Saturday, December 7, 2019; Singapore Round One

Saturday, December 7, 2019; Singapore Round One

The ship was coasting into its berth in Singapore as we peaked through the curtains.  The cruise ship terminal appears modern and purpose built for handling large cruise ships.  Ben went to the deck above the bridge to get a better idea of the lay of the land and was pleasantly surprised to see the Marina Bay Hotel’s unique profile nearby.  It is a curved structure with 3 towers topped with what looks like a slightly curved ship sitting atop and astride the 3 towers.  It is instantly recognizable and unique.  Spread out before it is a forest of towers forming a man made canopy.  These are covered with vines and flowering plants, and at night time, they look like a scene out of the movie Avatar.  

The Sapphire Princess was in the process of disgorging the vast majority of her passengers and preparing for all the new incoming passengers.  The buffet was packed with passengers dragging their carry-on luggage and awaiting their disembarkation marching orders. Passengers disembarking have to clear their staterooms by 8am.  We had breakfast in the sit down dining room, which was largely empty, aside from the few other carrying over passengers like us who are classified as “in Transit”.  

After breakfast, we picked up our passports and then headed off the ship.  The terminal is well equipped and actually had usable free Wifi, so we got out our iPhones and iPads to upload photos and any necessary software updates.  The terminal was comfortably air conditioned and had every modern convenience.  It was able to process passengers quite efficiently so there were no long waits or crowds as we went through immigrations.  There is an information center in the lobby by the taxi stands that was very helpful with maps and live information.  We were advised it would probably take between 45 minutes and an hour to walk to the Marina Bay Gardens from the cruise terminal, and that it was a safe walk.

We exited the terminal and ran into two of the Cruise directors’ staff who had done a lot of trivia with us- Kaitlyn and Jamie.  Both had some down time and were headed off to catch a cab and see Singapore.  This was their first time in Singapore.  We bade them farewell and hit the sidewalk.  

There is actually a covered walkway that runs about a half mile to a subway station.  We passed incoming passengers wheeling suitcases behind them along this walkway.  They must have been staying in hotels in Singapore without Princess transfers.  Beyond the subway station, the covered walkway extended to another smaller pier called the South Marina Pier, which was about a quarter mile from the subway station.  Beyond that, there was both a pedestrian walking path and bicycle path that ran along the waterfront all the way to the Marina Bay Gardens.  It started to rain on us about 2 miles into our journey, but it was just a bit more than a sprinkle.  It did manage to get Janet pretty wet because she just wore her hat, while Ben did tote an umbrella.  We reached the Marina Bay Gardens  at about 2-1/2 miles or 5 km from the ship, and it had stopped raining.  Bus loads of tourists were pouring out of the buses and into the park.  

The central portion of the gardens is fenced off with admission gates for their winter wonderland festival, where one of the gardens is all strung up with Christmas lights and Christmas market like stalls are set up.  During the day, the gates are unmanned, and you can stroll through freely.  There is paid admission required to enter two large glass pavilions that house butterfly’s and some of the exotic plants.  The free gardens are well maintained and organized by environments, very reminiscent of the San Diego Zoo, but without animals.  

The landmark feature of the Gardens is the artificial forests created with steel towers that are shaped like giant trees.  There are all manner of vines and flowering plants planted within these structures, although at this time of year, the canopy is pretty much wide open.  The most unusual plants we saw were Cannon Ball trees, which we had seen before in the Botanical Gardens in St. Vincent in the Caribbean.  The trees there had the characteristic flowers that look like fancy eyeballs with fake lashes and mascara, but these trees were laden with the Cannon Ball fruit, which give the tree its name.  The ones we saw in St. Vincent did not have any Cannon Balls hanging from them.  

The weather was overcast after the rain had stopped, but the temperature was in the mid 80’s and the humidity was about 70% so we were able to work up a pretty good sweat.  Fortunately, there was a significant cooling breeze.  Had it been a fully sunny day, it would not have been too comfortable to be wander about.  

After touring the Gardens, we walked across a sky bridge that connect the Gardens with the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, which looms in the sky over the Gardens like a giant space ship that has landed on the planet Pandora from Avatar.  

The hotel is beautiful, modern, and nicely air conditioned, so we were able to cool off a bit.  We then went up to the Skypark, which is an observation deck at the bow end of the ship like structure that sits atop the triple towers.  The views from the Skypark were sweeping, to be sure.  The clouds and haze did limit distant visibility, but it was impressive how many freighters and other merchant ships were at anchor all around Singapore’s Marina Bay.  The wind was quite strong, so you really had to hang on tight to your cell phone or camera as you took pictures.  It was not too crowded when we were up there- lots of tourists to be sure, but it was easy to get up to the railing anywhere to get whatever pictures you wanted.  

