Wednesday, December 11, 2019; At Sea, Phuket to Bali
It was nice to sleep in until 8am and not have to be up at dawn for excursions. Janet has come down with the cold that Ben is just about over so we are getting through our supply of OTC medications.
Walking around the ship, the change in passenger demographics and decor is hard to ignore. There is frequent laughter and chattering of children in the atrium and elevator lobbies, and it catches us off guard to run into children in the stair wells running up or down, some with face paint on. The lounges now sport artificial Christmas trees. The ship must have storerooms filled with decorations for each holiday.
After a leisurely breakfast in the dining room, we met up with some trivia friends including a woman from Florida, a man from Utah, and a couple from Australia. We were happy that they had some challenging questions like How many flowers are embossed on each side of an Oreo Cookie, and what mountains separate Casablanca from the Sahara desert. There were also some funny questions like Which bird has suffered the greatest losses in population in Britain over the last 100 years- Blue Tit, Little Bustard, or Shag?
Ben hit the fitness center while Janet watched Rene Zelwiger’s “Judy”, a rather melancholy biopic of Judy Garland’s post Wizard of Oz life. Fame does carry with it a heavy price. Then Janet walked the halls while it was Ben’s turn to take a nap.
We skipped lunch in favor of afternoon tea, and then played the afternoon trivia. We were 2 points off the win on this one. Then it was time to get changed for the first of two Formal nights on this last cruise segment. It has sure been nice to have professional laundry service- Ben’s shirts have never looked so nice and crisp, professionally starched and pressed.
At dinner, we met a pair of women from Kentucky. One was quite talkative, and gave Ben a recipe for home made pimento cheese. On the other side of us was a couple from San Francisco who will be spending the holidays staying on the Sapphire Princess for the next 21 days. Their kids are headed to the in-laws this year for the holidays, so they will celebrate on their own in SE Asia.
There was a Twisted Trivia tonight, featuring brain teasers and guess the ending video clips. We met with the Australians that have been on our trivia team, and a woman from Kansas City in the lounge. It turns out that the Twisted Trivia was exactly the same as the one we had attended earlier in our cruise, probably between Rome and Dubai. The Australians had not seen it, nor had the woman from KC, so we stayed to help them win a bottle of champagne for the woman from KC to share with her husband, but it was hard knowing just how much of it to throw to stay just ahead of any other teams in the room, not knowing how many others were in the same position as us. In the future, we’ll simply refrain if we know it’s a repeat trivia because it’s just not much fun if we’re not being challenged.
Our evening concluded with watching the production show “Do You Wanna Dance” again. It is interesting to see that some of the dancers have changed roles, and they are still down by one male lead singer, but have reworked the songs and choreography so that a new viewer would not know there was anything different. The dancers really do an amazing job with all the different styles and types of dancing required for these shows, and the costuming is really well done, so we enjoy even seeing the same show again. It sounded like our cruise director has also come down with the cold that has worked its way through the ship, as he made his end of the show announcements.
They shut down the Casino tonight because we were back within Singapore’s territorial waters, and could see the Marina Bay Hotel, Gardens and Ferris Wheel in the distance as we sailed past tonight. We have to move our clocks forward an hour back to Singapore time tonight, and have one more sea day tomorrow before we hit Bali.
