her chopsticks and scoured them, her cup, plate, spoon, and bowl. Then she poured hot tea in the bowl and used it to wash her chopsticks, bowl, spoon and plate. Debbie strictly wrote this off as some mental problem of the old lady. BUT, then she noticed several other new tables being seated, and them doing the same thing. This was the first hint, that we were out of our element. By the time we realized we should have washed our dishes in our hot tea, our tea was not hot enough to do any good so we decided to brave it, and eat our Dim Sum with unwashed chopsticks and plate. Debbie was already close to getting hives over this thought. At this point, the people at other tables around us were smiling and talking about the little old lady at our table. We realized she was probably there to sponge off our uneaten food which again was fine with us. THEN, our food started coming. The first thing to show up looked and tasted like crispy fried bean curd. The problem was that we did NOT order any crispy fried bean curd. But it turned out OK, and was tasty for fried bean curd. Then we got 4 dishes in steamer baskets. Debbie first opened the glutinous rice steamed in Lotus leaf. As she unwrapped it, she spotted little shrimp around the edges. She immediately re-wrapped it and put it back on the plate. The little old lady had her first dish from us. The next thing Debbie picked up looked sort of like steamed pork dumpling. But after taking a bite and finding it undercooked in the center and pink, she undertook a closer inspection (and Debbie closely inspects everything new), the meat was mighty gristly and also she thought it tasted fishy or just off somehow. (Debbie still suspects that this was an undercooked cat ball. It is not so much the being served cat that she did not order that upset her so much as the fact that they did not even cook it through!) Clay did eat 2 of these dumplings, but the little old lady made another score with Debbie's portion. Essentially, the same process continued with the other 2 dishes. They all had something objectionable or unknown in them, the little old lady ended up with Debbie's (and sometimes Clay's share). This adventure cost us about 115HKD (or about 15USD) and significant worry the rest of the day regarding what we might have ingested, and the dirty dishes issue. But I will have to say, a day later Clay had no noticeable effects from the meal. Debbie however suffered a purge, that Clay thinks was just stress-related, perhaps rightly so. In which case, Debbie has a highly evolved protective digestive system. Or maybe, it was something she ate!
After the meal, we meandered on down the hill to the Western Market, taking in the sights on the way. At this market of upscale shops, we caught one of the double decker trollies for a ride back to the Star Ferry dock where we caught the 15C bus that took us to the Peak Tram Lower Station which is a 100-year old tram that takes you up to Victoria Peak. They say when it was first done, it turned a 3 hour pedicab ride up to the peak into an 8 minute ride. The tram is a very steep ride up the hill with 15-20 degree picthes. The whole thing is on angle, there is not a flat straight surface. On occasion, it will come to a complete stop, and you are just hanging on the side of the mountain. You sit on wooden benches, but at an angle for shuttle launch! It is more than a little disconcerting, but we all survived. There was little to see because of the fog and clouds. It was another 'On a clear day, you can see'... situation. It was even more fogged in than yesterday when we arrived and decided to save it for later. But, we did not want to put it off to the last day because Jamie is warning that rain is expected here. But we did it, and the ride made it interesting. We also got interviewd for the 3rd and 4th times at the top. After this, took the tram back down and you sit the same way. So you ride backwards on the way down. Debbie did not handle the ride well, though she had another meclizine and put on her seabands before we started out. Then back to the ferry station on bus 15C, and we caught the ferry back to Kowloon. We stopped in the mall on our way through and priced glasses for Clay. We picked the lower priced one and Clay got his eyes examined and frames picked out and his new glasses will be ready tomorrow after 5:30pm. Then, we picked up some essentials in a drugstore and on back to the ship, dodging the tailor hustlers and middle schoolers still doing interviews. We got back to the ship at about 6:10pm. This was just in time to get to Compass Rose and have a quick dinner so we could try to catch the Light Show after 8pm down at the waterfront on the Avenue of Stars. At 8pm each evening, they put on a light show which lights up the skyscrapers on each side of the harbor with the dynamic lighting being synchronized to music that you can hear on the Avenue of Stars. It was really quite impressive. The fronts of these huge buildings would dance with lights and several of the tallest ones shot colored beams of light from their tops. It was a wow moment. Note, that the guide books and brochures just say that this lightshow takes place after 8pm. The buildings are lighted all night, but that show started at 8pm and ended at 8:15pm. The recorded English language announcements did not say that it would happen again or happen in another language. It was sponsored by the Hong Kong Tourism Board.
After the 15-minute light show, we caught the MTR (the subway) out to the Jordan Road station and from there walked up to the Temple Street Night Market. That was another WOW situation. It was as big and as crowded as the Sunday Flea market in Rome, but without all the Gypsy children trying to rob you. We are sure there may have been pick pockets and prostitutes and hustlers around, but it felt safe and unthreatening and no one bothered us. It was big and you could buy just about anything there. We took the MTR back down to Tsim Sha Tsui. We finally got back to the ship about 11pm and we had had a full day.
We found the public transit to be very convenient. It runs on a pretty quick schedule, we never waited for long. The Peak Tram and its shuttle buses were the only thing that was really pricey and did not seem a good value. But, of course, it was a monopoly run by a private company apparently and was not part of public transit. We paid between $.25 and $.60 for buses and subways and less for first class on the ferry. It was all well-used and busy with convenient locations and helpful bus drivers. The local populace was helpful too. Whenever anyone saw us studying a map or bus sign, there was an offer to help us.
Hong Kong Day 2 photos
position at 6:30am: N22 17.48 latitude E114 09.55 longitude
(Hong Kong)
temperature: 62F, 98% humidity
distance since FLL: 20,509 miles
Foodwise, the day started out great as there were chocolate croissants this morning. Breakfast was being served very early this morning (6 am) in LaVeranda since there were a lot of passengers disembarking today. We got up there about 7:45 and behold, there were croissants. But from there, the food story takes some expected turns later in the day causing great trauma in some parts.
Our goal for today was to go back to Hong Kong Island, take a long walk among all the buildings over there, looking at their general architecture. Then we would wander through several parts of the island, just taking in the sights. During this wandering, we would catch lunch somewhere, and then take the tram up to Victoria Peak. After that we would make it back to Kowloon, catch dinner on the ship, and the go out to see the light show and take in Temple Street Night Market. Believe it or not, we did all this and more today, even with the food trauma. Here are some of the details.
We left the ship and made our way out of the Harbour Center mall to the street. This is about a 100-200 yd walk through part of this huge mall. Again, the only line of defense was the ship security station swiping your cabin card as you left and entered just outside the Coffee Corner. If there was any Hong Kong Security/Customs personnel around, they certainly were well hidden. (Forgot to report that when we returned to the ship last night we did not find any screening/x-rays, etc. We walked up the stairs to the gangway platform on the building, like a balcony on it, and just outside the door was a man. We were ready and showed him our keycards. He held out a handful of watches and asked, Rolex? We shook our heads and took 5 more steps to enter the gangway to the ship's side balcony. Washed our hands at the sanitizer and got our keycards swiped. The man with the Rolexes was less than 30 steps from the keycard swiper, but not in view due to the physical layout. Also, our high pressure hoses are gone here. We guess we are feeling pretty safe and secure here in Hong Kong.) Once outside, we walked another 100 yds to the Star Ferry building to catch the ferry across the harbor. Clay was ready this morning with currency of the proper sizes and we had no missteps in getting on the ferry. The ferry just goes back and forth, never turning around, so the seat backs flip back and forth like the seats on the street cars in New Orleans. After a quick ride and short walk out of the building, we found ourselves outside the ferry terminal on Hong Kong Island looking up at the sky line, getting our bearings and plotting our path to the points of interest we wanted to see. Our walking tour is loosely based on one or two walking tours that Debbie found online or in tour books in the library last summer as she was researching Hong Kong. She had printed them out for reference, but as we left the ship yesterday, there was a brochure display where we found a 3x8.5 booklet that detailed several of the ones we had printed, and we used the little booklet as our guide today as it was more convenient than the 8.5x11 loose sheets.