There were quite a few ship’s passengers at the Marina Bay hotel that we recognized.  One gal we talked to was going to stay a week or so, and then sail out of Singapore on the Sun Princess, which would take her all the way back home to Western Australia where she lives.  She and her husband have been on cruise ships since last January.  When they arrive back home, they will have circled the earth without needing an airplane in 11 months.

We then hightailed it back to the ship.  Fortunately, we had no more rain and got back to the ship about 20 minutes before the All Aboard time.  That is probably the closest we have ever cut it getting back to the ship on our own. We usually book ship tours that guaranty that they will hold the ship for us, and there have been many times when the tour buses have arrived late.  By walking and touring the Marina Bay Gardens and Marina Bay Sands Hotel Skypark ourselves, we saved over $120 each over the ship’s excursion price, but we also ended covering about 8 miles over the course of the day and burned over 1000 calories.  We could eat our dinners without guilt.  

Again, it sure feels good to get back on the ship and into it’s air conditioned pampering environment after a day of exploring in tropical conditions.  

We were able to enjoy a little bit of free Wifi from the terminal since the ship docked with our starboard side alongside the terminal building.  We watched the ship sail away from Singapore, which was quite scenic. 

We showered up, napped briefly and then had dinner in the Savoy dining room which is our favorite.  The lady we had been trying to avoid the last few days had disembarked in Singapore so it was safe to return.  

The Princess Theater featured a new comedian, Richie Minervini, who did a pretty good stand up comedy routine that played pretty well with the audience which was now mostly American, Australian, Canadian and to a much smaller extent Chinese. As on the prior cruises, about 15 minutes into his act, many of the Chinese start leaving the Theater.  I suppose if it were a Mandarin speaking comedian on the stage, we wouldn’t choose to go to the show, rather than stake out prime seats and then leave after 15 minutes.  

The respiratory virus that had spread from the Chinese to the Australians and then to Ben on the Rome to Singapore cruise was manageable with medications to limit Ben to occasionally clearing his throat and rarely coughing, but is starting to tickle Janet’s throat.  We hope it doesn’t make another round on the ship, but so many people seem to have had no education or awareness of public health and hygiene issues.  It’s not rare to see someone cough into their hand in the buffet and then grab a serving spoon without a second thought. So it’s just as important to wash your hands after you come out of the buffet as before you go in.  

We finished the night with a welcome trivia game.  It was mostly silly jokey questions like where do the crew sleep- on shore commuting by high speed boats, on shore commuting by helicopter, or on board.  There were really only a handful of questions that required any knowledge.  But we did manage to win our first trivia for this cruise segment, and now have two bottles of champagne to give to our room steward at the end of our cruise. 

We did get another 250 minutes of internet each, and our mini bar was refilled.  We still have quite a few coffee card punches left over from the Dubai to Singapore segment, so we may actually keep the mini bar set up for this last segment, and enjoy some sodas, beers and cocktails.  And it has really been nice to be a able to send out our laundry on a regular basis.  We have never had such clean and neatly pressed clothes on a cruise.  

Tomorrow, we are back in Port Kelang, Malaysia, the gateway to Kuala Lumpur.  We did get all the excursions we wanted, so we will visit the Batu Caves tomorrow instead of returning to Kuala Lumpur.

Friday, December 6, 2019; Kelang & Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Friday, December 6, 2019; Kelang (Kuala Lumpur), Malaysia

The weather forecast had been predicting a 40% chance of rain for today in Kuala Lumpur, but as we arrived at the Port of Kelang, gateway to Kuala Lumpur, the sky was just lightly overcast as the sun rose above the horizon.  It was 80 degrees at 6AM, but the humidity had dropped to only 60%.  

We had a quick breakfast and made our way to our departure lounge to pick up our stickers.  We had discussed with some other passengers how it seems no matter how hard you try to be punctual, that someone else always seems to have already grabbed the best seats on the bus. Then we figured that some people are cheating because usually you present your ticket to the shore excursion person in your designated departure lounge, and you are issued your sticker, which designates what excursion (color) and Bus number you are assigned.  You are then instructed to proceed into the theater and are then seated in rows in the order in which you enter.  This is intended to create a system of fairness- those who show up early, get to be lead out to the buses in the order in which they arrive at the theater with their stickers on.  

Passengers with mobility issues are lead out to the buses before the theater cued passengers are called up (fair enough, except that you’ve never seen so many “Mobility issued” passengers run and shove their way out of the lounge and head to the gangway.  

Another way people can cheat is by ducking out of the theater altogether, and then just heading to the gangway without waiting for their group and bus number to be called up in the theater.  As tempted as we were to test out this theory, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to be that dastardly, so we obediently waited in the theater.  

Once off the gangway, numbered groups from different lounges get mixed together with passengers not on excursion, so whoever walks quicker can work their way through the crowds in the terminal to the bus.  That’s considered allowable since some people are so slow, they just jam up traffic if you don’t go around them.  

