Sydney to Mumbai

I left Timor Leste on the 6^th May after spending a very interesting 7 months there working with some great Scout Leaders and having met some lovely well intentioned people from all over the world. 

I had hoped that I had left enough time to get my Indian visa before I sailed.  I sent the paperwork and my passport off to Perth.  I hadn’t booked my airfare to Sydney as I could leave from Brisbane if I didn’t get it back.  Fantastic work,  it was back in just over a week and now I am all ready to go.

20 May 2013 -  0700 Sydney Airport and I have just collected my luggage and noticed  a man holding a sign ‘Sea Princess ‘ and I gladly joined him to travel in the bus to the new Passenger Terminal in White Bay.  The terminal has only been open 5 weeks and I sat with the other early passengers and watched to people leave the ship after travelling to Fremantle and back.  I am always impressed by the efficiency of the Princess staff and when it was time to board, everything was handled very efficiently and I was on the ship in about 30 minutes which included Customs.

The layout of the Sea Princess is exactly identical as that of the Sun Princess I was on last year, the names of the bars and dining rooms are different but it was easy to settle in.  I am in the middle of the ship and in the middle of everything, not a lot of walking involved.

We left the terminal at 1600 hours and the new terminal is on the other side of the Harbour, our trip under the Sydney Harbour bridge was from a different angle from last year.  We sailed so close to the Opera House we could have ordered ‘take aways’.  It was just as exciting as before and I loved being on the deck to enjoy the scenic views. There was no band to see us off this time but the excitement was still there. I didn’t stay on deck very long as it was quite cool.

I went to the dining room that night to meet my table mates for the next 104 days and found that I was sitting at a table of 4 married couples and me and we were right at the back of the dining room.  Oh no, what happened!!  To make matters worse (not for me) two of the men were in wheelchairs and we had to climb two steps to get to our table.  The couples were nice but not sure if I want to spend 104 nights with them, prefer single people.

It was great wandering around, I met up with a couple that were on last year’s trip and caught up on a lot of the gossip on last year’s passengers.

21 May saw us sailing up the coast and I spent the day settling in and putting up my photos that I carry with me as I travel so that I wake up looking at something familiar. The weather is still cool and the seas are rough. I am looking forward to tomorrow as Ann and Ros are both coming on board, I got to know them very well last trip, Ros was on my dinner table.

Distance Sydney to Brisbane 468.8 Nautical Miles, average speed 14.42 knots.

22 May – 0700 Brisbane. The weather is still cool and guess what, it is raining.  Welcome to Brisbane.   I was not in any hurry to get off the ship, I was just going to catch the shuttle into the CBD and buy a few things that I needed including a power board.

I was just about to enter the terminal when standing in the door was Pat who was coming with us on the trip but unfortunately her Mum had a fall and Pat had to stay at home to nurse her.  Pat lives in Brisbane and decided that she would come and welcome us and spend the day catching up with everyone she met last year.  It was a lovely surprise and she took me to the nearest large shopping centre to buy my things and I had decided that I needed a couple of warm shirts, of course I bought more than the shirts.  Everything was so cheap.

I had a great day with Pat and of course catching up with all the passengers who were boarding in Brisbane.  We sailed at 1700 hours which was an hour late because a couple of passengers boarded without going through customs.

At dinner that night I noticed that there was a lady at next to our table sitting by herself and I asked her to join our table and she told us that she preferred to be there as her table waiter has been with her for the last 4 cruises.  We had another member on our table a lovely single lady called Judy.

We now had 8 days at sea to look forward to.  I enjoys days at sea, I spend a lot of days sitting on the deck reading and I have my binoculars next to me so that I can have a closer look at everything.  I go to afternoon trivia and either go to the shows or go up on the top deck and watch the movies.

23, 24, 25 & 26^th May – travelling up the coast towards to Arafura Sea.  I had been talking to a number of ladies and we have decided that we would all like to sit together at dinner so we would as the Head Waiter if we could move to my table but he told us that was not possible as my table was already full !!! so we then remembered the lady sitting by herself and we decided to join her.  We then (5 of us) went to her table hoping that she would be happy with this change in circumstances and she wasn’t there, her table was empty so we made ourselves at home.  It was lovely to see her face the next night when she came to her table and saw us sitting there, she was absolutely delighted and told us that we had made her trip.  We now have a table of 8 ladies and must admit that we are the noisiest table in the area.  

We have had our first formal evening and it was combined with the Champagne Fountain and the Captain’s welcome.  The Captain is very different from last years, he has spent the last several years cruising around the Mediterranean in big ships and the Sea Princess is much smaller that he is used to and he hasn’t been in this part of the world for some time.

The food is just as good as I remembered and I am having smoked salmon every morning for breakfast and the bread rolls are a great temptation.  I have decided to use the stairs and I have been up and down them so many times, the trip from the 6^th deck to the 14^th leaves me panting and sounding like a steam train. 
 

27th May – Banda Sea. The weather is cloudy and we have showers all the time.  About 1600 we passed the island of Atauro which is the island that you can see from Dili in Timor  Leste and we were that close that I could have swum ashore.