The HSBC building was easy to spot at about the 11 o'clock position as you walked out of the ferry terminal. This bank is one that handles the PLUS system that we can use as an ATM so it was an easy landmark for us to recognize and the building itself was equally unusual looking with its strut and ladder facade. The HSBC building is 'one of the most important buildings of 20th century architecture' according to our guidebook. The building is open underneath and supported by corner pylons. Everything is glass and metal and you can see the inner workings of the escalators and elevators that take you up and inside. It has as open-air ground-level atrium that goes up a couple of floors due to the fact that the harbor-facing side is built on lower ground than the other side. The really unusual thing is that the top of this open-air atrium is a curved glass ceiling, that appears to be the floor of the inside atrium above. So, we walked under this building to look up through the glass floor to see inside the building. It was indeed an unusual building. In front of the HSBC building is a open area called Statue Square. The land was purchased by HSBC and donated to the city with the proviso nothing could be built on it that would obscure the HSBC building from the harbor. Since HK is constantly reclaiming land, what is currently waterfront may not be waterfront in 20 years, and this is an attempt by HSBC to preserve the view to its building. Adjacent to the Statue Square to the east is the Legislative Counsel Building. It is a mix of Victorian and Chinese architecture, and was built in 1912 as the Supreme Court building. Now it is used as the advisory Legislative Counsel which now serves as a debate forum since 1997 where HK was ceded back to China.
Also, next to the HSBC building is the old BanK of China building which is an Art Deco building. This building was dwarfed when the HSBC building was put up. In the nature of HK competition, Bank of China decided to build a taller building close by that towers over the HSBC building. It was the first building built here to break the ridgeline of Victoria Peak. This new Back of China building appears to be constructed of triangular modules due to solid strips of building material that make their way up the building facade in triangular patterns. The BoC building has a public observation level on the 43rd floor, about half way up the building. We went up there to see the sights, but it was really foggy, so it was one of those 'on a clear day you can see" .... But even so, it was worth the elevator ride. The area around the BoC building had water gardens and they were trying to get the fish out of one side to do maintenance work. We saw a bank employee with rubber boots and a net trying to snag a few stragglers. We immediately commensurated with his plight from our expereice of trying to empty our small fish pond of fish before our long trip. (Animal lovers, don't worry. They were adopted by the goldfish pond of the City of Raleigh's Pullen Park and have a new, larger home.)
It was about 10:30am when we left our architecture walk to start on what is known as the Central and Western District walk from the Hong Kong Walks brochure. We sort of did it in reverse ending up at the Western Market instead of starting there. We also added a trip up the MidLevels Escalators which is not part of this 'official walk'. Here are just a few of the areas we hit. It took about 3 hours, not counting lunch, which Debbie is trying to block anyway. We first started out trying to locate the MidLevel Escalators which are about 1/2 mile long and move people down the hill from 6 to 10AM. Then their direction is reversed to move people up the hill the rest of the day. From our buildings tour, we walked west along Queens Road Central until we hit Wyndham St. which we followed uphill to catch the escalators. Along the escalator, there are steps leading back down the hill. On these steps are lots of little shops and restaurants. After the escalators, we started thinking about lunch. The escalators lead up to the Soho section of Hong Kong and Hollywood St. One guide book mentioned this was a good restaurant district, but we did not find anything that jumped out at us. Reading further in the guide book, we saw mention of lunch DimSum places and thought that might be good idea. (Wow, was that wrong!) So we continued on our walk taking in the stops and looking for a Dim Sum place. One stop was Man Mo Temple. It was build in 1847 and is the island's oldest Temple, and is dedicated to the gods of literature and war (Man and Mo). If you go into this temple, beware that you will be overwhelmed by 170 years of burning incense, so be prepared if you have any respiratory problems. It is completely overpowering. Another stop along the way was a browse along Upper Lascar Row aka Cat Street. These were little street stalls with souvenirs and antiques and other things. It was here we were first interviewed by middle school children, probably 12-14 years old. They were looking for English-speaking tourists to interview on local tourism in English. (Can't imagine why they picked us!) Anyway, this was the first of 4 such interviews we had throughout the day in various and far-ranging tourist locations. They were, literally, all over the place. But it was fun speaking with them in English which they were clearly learning. After being interviewed, they asked to photograph us with them. We obliged and took photos too. We continued our walk down the hill toward the bay, casually looking for a Dim Sum place. Well, in about 5 minutes, after a second interview by another group. Debbie spotted one. We looked inside and it was bright and large and spacious and had a lot of Chinese people in it, so we figured it would be as good as any. Well, we got seated in non-smoking at a table set up for 4 people, and were given a menu in English. We chose 5 dishes that we thought we knew what they were: steamed pork dumpling, BBQ Pork buns, glutinous rice in Lotus leaf, pork dumplings in soup, BBQ pork with rice noodles. Purposefully, we chose nothing we thought had any relation to seafood. We selected from an English language menu with item numbers on it. After a little effort, we thought we had communicated our choices to an order taker who checked them off on an order form by the numbers next to the English descriptions. We heard no English spoken in this place the whole time we were in there and we were the only Anglos in the place. At this point, Clay got up to go to the restroom (which turned out to be fine), but when he came back, there was a little old Chinese lady sitting at our table in front of Debbie. Evidently, the woman tried to sit there and was first run off by the wait staff in the restaurant. But as soon as the staff left, she was back and finally Debbie told her it was OK to sit there. As Debbie was waiting for Clay to return, the old lady pulled the paper wrapper off her chopsticks and scoured them, her cup, plate, spoon, and bowl. Then she poured hot tea in the bowl and used it to wash her chopsticks, bowl, spoon and plate. Debbie strictly wrote this off as some mental problem of the old lady. BUT, then she noticed several other new tables being seated, and them doing the same thing. This was the first hint, that we were out of our element. By the time we realized we should have washed our dishes in our hot tea, our tea was not hot enough to do any good so we decided to brave it, and eat our Dim Sum with unwashed chopsticks and plate. Debbie was already close to getting hives over this thought. At this point, the people at other tables around us were smiling and talking about the little old lady at our table. We realized she was probably there to sponge off our uneaten food which again was fine with us. THEN, our food started coming. The first thing to show up looked and tasted like crispy fried bean curd. The problem was that we did NOT order any crispy fried bean curd. But it turned out OK, and was tasty for fried bean curd. Then we got 4 dishes in steamer baskets. Debbie first opened the glutinous rice steamed in Lotus leaf. As she unwrapped it, she spotted little shrimp around the edges. She immediately re-wrapped it and put it back on the plate. The little old lady had her first dish from us. The next thing Debbie picked up looked sort of like steamed pork dumpling. But after taking a bite and finding it undercooked in the center and pink, she undertook a closer inspection (and Debbie closely inspects everything new), the meat was mighty gristly and also she thought it tasted fishy or just off somehow. (Debbie still suspects that this was an undercooked cat ball. It is not so much the being served cat that she did not order that upset her so much as the fact that they did not even cook it through!) Clay did eat 2 of these dumplings, but the little old lady made another score with Debbie's portion. Essentially, the same process continued with the other 2 dishes. They all had something objectionable or unknown in them, the little old lady ended up with Debbie's (and sometimes Clay's share). This adventure cost us about 115HKD (or about 15USD) and significant worry the rest of the day regarding what we might have ingested, and the dirty dishes issue. But I will have to say, a day later Clay had no noticeable effects from the meal. Debbie however suffered a purge, that Clay thinks was just stress-related, perhaps rightly so. In which case, Debbie has a highly evolved protective digestive system. Or maybe, it was something she ate!