After our bus for our “Best of Kuala Lumpur” tour was completely boarded, there were a few rows of empty seats at the front that passengers normally leave open so disabled passengers can use them. The bus held 50 passengers, and the tour group was just 32, so once the bus was under way, we scooted up to an open row up front.  This worked out better for us because Janet’s hearing is not so good, and if a buses PA system doesn’t work well, she misses out on all the narration.  We also can hop out of the bus quickly and not jam up the exit like those not as mobile can.  

The Port of Kelang is about a 45 minute drive from downtown Kuala Lumpur.  Malaysia seems to be better developed than Sri Lanka with regards to their secondary roads. Many have a separate parallel lane dedicated for motorcycle traffic, but there is no shortage of wreckless motorcycle speedsters who dart in and out of traffic between lanes of vehicular traffic, even when a motorcycle lane is present.  Leaving the Port of Kelang, the traffic was heavy with large 6 axle Lories, buses and cars, as well as motorcyclists.  While you see some scooters in the side roads, they tend to avoid the expressways.  In Taiwan the scooters outnumbered nearly all other type of vehicular traffic.  

There is a lot of construction evident around and in Kuala Lumpur.  China is helping to finance construction of a high speed rail line to run between Singapore and Thailand, and the support structures for this are very evident.  There are also other rail lines including a monorail in service in Kuala Lumpur.  

The bus got onto an expressway as our guide mentioned an issue of concern to most of the local citizens, and that is the expressways are constructed with taxpayer dollars, but the toll booths are operated by a private company, and not all the funds collected go into maintenance.  The company is a for profit organization, and it so happens that some transportation minister happens to be on some private corporation’s board of directors.  There is apparently a lot of this sort of corruption in Malaysia.  

For the most part, Kuala Lumpur appears modern and clean.  Malaysia is a Muslim majority country, but there is a significant non-Muslim population that derives from migrants from China and India who tend to be Hindu, Buddhist and Christian.  For some reason, they manage to co-exist in Malaysia.  The Muslims tend to be more tolerant than in some more fundamental Islamist countries.  Our guide was of Chinese-Malay extraction, and our driver was of Indian-Malay extraction.  

Looking around the city, the women do wear head scarves, but you don’t really see the total body coverage that we had seen a lot of in the UAE or Oman.  When coming from prayers, many men can be seen wearing prayer caps and a sort of prayer gown, but most men on the street appear normally dressed.  

Our first stop was at the National Monument, which is situated adjacent to the Presidential Palace and Parliament, which are beautiful buildings kept well behind secure fences.  We lucked out on the weather as the sun had burned through the clouds giving us a beautiful sunny day.  Our guide said that was not so common during this monsoon season.  It had been raining pretty hard the prior 3 days.  The National Monument looks a lot like the Iwo Jima monument in Washington DC because it was actually sculpted by the same artist.  To add to that impression, the Malaysian flag has red and white stripes just like the US flag, and a navy blue rectangle in the fly, but their flag contains a Muslim Crescent Moon instead of stars. So if the wind isn’t blowing, it sure looks like an American flag on the pole that is being erected, and the soldiers sure like like Caucasians, not Malaysians.  Perhaps they got a discount on the work.  There are beautiful gardens and water fountains surrounding the monument.

Our next stop was to look at some unusual Moorish architecture of the old central railway station, and then to get a glimpse of the Jasjid Jamek Mosque, which is the largest in Asia with a dome that is over 350 feet in diameter, and a Minaret that at 465 feet, is the tallest in the world.  It is called the Blue Mosque because of it’s blue aluminum sheathed dome.  

The buses took us a short distance to Merdeka (Independence) square, which used to be the cricket field for the Royal Selangor Club- a blast from their British Imperialist Colonial past.  From this square, you can look across history from the old cricket club to the old clock tower, and beyond that the twin Petronus Towers and KL Tower reaching high into the sky.  

Kuala Lumpur literally means “Muddy Confluence”, so we walked to a park where we could see the confluence of the two rivers that mark the spot where Kuala Lumpur was initially established.  For some reason, they have misters along the concrete banks that create an eerie fog that rolls along the river banks.  One of the two rivers carried a lot of litter floating on its surface. There is a Mosque situated at the confluence.  

We then were taken to our mandatory shopping stop, but there as a demonstration of Batik manufacturing on site, and also a nice textile museum highlighting the evolution and history of textile production in Malaysia, including a gallery of celebrated Malaysian textile artists and pioneers. For some reason, our guide had just turned us loose to explore on our own without pointing out the museum specifically, but it appeared to be pretty new, so perhaps he wasn’t aware that it had opened.  

That took us to lunch time, when they lead us up the KL Tower, which at 1381 feet, is twice the height of Seattle’s Space Needle, but contains a rotating restaurant and observation deck.  We had an excellent buffet while enjoying the view of the city’s skyline from that vantage point.  Of all the tours that have included a lunch, this one was by far the best.

