We don’t have our passports at the moment because the ship’s
officers collected them after Sydney for the ease of organising the group visas
for Indonesia, Borneo and the Phillipines.
We do however have a bar coded cruise card with photo and all our
details on it, and each country issues different documents – Indonesia and the
Phillipines for China we also have to carry a photocopy of the passport on a
sheet of paper with a bar code on it which when read at immigration produced
our passport and photo on screen, with multiple entry Chinese visa.
Sector four of our grand voyage will be starting when we
arrive in Hong Kong. This sector takes
in Sanya on Hainan Island and then we leave China for Vietnam, Cambodia,
Thailand, Singapore and the Malaysian Peninsular. We have full day excursions booked until
Thailand. Then we get our passports back.
After Port Kelang the cruise then sails up the west side on
the Indian Ocean on to Mumbai, then on to Abu Dhabi, but we will instead be
enjoying our own adventure from Port Kelang to Abu Dhabi via the Siam Care
Biannual Seminar and Family Camp in Bangkok. We are staying in Bangkok for 7
nights and then flying to Abu Dhabi on 2/4/2015, rejoining the ship for the fifth
and final sector. This means we will
miss Mumbai and 6 sea days (i.e. 6 art lessons!). We must ask Easa if we can take some art homework
with us to Thailand! So all in all we
are delighted to have found this impromptu way to be both on the world cruise
AND at the Siam Care Seminar J. I hadn’t missed one since 2002, so we are
both thrilled at the way it has worked out.
This has all been organised while we have been on the ship and since we
left the UK, for this we would like to thank Gary Manners.
Today we have been sailing back down the East China Sea, a
comparatively busy stretch of sea where we’ve see so many fishing vessels,
freight ships, cruise liners on both sides of ours, more signs of activity than
any other ocean so far. The sea has been
really peaceful and smooth with a very beautiful pale turquoise colour. The clouds have all disappeared and the air
temperature is rising up again to 15C today, predicted to be 18C in Hong Kong
and then after Sanya entering the tropics again. Khachik and I have had our winter coats on
for the deck walking today, but still only 6 laps, so we finished off in the
relative comfort of the gym using headphones so we could be entertained at the
same time. We tread-milled, arm-cycled and recumbent cycled for an hour before
my yoga practice. Good work! The gym is on deck 9 at the front of the ship
and the treadmills are positioned so that you get a panoramic view of the sea
in the direction we are sailing. It’s
awesome.
After all that virtuous activity we broke the mould after
coffee and went to listened to a talk by Bernard Purrier in the Palladium about
whales, dolphins and porpoises and the many theories about Cetacean strandings. This was fascinating, really informative and
immediately raising our awareness of how little we know about so much. We missed the first 2 of these as they
clashed with other things, but I would like to hear the last about the future
of the world’s fish in a talk called “Empty Seas, Empty Nets?”
Some talks do end up on the telly in our cabins for example
the music talks Chris Walker has been doing about some favourite performers
from the last century. At the moment
there’s a talk about Frank Sinatra on a loop.
Anyway, to get back to our sea day activities – the whale
talk, lunch, a look at excursions, crosswords and art (challenging watercolour
of a leopard!), dinner (another chance to choose from Marco Pierre White’s
special menu) , and back “home” in the cabin. The excitement builds at the end
of each sector.
Tomorrow is our end of sector art exhibition, and the culmination concert for the Arcadia Vocalists. The talent shows and strictly come dancing competitions happened today. So I will say bye for now, and will be back here about this time again tomorrow. xx
Tomorrow is our end of sector art exhibition, and the culmination concert for the Arcadia Vocalists. The talent shows and strictly come dancing competitions happened today. So I will say bye for now, and will be back here about this time again tomorrow. xx