Thursday, November 2, 2017; At Sea, Late arrival to Port of Hong Kong

Thursday, November 2, 2017; Sea Day, arriving in Hong Kong

We met Judy and Bill from Victoria at breakfast and got to chat about the Mutiny on the Diamond Princess.  We had feared that we would be put off the ship in Hong Kong because we had written our cabin number on a piece of paper that was circulated around the crowd, but it turns out that the ship’s staff at the reception desk had taken cabin numbers of the people who had actually turned up at the reception desk.  Bill had been one who did go to the reception desk with the “Mob” and gave his room number.  He got an automated call that simply said that if they had any residual issues, to set up an appointment with the Hotel manager. They didn’t have any hint of any ongoing threat of being expelled from the ship in Hong Kong.

We tied for first place in the morning trivia, and won the tie breaker, which was “How many cells die each minute in the human body?”  We guessed 10 million, while the other group guessed 1 million, but the actual answer was 300 million, so while we were still way off, we were closer.

We retreated to our stateroom and watched the movie “The Intern” with Robert DeNiro and Anne Hathaway and then had lunch with a woman from Manchester and 3 people from Minnesota- one of which grew up in the Southcenter/Highline area like Janet did.

We attended an Origami class and learned how to make a tiny shirt and a flower.  One of the Japanese women there was a real expert (same one we noticed during the Bon Odori class) who made a Penguin and umbrella. 

The afternoon trivia was a special “Everything Disney”, which we won handily with Judy, Rick and Joanna.  We enjoyed the champagne before going to the evening trivia which was a multimedia “TV Themes” trivia.  We also managed to win that one handily.  We had a very pretty Italian gal join us for that game, and learned that her boyfriend was the first officer on the ship.  It was funny that during Ken’s Halloween trivia, he had singled her out had made several jokes, pretending to give her his room number and phone number.  We shared that champagne after having the bartender exchange it for a cold one and new chilled flutes.  

The ship was approaching Hong Kong Harbor as the Showtime production of “Born to be Wild” was starting.  This was the first show we attended on this cruise that wasn’t standing room only.  This show featured the singers and dancers with a full sized pink Cadillac and fully animated back drop, and a good medley of rock songs, but the lead male singer sounded like he was coming down with a cold.  

After the show, we went up on the deck and saw that we had docked in Hong Kong, and were surrounded by city lights in the Kowloon harbor.  As we walked around, we saw lots of people on their phones so there must be cellular service and possibly Wifi from the terminal building.  Unfortunately, we won’t be allowed to disembark the ship until it is cleared by customs tomorrow morning.  We’ll see if we can get any of this blog uploaded via Wifi.