After the meal, we meandered on down the hill to the Western Market, taking in the sights on the way. At this market of upscale shops, we caught one of the double decker trollies for a ride back to the Star Ferry dock where we caught the 15C bus that took us to the Peak Tram Lower Station which is a 100-year old tram that takes you up to Victoria Peak. They say when it was first done, it turned a 3 hour pedicab ride up to the peak into an 8 minute ride. The tram is a very steep ride up the hill with 15-20 degree picthes. The whole thing is on angle, there is not a flat straight surface. On occasion, it will come to a complete stop, and you are just hanging on the side of the mountain. You sit on wooden benches, but at an angle for shuttle launch! It is more than a little disconcerting, but we all survived. There was little to see because of the fog and clouds. It was another 'On a clear day, you can see'... situation. It was even more fogged in than yesterday when we arrived and decided to save it for later. But, we did not want to put it off to the last day because Jamie is warning that rain is expected here. But we did it, and the ride made it interesting. We also got interviewd for the 3rd and 4th times at the top. After this, took the tram back down and you sit the same way. So you ride backwards on the way down. Debbie did not handle the ride well, though she had another meclizine and put on her seabands before we started out. Then back to the ferry station on bus 15C, and we caught the ferry back to Kowloon. We stopped in the mall on our way through and priced glasses for Clay. We picked the lower priced one and Clay got his eyes examined and frames picked out and his new glasses will be ready tomorrow after 5:30pm. Then, we picked up some essentials in a drugstore and on back to the ship, dodging the tailor hustlers and middle schoolers still doing interviews. We got back to the ship at about 6:10pm. This was just in time to get to Compass Rose and have a quick dinner so we could try to catch the Light Show after 8pm down at the waterfront on the Avenue of Stars. At 8pm each evening, they put on a light show which lights up the skyscrapers on each side of the harbor with the dynamic lighting being synchronized to music that you can hear on the Avenue of Stars. It was really quite impressive. The fronts of these huge buildings would dance with lights and several of the tallest ones shot colored beams of light from their tops. It was a wow moment. Note, that the guide books and brochures just say that this lightshow takes place after 8pm. The buildings are lighted all night, but that show started at 8pm and ended at 8:15pm. The recorded English language announcements did not say that it would happen again or happen in another language. It was sponsored by the Hong Kong Tourism Board.
After the 15-minute light show, we caught the MTR (the subway) out to the Jordan Road station and from there walked up to the Temple Street Night Market. That was another WOW situation. It was as big and as crowded as the Sunday Flea market in Rome, but without all the Gypsy children trying to rob you. We are sure there may have been pick pockets and prostitutes and hustlers around, but it felt safe and unthreatening and no one bothered us. It was big and you could buy just about anything there. We took the MTR back down to Tsim Sha Tsui. We finally got back to the ship about 11pm and we had had a full day.
We found the public transit to be very convenient. It runs on a pretty quick schedule, we never waited for long. The Peak Tram and its shuttle buses were the only thing that was really pricey and did not seem a good value. But, of course, it was a monopoly run by a private company apparently and was not part of public transit. We paid between $.25 and $.60 for buses and subways and less for first class on the ferry. It was all well-used and busy with convenient locations and helpful bus drivers. The local populace was helpful too. Whenever anyone saw us studying a map or bus sign, there was an offer to help us.
Hong Kong Day 2 photos
Thursday, February 23, 2006
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
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
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Day 56 - Wednesday Feb 22 At sea
position at 7:30am: N15 53.58 latitude E119 05.501 longitude
(in the China Sea about 560 E of Hong Kong, our next port)
temperature: 81F, 91% humidity, mostly sunny
distance since FLL: 19,952 miles
The Filippine folk dancing last night was exceptional. It was the National Folk Dance Company of the Philippines and was definitely a class act. They were even better than Debbie when they did the bamboo pole dance.
The ship had lots of visitors yesterday when we were in Manila. A lot of the crew is Filippino and the crew members were allowed to have their families visit the ship so they could see it. Lots of children, wives and parents onboard. There were a lot of smiling faces about. It took some conjoling and arm twisting by the ship to get approval for the family visits. The story we heard was that the port officials just would not allow it. But in the end, it was worked out.
Clay's morning walk went well. He did three miles at about 80% of his pre-injury pace. It was enough of an improvement that his fellow walkers commented on it.
This morning we are seeing ship movement due to swells. The ship is lurching back and forth but not anything close to the Australian Bight Standard Measure. The captain in his 9 am vords of visdom said he expected the swells to increase through the day. Debbie was able to do two exercise classes before 11 am. After that, the ship movement made her take to the bed for the rest of the day, skipping lunch and her afternoon classes. Freddie, in his noon announcements from the bridge, put the swells at 6-8 feet. Clay ate lunch at a Chinese buffet that was given on the pool deck. The ice cream flavors for the day were Vanilla and Malt Whoppers. It is the first time we have seen the Malt Whoppers ice cream. When Debbie learned this, she dispatched Clay back up to the pool deck to bring her a Malt Whoppers serving back to the room.
Clay tried to sign us up for a walking tour for the second day of our first stop in Vietnam on our next segment in about 5 days. He was told at the tour desk that we would have to wait-list as the tour was sold out. Later in day, we got a copy of our bill to date delivered to our room. We get one at the end of each segment just to keep track of things. On this bill, they have already included the walking tour we were wait-listed for, so we assume we have cleared the wait-list.
Theafternoon and evening was spent reading up on Hong Kong and trying to lay out a plan for our 2.5 day visit. We should be there at 1 pm tomorrow if we make the published schedule. This evening is a formal night, but we skipped it, choosing instead to eat up in the always casual LaVaranda restaurant. Debbie had fillet mignon and Clay had a veal chop from the 'steakhouse' menu now being served in LaVaranda.
Hong Kong is the end of a segment so people will be leaving the shipday after tomorrow. Roger Condon in his port talk today mentioned we would get about 225 new passengers coming aboard in Hong Kong. This 225 plus the 275 world cruise passengers would bring the next segment's passenger count to about 500.
Sorry no pictures today. So far, we have 11 CDs full of pictures but we can only post a few online at this point. (This means we have used 22 of the 100 CDs we bought in Acapulco.) We are just under half way through our trip.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Day 55 - Tuesday Feb 21 Manila, Philippines
Manila photos
position at 7:00am: N14 34.58 latitude E120 58.01 longitude
(Manila, Philippines)
temperature: 80F, 78% humidity, mostly sunny
distance since FLL: 19,774 miles
So, today we finally arrive in Manila. This has been the most anticipated port on our itinerary as regards the people working on this ship. They will finally get to see their families. Their families will be allowed on board the ship. It looks like we will be losing some crew here as well and we suppose gaining some new. We expected to dock by 8am and slept in.
Debbie was awakened by the smell of something like an electrical fire and noticed a lack of motion. Clay was in the shower. It was not 6:30am yet. Debbie got up and followed her nose to the balcony. There was daylight outside and she pushed open the curtains and stepped out. We were in Manila Bay and the smell was apparently coming from the smog and pollution visible on land. Clay went out to the Coffee Corner while Debbie was in the shower and got her a chocolate croissant. Debbie ate it before going up to LaVeranda. We got a corner table outside at LaVeranda and so had a nice sail in to dock. We both ate cold cereal and toast with juice. Then up top to see what else we could see. We arrived up top just in time to take in the 180 degree turn backing up to the dock. The breakwater and dock are crumbling. We stopped after tying off about 6 feet from the dock. An announcement was made that someone had run to the laundry to get some sheets to hang over the big, old tires that were hanging off the side of the dock. They had crew out there in Kota Kinabalu putting a coat of fresh, white paint and Capt. Dag did not want to mess up his new paint job. An announcement was made about 8am that the ship was cleared and we could leave. We did not have our car coming until 8am so we stayed put until about 8:30am. There was a tent at the foot of the gangway selling Voyager 2006 World Cruise T-shirts with flags of the countries we visit on it and all the ports listed on back. There was a sign up saying the shirts were $9.99. Clay wanted to go down and get some and so we went out to the Main Atrium to see about going out and buying shirts and coming back up before going out on