At Sea and Bali, Indonesia

At Sea

On Saturday, 29 November, Jesse awoke at 5:45 and downloaded the e-mail; then he worked on our photos.  Sally slept till 10:00 – what a vacation!  After breakfast, we went for a swim and conversed for quite a while with Vicki from New South Wales.  She has an aunt in the USA and has traveled extensively through the USA and Canada.  Although she used to dance a lot, now because of a problem with her ankle, she is unable to dance anymore.  Still, she likes to watch the dancers.  Afterwards, we relaxed in our cabin for a few minutes and then headed to the Horizon Court for a light lunch.

Since dining was to be formal tonight, complimentary canapés were delivered to our room at 4:00 (an extra benefit for elite passengers); then we dressed in our formal attire to attend the 5:00 Captain Circle Cocktail Party where we were served complimentary cocktails.  Although we had hoped to dance to the Diamond Princess Orchestra, there were so many Gold, Platinum, and Elite passengers on this cruise that the staff had set up chairs and tables on the dance floor.  No dancing.
 

3rd Formal Night with Paul and Mary

Immediately after the cocktail party we went to dinner, where we shared a table with Dee from Vancouver, Canada, and Roland and Marie from Sydney.  Dee is a retired dental hygienist who has been traveling since October and will not be returning to Vancouver until January.  Her travels will have included three cruises, a three-week stay with friends in Melbourne, and a stay in Hawaii.  Roland is a retired nurse; his wife, Marie, retired from Australia’s medical service.  They seem most disappointed that they had missed two opportunities to cruise to Egypt due to other financial obligations.  Now, no cruise ships go to Egypt.  Because both Roland and Marie spoke very softly, Sally missed a lot of the conversation.

After dinner, we returned to our cabin for a little while before meeting Paul and Mary in the Wheelhouse Bar for dancing.  We danced and conversed until 10:00 PM before retiring to our cabin for the night.
 

2nd Day At Sea

On Sunday, 30 November, Jesse awoke at 4:45 AM and downloaded the e-mail.  We have figured out the large number of Platinum and Elite Aussie passengers onboard the ship with their fancy smart phones and “free” Internet minutes are clogging up the Wi-Fi services.  Anyway, after downloading e-mail, Jesse returned to bed and slept until 9:00.

At 10:00, we went to breakfast in the Horizon Court, then for a swim in the “indoor” pool.  Since the pool was a little crowded, there wasn’t much space for swimming; however, Jesse spent most of the time in the shallow end conversing with a woman who resembled Jamie Lee Curtis about cruising (and doing water aerobics exercises) while Sally swam and then conversed with a man named John at the deep end about health issues and then American politics.  John lives in Sydney and retired from the carpet business after he sold out to a larger company.  About politics, he said he wishes President Obama would take a firmer stand internationally; democratic nations need a strong power (namely the USA) to take the lead (for instance against Putin or ISIS), and the UK and Australia would definitely support them.  Also, John says things are a lot more expensive in Australia than the USA.  He recently purchased a Mercedes in Australia for $100,000; the same automobile would have sold in the USA for $45,000.

Afterwards, Jesse lounged in the cabin while watching BBC news, while Sally did a little hand washing.  Then at 2:30, we went back to the Horizon Court for lunch.  Since Sally had become interested in the “Elephant Safari” excursion at our stop in Bali during her conversation earlier with John, we went to the shore excursion desk and exchanged our tickets for an easier (more boring tour consisting of bus riding and shopping!) for “Elephant Safari” tickets.  We had not even considered the “Elephant Safari” previously because it is classified as a strenuous excursion.  Sally was surprised that any tickets were still available; however, since many of the ship passengers are elderly, they might not enjoy riding elephants.

At 6:30, we went to dinner in the Savoy dining room.  Although we sat next to two women at a nearby table, they were mostly engaged in conversation with Sharon and Tony from Yorkshire, England at the table on the other side of them.  We didn’t get the names of the two women.  Although we had met Sharon previously in a hot tub, Tony had not been with her.  Since we had trouble understanding Sharon’s Yorkshire accent, we’re unsure of some details that she related.
 

Dancing in Wheelhouse Bar

We were served quickly, so went to the Wheelhouse Bar afterwards, where we danced to the Soul Wave from 7:30 PM until they went on break.  Later, we met Paul and Mary in the Wheelhouse Bar.  Afterwards, we chatted a little with the Soul Wave couple, Amber and Rolando.  From Italy, they have been on the ship since October and end their tour in February.  They are also engaged to be married. 

3rd Day At Sea

On Monday, 1 December, Jesse awoke at 5:00 AM and downloaded the e-mail; then slept until 8:00 AM.  We haven’t been setting our alarm clock; we have just been waking up whenever.  After breakfast, we watched The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and then Dawn of the Planet of the Apes on TV, along with BBC news before going to lunch at 1:30 PM.  After lunch, we went to the Club Fusion for a Tango dance lesson.  We learned a new Tango step, but by the time we returned to Club Fusion for the afternoon Tea Dance at 3:30 PM, we were unsure of the exact steps.  Since the Soul Wave played a tango, we had some practice.

After the Tea Dance, we returned to our cabin and relaxed.  During that time, our cabin steward returned our passports, which had been stamped by Indonesian immigration.  Now, Jesse now has only two blank pages in his passport book and Sally has only three; therefore, we plan obtain additional pages when we return to the USA before our next cruise.  These are our second passports since we started traveling outside the USA in 1999.  If our parents were alive today, they would be amazed at the extent of our travels.

