Day 6 – Lazy

Other than Alan’s continued consumption of huge quantities of food, we didn’t do that much so it’s fallen to me, Sarah, to do the blog.

The person who looks after where we sit for breakfast, Timo, sees us coming of a morning and puts in the order for Alan’s swedish pancakes without even having to ask. The usual serving is 3 but, as Alan ends up ordering two servings, Timo pre-empts him now and automatically puts in an order for a double serving.

After breakfast, and as we were still in port at Ho Chi Minh City, we decided to take the opportunity to do some washing. We had seen enough of the city yesterday and it was a really really hot day.  As I suspected, most people were off the ship and all four machines were free.  We took control of two of them.  After the wash cycle I said to Alan to double check that there was nothing left in his machine. He gave me the all clear and we left the laundry room with our clothes in the dryer.  When we returned, someone was using the machine that he was using and one of my socks had been pulled out and left on the ironing board.  Thanks Alan, so glad I asked you to double check your machine! <shakes head> I stuck my head in the washing machine and had a good look. Obviously Sarah dropped it.

By this time, and not wanting Alan to waste away, we wandered back to lunch.  It was far too hot to have it around the pool so we went back to the same place we have breakfast.  It was German day but we stuck to the regular food, which for Alan means a countless number of prawn cocktails.  No point letting all those jumbo shrimp go to waste.

After lunch Alan and I ventured off the ship to get a photo of it plus check out the small market stalls set up on the dock.  Five minutes in the sun was enough and we came back onboard. I think I even got a little bit sunburnt from the small amount of time we spent out there. Not surprising since it was about 40 degrees. Having had such a strenuous day so far, Alan opted for an afternoon nap.  At 4pm we bid farewell to Ho Chi Minh City.

Thankfully Alan woke up in time for our afternoon swim and spa.  The pool water was quite warm today and for once, Alan wasn’t complaining about it. The pool thermometer said 33 degrees. Almost warm enough to swim without getting chilly. However, this had a flow on effect in that the spa didn’t feel as warm.  It was interesting though to sit there and watch the scenery go by.

After showering, it was time to hit the main dining room for dinner.  The staff get to know you very quickly and automatically put us at our regular table and bring us our regular drinks.

Following dinner, Alan felt like a chocolate milkshake but unfortunately the ice cream was put away so we ended up with chocolate frothy milk.  It wasn’t that enjoyable.  The show didn’t interest us tonight so we ended up back in the room watching Yes Man again, just one of the many and I mean hundreds of movies available on demand on the ship.

Tomorrow is a cruising day as we head to Chan May (Hue), Vietnam.

Day 5 – Ten million crazy people

The blog today is being written by Alan. Yay, right? Sarah may make a few observations in red.

We woke this morning to a view of trees outside as we cruised up the Saigon River toward our destination of Ho Chi Minh City. This was our first view of land since we left Singapore months ago.

We hit The Colonnade for breakfast as usual. The staff on this ship are all so good. When the guy saw Sarah and I sitting there, he immediately asked if we’d be having the strawberry pancakes for Sarah and Swedish pancakes without lingonberries for me once again. You forgot to mention that he brought you a double stack of the Swedish pancakes and then, you got another double stack.

After breakfast, we went up to the Observation Bar on deck 10 at the front of the ship to get a good view as we cruised closer to port.  By about 11am we were being pushed into place by a tugboat and tied to the wharf. We obtained our shore passes so that we could leave the boat.

We had lunch before leaving the boat. No point in paying for food out there somewhere when it’s all inclusive on the boat. It was Mexican day in The Colonnade for lunch today, so I was very happy with that. I also had 2 jumbo shrimp cocktails. So good!

Back to our room and we prepared ourselves for an afternoon of sightseeing. Cameras and mosquito spray at the ready, we passed through immigration and were soon standing on Vietnamese soil. Or concrete, as the case may be.

Sarah had prebooked a car and tour guide to take us around to the popular tourist spots of the city. She was waiting there for us as we left the boat, with Sarah’s name on a placard. Her name was Han and she was very friendly. I didn’t catch the driver dudes name. Driver dude didn’t speak English so it really didn’t matter.