our private tour. The atrium area was packed with people for 2 floors. The blue rope was still across the security checkpoint. It had been 30 minutes since they announced that we could leave, what the heck was going on. We figured that we better go ahead and get our stuff and get in line to be at the foot of the gangway to meet our car by nine. There was some kind of lack of communication going on between the Tour Desk personnel and the Cruise Director's staff. Jamie kept making loudspeaker announcements telling us to go on out and Dionne was standing at the bottom of the stairs yelling the same message. But, after we fought our way to the security checkpoint to try to exit, Asta refused us. We and everyone else who was not going on the Corregidor tour were told to get out of the way, move away from the exit and wait to be called. Called by whom? Jamie had been making general calls for people to disembark for the last 1/2 hour. Asta told us that no cars or buses were being allowed on the dock yet and she knew we had a car and would call our names when it was here. It was already sitting out there. It sat all the while that we waited to leave the ship. (We finally just merged in with the next tour group and exited the ship under their cover in order to shop on the dock.) After we shopped, Clay was going to take the sack of shirts up to the cabin. Debbie had been checking people holding up name signs, but had not seen ours. Just as Clay walked away, a woman broke out from a group of tour guides sitting and standing under a tent with maps and literature and she held up a sign that said BURCH PRIVATE CAR. Debbie yelled for Clay and told the woman that we were here and ready. The woman did not want us to have to walk to the car and was not sure where it was. So, she spoke with us under the shade of tent and made phone calls. Finally, she walked about 100 feet away from the tent area to a line of cars and ours had been sitting there all along. She had a phone number that was 1 digit off. While we were under the tent alone, Roger came in and he still did not understand that this was where all the guides were waiting for their passengers. And waiting, and waiting.... There were some major communications problems at this port. The guide and driver were very pleased that we had come because 3 other cruise ships had all cancelled their port calls here in the last 2 weeks and that another one scheduled to come in a day or 2 was wavering about cancelling or coming. We asked why, and they said because of the news. What news? Have we missed something? We don't get a lot of news onboard just because we don't watch Fox News onboard or CNN when it is available, but still if there had been something that was affecting cruise ships we would have expected to heard about it. They said, no the only international news out of the Philippines was about the mudslides and that had nothing to do with Manila. What news then? We don't know. We asked if it was related to our cancelled stop in Sandakan because of concern with Mindano pirates and they thought maybe that was it, but did not know what had changed recently with that situation that was causing ships to reroute. We left the dock about 9:20am. We did a city tour first to see Future Manila which was the area that Imelda Marcos built on reclaimed land in Manila Bay and around Pasay City. Then to see their Little New York, Makati, and then to see their little Beverly Hills, we don't know the name, and then to see past Manila, or Intramuros. We were to go to 3 museums and have lunch before returning to Voyager around 2pm. We searched for an ATM machine and had some user error issues before we put all the heads in the car together and read the back of the ATM card and found the right kind. Then, there was more user error and we had to make 2 trips to the machine to get more than $5USD worth of pesos. Oh, well, these are the trials of traveling with only a day in each place. We drove around for about an hour. It was alright. The traffic and jeepneys were thrilling and it was cool and comfortable in the car. Jeepneys are jeeps that the US Army left behind here. The locals have converted them into a unique kind of private bus service. It is a trip. It is apparently the cheapest way for locals to get around, not to mention colorful. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Manila. We were the only people in there other than the workers. The place is under renovation and our guide, Dolly was not even sure it was open. It was, and only part of the exhibits were there and scattered strangely. But, all the classical gold and pottery from the pre-colonial era was still in the vault in the basement and that was what we were really interested in seeing anyway. It was an impressive and probably priceless collection well-displayed and signed in English. We are glad that we made the effort to visit and it is too bad no one else was there. Our only stop in Intramuros was a curio shop. We really only intended to use their bathrooms, but we did also spend a few pesos with them. They greeted us at the door with free beads and told us that since we were cruisers touring with Dolly that we could have a 60% discount off several of the products they had for sale. Clay got a toy Jeepney and a 30 peso ($.60US) San Miguel beer in a brown bottle. (That's how it should be drunk according to our Filippino wine steward. Also, our driver today agreed that the stuff in the can does not compare to that in the bottle. Clay agreed, too.) After, that we drove around Intramuros and learned that the San Agustin church is closed until 6pm so we could not see that. Then we went to lunch at the Blue Bay restaurant in the Harborview area. We sat right out over the water and it smelled very bad. There we had a buffet featuring Filippino food. It was a real test for Debbie who does not do buffets to start with, and to do one that was mainly seafood and other unidentifiable foods was particular trying. Our guide was very proud of the selection though and seemed very unhappy when Debbie looked over the items and asked to eat something else. So, Debbie retracted and said that it was fine, we should stay here and try the local dishes off the buffet. She did eat some chicken and noodle stir fry-to-order that she found tasty. We all had the national dish of roasted suckling pig, splayed open in half length-wise with a face. Clay ate roast piglet, crabs, something the driver called Dim Sum but was just a single item. Clay also ate some Sushi and got another San Miguel beer. This one cost 60 pesos, but it was a high-class restaurant. We also had some typical Filippino desserts including flan and two others (one based on coconut and the other based on a purple sweet potato). They were all good, even the flan, which was much better than the one served on Voyager. After lunch, we headed back to catch the National Museum, or the Museum of the Filippino People. Well, when we got there, this one was also closed. It seems they had just switched their schedule to Wed-Sun instead of Tue-Sat. So, Dolly suggested a museum in Intramuros that focused on the role of Chinese in the Philippines. This one we found open, though again only barely, they turned the lights on for us! We were again the only people there and we spent maybe 30-40 minutes going through it. After that, we headed back to the ship and got back around 2:30pm. After a quick room stop to drop off our parcels, we took the Radisson shuttle bus into town. It stopped at the Robinson Mall. It was a huge mall having all the stores you would find back home plus some others. They also had a market area with lots of little stalls and a grocery store. It was really busy and bustling with lots of people. We walked though it to the end, saw the TGI Friday's restaurant and decided we had seen enough. We walked back through and waited for the Shuttle bus to return. We got back on the shuttle and drove around in very heavy traffic for about 10 minutes before the bus stopped again, in front of wouldn't you know it, TGI Friday's. We had circled the mall. If they had told us that they stopped at both ends we could have saved ourselves a 20-minute backtrack. We were back at the ship a little after 5pm.
Tonight is country club casual. There were still lots of visitors aboard. Compass Rose was very empty tonight. There were some new waiters and we had one named Albert. We thought we saw Edwin, one of the head waiters, leave the ship today. He was in shorts, T and sandals and rolling around a big stack of luggage. He seemed to be going around shaking hands and saying goodbyes to lots of crew and passengers around the dock area before loading on a bus and leaving. We sat on the other side of CR tonight so did not get to see if someone else was working his area. Dinner was good. The reason we had to go was for the leftover white chocolate sherbet being incorporated into dessert tonight. So, Debbie got that and it was all she cared about. She has a tummyache and is sure that either we'll die from lunch or wish we had. She thinks she will have nightmares for days about that tiny piglet that she had to eat pieces of. Piglet pieces. Piglet! We have to stay up late tonight. At 9:30pm in Constellation Theatre they are having the Bayahihan National Dance Company of the Philippines. May have to wait until tomorrow to report on that.
Manila photos
position at 7:00am: N14 34.58 latitude E120 58.01 longitude
(Manila, Philippines)
temperature: 80F, 78% humidity, mostly sunny
distance since FLL: 19,774 miles
So, today we finally arrive in Manila. This has been the most anticipated port on our itinerary as regards the people working on this ship. They will finally get to see their families. Their families will be allowed on board the ship. It looks like we will be losing some crew here as well and we suppose gaining some new. We expected to dock by 8am and slept in.
