Day 75 - Monday March 13 at Sea, dock at Yangon @ 4 pm

Myanmar Day 1 photos

position at 7:30 am: N8 33.30 latitude E97 55.26 longitude
(Andaman Sea, about 115 miles S of Yangon, Myanmar, our next port)
temperature: 82F, 94% humidity, partly cloudy
distance since FLL: 24,652 miles

The sea is a little rougher this morning and the ship has a little (but not a lot of movement). There is about a 15-20 mph headwind and this is causing the motion probably. We are making about 15 knots, sort of treading water, to get to our appointed time at 4pm in the Yangon River.

It was nice on deck this morning, temperature around 80. But, very humid and the sun is bright. Since we gained a half hour, some people were out early.

We went up to LaVeranda for breakfast this morning because we expected chocolate croissants today and there they were. Debbie had two chocolate croissants with some very hard earned raspberries. She dressed for exercise this morning because the 9am class is circuit training (like Curves) and everyone can work at their own pace. Clay joked that she was going in planning to be the slacker. She said she would just do what she could. While we ate breakfast, we saw long lines of small boats going off into the distance as far as you could see. Once we got much closer to a set of them and it looked like only some were boats. The rest looked like rickety floating stick platforms. It looked like some kind of spread out floating fishing village. We will get the camera and hope to sail near some more to get pictures.

Debbie made it through circuit training and abs/backs/butts on the fitball and felt much better afterwards. She did take it pretty easy though. There were lots of new people in classes today that are new this segment. They were unhappy to hear that there was a cold/virus going around the ship. Debbie doesn't have a fever any longer though and is not coughing, so she did not feel like she would be infectious.

It is still smooth sailing. We are in the Gulf of Martaban now just before lunch. The water has turned brown and so has the air! There is not a cloud in the sky and the sun is merciless, but you have to look directly overhead to see it or the blue of the sky, everything else is close and brown. It is actually pretty creepy. It must be pollution, but we are still a couple of hours from entering the Irawaddy River to sail up near Yangon. We have just slowed down to only 4 knots and are just rocking side to side with the current and from the angle of the sun seem to have made a turn. There is nothing in front of us or near us. We thought maybe we were slowing to pick up a pilot but we don't see anything. Jamie announced on Voyager Today on TV that we would be picking up clearance officials with the pilot a few hours before we expect to dock at 4pm and hope to be cleared by 5pm when they have night tours starting. There is an ice cream sail-in social scheduled on the Pool Deck from 2:30pm to 3:30pm. We will see about going to that, the air is really hard to breathe on the balcony with our cold-compromised respiratory states right now, so we may not go. We are now down to .75 knots speed, so we are obviously standing still and waiting for something. We just dropped the anchor. We sitting still in a brown world. The Captain just came over the speakers in our cabins and confirmed that we have dropped anchor and expect to get the pilot (who he says is in a small white boat barely visible through the mist on the starboard side) at 1:45pm. Now he doesn't expect to dock before 5pm. Clearance will still take as long as it takes. We probably did the right thing just considering this a sea day and not worrying about getting ashore today. It is 6 past noon, so we will go to Compass Rose for lunch now. Back from lunch. We are still sitting still at anchor. We went up top and walked around and tried to take some pictures to show how brown everything is from the water to the sky, with almost no horizon visible, but don't know whether it is the kind of thing that photographs. This seems like a good afternoon for a nap.

At the mouth of the river through the brown haze were barely visible smokestacks, so it appears that there is some heavy industry here. The air did clear as we went up the river. We did sail upriver on schedule and arrived at the dock about 4:15pm. The Captain did his signature 180 degree turn to slide sideways into the pier for a quick getaway on departure and we are docked on the port side. We were cleared by 5pm. We welcomed aboard an older man in a wheelchair who Capt. Dag went down to greet and received flowers from, then about 30 men in everything from white uniforms, green uniforms and some in longyis (long wraparound skirts) as well as 2 women with the man in the wheelchair. At 5pm Jamie announced that everything had happened on an accelerated schedule and that some evening tours were departing immediately. Some were departing at 6pm and that Compass Rose had opened at 5pm to serve dinner to those people. Jamie announced that the complimentary shuttles into Yangon this evening would start running at 5:30pm. By 10 of 6 the older man in the wheelchair and most of his entourage had left the ship. The dinner tour buses had left and the cocktail buses were not far behind as well as a couple of the shuttle buses had departed. It looks like it will be a quiet evening onboard.

We ate in Compass Rose. It was pretty quiet. We had both Albert and Adorable serving us as there were not enough tables to keep them both busy. It seems a lot of people are out on tour this evening, and others have taken the shuttle into town.


Myanmar Day 1 photos