We drove out into the traffic. In no time it became abundantly clear that there are quite simply NO road rules in this city. There are about 10 million people living here, and around 7 million of them ride motorcycles. There is no such thing as staying in your own lane. There are very, very few sets of traffic lights, so at most intersections it’s just a free for all. On numerous occasions we simply pushed our way through the heavy oncoming traffic when we needed to make a turn. It was ridiculously scary! We thought Penang and Kuala Lumpur were bad last year. This made them look like a walk in the park. Oh, and pedestrian crossing mean nothing. People who are walking on them have to wait for the cars and motorcycles to pass, because there’s no way they’ll stop for you. The rule is, if you are a pedestrian, close your eyes and keep going.  If you stop, that’s when the problems occur.

Han was very informative, telling us things that we would have no way of knowing without a tour guide. Our first stop was at the Presidential Palace, now known as the Reunification Palace. This was the famous palace which was where the Vietnam War ended back in 1975. It’s no longer used by government, so luckily we were able to go in and look all through it. It was destroyed by a bomb in 1962, but rebuilt as it is today, although much reinforced.

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We were shown through several impressive Presidential rooms where foreign dignitaries would meet and talk. Finally, Han took us down to the basement. After the Palace was destroyed and rebuilt, they built a series of war room bunkers underneath from where the President and Generals fought the war. It was extremely interesting to see. There were still old communication rooms full of gear used in the war, map rooms, The President’s hideout, and a 7 kilometre long tunnel to the airport. We decided not to walk down that tunnel.

Back out the front of the Palace we took photos of the two tanks  there. These tanks are the ones which actually broke through the Palace gates on April 30th 1975, bringing the 17 year Vietnam war to an end. We took a photo of Nev and Trev climbing on one of the tanks and some young Vietnamese girls wanted their photo with the boys too.

Our next stop was at the War Museum. There were 3 American warplanes, plus a number of tanks and armored vehicles in the grounds outside the museum. Inside the museum were hundreds of photographs from the war, blown up to large sizes and with explanatory text telling us what they were. The ground floor contained mostly propaganda articles and anti-war protest photos.

The first and second floors were full of graphic and, at times, quite distressing photos. Naturally, it was a rather sombre place. There was a lot of pictures and literature about the atrocities by the American army, much of which never came to light until well after the war had ended.

 

 

 

After we left the war museum, we briefly stopped by Notre Dame Catholic Cathedral. It’s very big and impressive looking, and based on the design of Notre Dame in France. Across the road from there was the old post office, which is still in use but much more of a tourist attraction these days. We had to take our life in our hands to cross the road to get there. The old phone booths in the Post Office have now been turned into little individual ATMs.

 

Next up was a visit to a factory type place which make beautiful varnished and painted stuff. It was obviously a blatant attempt to get us to but some merchandise, which we didn’t, but it was still nice to see.

Our last stop was at the Saigon marketplace. It was similar to Parklea Markets in Sydney, for those who know what that’s like. As soon as we walked in there, the smell was just atrocious and it was extremely hot. I wanted to buy a couple of new shirts since I hadn’t brought enough with me on the trip, so we found a stall and I picked out 2 that I liked the look of. I managed to bargain the lady down 250,000 dong (about $11.17). Sarah wanted a magnet, so we found one of those and I bargained that down 5,000 dong as well. It only cost us just over $1.

We came back to the ship and were thankful to get in from the heat and humidity. Sarah and I hit the pool for another swim. The pool was even more freezing than yesterday, so we didn’t stay in there long before getting into the spa. You won’t know cold until I make you hit the pool in Shanghai.

After our swim, we showered and got ourselves ready for dinner. It was another decadent feast, as usual. Potato ravioli with truffles for entree. They were absolutely delicious. Our main course was specially ordered Nigerian tempura king prawns. A friend of Sarah’s dad, who is also on this cruise, had spoken to the staff about obtaining them for us for our dinner tonight. They’ll get anything for you on this boat!  That includes getting a second entree after the main meal.  Alan is turning into a very round shape.

Now we’ve just been down around the pool area, where we’ve been enjoying a Vietnamese cultural show featuring traditional musical instruments and dancing. It lasted about an hour and was very entertaining.

Trivia for the day: Vietnamese males who don’t go to college or university, must join the army for at least 2 years.

Day 4 – Rough Cruising

After yesterday’s complaining from Alan, I decided I better write the blog today. I’m sure he’ll have a few choice words to say in Red.

The ride though the night got a little rougher and a few times I thought I might fall out of bed.  Thankfully that didn’t occur. I’m sure it will happen sooner or later, given how clumsy Sarah is.