Debbie was awakened by the smell of something like an electrical fire and noticed a lack of motion. Clay was in the shower. It was not 6:30am yet. Debbie got up and followed her nose to the balcony. There was daylight outside and she pushed open the curtains and stepped out. We were in Manila Bay and the smell was apparently coming from the smog and pollution visible on land. Clay went out to the Coffee Corner while Debbie was in the shower and got her a chocolate croissant. Debbie ate it before going up to LaVeranda. We got a corner table outside at LaVeranda and so had a nice sail in to dock. We both ate cold cereal and toast with juice. Then up top to see what else we could see. We arrived up top just in time to take in the 180 degree turn backing up to the dock. The breakwater and dock are crumbling. We stopped after tying off about 6 feet from the dock. An announcement was made that someone had run to the laundry to get some sheets to hang over the big, old tires that were hanging off the side of the dock. They had crew out there in Kota Kinabalu putting a coat of fresh, white paint and Capt. Dag did not want to mess up his new paint job. An announcement was made about 8am that the ship was cleared and we could leave. We did not have our car coming until 8am so we stayed put until about 8:30am. There was a tent at the foot of the gangway selling Voyager 2006 World Cruise T-shirts with flags of the countries we visit on it and all the ports listed on back. There was a sign up saying the shirts were $9.99. Clay wanted to go down and get some and so we went out to the Main Atrium to see about going out and buying shirts and coming back up before going out on our private tour. The atrium area was packed with people for 2 floors. The blue rope was still across the security checkpoint. It had been 30 minutes since they announced that we could leave, what the heck was going on. We figured that we better go ahead and get our stuff and get in line to be at the foot of the gangway to meet our car by nine. There was some kind of lack of communication going on between the Tour Desk personnel and the Cruise Director's staff. Jamie kept making loudspeaker announcements telling us to go on out and Dionne was standing at the bottom of the stairs yelling the same message. But, after we fought our way to the security checkpoint to try to exit, Asta refused us. We and everyone else who was not going on the Corregidor tour were told to get out of the way, move away from the exit and wait to be called. Called by whom? Jamie had been making general calls for people to disembark for the last 1/2 hour. Asta told us that no cars or buses were being allowed on the dock yet and she knew we had a car and would call our names when it was here. It was already sitting out there. It sat all the while that we waited to leave the ship. (We finally just merged in with the next tour group and exited the ship under their cover in order to shop on the dock.) After we shopped, Clay was going to take the sack of shirts up to the cabin. Debbie had been checking people holding up name signs, but had not seen ours. Just as Clay walked away, a woman broke out from a group of tour guides sitting and standing under a tent with maps and literature and she held up a sign that said BURCH PRIVATE CAR. Debbie yelled for Clay and told the woman that we were here and ready. The woman did not want us to have to walk to the car and was not sure where it was. So, she spoke with us under the shade of tent and made phone calls. Finally, she walked about 100 feet away from the tent area to a line of cars and ours had been sitting there all along. She had a phone number that was 1 digit off. While we were under the tent alone, Roger came in and he still did not understand that this was where all the guides were waiting for their passengers. And waiting, and waiting.... There were some major communications problems at this port. The guide and driver were very pleased that we had come because 3 other cruise ships had all cancelled their port calls here in the last 2 weeks and that another one scheduled to come in a day or 2 was wavering about cancelling or coming. We asked why, and they said because of the news. What news? Have we missed something? We don't get a lot of news onboard just because we don't watch Fox News onboard or CNN when it is available, but still if there had been something that was affecting cruise ships we would have expected to heard about it. They said, no the only international news out of the Philippines was about the mudslides and that had nothing to do with Manila. What news then? We don't know. We asked if it was related to our cancelled stop in Sandakan because of concern with Mindano pirates and they thought maybe that was it, but did not know what had changed recently with that situation that was causing ships to reroute. We left the dock about 9:20am. We did a city tour first to see Future Manila which was the area that Imelda Marcos built on reclaimed land in Manila Bay and around Pasay City. Then to see their Little New York, Makati, and then to see their little Beverly Hills, we don't know the name, and then to see past Manila, or Intramuros. We were to go to 3 museums and have lunch before returning to Voyager around 2pm. We searched for an ATM machine and had some user error issues before we put all the heads in the car together and read the back of the ATM card and found the right kind. Then, there was more user error and we had to make 2 trips to the machine to get more than $5USD worth of pesos. Oh, well, these are the trials of traveling with only a day in each place. We drove around for about an hour. It was alright. The traffic and jeepneys were thrilling and it was cool and comfortable in the car. Jeepneys are jeeps that the US Army left behind here. The locals have converted them into a unique kind of private bus service. It is a trip. It is apparently the cheapest way for locals to get around, not to mention colorful. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Manila. We were the only people in there other than the workers. The place is under renovation and our guide, Dolly was not even sure it was open. It was, and only part of the exhibits were there and scattered strangely. But, all the classical gold and pottery from the pre-colonial era was still in the vault in the basement and that was what we were really interested in seeing anyway. It was an impressive and probably priceless collection well-displayed and signed in English. We are glad that we made the effort to visit and it is too bad no one else was there. Our only stop in Intramuros was a curio shop. We really only intended to use their bathrooms, but we did also spend a few pesos with them. They greeted us at the door with free beads and told us that since we were cruisers touring with Dolly that we could have a 60% discount off several of the products they had for sale. Clay got a toy Jeepney and a 30 peso ($.60US) San Miguel beer in a brown bottle. (That's how it should be drunk according to our Filippino wine steward. Also, our driver today agreed that the stuff in the can does not compare to that in the bottle. Clay agreed, too.) After, that we drove around Intramuros and learned that the San Agustin church is closed until 6pm so we could not see that. Then we went to lunch at the Blue Bay restaurant in the Harborview area. We sat right out over the water and it smelled very bad. There we had a buffet featuring Filippino food. It was a real test for Debbie who does not do buffets to start with, and to do one that was mainly seafood and other unidentifiable foods was particular trying. Our guide was very proud of the selection though and seemed very unhappy when Debbie looked over the items and asked to eat something else. So, Debbie retracted and said that it was fine, we should stay here and try the local dishes off the buffet. She did eat some chicken and noodle stir fry-to-order that she found tasty. We all had the national dish of roasted suckling pig, splayed open in half length-wise with a face. Clay ate roast piglet, crabs, something the driver called Dim Sum but was just a single item. Clay also ate some Sushi and got another San Miguel beer. This one cost 60 pesos, but it was a high-class restaurant. We also had some typical Filippino desserts including flan and two others (one based on coconut and the other based on a purple sweet potato). They were all good, even the flan, which was much better than the one served on Voyager. After lunch, we headed back to catch the National Museum, or the Museum of the Filippino People. Well, when we got there, this one was also closed. It seems they had just switched their schedule to Wed-Sun instead of Tue-Sat. So, Dolly suggested a museum in Intramuros that focused on the role of Chinese in the Philippines. This one we found open, though again only barely, they turned the lights on for us! We were again the only people there and we spent maybe 30-40 minutes going through it. After that, we headed back to the ship and got back around 2:30pm. After a quick room stop to drop off our parcels, we took the Radisson shuttle bus into town. It stopped at the Robinson Mall. It was a huge mall having all the stores you would find back home plus some others. They also had a market area with lots of little stalls and a grocery store. It was really busy and bustling with lots of people. We walked though it to the end, saw the TGI Friday's restaurant and decided we had seen enough. We walked back through and waited for the Shuttle bus to return. We got back on the shuttle and drove around in very heavy traffic for about 10 minutes before the bus stopped again, in front of wouldn't you know it, TGI Friday's. We had circled the mall. If they had told us that they stopped at both ends we could have saved ourselves a 20-minute backtrack. We were back at the ship a little after 5pm.
Tonight is country club casual. There were still lots of visitors aboard. Compass Rose was very empty tonight. There were some new waiters and we had one named Albert. We thought we saw Edwin, one of the head waiters, leave the ship today. He was in shorts, T and sandals and rolling around a big stack of luggage. He seemed to be going around shaking hands and saying goodbyes to lots of crew and passengers around the dock area before loading on a bus and leaving. We sat on the other side of CR tonight so did not get to see if someone else was working his area. Dinner was good. The reason we had to go was for the leftover white chocolate sherbet being incorporated into dessert tonight. So, Debbie got that and it was all she cared about. She has a tummyache and is sure that either we'll die from lunch or wish we had. She thinks she will have nightmares for days about that tiny piglet that she had to eat pieces of. Piglet pieces. Piglet! We have to stay up late tonight. At 9:30pm in Constellation Theatre they are having the Bayahihan National Dance Company of the Philippines. May have to wait until tomorrow to report on that.
Manila photos
Monday, February 20, 2006
Day 54 - Monday Feb 20 at Sea
position at 7:00am: N9 40.077 latitude E117 30.59 longitude
(in South China Sea about 400 SW of Manila, Philipines, our next port)
temperature: 79F, 94% humidity, mostly cloudy
distance since FLL: 19,361 miles
Clay got up early for his deck walk. It was very windy up top this morning. The South China Sea is a rough ride for us. (Freddie said in his noon announcement that we were experiencing the long swells of the South China Sea.) Debbie had to go for a double dose of meclizine and Relief Band early this morning to go up and around.
We had breakfast after 8am at Compass Rose to make up for missing our big Sunday breakfast. No chocolate croissants. Debbie had a ham and cheese omelet and an English Muffin. Her hash browns were forgotten. Clay had blueberry pancakes and sausage. Our waiter was singing and dancing this morning, this particular waiter is famous with us for his curtness. He was very happy, but also very unfocused this morning. Debbie also got to start with a small bowl of raspberries.
