Once we left Sri Lanka it was a very leisurely ride to Cochin.  In fact it was so leisurely that we could have arrived around 8 pm yesterday.  However it would’ve cost the ship $45,000 extra to arrive early!  The Captain chose to reduce speed so that we’d arrive at our regularly scheduled time. We docked at the…

We arrived in Sri Lanka about 6:00 am.  Sri Lankan Immigration officials came on board when we left Singapore so we were cleared before we arrived. Sri Lanka is primarily a Buddhist country. After a great breakfast we were off to our excursion “Elephants of Pinnawela By Train”. About 9:00 am we boarded the bus…

Today Ron and Paul took different tours.  Ron’s excursion today was called “Around The Island” and Paul’s was called “Mysteries of the Orient”. Ron’s tour started off with a visit to the Tiong Bahru Wet Market to view the local vegetable and meat available in Singapore.  He had seen wet markets in other cities and…

Having visited Singapore two years ago we didn’t feel we needed to take city overview tours so we took tours to specific sites/attractions in the city. Today’s excursion was called “Gardens By The Bay & Marina Bay Observation Deck”. The Marina Bay Sands Hotel is a beautiful Hotel with what many people call a boat…

If you are squeamish, you might want to skip this post and move on to Singapore. If you have seen Jack Nicholson in Bucket List, you have heard of Civet Cat coffee or kopi luwak.  Kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee and Luwak is the local name of the civet cat who eats the…

This morning we arrived at Semarang around 7:00 a.m.  Once again we were greeted by cultural dancers and musicians on the pier as well as a country and western combo inside the terminal! We left the ship about 8:30 a.m. for a day long excursion entitled “Borobudur By Train”. In order to get to the…

After a short overnight cruise from Komodo Island, we arrived at the Island of Bali.  We were welcomed at the port by traditional Balinese dancers and musicians.   Bali is a Hindu nation and most of the architecture and lifestyle are based on these precepts.  The Balinese celebrate the international New Year but also celebrate…

Here There Be Dragons! We arrived in Slawi Bay and tendered onto the island around 9:00am. Our visit today was different from other ports in that unless you were part of an excursion group, you couldn’t leave the ship.  This is one method countries are using to better control crowds and protect their natural environments….

During the cruise, some people do charitable work along the way.  A very good example is Project Linus (“Security through Blankets”) where passengers knit and crochet blankets for seriously ill or traumatized children.  There are Project Linus chapters in many places (even Burbank and San Fernando Valley), but these blankets go to the Seattle chapter…

Just a quick note before we talk about Darwin.  In our Cairns post we mentioned the danger of swimming in the ocean beaches because of saltwater crocodiles.  However this also applies to freshwater crocodiles in rivers.  We made this sound like its only a problem in Cairns.  That’s not true.  We started seeing warning signs…