Second Day At Sea - to Singapore

We are into the afternoon of the day before we arrive in Singapore. I had been trying to send my last blog for about a day but for some reason I can't get on the wireless system. Since I am doing this off line and I want to post some photos I had no way of getting the info and the photos into the system. I certainly do not want to start typing everything again. Ops finally logged in!

Last night we had our first meal with our dining group. We have 2 couples from England at a table for 6. It is the oddest table as it is against a post and it is hard to have a conversation with this post. We all asked that the table be moved but for obvious reasons, it is fixed to the deck. I think we are stuck with it! Both couples are leaving in Beijing so we will have new people after that stop.

This cruise is a bit unusual in that there are 40 different countries represented on board – that is the passengers and not the crew. When they make a general announcement, they do it in 4 or 5 languages. That was what happened today when the Captain came on and made the standard announcement that the ship has norwalk and strict measures are being implemented. It seems that this is quite an occurrence on these ships. However it usually takes a few days. We are only on day 3 of the cruise. Anyway this ship has a different feel as far as the passengers. Obviously there are way fewer Americans than we have encountered before. You hear all these different languages as you walk around. As usual Canadians are the second largest group. I think Brazil is next!

The sailing so far has been quite calm. There is nary a ripple as we head to Singapore. If it wasn't for the slight vibration from the engines you would not even know that we have been sailing for almost 2 days. No tilting on the line dancing which was really awful today. The same person did the 'swing' dance later in the day and was quite good. We did not know that line dancing had a count of 4! All these years we had danced in segments of 8!

Tonight is the first of our 6 formal nights. Our chocolate covered strawberries just arrived. Not as many as in the past but they certainly were larger. Since sushi is being served to the “special event” we decided no go for a drink. They are serving champagne or mimosas as the drink. Certainly not like the old days when you could get a glass of wine or a good ole fashion Manhattan! I guess that will have to wait until we get back home!

We did get a nice surprise today. For some reason we ended with more shipboard credits than we had expected! A nice surprise since we are taking tours in the next 4 ports. In the final 2 ports (Nagasaki and Pusan) we will simply take the port bus into town or just walk as in the case of Nagasaki.

Although I am having trouble with my Adobe (I may have to reinstall it) I managed to dumb down the photos enough to load them on the blog. Remember that you can leave messages on the blog. Thanks to those who have done so!