Debbie was not sure if she could make it to step and toning class at 9am because of the roll of the ship. She finally decided to tough it out and did so. Clay went to Roger's talk on Hong Kong. There were technical problems and it was late and juryrigged together but that Roger did finish it late. Clay returned to the cabin to find a letter informing us that our 6-hour tour, the Manila Museums, was cancelled. This is less than 24-hours notice and past the booking deadline for a replacement. Clay went and got Debbie just minutes before Back Strengthening class started. He needed her to go with him to the Tour Desk before they closed for lunch, or else he would have to figure out something for himself. So, Debbie ditched the class and we went together to see what we could book as a replacement. The woman we spoke to was defensive and short with us. Debbie got angry. We understand this ship does not have to honor any of its published itinerary and that the Tour Desk does not have to provide any tour that we book, but it seems we are owed more this treatment. She said, they only had 4 people sign up for that tour and that was not enough. (They also cancelled 2 other tours for low participation reasons. We don't know when those people were notified.) She suggested that we just walk the 350 yards out of the dock and hire a cab or take the shuttle bus to a shopping center in town and find our own way about. (Remember that we went to book a replacement tour. We could have not gone to the desk and done our own thing without any face time at the Tour Desk.) Debbie informed her that we had mostly fended for ourselves ashore so far on this cruise, but that we had time to do research and know what to do and how and where. Here we were being left high and dry with less than 24 hours to do our own research and Debbie felt that the Tour Desk did indeed owe us something other than "you knew the risks that you might be on your own." Debbie countered that in fact we did not know the risks, that the Tour Desk knew how many people were booked and what the minimum number was for the tour to operate, but that we did not know until just now. The reply was basically, too bad. Debbie asked her if the goal here was to just send us off tourless and unhelped and angry when we had come asking for something to replace the cancelled tour and nothing more. Um, no, not the goal. Debbie told her, then we need to have a different conversation. And asked her again: we want to do something very similar to this canceled tour, how can you help us make that happen? She got out a form and told us that she would request an English-speaking guide and driver with car for 4-hours for $150 to take us to the museums. She told us that we should get a confirmation letter if it was possible for this to be arranged. It is 4:30pm and no letter yet. They did call and say the car and driver were confirmed and we would get a letter later this evening.
We had a quick lunch of sandwiches today in Compass Rose, because we did not like LaVeranda's dishes and we had less than an hour for lunch because Debbie had a spa appointment today. (Debbie did get to eat two minature chocolate croissants that Clay picked up from a tea tray on the way into Compass Rose). She got the Renovateur Ultimate Body Treatment. "This unique signature treatment starts with Renovateur exfoliation to prepare the body for sustenance. (This invigorating treatment begins with a sunflower seed exfoliation using lymphatic drainage techniques. An excellent preparatory treatment for sun exposure or deep tissue work.) Then, you will be enveloped in a volcanic powder concoction that will replenish your body's minerals and help address fluid retention. While your body is wrapped, you will be treated to a deeply relaxing cold pebble facial massage. Lastly, the de-stress process is completed bysurrenduring to the heat of warmed volcanic stones that will be massaged all over. The heat will engulf you and the strength of the stones gliding through your body's contours will melt your tensions away. This star treatment will leave you walking on 'air' to a brand new you." The price is $195 for 90 minutes. Debbie got a 10% discount for being on the full World Cruise. They must not have had any cold pebbles because she did got a neck and head massage instead. It was good, but it is VERY dirty. So, probably, once is enough. She is smooth as a seal though and says she did enjoy it.
Debbie went to yoga-style strengthen and stretch class from 4:30pm-5:30pm and during that time the Tour Desk called and confirmed our independent tour tomorrow. Thanks.
Also, while Debbie was in class the Captain made an announcement that he had been able to work out with the Filippine authorities that the families of Filippino crew onboard would be able to have their families visit the ship. He emphasized family only and this only applied to crew, not passengers. He also said that since he expected a lot of traffic through the port to the ship and back out that he had arranged to have shuttles operating continuously between the ship and the port entrance now.
Tonight is Informal and we plan to go to Compass Rose because they have Refreshing White Chocolate Sherbet as the palate cleansing course tonight. There is a woman named Carole Klein who works at the former Regent Hotel, now Intercontinental in Hong Kong, that is giving a talk at 6:15pm tonight about shopping in Hong Kong. She promised on Voyager Today to have handouts and maps so we are planning to attend. We got our handouts, but no maps. Dinner was later than usual because the shopping talk lasted until 7:10pm. We were back in the cabin at 8:10pm and that included time for us to tour the Boutique to see what was new. A record! The Refreshing White Chocolate Sherbet was delicious and Debbie order 2 more scoops for her dessert.
Sorry - No pictures today.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Day 53 - Sunday Feb 19 Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia on Borneo
Kota Kinabalu 2 photos
position at 6:00 am: N5 59.47 latitude E116 4.47 longitude
(Kota Kinabualu, Malaysia on the island of Borneo)
temperature: 79F, 100% humidity, mostly cloudy
distance since FLL: 19, 089 miles
We had to be on dock by 8:05am to meet the bus for our morning tour. We went up to LaVeranda shortly after it opened at 7am. Lucky day! Debbie had 2 chocolate croissants and a bowl of raspberries. Clay had eggs again.
We were out on the dock by 7:50am. We could hear the music coming from outside before we left. There were men in native costumes playing drums and gongs. There were young women in native costumes putting strands of beads on everyone. Roger told us to go to bus 2, the closest one for our tour. There were already several people on it and the AC was on, so it was nice. Clay went back out to take a lot of pictures of our welcome committee. By 8:20am, the last person finally decided to reboard the bus. (We could not leave because she had turned in her ticket and the head count did not work out.) We drove about 10 minutes through KK (what the locals call Kota Kinabalu) and to the train station. This is the northern terminus of the only train track on Borneo. It is narrow gauge. And, surprise! We had been told that we would get a diesel engine. The old steam engine generally only makes this run from KK to Papar on Wednesday and Saturday, but RSSC made special arrangements and we got the steam engine. It was great! A couple of busloads went to the train first and a couple of busloads went to the beach cultural show first and then we switched. So, each group took the train one way and the bus one way. They blew the train's whistle almost constantly and ran off the tracks everything from packs of children to herds of water buffalo. It was all open air and you could smell the mangrove wood they were burning and sometimes get the ashes on you. It traveled 30km/h so you could take lots of pictures. Everyone along the way was stopping and waving and taking pictures of us taking pictures. It was very special.
They unloaded us from the train in the village of Papar. It was a small village they said, but it was bustling with a Sunday market. We drove us for a half-hour or so to a beachfront hotel for a cultural show. They gave us each a cold water, or soda, and a chance to use the toilets. They had some vendors set up with sovenirs and crafts. They had a shaded, raised, wooden performance platform with rows of plastic chairs set up for us. We had about 50-60 passengers there. We got some seats in the front and center row because we had done our shopping last night and did not linger through the vendor area. They had musicians and dancers. They did about 4-5 dances in all and demonstrated some games with tops and with rattan balls, while the dancers changed costumes. They also did a blowdart demonstration. That was a hunting method here, historically. One of the dancers popped 2 balloons in one try as another dancer held the balloons out on a pole. Then... the MC asked for a volunteer to shoot the remaining balloon with the blowdart gun. Now if we had known that this performance was going to involve audience participation, we would have sat in the back. But... The average age on the front row was probably 70, and where the heck are all those kids when you need one? Anyway. After trying to pull several people out of the front 2 rows and not dislodging one, and Debbie refusing to make eye contact, he came back and politely entreated her to help out. He pulled on her and with a push from Clay and the woman next to her, she got up. Now Debbie is shy and has the worst hand-eye coordination of almost anyone alive today. She was pretty much completely appalled and mortified. After a moment of panic about hitting one of the performers with a dart, or missing the balloon 3 times and being humiliated, she flashbacked on a TV special and remembered not to inhale with the gun to her mouth. She took a deep breath and the guy showed her the sight on the end and helped her line it up and she blew hard. Hurray! Popped it in one try! They did 2 more dances, then they did one with bamboo poles beat rhythmically on the ground and dancers stepping between. The MC asked for volunteers again and pretty much everyone pointed at Debbie. The girl tried a few other people and when no one whose hand she pulled on stood up, she asked Debbie. It started out OK and then they just kept getting faster and faster and Debbie choked. No one got hurt, only Debbie's dignity. A couple of people later congratulated her for being brave and a good sport. (Debbie would like to explain the most unflattering outfit she owns, that sadly managed to be put on public display and now posted on the Internet by Clay! Borneo has not only malaria but also dengue fever. We shopped for BuzzOff clothes almost as soon as we booked this cruise. BuzzOffs are impregnated with Permethrin bug repellent and are good for 25 washes. Clay managed to get a pair from ExOfficio of zip-off-leg pants and 2 shirts at Orvis for a fraction of their regular price right away. But Orvis had no women's BuzzOff clothes on sale at the time. One pair of long pants in her size would have cost more than twice the cost of all 3 of Clay's sale pieces. So, Debbie rummaged through the kid's clearance clothes box and came up with a XL pants and a matching L shirt in boys'. They looked awful when she tried them on, like pajamas, but they fit and let's face it, the BuzzOff clothes were not going to be fashionable anyway. So, for $25 she got a whole BuzzOff outfit, with long pants and long sleeves, but very lightweight CoolMaxx knit. So, today when she knew it was mostly bus and train riding and NO ONE would notice her awful, unflattering knit bug repellent clothes, she wore the bargain BuzzOff outfit.... The rest is, sadly, now recorded history. Debbie out.)
