At Sea

            On Tuesday, 22 Oct, Jesse awoke about 8:30 AM and started getting dirty clothes ready for the laundry (pre-scrubbing, etc); Sally awoke just as Jesse was heading for the laundry room.  Since Sally was still worn out from the previous day’s activities, Jesse brought her breakfast from the Horizon Court.  After finishing his laundry, Jesse went to dance class in the Club Fusion, while Sally worked on the blog.  Also at dance class, Lenata was Jesse’s dance partner.  The class reviewed the Cha Cha, the Jive (East Coast Swing), and the Salsa, which gave Jesse a second opportunity to master the new Salsa dance steps.  (Hopefully, he will still remember them when we get back home.)

We lounged around the cabin all afternoon, finally logging into genealogy DNA websites to use up some of our complimentary minutes that we still have left in our internet accounts.  Now, since we now have only 88 of our 1000 complimentary minutes left in our internet accounts, we won’t lose a lot of minutes like we did last year.

About 4:30 PM, Jesse went down to the Horizon Court to get soup for a light late lunch.  Although he brought back only a cup of soup for Sally, for himself he couldn’t resist also bringing back a cup of soup, a loaded baked potato, chicken/rice casserole, chocolate bread pudding, and ice cream!  (This is why we try to avoid eating at buffet restaurants at home!)

Tonight we had a formal dinner, with escargot, lobster, and prawns.  Afterwards we enjoyed a complimentary cocktail before retiring to our cabin for the night.  During the evening, we watched the movie “Mud” with Matthew McConaughey on TV, in segments.  The movie reminded us a lot of “Great Expectations,” except that there were two boys, not one.

As we thought more about our tour in Bangkok, Thailand, our tour guide, Wee, talked a lot about “sticky rice.”  Thai people love sticky rice, which is a good traveling food that lasts all day and can be enjoyed for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  A mixture of rice, salt, sugar, curry, and coconut milk is baked inside hollow bamboo sticks about 3 inches in diameter and 10 inches long.  The sticky rice stays fresh all day; in fact, it lasts even longer, since any leftovers can later be refrigerated at home.  At our last stop before returning to the ship, Wee purchased a few tubes of sticky rice and shared them.  Although Sally didn’t try any, Jesse did and thought it tasted a little like rice pudding.

Also, Wee talked about the rice barges that used to transport rice down the Mekong River many years ago before the good roads that they have now for transportation.  (He had grown up on a rice farm.)  Wee said that was nothing more scenic, pleasant, and relaxing than floating down the river on a rice barge.  Also, more than once he mentioned that inexpensive, interesting vacations can still be taken further north, away from the city.  Maybe for the young and adventurous!

On Wednesday, 23 Oct, we again slept fairly late.  After we returned from breakfast, our cabin steward placed a heavy vinyl strip on our bed for packing our suitcases.  Although it would seem to be easy just to throw everything into our suitcases to go home, it’s actually much more complicated.  We were advised to have most of our luggage outside our cabin door by 6:00 PM (before we leave the cabin for dinner).  However, we need clothes to wear to dinner tonight; another set of clothes to wear on our tour of Singapore tomorrow (when it will be very hot outside of the bus); and also comfortable, somewhat warmer, clothes to wear on the very long flight home.   And we always have to be careful to put bigger containers of liquids in a suitcase that will be checked. Packing is never fun!  Incidentally, the air temperature on this cruise has increased from about 45 degrees F in Alaska to at least 88 degrees in Southeast Asia – and now we will go back to colder temperatures again.

Jesse went to dance class where they reviewed the Samba, Tango, and Merengue.  Since Lenata wasn’t there this time, an Asian woman agreed to be Jesse’s dance partner, but only after he told her where Sally was!  Jesse didn’t recognize her, but she had apparently seen us together.

Jesse & Alass (Dance Instructor)

By mid-afternoon, Sally tired of packing and decided to take a nap, but then got up and packed more.  We managed to get two of our suitcases out into the hallway before dinner, as required.  After dinner, we danced to the Superfly band until they went on break and then returned to our cabin for a little while. 

With Niona & Dennis

We returned to the Explorers Lounge a little after 9:00 PM, where we were scheduled to meet up with Niona and Dennis.  We danced to a couple of songs, and then went to a quieter area for conversation.  We said our goodbyes around 10:30 PM and returned to our cabin to finish packing.

 

We have a 6-hour tour of Singapore tomorrow before the bus drops us off at the airport.  Unless we find free Wi-Fi in one of the airports, we’ll be making our final posting to our blog to cover disembarkation, Singapore, and our return trip when we get home to Bettendorf.