At dinner, we sat at a table for two next to Steve and Ann from Adelaide, where they had boarded the ship.  We shared interesting stories about growing up in Australia and the USA.  And of course, then they started telling us how “safe” it is in Australia; that is, “you have more of a chance of dying in an automobile than getting attacked by a shark.”  Then they proceeded to tell us horror stories about the dangers in Australia.  They soon finished their meal and we started conversing with two women, Tracy and Gail, who had boarded the ship at Freemantle.  They were much younger than the average passengers on this ship, and had been told by their travel agent that their discounted ticket was partly because of their younger age.  (Apparently, Princess wanted a few younger passengers on the cruise ship – or maybe they just wanted to fill the ship!)

Later, we danced in the Wheelhouse Bar until the band went on break at 9:30 PM.  When we mentioned to Paul that we couldn’t remember the new tango step that we had learned that afternoon, he demonstrated the step to us.  Paul had also attended the dance lesson, but not the Tea Dance.  Mary told us that she was staying on the ship instead of going to Bali; she doesn’t like the dirt, the beggars, or people pushing to sell trinkets and was choosing to spend her day reading.

Bali, Indonesia

On Tuesday, December 2, we awoke just prior to our alarm at 5:45 AM.  Jesse quickly downloaded our e-mail before we dressed and headed for breakfast, where we shared a table with Dee from Vancouver, whom we had met a couple of days earlier.  Dee told us about a very noisy storm overhead with lots of thunder and lightning that had awakened her during the night; that was news to us because we hadn’t heard a thing!  Then we made it for our 7:15 AM excursion meet up time in the Wheelhouse Bar with little time to spare, and were given spaces on the last bus to the “Elephant Safari” tour.  Our friend Paul and also Dee were on the same tour, but on a different bus, where they happened to sit together.  On the tender, we sat below, where it was already very hot and humid for the 20-minute tender ride to shore, the island of Bali.  About 8:15 AM, we boarded our bus.

Our tour guide, Sudarma talked and Mr. Aki, the bus driver, navigated the narrow roads toward the Taro Elephant Safari Park in central Bali, located 30 minutes north of Ubud.   As we made our way north for an hour and a half, we traveled past coffee, cacao, banana and spice plantations; little villages with thatched roofs; and many terraced hillsides of rice paddies.  Bali has two seasons: wet (September to March) and dry.  The humidity today was 90 percent.  Mostly, Sudarma told us about the religious beliefs of people on Bali.  Although 80 percent of the people in Indonesia are Muslim and Bali is part of Indonesia, the Bali people are Hindu.  However, they are less strict in their religion than are Hindus in India.  They stress flexibility and respect to all people and animals.  He said it is because of their flexibility that the Muslim government of Indonesia trusts them.  They have a lot of ceremonies, and they have temples at various levels: family, clan, village, regional, etc.
 

Elephant Safari Park

We arrived at our destination about 10:00 AM.  Set in over four acres of exotic botanical gardens and surrounded by lush forest, the Elephant Safari Park is home to 27 elephants that were rescued from deforestation in central and southern Sumatra.   An official member of the World Zoo Association, the Park not only meets international standards for animal care but is a sanctuary for the endangered Sumatran elephants.  Once we arrived, we walked through the Park's museum, which contains a full-sized 15,000 year-old mastodon skeleton. Then, since it was starting to rain, we were given plastic ponchos to wear.  (After that, it was hard to determine who was who, since we were all covered in either green or blue plastic ponchos!)  First, we watched an elephant show, where the some of the smaller elephants kicked soccer balls, and twirled hula hoops and dunked basketballs with their trunks.  They also “sprayed” the audience with water, but luckily we were out of their range.  After watching the elephant show, we were escorted to an area where we were allowed to pet and feed a baby elephant.  While we waited our turn for our elephant ride, we had a few photos taken with the elephants.


Elephant Walk

The highlight of our visit was the exciting elephant walk.  The park attendants helped us climb into a teak wood chair atop one of the large elephants; and then the trainer guided the elephant on a 35-minute walk.  The ride was very bumpy and hard on the back (probably more so for larger people like Jesse).  Although we were told that we would quickly get used to the “gentle, swaying gait of the elephant,” that was impossible.  The movements of the trainer (who sat on a cloth on the elephant’s neck) seemed to be in sync with the elephant, but we jolted with every step.  Jesse had always thought female circus performers looked really sexy riding atop the elephants, this didn’t “feel” sexy at all!  Although the ride was very exciting, it was also exhausting.  The conclusion consisted of the elephant wading into the pond, where he/she sprayed us with water.  Luckily, our elephant was nice to us and didn’t get us wet.  This made Sally happy because she had been dreading being sprayed with the filthy water.  (Earlier, we had seen some of the elephants pooping in the pond!)  At any rate, Sally feels that the elephant ride will probably be the high point of our Australian cruise (followed by feeding the Kangaroos in Tanzania)!  It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience!

After the elephant ride we shared a buffet lunch with Don and Carol, whom we had seen on the dance floor.  They are both retired and this is their third cruise.  After lunch, we repeated the even longer (1 hour and 45 minutes) bus ride back to the pier, where we boarded a ship’s tender back to the ship.  We were back in our cabin by 3:30 PM, where we relaxed (and Sally had a short nap) until dinner.

At dinner, we sat at a table for two.  Since no one was seated next to us this time, we had a quiet dinner together and discussed the events of the day.   Later, we met Paul and Mary in the Wheelhouse Bar and danced for an hour.  Afterwards, we returned to our cabin and completed the immigration forms that we would need for Australian immigration on Wednesday morning.  Since the ship had stopped in Indonesia, Australian immigration required us to go through immigration to re-enter Australia.  There was an additional questionnaire about travels to Africa and possible exposure to Ebola.  Before retiring, we set or clocks forward by one hour because the ship is traveling eastward along the north coast of Australia.  (Now we start losing sleep that we had gained previously.)