We were up reasonably early this morning, before 8am, and were greeted with another warm, humid and partly sunny day.  The calm seas we had experienced the day before were replaced with something a little more choppy which makes walking seem like a new art form.  Alan laughed at me at one stage for my walking style, only to shortly thereafter walk into a wall.  Now that was funny!! Well clearly I was mocking Sarah by walking into the wall.

Breakfast was so good yesterday, I decided to have it again, the strawberry pancakes.  They were perfect.

Alan decided to branch out and have the Swedish pancakes with lingonberries.  They turned out to be crepes with a very strange fruit jam.  The crepes were so good he ordered a second helping,  minus the lingonberries.

We met some more Australians at breakfast, who Dad had met on previous Seabourn cruises.  These guys, too, have been on the boat since Fort Lauderdale, which departed 5 January.  As much as I’m enjoying this (two days in) I can see that when it’s time to get off, I’ll be happy to do so.  I can’t imagine what you do on a boat for two months!

We returned to the cabin for a bit of R&R before we hit the trivia contest day 2.  Another up and down day, in which I contributed one answer (one each day now … that’s a good average), on some very hard questions. We managed to keep off the bottom of the table but I'm not sure how. With two days in a port starting tomorrow, we won’t have any trivia until back at sea so maybe we have some time to study up. Yeah, right! At least there were no Australian questions this time, so we didn’t have the chance to embarrass ourselves again.

After trivia we joined Dad on deck around the pool and had lunch.  Hamburgers today followed by some really lovely ice cream.  However, I quickly discovered that ice cream and choppy water doesn’t mix so I put on my acupressure wrist bands and had a lie down. It’s amazing how quickly they work.

Alan took himself off to the casino to try his luck at poker.  Unfortunately that luck wasn’t there.  They way they run the games is that there is a buy in (in this case $100) but the limit of the bets are $3 and $6 so bluffing is difficult because everyone plays every hand.  Also, all the other players were friends and spoke Spanish to each other so Alan thinks they conspired to get his money and he came back a little sad.  Poor Alan. Stupid boat poker! They don’t know how to run a proper tournament. Give me APL any time.

We were back to dinner in the main dining room tonight. I had lovely crab cakes for entree and Alan had a chowder.  We both had the veal tenderloin for main.  It was so good.  I chose the sugar free low fat dessert, not because I was trying to be good but the chocolate crepes sounded nice.  Alan had some silly chocolate cappuccino cake.  Why put coffee in a lovely chocolate cake?

We decided to miss the comedian tonight and try and get an early night.  Tomorrow we start our entrance into Ho Chi Minh City around 8am and that will be interesting.

Sorry for the lack of photos but the humidity is playing havoc with the camera. The room is so cool that every time we take the camera out, it fogs up.  I’ve had a read up tonight and once it has unfogged again, I will place it in a ziplock bag and hopefully it will acclimatise tomorrow whilst in the bag and when we take it out, it won’t fog up. Fingers crossed.

Sarah and I went for a swim for the first time today. We waited until about 5pm, when it wasn’t quite so sunny and hot, and we were the only people in the pool. The movement of the boat made it quite like a wave pool and swimming from one end to the other was quite a task at times. According to the pool thermometer the water temperature was 31 degrees. I don’t believe it. More like about 12!!!

We went in the spa after the pool. That was lovely and relaxing. The bar dude kept bringing us alcoholic drinks, which of course we knocked back.

Day 3 - Sarah is making me write the blog and I can’t remember what we did yesterday, so there is no title!!!