We forgot to say last night that they drive on the left here. Also, they said they had a meter of rain last week and it had only been clear for yesterday and today. Lucky for us again. It is about 83 degrees and 65% humidity. There has been a nice breeze everywhere, so it has been as pleasant as we could hope for it to be.
Lunch at LaVeranda in a hurry, again. Cabin potty break and back out to board buses. Our luck finally broke and after we left KK heading 18 miles SW to the Sabah Zoo we hit rain and thunderstorms. Too bad no one warned us it was raining out that way, because there was a big barrel of RSSC Voyager golf umbrellas at the top of the gangway. Debbie had a small umbrella in her purse and used it. Otherwise, the guides passed out plastic pullovers as we exited the bus. They were not as spacious as ponchos and did not open down the front, but were pullovers. We also lost all the breeze. So, it was about 85 degrees with 100% humidity. Whether we were soaked with rain or sweat, we were soaked through. The zoo was wonderful. It was small and compact. We saw birds, binturongs (or bear cats), pygmy Borneo elephants, rhea (like ostrich), Malayan tiger, orangutan, proboscis monkey, mouse deer, barking deer, banteng (wild cow), and ostriches. They had 2 six-year old girl elephants. One played in the pond right next to the viewing platform and was just too funny. The other little girl the keepers had out in front of the enclosure and you could stand right next to her. She licked Debbie's hand and then rumbled! This zoo is brand new and a month from opening yet (maybe more). So, we were their first foreign visitors. They were very interested in speaking to us about every exhibit and there were so few of us that we all at some point had an opportunity for a one-on-one session with some species' keepers. It was great even in the hot, pouring rain. Clay feels it was the highlight of the trip so far for him. When we arrived back at the ship, not yet dried out, the local guides were at the bus door handing out RSSC Voyager umbrellas to everyone for the walk to the ship.
Forgot to say that we turned another corner yesterday and left the Sulu Sea and entered the South China Sea. At 6pm, we left the dock at Kota Kinabalu and are now sailing in the South China Sea again on our way to Manila.
Here is the tour description for our Last Train in Borneo Tour.
===================
Duration: 4 Hours.
Seated.
Travel back in time as you journey through the scenic Borneo countryside in a diesel train. Mangrove swamps, villages, smiling children and wallowing buffaloes pass by the window, as this almost century old train ambles slowly along its rails to the agricultural town of Papar. Proceed to one of Sabah's most beautiful beaches to watch a colorful display of cultural dances. Sabah has over 108 dances with 32 ethnic groups. On your return, capture an overview of Kota Kinabalu, with a drive through the city before reaching your ship.
Price: $115 pp
============================
In overview, this has been the most pleasant and unexpectedly wonderful of the ports we have yet visited. There are a few reasons that we can identify for this. One is just the warmth and open friendliness of the people that have approached us in Kota Kinabalu and Sabah State. For example, last night after the shuttle bus dropped us off in front of the waterfront taverns and pubs. Debbie stepped out of the bustle of passengers and onto the sidewalk. A woman came out of the parking lot adjacent to the walk and asked her, in English, if she needed anything. Debbie replied no and gestured to the group. The woman then smiled and said "Welcome to Kota Kinabalu," before walking on to her car. The second is that nearly everyone we encountered spoke English. This was in addition to being warm and friendly and graciously welcoming to us. Every time people saw our buses they would look up and smile and wave. It seemed that the entire populace was pleased that we, as tourists, had come to their neighborhood. Now, this does not happen everywhere, or almost anywhere else. Third, and very importantly, was the quality and performance of the ground operator, Exotic Borneo Holidays. We have not taken a lot of Voyager's tours, so we are no experts, but these people were head and shoulders above every other tour operator that we have experienced to date. When they were operating the complimentary shuttles, they had a guide come on to offer maps and answer questions or just offer advice and suggestions. When the shuttle arrived at its destination there were additional personnel there to meet us. They too had maps to hand out and solicited questions and of course, the guy last night did walk us to that mall and back for no apparent reason other than that several people asked and it was easier to just walk with us than repeat the directions over and over, but still. No other shuttle from dock to town on this cruise has had guides available at all, much less at each point. The same kind of thing happened today. We had attendants on the train. Every time a bus stopped, the guide alone did not have to handle 30 people, because 1-5 people were there waiting for us to show up and to offer assistance. Again, we have not seen this level of commitment of manpower or eagerness to anticipate and fulfill our needs as their guests. It has been an amazing experience and we are grateful for it.
In ship's news, Latitudes is turning into TGIFriday's on February 25th. It has been back to Indochine since sometime last week. We got a letter inviting us to make our reservations for this happy event before the next segment's cruisers board. Either someone has never been to TGIFriday's or whoever is writing these letters is practicing irony. Here is the first part of the letter to share the excitement. "After the excitement of the Outback Dinner, we become more cosmopolitan, and are delighted to introduce you to the thrills and spills of TGI Friday's. The room will be transformed into the famous design of this world renowned restaurant, and we will also proudly present a genuine cocktail master flown over from Minneapolis to give you the authentic TGI Friday's experience." OK. Cosmopolitan and world renowned. Admittedly, we have not been in a TGIFriday's in a number of years, but those are not words we would have used to describe it. We have our reservation for March 1st. Keeping our fingers crossed that this one sticks better than the Outback reservation did when we showed up after receiving our confirmation card that afternoon to be told that someone had called and cancelled our res. Well, we got in to eat that night anyway and frankly if we were to miss any of these, we would live.
Kota Kinabalu 2 photos
position at 6:00 am: N5 59.47 latitude E116 4.47 longitude
(Kota Kinabualu, Malaysia on the island of Borneo)
temperature: 79F, 100% humidity, mostly cloudy
distance since FLL: 19, 089 miles
We had to be on dock by 8:05am to meet the bus for our morning tour. We went up to LaVeranda shortly after it opened at 7am. Lucky day! Debbie had 2 chocolate croissants and a bowl of raspberries. Clay had eggs again.
We were out on the dock by 7:50am. We could hear the music coming from outside before we left. There were men in native costumes playing drums and gongs. There were young women in native costumes putting strands of beads on everyone. Roger told us to go to bus 2, the closest one for our tour. There were already several people on it and the AC was on, so it was nice. Clay went back out to take a lot of pictures of our welcome committee. By 8:20am, the last person finally decided to reboard the bus. (We could not leave because she had turned in her ticket and the head count did not work out.) We drove about 10 minutes through KK (what the locals call Kota Kinabalu) and to the train station. This is the northern terminus of the only train track on Borneo. It is narrow gauge. And, surprise! We had been told that we would get a diesel engine. The old steam engine generally only makes this run from KK to Papar on Wednesday and Saturday, but RSSC made special arrangements and we got the steam engine. It was great! A couple of busloads went to the train first and a couple of busloads went to the beach cultural show first and then we switched. So, each group took the train one way and the bus one way. They blew the train's whistle almost constantly and ran off the tracks everything from packs of children to herds of water buffalo. It was all open air and you could smell the mangrove wood they were burning and sometimes get the ashes on you. It traveled 30km/h so you could take lots of pictures. Everyone along the way was stopping and waving and taking pictures of us taking pictures. It was very special.
