Singapore

Monday 5th October
We decided to have a fairly leisurely day today. Singapore has a very modern cruise port, much like an airport terminal which take you directly to a couple of very large shopping centres. We decided to give the city centre a miss as we have been to Singapore a few times in the past. Another couple joined us to take a taxi to the Jurong Bird Park which has a spectacular array of birdlife. We took the little overhead train around the park and instead of walking for hours we saw most of what there is to see in about ½ an hour. We’d had our Taxi wait for us and then took it back to the port. The GD and I treated ourselves to a delicious Thai lunch on the rooftop garden of one of the shopping centres at the port. After a nana nap we went back to the shopping centre where I had a hair cut and blow dry for 35 singapore dollars. Apart from the hair cut the only thing I bought was a 25 singapore dollar watch which only went for the length of time it took me to get back on the ship. Hopefully it only needs a battery but I guess the old saying “you get what you pay for” applies. We set sail about 7pm on a beautiful barmy evening sipping a good wine up on top deck. It felt a little sad to us in a way, as it is the last foreign port on this long voyage, before we disembark in Darwin in a few days time. We are going to spend a few days there before flying home on Tuesday 13th October. It’s been quite an adventure but now we have to start thinking about home and the real world

Sunday 4th October
Shopping shoes – sorry those were the first two words which came to mind as I sat down to write this entry. The GD earned a few brownie points today as he patiently waited for Gemini to explore the shoe shops at Klang. Since we have been to KL a couple of times and as it’s a long way from the port of Klang we opted to take the shuttle bus into the relatively new shopping centre at Klang instead of going all the way to KL. It met all my expectations and after a nice lunch (randang for the GD and ginger chicken for me) we returned to the ship – carrying 3 pairs of new shoes, mine of course. It appears that sometime in the not too distant past, a lot of money was invested in Klang which is still waiting for a return. There are a lot of relatively new buildings standing empty between the port and the town. The weather has been kind to us again and although it was cloudy it didn’t rain. We cruise through the straits of Malaca tonight and should arrive in Singapore at about 7am tomorrow

Saturday 26th September - Saturday 3rd October.
Goodness me, a whole week has gone by and I haven’t written a thing. We survived house arrest throughout India with a few insignificant shots from the deck of the ship. We didn’t get off scott free as we were summonsed to the dining room on the third Indian port at 7.45am with about 130 other passengers without visas. They (Indian Immigration) still wanted to compare our faces with our passports and put a stamp on the (the passports that is). A bit of a joke if it wasn’t so annoying and inconvenient. The ship left India on 28th September and then we were at sea from 29th September until our arrival in Phuket on the 2nd of October. We did an easy tour of Phuket, which took in some of the scenic places and of course temples and places to spend your money (not ours). They are mostly Buddhist, nice people and nice surroundings. Our tour didn’t take in the beaches that would have been nice.
Today, Langkowi, Malaysia. We took a tour visiting various places of interest, including museums etc.. It seemed it was a busy weekend for weddings, passing no less than 4 villages where a marriage was taking place and according to our guide, everyone from the village is a guest. The monkeys were very visible along the road in some places. We were unsure if our bus was going to make the journey as the first hill almost saw us rolling backwards. It was a little tired and not long for buss world, we think but it got there and back again with great difficulty on relatively small hills. We both thought the most interesting place we visited was the rice museum, a small working rice paddy and processing museum. The scenery is very pretty here with the coastline dotted with small islands. We left Langkowi at about 4.30 this afternoon and now cruising towards Klang, the port for Kuala Lumpur. Since we have spent some time in KL (about 60kg from port of Klang) before and have seen the places on the list of tours, we plan to spend a part of the day in Klang after a restful morning on the ship. We’ve seen the usual good quality entertainment in the past week but taking a night off tonight to recoup. These shore days are quite tiring for an old couple like us.