28, 29 & 30^th May - Steaming towards Singapore.  The ship has stabilisers to reduce the rolling movement of the ship.  The automatic stabilisers operated by gyroscopic control are housed in compartments inside the hull below the waterline and are stowed while the ship is in port.  A stabiliser has the form of a pivoted fin or horizontal rudder like those used in a submarine.  As the ship begins to roll and thus deviate from the fixed plane of the gyroscope, the stabilising mechanism comes into play and the angle of the fin is made to vary against the ship’s tendency to roll.  All that means is that it is very rare that the ship is rocky; it is at the moment because the ship is running head on to the water and the stabilisers would help.  I really enjoy the rough weather.

We crossed the Equator during the afternoon and entered the Northern Hemisphere and of course King Neptune was there and welcoming all the Pollwogs (first time crossing) to watch the ceremony and some lucky enough were able to join with the crew and enjoy first-hand the ceremony.  I must admit, I didn’t go and spent the time on the deck enjoying the quiet.

Distance Brisbane to Singapore 3820.2 Nautical Miles, average speed 18.84 knots.

Friday, 31^st May – Singapore.  Currency – Singapore Dollar.  In the early hours of the morning we entered the busy traffic lanes of the Singapore Straight and picked up our pilot at 0600 and docked in Singapore one hour later.

I hadn’t booked a tour and I had been invited by Alan (on the cruise last year) to go with him to the Haw Par Villa or the Tiger Balm Gardens where John and I went over 40 years ago when we lived in Singapore.  The gardens had been sadly neglected over the years after the two brothers who built it passed away.  The Government has now started to renovate it to its old glory.  It was lovely going back there and I was surprised how much I remembered.  There is no entry fee at this time.

We spent three hours there and then decided to go to see the latest hotel which is on the shore and is so expensive, we had a cup of tea which cost $7.50 and Alan had a club sandwich which put him back $25.  I decided that I wasn’t hungry!

This is a hotel!

We then walked to the Gardens on the Bay which is a new conservatory and it is just packed full of amazing plants and flowers from all over the world.   There were so many flowers and trees and it was so hard to believe that they had only been in the ground for three months, it will be amazing in 12 months’ time. 

Once again the time had flown and it was time to go back to the ship and we sailed away at 1700 hours after we had to wait for the people who were running late.  

We left the city just as the afternoon shower came bucketing down and we all had to find shelter out of the rain so that we could enjoy our ‘sail-away’ glass of champagne.

Distance Singapore to Port Kelang 193.7 Nautical Miles, average speed 17.61 knots.

Saturday 1^st June - Port Kelang, Malaysia.  Currency – Ringgit (MYR).
 

Port Kelang is about an hours bus trip from Kuala Lumpur and as I had been there last year I decided that I would just stay in the Port and catch the Princess shuttle to the nearest town and spent the day in the huge shopping centre enjoying a lunch of satay and rich porridge.  Once again it was hard to buy any clothes as nothing was in the shop able to fit the well-padded western bodies.  The weather was sunny and we sailed out of the Port in lovely sunshine.

Distance Port Kelang to Langkawi 213.4 Nautical Miles, average speed 16.80 knots.

Sunday 2^nd June – Langkawi, Malaysia.    Currency – Ringgit (MYR). 

Langkawi is not just an island; it’s more than 100, most of them just tiny specks laid out across the sea like pearls.  The largest island is the Pulau Langkawi and is only 30 kilometres in length and thirteen kilometres wide.  

It was spitting as we left the terminal on our way to the Kilim Marine Park but by the time we got there it was so heavy that we were soon soaked from head to toe.  We were planning to take a 45 minute around the mangroves but just as the bus stopped at the boat rank, the heavens opened up and it started to pour and continued non-stop, we were soaked to the skin.  After about 30 minutes most of the other people had left to go to the shops, our group decided to go on the boat trip despite the rain.  I had brought my rain coat and ponchos were given to the others.  We set off in a small covered boat down the river, stopping off to walk through the bat cave which was dark, wet and scary and we didn’t see any bats, only heard them. 

The rain had stopped by the time we got out of the caves and we then travelled out into the open sea and on the back to the docks we stopped off to walk through a fish farm.  I fed a manta ray and held a horse shoe crab, we saw a number of monkeys and birds during the trip.  Lunch followed next, we travelled to another part of the island for a ‘dim sum’ lunch which was delicious, shopping of course came next and then back to the ship.  

I must admit it was nice to get out of my wet clothes.

Monday 3rd June – Malacca Straits and Bay of Bengal.  We settled back into sea life after 3 days on shore.  About this time in the cruise we start the debate about the Indian Visa, we were told prior to boarding that we had to get an Indian Visa which costs nearly $100 and sometimes to a bother to get and of course there are always about 150 people who did not get a visa and should not have been able to get on board. 

Tuesday 4^th June – Indian Ocean, passing the coast of Sri Lanka and we are now entering into Pirate Seas and the ship is being prepared to ‘repel’ them, this means that there is security people on the deck 24/7 and they attach water guns onto the side of the deck, we have also had to have practice exercises which mean that we all hide in our cabins.  One of the upside of living inside in a ‘cave’ is that the Pirates would be worn out by the time they came to us.  

Wednesday 5^th June – almost passed Sri Lanka and heading towards the Indian coast.  The weather is still cool and overcast and it looks like the monsoon season is starting, the weather is so different from the trip last year. 

Thurday 6th June – continuing up the Indian coast.  My Trivia team which consists of the ladies I have dinner with and today was the last day of this sector and guess what we won the prize for the ‘most average’ which was better than the wooden spoon my team won almost every sector last year.

Distance Langkawi 2118.2 Nautical Miles, average speed 18.53 knots.