They unloaded us from the train in the village of Papar. It was a small village they said, but it was bustling with a Sunday market. We drove us for a half-hour or so to a beachfront hotel for a cultural show. They gave us each a cold water, or soda, and a chance to use the toilets. They had some vendors set up with sovenirs and crafts. They had a shaded, raised, wooden performance platform with rows of plastic chairs set up for us. We had about 50-60 passengers there. We got some seats in the front and center row because we had done our shopping last night and did not linger through the vendor area. They had musicians and dancers. They did about 4-5 dances in all and demonstrated some games with tops and with rattan balls, while the dancers changed costumes. They also did a blowdart demonstration. That was a hunting method here, historically. One of the dancers popped 2 balloons in one try as another dancer held the balloons out on a pole. Then... the MC asked for a volunteer to shoot the remaining balloon with the blowdart gun. Now if we had known that this performance was going to involve audience participation, we would have sat in the back. But... The average age on the front row was probably 70, and where the heck are all those kids when you need one? Anyway. After trying to pull several people out of the front 2 rows and not dislodging one, and Debbie refusing to make eye contact, he came back and politely entreated her to help out. He pulled on her and with a push from Clay and the woman next to her, she got up. Now Debbie is shy and has the worst hand-eye coordination of almost anyone alive today. She was pretty much completely appalled and mortified. After a moment of panic about hitting one of the performers with a dart, or missing the balloon 3 times and being humiliated, she flashbacked on a TV special and remembered not to inhale with the gun to her mouth. She took a deep breath and the guy showed her the sight on the end and helped her line it up and she blew hard. Hurray! Popped it in one try! They did 2 more dances, then they did one with bamboo poles beat rhythmically on the ground and dancers stepping between. The MC asked for volunteers again and pretty much everyone pointed at Debbie. The girl tried a few other people and when no one whose hand she pulled on stood up, she asked Debbie. It started out OK and then they just kept getting faster and faster and Debbie choked. No one got hurt, only Debbie's dignity. A couple of people later congratulated her for being brave and a good sport. (Debbie would like to explain the most unflattering outfit she owns, that sadly managed to be put on public display and now posted on the Internet by Clay! Borneo has not only malaria but also dengue fever. We shopped for BuzzOff clothes almost as soon as we booked this cruise. BuzzOffs are impregnated with Permethrin bug repellent and are good for 25 washes. Clay managed to get a pair from ExOfficio of zip-off-leg pants and 2 shirts at Orvis for a fraction of their regular price right away. But Orvis had no women's BuzzOff clothes on sale at the time. One pair of long pants in her size would have cost more than twice the cost of all 3 of Clay's sale pieces. So, Debbie rummaged through the kid's clearance clothes box and came up with a XL pants and a matching L shirt in boys'. They looked awful when she tried them on, like pajamas, but they fit and let's face it, the BuzzOff clothes were not going to be fashionable anyway. So, for $25 she got a whole BuzzOff outfit, with long pants and long sleeves, but very lightweight CoolMaxx knit. So, today when she knew it was mostly bus and train riding and NO ONE would notice her awful, unflattering knit bug repellent clothes, she wore the bargain BuzzOff outfit.... The rest is, sadly, now recorded history. Debbie out.)
We forgot to say last night that they drive on the left here. Also, they said they had a meter of rain last week and it had only been clear for yesterday and today. Lucky for us again. It is about 83 degrees and 65% humidity. There has been a nice breeze everywhere, so it has been as pleasant as we could hope for it to be.
Lunch at LaVeranda in a hurry, again. Cabin potty break and back out to board buses. Our luck finally broke and after we left KK heading 18 miles SW to the Sabah Zoo we hit rain and thunderstorms. Too bad no one warned us it was raining out that way, because there was a big barrel of RSSC Voyager golf umbrellas at the top of the gangway. Debbie had a small umbrella in her purse and used it. Otherwise, the guides passed out plastic pullovers as we exited the bus. They were not as spacious as ponchos and did not open down the front, but were pullovers. We also lost all the breeze. So, it was about 85 degrees with 100% humidity. Whether we were soaked with rain or sweat, we were soaked through. The zoo was wonderful. It was small and compact. We saw birds, binturongs (or bear cats), pygmy Borneo elephants, rhea (like ostrich), Malayan tiger, orangutan, proboscis monkey, mouse deer, barking deer, banteng (wild cow), and ostriches. They had 2 six-year old girl elephants. One played in the pond right next to the viewing platform and was just too funny. The other little girl the keepers had out in front of the enclosure and you could stand right next to her. She licked Debbie's hand and then rumbled! This zoo is brand new and a month from opening yet (maybe more). So, we were their first foreign visitors. They were very interested in speaking to us about every exhibit and there were so few of us that we all at some point had an opportunity for a one-on-one session with some species' keepers. It was great even in the hot, pouring rain. Clay feels it was the highlight of the trip so far for him. When we arrived back at the ship, not yet dried out, the local guides were at the bus door handing out RSSC Voyager umbrellas to everyone for the walk to the ship.
Forgot to say that we turned another corner yesterday and left the Sulu Sea and entered the South China Sea. At 6pm, we left the dock at Kota Kinabalu and are now sailing in the South China Sea again on our way to Manila.
Here is the tour description for our Last Train in Borneo Tour.
===================
Duration: 4 Hours.
Seated.
Travel back in time as you journey through the scenic Borneo countryside in a diesel train. Mangrove swamps, villages, smiling children and wallowing buffaloes pass by the window, as this almost century old train ambles slowly along its rails to the agricultural town of Papar. Proceed to one of Sabah's most beautiful beaches to watch a colorful display of cultural dances. Sabah has over 108 dances with 32 ethnic groups. On your return, capture an overview of Kota Kinabalu, with a drive through the city before reaching your ship.
Price: $115 pp
============================
In overview, this has been the most pleasant and unexpectedly wonderful of the ports we have yet visited. There are a few reasons that we can identify for this. One is just the warmth and open friendliness of the people that have approached us in Kota Kinabalu and Sabah State. For example, last night after the shuttle bus dropped us off in front of the waterfront taverns and pubs. Debbie stepped out of the bustle of passengers and onto the sidewalk. A woman came out of the parking lot adjacent to the walk and asked her, in English, if she needed anything. Debbie replied no and gestured to the group. The woman then smiled and said "Welcome to Kota Kinabalu," before walking on to her car. The second is that nearly everyone we encountered spoke English. This was in addition to being warm and friendly and graciously welcoming to us. Every time people saw our buses they would look up and smile and wave. It seemed that the entire populace was pleased that we, as tourists, had come to their neighborhood. Now, this does not happen everywhere, or almost anywhere else. Third, and very importantly, was the quality and performance of the ground operator, Exotic Borneo Holidays. We have not taken a lot of Voyager's tours, so we are no experts, but these people were head and shoulders above every other tour operator that we have experienced to date. When they were operating the complimentary shuttles, they had a guide come on to offer maps and answer questions or just offer advice and suggestions. When the shuttle arrived at its destination there were additional personnel there to meet us. They too had maps to hand out and solicited questions and of course, the guy last night did walk us to that mall and back for no apparent reason other than that several people asked and it was easier to just walk with us than repeat the directions over and over, but still. No other shuttle from dock to town on this cruise has had guides available at all, much less at each point. The same kind of thing happened today. We had attendants on the train. Every time a bus stopped, the guide alone did not have to handle 30 people, because 1-5 people were there waiting for us to show up and to offer assistance. Again, we have not seen this level of commitment of manpower or eagerness to anticipate and fulfill our needs as their guests. It has been an amazing experience and we are grateful for it.
In ship's news, Latitudes is turning into TGIFriday's on February 25th. It has been back to Indochine since sometime last week. We got a letter inviting us to make our reservations for this happy event before the next segment's cruisers board. Either someone has never been to TGIFriday's or whoever is writing these letters is practicing irony. Here is the first part of the letter to share the excitement. "After the excitement of the Outback Dinner, we become more cosmopolitan, and are delighted to introduce you to the thrills and spills of TGI Friday's. The room will be transformed into the famous design of this world renowned restaurant, and we will also proudly present a genuine cocktail master flown over from Minneapolis to give you the authentic TGI Friday's experience." OK. Cosmopolitan and world renowned. Admittedly, we have not been in a TGIFriday's in a number of years, but those are not words we would have used to describe it. We have our reservation for March 1st. Keeping our fingers crossed that this one sticks better than the Outback reservation did when we showed up after receiving our confirmation card that afternoon to be told that someone had called and cancelled our res. Well, we got in to eat that night anyway and frankly if we were to miss any of these, we would live.
Kota Kinabalu 2 photos
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