At Sea

            Today, Tuesday, 8 October, was Cruise Day #1 for the Beijing to Singapore cruise, though we had remained onboard from the “repositioning cruise” from Whittier, Alaska to Beijing.  In fact, yesterday morning we were given new “cruise cards” (cabin keys/charge cards), and were told to exit the ship at Beijing by using our old cruise card, and to enter the ship after our excursion by using our new card.  (We were also issued our bill for the previous cruise, as well as given additional free Internet minutes.  Our bill showed a charge for a rum drink that we didn’t buy, and Jesse wasn’t happy when he said as much to the woman at the desk.  (He didn’t like the fact that she didn’t appear to believe him.)  Also, we intended to buy a ship photo of us with the Austria couple, Francisco and Marlies, but it had already been shredded.  At least, it seems that we can still obtain a copy.

At the Horizon Court, we joined a couple at the breakfast table.  Although they smiled and looked friendly, they were Russian and couldn’t speak English.  When Jesse tried to tell them that we had been to St. Petersburg and Vladivostok, apparently they have different pronunciations or names for those cities; it was obvious that they had no idea what we were talking about.  A few minutes after they had vacated their seats at the table, another couple sat down.  Although they couldn’t speak English either, a server who spoke Spanish came to get their drink orders; and she translated for us that this couple was from Argentina, about 600 km from Buenos Aires.

We noticed a big change in the ship’s clientele since Beijing.  We expected mostly Asians to board the ship in Beijing; instead, it appears that we picked up passengers from all over the world.  Also, the previous passengers were almost all retired, while the new passengers appear to be a bit younger on average, probably still working and on their annual vacations.  On the first cruise, there were only two young children.  Now there were a more children.

 After breakfast, Jesse went to a Waltz dance lesson, while Sally worked on the blog.  Since the lesson was very basic, Jesse didn’t learn any new dance steps.  Afterwards, we went to lunch.

In the early afternoon, we decided to go for a swim.  On our way to the pool, Jesse remembered that we were scheduled to attend a Cruise Critics “Meet & Greet.”  We felt a little out of place in our swimsuits (though we wore cover-ups).   Sally soon sat down to talk with a small group who had heard about the very rough seas at the beginning our repositioning cruise and were asking a lot of questions about it.  Meanwhile, Jesse, being his usual sociable self, walked around the room introducing himself to the various attendees, until Sally joined him to meet more people.

At dinner, we met three new tablemates (all travelling alone) and all over 70 years old:  Tom from near London, England; Jeri from Seattle, Washington; and Ursula from Switzerland.  They had met the previous evening when our bus had arrived back from Beijing very late.  We had an interesting conversation about world politics.  We’re surprised (and somewhat disappointed) that only 5 of us sit at the table, leaving 3 empty seats.  However, many people have come to like the “Anytime Dining,” which is later, with no assigned seating.

After dinner, we danced for about an hour before returning to our cabin.  Most of the dancers with whom we had shared dance floors for the past two weeks apparently disembarked at Beijing.

We woke up Wednesday, 9 Oct 2013 to another at-sea day, which was a good thing because Sally managed to pick up a cold (in spite of using a lot of hand sanitizer) that started on Tuesday, and she felt worse today than she had yesterday.  Her resistance is always low anyway, and it didn’t help that we had three days of getting up early for excursions, with the third excursion day being extremely long (a total of about 13 hours, after being prolonged by sitting in fog for 2 hours).   Therefore, Sally relaxed in bed longer than usual this morning before we went to breakfast, and Jesse went alone to dance lesson.

Sally didn’t feel well enough to go to lunch, so Jesse brought back soup, sushi, cherry cobbler, and ice cream from the Horizon Court; then he did a load of laundry.   There was a good movie on the television that Jesse watched three times in segments, “Here Comes the Boom,” with Kevin James, Salma Hayek, and Henry Winkler.  With all of the activities, it’s difficult to watch an entire movie in one sitting.  There appears to be a lot of Spanish and Portuguese speakers onboard this time.  Jesse assisted a couple of Spanish-speaking passengers as they were attempting to interpret the signs in the laundry room by telling them that they needed “ocho” US quarters for their laundry.  However, he has responded to Spanish conversations at least three other times with, “Yo hablo español muy, muy poquito.”

Dinner tonight was our first formal affair for this segment of our cruise.  Since Sally wasn’t feeling very well, we skipped the free “Princess Welcome” drinks and dancing, and retired to our cabin after dinner.