After lunch, we made a photo stop at a parking lot with a great view of the Petronas Twin Towers, which at 1400 feet, remain the tallest twin tower structure in the world.  As we snapped our photos, a continuous stream of men came across the parking lot from a nearby mosque, many wearing prayer caps.  They had just completed their mandatory afternoon prayer, and were returning to their offices to work.  

Our final stop was at the National Museum of Malaysia, designed to resemble a grand Malay Palace. There were a number of outdoors exhibits including a traditional Malay House.  You had to take your shoes off and then climb up some steep stairs to get into the house built on stilts.  Because most Malays lived close to the rivers, they did have to build their homes on stilts to deal with the regular monsoon season floods, and also because tigers don’t seem to like going up stairs or ladders.  

We learned that Malaysia was put on the map by major tin deposits, which were it’s first source of wealth.  Later, oil and natural gas reserves, most off shore, generated a lot of wealth.  Petronas is the National Petroleum and Natural Gas company.  They also have a large automotive industry.  Their biggest local products are passenger cars by Proton and Perodua.  There were a lot of unfamiliar automobile logos to us on the streets of Kuala Lumpur. 

The national sport of Malaysia is Badminton, but they also have an up and coming national sport is called Sepak raga bulatan which combines volley ball and soccer using a rattan ball. No use of the hands is allowed.

There were lots of interesting artifacts in several galleries organized into natural history, cultural history, and political development.  Malaysia has a long and complicated history with the Portuguese, Dutch and then British exerting colonial control, followed by independence from the Britain in 1957 complicated by a long and bloody Communist insurgency they call the “Malaysian Emergency”.  By the time we got through the museum, we were thoroughly exhausted, and glad to have the opportunity to nap in the bus as it drove us back to the port.  

They did have some Wifi in the cruise port terminal, so we tried to upload more pictures and update our emails, but we really didn’t have much time before we had to reembark the ship.  

It felt so good to strip off our sticky and sweat drenched clothes and hop into the shower.  Life is so much more comfortable on the ship than out on the streets of many of our destinations that we genuinely look forward to returning “home” after our excursions.  

After a nice sit down dinner, we headed to the theater to see the last show of the Cellist/Tenor duo of Branden and James.  It was a fantastic show with truly imaginative and fun arrangements of popular and classical music.  If you ever get a chance to see them on a cruise ship, or in Australia, where they usually tour, don’t miss them.  

We had our last music trivia for this cruise. We played with a young Spanish couple who walked in late and joined us.  They would have won because they knew all the songs, but didn’t hear the first 4 songs and we had no idea what 2 of the first 4 songs were.  We got all the other songs right. The category was classic rock, but our knowledge of grunge and heavy metal put us in a severe handicap. 

We finished up the night listening to a performance of AJ Clarke on The Songbook of the Piano men.  He put on a very enjoyable and educational show featuring music of Elton John, Barry Manilow, and Billy Joel.  

The whole evening had a sort of sad sentimental feeling cast over it because most of the passengers are disembarking.  There are 200 of us who are continuing on the ship after it docks in Singapore tomorrow, but all our friends that we have met will be leaving tomorrow.  There were hugs exchanged all over the ship.  

The ship has no organized excursion for us “In Transit” passengers who will reboard the ship for it’s next cruise tomorrow, so we will head into the terminal tomorrow with our passports to clear immigration and then see if we can find either a Hop-On-Hop-Off tour, or figure out the subway.  We’d like to see the Marina Bay Sands Hotel observation deck and the Gardens By The Bay on our own tomorrow, since those are not part of the later Princess organized debarkation tour that we can take when we return to Singapore at the end of this next cruise segment which goes up to Phuket Thailand, and then down to Bali before returning to Singapore.

Thursday, December 5, 2019; At Sea, Sri Lanka to Malaysia Day 3

Thursday, December 5, 2019; At Sea, Sri Lanka to Malaysia Day 3

It’s hard to believe we have reached the last sea day of this cruise segment, and luggage tags went out this morning for all the passengers disembarking in Singapore, including all our trivia partners.  We will arrive in Kuala Lumpur tomorrow, and then Singapore the next day.  

We had the last of our progressive activities today.  We managed to win the morning Trivia, winning notebooks, which we gave away to other trivia players who we’ve come to know who have not won prizes. Then we managed to win the Progressive trivia, holding on to our one point lead after today’s quiz and bonus question.  Fortunately, today’s bonus was one we knew (Who’s hit was Poker Face).  It was only worth 2 points today.  We walked off with a bag of notebooks, wine bottle stoppers and coasters.  We will give some of the items to our room steward, and gave away the rest since we really don’t have extra weight capacity in our luggage for the return trip home, unless we leave some things behind.  

