November 7 (Monday)
We had stayed in The Sheraton Towers Hotel but breakfast was not provided. We were going to venture out to find breakfast, but it was raining...no, it was pouring. So we decided to skip breakfast and took a taxi directly over to the Marina Bay Cruise Center to board our cruise. We thought if we boarded early, we would just have brunch on board our ship. From 11:00 - 2:00 we waited, and waited, and waited for the check in process. I was not impressed with Royal Caribbean. We have cruised before, and other cruises have been so much better organized.
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| Royal Caribbean - Mariner of the Sea |
After 3 hours of waiting, we finally did board the ship. We hit the Wind Jammer Buffet for lunch. For dinner, we made reservations for the Chopped Grill. That was worth the extra money for steak and lobster...yummy, scrumpdillyishous, divine!
Tonight's show was Zilwin Chew's Magic Show. He was very good. I even got to be a participant in his mental manipulation. He had thrown out 3 balls of paper into the audience. I happened to catch one of them. He asked me to pick a number between 1-13 (like in a deck of cards). Another person was to pick a suit (hearts, diamonds, spade, or club). The third person was to pick between 2 decks of cards, A or B. So deck B was chosen and the 2 of hearts was also chosen. As he flips through the deck of cards, one card would be facing opposite of all the others. You guested it...it was the 2 of hearts. Pretty amazing along with his other mental skills. All in all a fun night.
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| Mariner of the Sea - Impressive |
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| Floor of the Casino |
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| Shopping on Board |
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| Pool Area |
November 8 (Tuesday)
Our first port was Port Klang, Malaysia. We visited the Batu Caves. The caves are a limestone hill that has a series of caves and cave temples There were 272 steps going up into the cave. The cave is one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside India, and is dedicated to Lord Murugan. His statue guards the entrance to the cave. We were escorted by friendly, hungry monkeys all the way up.
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| Lord Murugan undergoing restoration |
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| Mom and Baby Monkey |
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| John holding up a stalactite |
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| Entering into the cave |
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| Great workout - 272 steps up, 272 steps down |
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| This little guy stole a visitor's pop |
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| Opening in cave to sky above |
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| Weird...but I'm sure there's a story behind these characters. |
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| Fresh coconut drinks |
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| Interesting architecture with British/Indian influence - civic centre |
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| View from the KL Tower |
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| Met these sweet school girls from a convent |
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| We Love Malaysia! |
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| The Petronas Twin Towers |
The Petronas twin towers are the world's tallest twin towers, 1,483 feet tall. One of the towers was built by a Japanese company and the other was built by a Korean company in a competition to to who could finish first. The Korean company won by 2 days.
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| Afternoon snack from The Chocolate Factory...no calories right? |
After a busy day of touring, back to the ship for some R&R. No better way to do that than to go to the spa for a relaxing massage.
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| Ahhh... |
All relaxed and refreshed. Dinner was filet mignon. After dinner entertainment was a movie, The Shallow. Hot Chocolate night cap, and we'll call it a day.
November 9 (Wednesday)
We went for an early sit down breakfast as opposed to the buffet. Got a lovely window seat and watched as we started to pull into port. At Phuket, the ship couldn't get right to shore so we had to ride in on tender boats. Then we caught our excursion bus to the Elephant Adventure at the Island Safari. Watched a short monkey show.
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| What the beach looks like on a nice sunny day... |
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| Cloudy day, so beach looked rather dreary and grey. |
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| Riding an elephant - another tick off the bucket list. |
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| Not that exciting, but now I can say I've done it. |
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| Baby Elephant Show |
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| Monkey Show - I felt sorry for the monkeys all chained up. |
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| Can you pick out the monkey? haha Camouflaged monkey. |
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| Water Buffalos - Reminds John of home in China. |
Next stop was the Wat Chalong Temple. It is the most important of the 29 Buddhist temples of Phuket.
Across the road from the temple were all kinds of kiosks selling souvenirs and food. It just wouldn't be right being in Thailand and not eating Pad Thai.
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| Now does he look like a happy camper...authentic Pad Thai! |
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| Gotta get my magnet. |
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| Thai hostesses at the jewelry market. |
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| Next stop, the cashew factory. |
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| John wanted a ride in their taxi - cool cab. |
On our way back to the ship, we had about an hour to stroll around. I really wanted to try Thai massage. I had heard so much about them. We came across a resort and ventured into the Wimarn Spa. It looked pretty posh. Well this is our last hurrah so to speak, so we decided to go for the gusto. We were not disappointed. However, John's camera died, before we could get any pictures inside.
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| Wimarn Resort and Spa |
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| Walkway to Spa |
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| I'm excited for my Thai Massage! |
Ah...that was deluxe. Unfortunately we had to cut our time short and rush back to the ship. Once back on board, it was dinner time. We decided to try Johnny Rockets, a 50's style burger and shake grill complete with juke boxes at every table. They really work, but you had to have an American nickel. I had lots of coins, Chinese, Singapore, Malaysian, Thai, just not American. Too bad, so sad.
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| Oops, we covered up the juke box with our creamy milk shakes. |
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| Now that's a BURGER! |
Time to relax. We watched the on deck movie, Ghost Busters 2. Back to our stateroom, we had a friend waiting for us. Our porter had made an elephant, so appropriate for this day. We are a day ahead of the U.S.
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| Trump wins U.S. election - how appropriate. |
November 10 (Thursday)
No port of calls today, just a day at sea. We had breakfast at Wind Jammers, then looked through the photo gallery to see if we liked any of the pictures they took of us. Then we picked up our passports which they had been holding in preparation of deboarding tomorrow.
We had a light lunch buffet then lounged around the pool. The ship had an ice arena and we watched the ice show. Dinner was at The Sound of Music Restaurant. During dinner, there was an intense lightning storm. That in itself was quite the light show. Being that this was the night on board, all the servers put on a bit of a show during dinner. The guys were dancing "Gangham Style"... pretty impressive and entertaining. Even though it had rained quite heavily during dinner, by mid evening it had pretty much died down, and we ventured out on deck to watch a movie (Tarzan) under the stars, but since it was still cloudy, we didn't see any starts.
Sad that this trip has come to an end so soon. Back to our state room to pack.
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| Pool side surfer |
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| Hot Tub Haven |
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| 3D Fruit Carving Demo |
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| Evening Entertainment |
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| Deck 5 - Shopping Plaza |
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| Tonight's dinner - Filet Mignon |
November 11 (Friday)
No Remembrance Day here, but I am truly grateful for all those who fought for our freedom.
November 12 (Saturday)
Caught an early flight back to Hong Kong. Arrived around 3:00 back at our apartment. Phoned June and made plans for dinner at 6:00 at Dan Ryan's.
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| We're sure gonna miss these two. |
November 13 (Sunday)
We went to church at Kowloon Tong with the Lee's and Nihipali's. Traveling sure wiped me out and I needed a nap before going out to dinner with Auntie May Soo and family.
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| John, Judy, Ernest, Agatha, Louisa, Steven, May Soo, Susan and her husband (my mom's cousin from Vancouver) |
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