As you may have gathered from the title, Alan is blogging today. Any additions made by Sarah will be in red.
Today was our first full day at sea. The night went fairly smoothly, apart from listening to Sarah and her dad both snoring for 8 hours. At times I thought it was the ships horn sounding. Thank goodness for earplugs! With the earplugs in the only one he could hear snoring was himself.
We were up by 9am and headed down to The Colonnade on deck 8 for breakfast. There’s a huge selection of food on offer, and we all ate plenty. Sarah and I enjoyed our pancakes. Yum!
We came back to our room after breakfast, but our room cleaner chick, Marlena, hadn’t finished yet, so we took a wander around the ship looking for power points. As some of you may be aware from our facebook, the internet out here in the middle of the sea is quite dodgy because it’s a satellite connection, and we’ve been finding it difficult to get online at times. The girl down at the guest internet stations said it’s due to our room being located in the middle of the ship and the two radar beacon thingys being at the front and back of the boat. We did, however, manage to figure out for ourselves that the problem was that they had forgotten to give us a passphrase to gain access. Anyway, we now have access from our laptops here in our room, although the speed isn’t wonderful.
At midday, Sarah and I ventured down to The Club on deck 5 to check out the trivia competition. We must have been looking a bit lost, because a couple of Americans invited us to sit down and join their team. In all there were 6 Americans along with us and our team name is Mixed Nuts. It’s run each day we’re at sea and points accumulate each day with the winning team awarded some prizes at the end of the cruise. The questions are very hard and obscure. Unfortunately, neither myself or Sarah knew the answer to the Australian question which was asked. How embarrassing! Oh well, hopefully we’ll improve. And at least our team isn’t coming last. Not yet, anyway.
Back to our room for an afternoon lie down, before getting into our good clothes for dinner. We went to Restaurant 2 for our degustation dinner, which consisted of 9 courses. They were very small servings, but we ate a lot of stuff that we’d never had before. Crispy foie gras. Lobster roll with black caviar. Bacalaito fritter. Seared panela salmon. Shiraz braised oxtail. White asparagus vanilla cappuccino. Drunken turbot, porcini and swiss chard. Mushroom toast. Tuscany braised veal with mascarpone mashed potato. And for dessert, dark chocolate ganache, espresso citrus panna cotta and condensed milk ice cream.
Dad was sure the waitress was mocking him when she bought our the wine and it was called Fat Bastard.
It was all very good, although most of it I wouldn’t go out of my way to order in a restaurant. The veal was my favourite, except that I ate the lavender garnish. That did not taste good!!!

After dinner, we went to the Grand Salon on deck 6 to see the show. It featured swing singer Ned Rifkin and the band doing a selection of songs from the dark ages. Not really my thing, but it only went for about 45 minutes.
After that, we went up to the Observation Bar on deck 10 for the Name That Tune game. We met up with our American friends from trivia, so once again we joined their team. We were positively brilliant at trivia compared to this debacle. The chickie on the piano plays a small snippet from a song and we had to try to figure out what it was. Had they played something from within the last 50 years, I might have had a chance. As if I know any Col Porter stuff! Our team managed to get 5 out of 13 right, so that’s almost respectable, I suppose. I contributed 3 of the 5 songs we got which was much better than my one trivia contribution.
By the time that finished, it was about midnight so we returned to our room for some sleep. We did gain an hour last night though. We must have crossed a time zone somewhere along the way. Zzzzzzz…….

Day 2 – Embarkation

Sarah blogging again today for no particular reason other than I said I would and got no complaints from Alan. Alan may make the odd comment here and there and they’ll be in red.

After a rather disturbed sleep where each of us blamed someone else for the snoring, we got up from our tiny Singapore room, showered, packed and watched the Oscars while waiting for checkout. I don’t snore! The weather when we awoke was very wet but by 11am when we left the hotel, the rain had cleared leaving a cloudy, hot and humid day in it’s wake.

We made our way down to the Singapore Cruise Centre and discovered that we weren’t the only ship departing.  The Royal Caribbean ‘Legend of the Seas’. (our is the left one in the photo), plus the Orion II were all docked and departing today. We dropped our luggage and walked around the shops looking for lunch.  We found a place, Secret Recipe, which we’d eaten at in Malaysia last year, and just so happened was right next door to a shop selling football shirts.

We then returned to the check-in for our ship and we got a first look at not only our ship but also the difference in service.  Our ship holds 450 passengers whereas the Legend of Seas holds 2,074 passengers. On this trip, there are actually only 400 passengers on our ship. And with 335 crew, you’re certainly made to feel very special. The others were being herded like cattle and we were greeted with silver service drinks and ice cold towels.  We were escorted by one staff member who showed us around the ship.

We were then left to our own devices.  Our room wasn’t yet ready and although we had only just had lunch, Dad and Alan helped themselves to pizza and chips by the pool.  Here I saw the first step into what a bigger Alan we will have when he gets off the ship. I’m looking to getting straight into soccer season when I get home. I’ll be just fine.

It was fairly hot on deck so Alan and I went exploring, deciding to walk past our cabin to discover not only was it ready but the staff member who would be looking after our cabin, waiting with champagne and canapés. 

She showed us the different features and confirmed that there would be a safety drill at 4.15pm and we were NOT to wear our life jackets to the drill.