The pop choir and other groups (drum circle and ukulele classes) had their recital in the Atrium in the early afternoon.  These turn out to be very crowded, because everyone who participates has all their friends and acquaintances show up, but we got to see Mary and Jackie both sing in the Pop choir, and it was fun watching them.  It reminds us of when we would enjoy or kids’ high school concerts.

We missed the afternoon trivia by one point, but would have won the tie breaker which was how many bones are in the human spine.  We knew that spot on, while the two teams that went to the tie breaker were both off by several.  

We got into our formal outfits and had another wonderful lobster dinner and each had two lobster tails.  We corrupted a nice Chinese couple from Toronto who were sat next to us to do the same thing and order double tails.  We enjoyed talking with them about their travels around the US. They liked flying into a location and renting an RV to explore the surrounding parks and attractions when they and their children were younger.  They are just now embarking on cruising, this being their second cruise vacation.  

We had chosen a different dining room from our usual favorite because we didn’t want to end up sitting by a woman who we sat next to a couple nights ago, but who couldn’t stop talking, and wanted specific medical advise for her husband.  Yesterday, we went to the same dining room and as they were leading us to a table, we spotted her in the distance and quickly asked the host to seat us on the opposite side of the dining room, so as to avoid any uncomfortable situations.  As we completed our meal, Janet spotted her getting up to leave, but then she made a bee line across the dining room right to our table.  Janet could see our waiters who had taken the care to reseat us across the dining room laughing when they saw her zooming across the room to us.  It turns out she wanted more specific medical advise regarding her husband’s upcoming biopsy.  As a general rule, I don’t tell people I was a doctor, but when she had sat next to us, she just kept prying and prying.  Now I know next time to tell strangers even less.  We were relieved to not see her in this other dining room tonight.  It’s a good thing we have 3 anytime dining rooms to choose from.

We met our trivia partners for a farewell trivia after dinner based on the cruise itinerary, but we had no idea who our two captains have been, or how many black jack tables there are in the casino.  We missed winning by 2 points, but cracked open the bottle of champagne we won from the Progressive Trivia and celebrated a good cruise.  We stayed for a second show by the comedian Mike Harris, who did a lot of old jokes, but with excellent delivery, and two funny jokes about penis transplants and bull fighting that you can’t do in front of some audiences

We arrive early in the morning to Kelang, Malaysia, port access closest to Kuala Lumpur and have an excursion that will introduce us to the Best of Kuala Lumpur.  We’ll have to hit the sack early and set an alarm.

Wednesday, December 4, 2019; At Sea, Sri Lanka to Malaysia Day 2

Wednesday, December 4, 2019; At Sea, Sri Lanka to Kuala Lumpur Day 2

Today was largely a repeat of yesterday with no change in the seas or weather outside.  

We finished our morning trivia 1-1/2 point off the lead.  We guessed wrongly that Indianapolis 500 winners drink champagne to celebrate their wins.  While the spray a magnum of champagne all over themselves and their car, they apparently have a longstanding tradition of drinking milk!  We missed Michael Phelps’ arm span by 4”, and didn’t know the price of a railroad in Monopoly, or the number of lines in a Shakespearean Sonnet.  

For our progressive trivia, as of this morning we managed to hold onto the first place position by one point, despite missing the 4 point bonus yesterday.  Fortunately for us, our nearest competitors also missed that.  On today’s quiz, we missed 5/20 including what did Georgia Armani study at University, what cosmetic company was established as the California Perfume Company in 1886, in what year was Pablo Picasso born, what unit of measurement is from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, and what song was a hit for Dion Warwick in 1964 and for the Stranglers in 1978?  We did manage to get the 3 point bonus question of which witch was crushed by Dorothy’s house in the Wizard of Oz.  We’ll have to see how we faired tomorrow, which is also the last progressive trivia for this cruise.  

Our afternoon trivia was another game lost by just one point.  We couldn’t come up with what Edwin Jenner is best remembered for (We couldn’t remember him at all) and didn’t know the highest mountain in the Karakoram mountain range, but we had narrowed our guessed to one of two possibilities, but put down the wrong one.  

The Princess Theater show was a duet of Branden and James, who are a cellist and vocalist, who put on a really fine show with lots of interesting and unique arrangements mashing up classical and pop themes backed by the Sapphire Princess band.  The cellist had both a conventional cello and a Yamaha electric cello, but only used the Yamaha in a conventional voice- no electric guitar effects.  He could have done the whole show with his conventional cello, but I guess he wanted to show off his new toy.  Both were quite talented at the piano and both could also sing.  It was one of the better Cabaret Showtimes we can remember.  

We stopped to watch the Yes/No gameshow, and saw two women get knocked out of the game in under 10 seconds each.  We figured we didn’t need to watch any more of that, so we retired to our room to watch another movie.  

Tonight, our clocks move forward another hour, and our last formal day for this cruise segment will bring yet another evening with Lobster in the main dining room with a Chocolate Journey dessert.  All this fast forwarding of the clocks is making it harder and harder to get up, but as we head further south, the days are getting longer, so it is getting light earlier every day.  

Tuesday, December 3, 2019; At Sea, Sri Lanka to Malaysia Day 1

Tuesday, December 3, 2019; At Sea, Colombo to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Day 1

We’ve settled into a stable schedule for our sea days consisting of eating and playing trivia while also sneaking in enough exercise to try to keep from having to be wheeled off the ship in wheel barrows at the end of the cruise. 

The Indian Ocean is surprisingly busy with commercial shipping. There are tankers and freighters of all sorts around despite the size of the ocean.  This is certainly a much more used marine highway than the courses we took between Los Angeles and Hawaii.  

The weather has settled into temperatures in the 80’s to 90’s with 80% humidity.  If it weren’t for the breeze from the ship’s movement, and abundance of swimming pools and air conditioning on the ship, it could be uncomfortable.  I feel sorry for the people who have to work everyday in this humidity and heat.  We really are spoiled to be able to tour these tropical parts of the world from the comfort and safety of our air conditioned cruise ships and tour buses, only having to deal with the heat and humidity for relatively short periods when we are walking around our excursion destinations.  

We have had some moderate seas with occasional monsoon rains.  The clouds over the ocean appear very active and alive, like you can really see the Earth’s water cycle at work with this tropical heat and humidity.  

We finished our morning trivia 2 points off the lead, but it appears that our Progressive trivia team is still holding onto first place, despite missing the bonus question worth 4 points yesterday.  On today’s Progressive trivia quiz we managed 19/20 but missed the 4pt bonus of what was Elvis’ last #1 hit song during his lifetime.  We know a couple of teams did manage to get that right, so we might have been knocked out of the lead.  

We are managing to get our “Rings Closed” on our Apple watches every day.  Even though we are on the ship, it is over 1000’ long, and we do have to walk everywhere and usually take the stairs as well.  That means clocking over 10-11,000 steps and getting our heart rates up high enough to record 30 minutes of exercise daily.  We know very well that we will not lose any weight on this cruise, but just hope to minimize the weight gain by staying active.  We just enjoy eating too much.  

We came within 1 point of winning the afternoon trivia, and could have won it had we gone with one of our alternative answers that we had narrowed our choices down to.  So close.  

We thought we had sworn off comedians, but we finished dinner early and were able to find seats in the theatre.  The production singers and dancers are putting on a single number before the comedians, apparently to draw more people to the theater.  They did an hot little number inspired by the British Invasion era.  One of the lead male singers seems to have taken ill, and a spare female lead vocal has taken over for one the shorter of the two original female lead singers we started the cruise with in Rome.  Her contract must have concluded in Dubai.  The comedian, Mike Harris, is a Australian, born in Scotland.  His physical presence is a bit like Rodney Dangerfield’s.  His delivery and timing were quite a bit better than the last comedian, and he seemed to connect better with all the Australians and people from the UK, which make up a majority of this passenger manifest.  

We also thought we had sworn off the Liar’s Club because the current format does not award any audience prizes, but it is still entertaining to hear the tall tales spun by the cruise director’s staff in creating definitions for the words Crapulence, Meacock, Willywaws and Oxpecker.  As you can imagine, the definitions can be entertaining fun.  

We also watched some movies in our room including The Light Between Two Oceans, and Rocket Man.  

Monday, December 2, 2019; Colombo, Sri Lanka

Monday, December 2, 2019; Colombo, Sri Lanka

We woke as the ship was slipping into the harbor at Colombo.  Our berth is a commercial pier with no facilities, other than a series of temporary tents set up for vendors on the dock.  There is a very modern looking tower piercing the skyline of Colombo.  It is called the Lotus tower, and it is currently the tallest free standing structure in SE Asia at over 300m in height.  It is currently only being used as a communications antenna complex because it’s offices and other spaces are not ready for occupancy.  Opening our balcony revealed 80 degree temperature with 80% humidity and overcast skies.  

The excursion we booked took us to a Tea Plantation and factory.  We didn’t realize when we booked the excursion that the Tea Plantation and factory were nearly a 3 hour drive from the Port of Colombo, but we were transported in slightly run down, but functional tourist buses with air conditioning.  Driving through the Port of Colombo and surrounding city reveals it to be very crowded and messy with heavy traffic.  There are lots of heavy trucks mixed in with tiny flimsy Tuk-Tuks (3 wheelers used as taxis and personal transportation) and everything else from KIA’s to Mercedes Coupe’s.  Subcompact SUV’s seem to be the most popular vehicles amongst the working middle class.  There are also vehicle brands here we have never seen elsewhere, including TATA and Mahindra, which are made in India.  Toyotas and Hondas are plentiful, but there aren’t many American cars to speak of.  