At 4.15pm the captain came over the speaker to give his welcome speech and then told us about the drill. He reminded everyone that when the alarm went off, it was just a drill and for people NOT to abandon ship. We then moved to the marshalling area, where we found a number of people had not listened and did wear their life vests.  This was the start, we discovered of people not listening.  Those who went aboard in Singapore were to give their passports in on their return.  That did not happen and even though there were several reminders in the afternoon, we ended up departing over an hour late while they chased up the stragglers.

We had dinner in the main restaurant.  Was unbelievably good.  We took photos on Alan’s phone but unfortunately, for some reason the silly XP laptops we have won’t recognise the phone as a phone and won’t let me get the photos off.  I can tell you we had an amazing duck salad for entree mmm duck yum! and I had a wonderful beef tenderloin and Alan a fillet mignon but we can’t really make you jealous without the photos.  Dessert was delicious too but now I’m just bragging. 

After dinner we went on deck around the pool and listened to the band while waiting to leave.  The Legend of the Seas had departed at 5pm and another had come in, the AIDAdiva.  Huge ship, bigger than the Legend of the Seas but in fact only held 2,050 passengers.  Lovely looking ship.

 

Finally at 11pm we set sail and after watching the lights of Singapore disappear, we returned to our cabin for some shuteye, ear plugs installed.

Cruise Bound

Sarah here today.  Up until the plane flight, Alan had had about 6 hours sleep in 48 hours so the old boy needs his rest.

We were picked up, late, by the limo this morning.  He had confused the two addresses; having our street name but Dad's house number. In any event, we arrived at the airport with still 2 hours before our Singapore Airlines flight.  Even though we had checked in at home, we were still required to queue for some time.  They need to take a look at Qantas because, as many of you would know from our trip to Singapore last year, online check in with Qantas had our bags dropped and browsing the shops within a few minutes.

As we queued up for economy, I was trying to get Dad's attention who had accidentally joined the queue for first class instead of business.  A Singapore Airlines employee saw me, asked if everything was okay and I explained what was happening.  She then ushered us out of the economy queue, moved Dad to business class queue and said we could all check in together.  Not only was this faster, but it got us priority baggage plus express passes for immigration and screening; many of the benefits of flying business class without the added cost.

Dad then set off for the business class lounge while Alan and I opted for McDonald's.

Soon we were boarded and in our lovely two only seats row. Singapore Airlines is very nice; comfortable and a bit more room than on other airlines.

Alan was asleep before we even took off.  I watched, on take off, his blanket disappear into the row behind us, never to be seen again.

I managed to amuse myself with the entertainment system, mainly trying to work out how to use the silly thing, before our breakfast of scrambled eggs, ham plus fruit, a pastry and yogurt arrived. Alan managed to stay awake long enough to get some food and then he was back to napping.

I watched a few movies and had a small nap myself.  After a little snack of peanuts, lunch arrived of fish in a white wine sauce. Have to say, very impressed with Singapore Airlines food.

We arrived 20 minutes early and were through immigration in five minutes, unlike last year when it took us an hour each time. An interesting tidbit that Alan noticed last night and which the immigration agent noticed in Singapore, is that we had our passports stamped by them exactly a year ago today, which was when we transited back through Singapore on our way home from Malaysia.

A quick cab ride and we arrived at the hotel. It's lovely and new. However the room is tiny (with a double and a single bed) and the bathroom is microscopic.  It's only for one night so who really cares.

View from our room

Alan suffering from a headache, had a lie down while Dad and I watched the women's golf being played in Singapore. After Alan surfaced, we went to the Merlion and, unlike last year, was not covered in scaffolding and the fountain was running.  From here, too, Dad was able to see the Marina Bay Sands; quite an impressive site.

We then travelled the 5 minutes by taxi to Clarke Quay (although Alan reckons it would have been a 5 minute walk or 3 minute swim) and had dinner at an outdoor Thai place.  We'd only been sitting there for less than 5 minutes and the rain came so we were moved to another undercover table.  A few minutes there and we were moved again to make way for a large party.  Each move was an upgrade and this time we were right on the river.  The food was okay but the parade of boats up and down the river was interesting to see.

Now 9pm back in the room (which is midnight at home) and I think it will be an early night for all of us.   Tomorrow we get on the cruise.

The Night Before

Hello everyone and it is great that you've decided to come and read about our adventures again.

This trip will be a little different as my Dad will be joining.

Tomorrow we fly to Singapore before boarding the Seabourn Quest on Monday.  

See you all soon.