There is a tremendous amount of construction going on.  Interestingly enough, a new superhighway is under construction, apparently financed by China.  The surface streets around the Port are in terrible shape with pot holes big enough to swallow a Tuk-Tuk if the drivers aren’t careful.  

There are plenty of stray dogs in the streets, and plenty of people in an eclectic mix of costumes ranging from jeans and torn t-shirts to sari’s and bare feet.  Actually, the preferred foot ware throughout the island seems to be bare feet or flip flops.  People even ride motorcycles with helmets, but bare feet.  Around the Port, there are shanty towns of improvised housing and piles of trash that look like all the freeway underpasses and medians in downtown Seattle and San Francisco.  

As our bus worked it’s way through the traffic from the Port to the outskirts of town, the traffic, mess and disorder diminished and as we got onto a spanking new looking toll expressway, it was like we were transported away from a Metropolitan slum and into a more interesting and pleasant rural tropical environment.  It was interesting to see colorful laundry hung on the chain link fences along the expressway where it was adjacent to residences. 

There are plenty of banana plantations and rice paddies evident as we worked our way down south along the coast of Sri Lanka.  We stopped at a very modern rest stop equipped with solar panels and a variety of shops in an air conditioned mini mall.  Undoubtedly also financed by the Chinese.  

We eventually left the expressway, and the worked our way up the hillsides through a couple of smaller villages with roadside shops and lots of people and animals wandering about in dangerous proximity to wildly zig zagging buses, trucks, Tuk-Tuks and motorcycles.  The roads are generally very crooked, shoulderless, and they do drive on the left side of the road here, to add to our terror.  When we got to the Tea Plantation and Factory, the driveway was at an acute angle to the road, which curved around a nearly blind corner.  Our bus had to execute a 6 point turn while blocking traffic in both directions to get into the driveway.  

True to their word, it took 3 hours to get to the Tea Plantation, but once we got onto the expressway, after the first several miles, the scenery really didn’t change much, so we were able to nap much of the way.  

Our tour of the plantation involved walking up a driveway with a factory guide pointing out all the various plants that covered the large site.  There are rows and rows of tea bushes, which are actually Camilla bushes.  There are taller skinny trees planted to provide some shade, and also because of their ability to fix nitrogen in the soil- part of their strategy to maintain an organic operation.  There were also a variety of other trees like Jackfruit and citrus trees, and bergamot bushes.  They like to market how ecologically friendly their organic operation is and what a diverse ecosystem they have.  There are workers weeding by hand, and picking tea leaves by hand on steep hillsides.  They all appear to be women.  

The most interesting thing we learned was that all their different types of tea all come from the same plant, but which parts are picked and how the leaves are processed determine which will be black tea, green tea, orange pekoe tea and others.  For example, at the tip of new growth on the bush, there is a still rolled leaf at the base of a 3 leaf cluster.  These are processed into green tea.  If you pick the branch further down and process a five leaf cluster, you can make all the other black tea varieties.  

We then walked through the factory to see a very labor intensive process of sorting, withering, rolling, fermenting, and drying the leaves and stems to yield their final products.  Again, inside the factory, all the employees appear to be women.  There also seemed to be a high ratio of supervisory to subservient employees- up to one supervisor per two employees.  

One of the factory rooms was where the tea leaves are withered in long trays running the length of the building.  One tray was full of leaves that had been adequately withered and ready for the next stage in processing.  This required moving them from the withering trays into a chute to the rolling process part of the factory downstairs.  This was done by two tiny women carrying large woven baskets on their heads like giant sombreros and one woman who would scoop the leaves into the baskets and then help lift the baskets onto the heads of the carriers.  The carriers would then walked down the row between the trays to the dumping station at the end of the building, and then return for another load.  A third younger woman appeared to be simply supervising the whole enterprise.  Everyone in the tour group (probably 200 people total in 4 buses) wanted to take pictures of the carriers with the baskets on their heads, and they obliged by pausing and smiling.  

After all the tourists had filed out of the wilting room, Janet went back and pulled out a bag of Princess chocolates that our room steward puts on our pillows every night.  We save them and Janet likes to give them to children she runs into on our tours.  She put a pile of them on a table at the end of the withering tray.  With remarkable speed, the gal that was the leaf scooper had swooped down and scooped up all the chocolates for herself, with no apparent intention to share with her colleagues.  The two carriers then approached with their palms out held.  Fortunately, Janet still had some left in her bag to give to each of them, and eventually even the supervisor, who seemed to be torn about how to manage this situation, came over with her hand out for chocolate.  They seemed to be quite excited for the treat.

The factory is not air conditioned, so by the time the tour was over, we were all sweating pretty good from the heat and humidity.  But the room where the final products were being sorted for packaging was filled with crates of delicious smelling teas.  

We finished the tour with a tea tasting, and then a sort of self service low tea where they served some butter and cheese sandwiches, chocolate cake and ginger snaps with a mug of tea.  It seemed like they weren’t really set up to handle the size of our groups from the cruise ship because they frequently ran out of cups and mugs.  We were a little concerned that some guy around back might just be hosing them off and returning them to the tables without properly washing them because the whole set up seemed a bit improvised, but we’ll see if we end up with food poisoning.  

We got back into the bus for our long return trip.  We stopped again at the rest stop for a bathroom break and could feel a few sprinkles from the sky.  By the time we were back on the road, we ran into some serious rainfall.  They have two monsoon seasons on Sri Lanka, and November to January is one of them.  We were told that we were very fortunate because the last tour group that had arrived 2 days earlier on a cruise ship had heavy rain fall the entire day.  By the time we got to the ship, the rain had stopped and the sun was back out.

We returned just in time for afternoon Trivia, which we finished our usual one point off the win.  We then got showered up and had dinner.  We met a Chinese woman dining alone next to us.  Her husband is a professor of Mathematics at SUNY.  It turns out he is the same age as Ben, but is scheduled for a prostate biopsy in a few weeks.  Ben reassured her not to be too alarmed because it is far from certain that her husband will end up with cancer, and even if that is the case, early diagnosis can lead to cure in most cases.  We never ascertained just why she wasn’t traveling with her husband- perhaps they take separate vacations all the time.  

We wound up our evening with a Movie Themes trivia, and finished pretty strong, but still were beat by another team by 1 point.  That’s why we’re the Bridesmaids, I guess. 

Our clocks go forward another half hour at bedtime tonight, putting us on Bangladeshi time.  We’ll have another 3 sea days before arriving at Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.  We actually look forward to sea days now after a busy day of excursions at port.

Sunday, December 1, 2019; At Sea Oman to Sri Lanka Day 3

Sunday, December 1, 2019; At Sea Oman to Sri Lanka Day 3

Our clocks sprung forward a half hour last night. It was hard getting up this morning, and by the time we got out of bed at 9:30AM, the main dining room had closed for breakfast, so it was off to the Buffet with us. 

On our morning trivia we finished 2 points off the lead. Is France ahead or behind Greenwich Mean time?  Which Spacestation deorbited in 2002?  We had a 50/50 chance on the first one, and got it wrong, and we confused one space station for another.  

Ben hit the fitness center while Janet went through the enrichment lectures.  Our Progressive Trivia team was in second place by 1/2 point after yesterday’s game.  We probably only did average on todays, scoring 16/20 but we may get another point because Matt had a wrong answer for What type of animal head does the Egyptian god Anubis wear?  His answer was Falcon, but the correct answer is Jackal.  We missed out on the bonus question which fortunately was only worth 3 points and which was who’s face was on a 10 year old grilled cheese sandwich that was auctioned off for $28,000 on E-bay?  We guessed it had to be either Jesus or the Virgin Mary, and put down Jesus, but it was the Virgin Mary.

We had a quick lunch at the buffet and then watched the beginning of the new Disney live action Dumbo, which creates an entirely new story line.  

Our movie was interrupted by our Captain’s Circle Reception.  We have figured out how to scam the most premium cocktails during the reception, so Janet ended up with 4 Moscow Mules and Ben ended up with 3 martinis.  But we also figured out that the most we can drink and remain standing upright is 2 of those cocktails so we stumbled our way to Bob and Mary’s room with the two extra Moscow Mules.  Bob and Mary had missed their Captain’s Circle presentation which was on November 20th.  The most traveled couple on this cruise has completed over 1500 days at sea.  Can you imagine spending 3 years at sea?  

We finished the Dumbo Movie after the Captain’s Circle reception.  Eve Green was in the new Dumbo movie, and we had just seen her in the James Bond Casino Royale movie, where she played Vespa.  

It was Italian night again in the dining room. We ordered the eggplant Parmesan, which in the past was always excellent, but today, they were too salty.  Janet had the chicken saltimbuco while Ben had shrimp and scallops.  Both entrees were good, and we had gelato for dessert.  

We finished off the evening watching “The Girl in the Spider Web”, which is a sequel to “The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo”.  There was plenty of intrigue, action and nerdy tech, like a James Bond movie, but the main character Lisbeth, is a lot more quirky and enigmatic than James Bond.  We didn’t think it was quite as good as the first movie, but worthwhile watching.  

Tomorrow, we arrive in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and have to be up early for our excursion to visit a tea plantation.  We will have a long bus ride into the countryside of Sri Lanka, which should give us a good look at the countryside and rural life, and give us an opportunity to nap.  The weather is somewhat unpredictable, so we’ll see how that plays out.