Cochin, India

Today we are in Cochin.  We have been here at least 3 times.  The weather here is absolutely awful.  Extremely hot and humid.  I think the reason we are stopped here is so that almost 200 passengers are getting off to go to the Taj Mahal. So for your enjoyment, here are previous blog entries as Michael and I have elected not to get off the ship today.

http://worldquest2013.blogspot.com/search?q=Cochin

http://worldsojourn2014.blogspot.com/search?q=Cochin

http://beverlywalkersworldadventures.blogspot.com/2010/05/cochin-india.html

Here I am today, dressed in my India garb.

Colombo Day 2

MICHAEL:

Today we were in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and I had to decide if I was going to participate in the included tour or not. We have been here several times before, and there really isn’t that much to see. Our concern was that the included would be redundant, but it turned out that it really wasn’t. We left the port, the largest port in southeast Asia, for a brief tour of the city, and our first stop, a fusion Buddhist temple. It’s called fusion because it’s a conglomerate of Buddhist customs from Chinese Buddhism, Sri Lankan Buddhism, Malaysian Buddhism, and a bunch of others. 

Al Alfur mosque 

Avukana Buddha statue 

The temple we stopped at looked like a combination Buddhist Temple and thrift store. I know that sounds funny, but the temple has received gifts from all over the world and most of the temple property, maybe 20 rooms or so, was simply housing all of these gifts. The gifts included anything from cash all the way up to Rolls Royce automobiles and they are all displayed in rooms dedicated to the particular category of gift. It was very very strange , and it had to be worth a fortune.

Replica of Borobuder Temple

From here we went to the Independence Square, which I had seen before, and a few other stops that I had also seen before, but all in all it wasn’t a bad tour. The only problem was that it was brutally hot.  Sri Lanka is an interesting country. It’s very poor and they have suffered from significant inflation, but they seem to be out of it now and buildings are going up all over the place.

BEVERLY:

I stayed on the ship except for 15 minutes when I ventured out onto the dock to peruse the shops that were just steps away from the gangplank.  It was just too blasted hot to stay out much longer than that. When Michael got back from the excursion, we spent a delightful afternoon down at the spa pool.

Colombo, Sri Lanka

GOOD NEWS!  I am no longer walking like a drunk.  As I described in my post on Phuket, I had trouble walking and maintaining my balance.  NO LONGER THE CASE.  I discovered that a medication I take for nerve pain was causing a multitude of symptoms.  Be gone Lyrica!  I also had a rash around my neck caused by this nasty drug.  It took awhile to figure it out.  The wobble is gone, but the pain remains 😩

We were at sea yesterday.   Last night we had a bridge dinner in the Chef’s Table restaurant. It was quite a noisy affair. Good stories, lots of wine and interesting food.

Today we arrived in Colombo.  It is extremely hot and humid. This port is humongous. Normally we enter a port while we are sleeping. Today, we watched the afternoon entry.  It is very impressive and huge.  We don’t have a tour scheduled for today.  Michael is getting a haircut this afternoon and after that, we are going “shopping “ on the dock.  Isn’t it nice that there are stalls with vendors just waiting for us to spend 💲💲💲 😉 🤪 😂

We met Melinda and Duncan for cocktails and dinner, and to wish them a safe journey.  They are leaving the ship to travel to India and other places.  There are about 160 people going on the overnight trip to India to see the Taj Mahal. We don’t get to go because we have to be on board for the sea days even though most of our bridge and knitters are going to be gone.

Phuket, Thailand

What a crazy day it was. We got notified that we were going to be able to upgrade to a penthouse room for a minimal amount of money. Room upgrades like this are not free. In any event, we had packed the night before and then at 10 o’clock this morning, our cabin stewards took all of our stuff and brought it to the new cabin. We moved from the back of the ship to the front of the ship.  We have so much more room.  You all know that we are a little bit OCD and by 11 o’clock we had everything put away, hung up just like we’ve been there the whole time. 

We had a mission today and that was to go to the beach. According to the schedule, we were supposed to be in Phuket, but wound up on the other side of the island in Penang. Instead of using the ship’s tenders, a dock was brought up to the ship and we used a large tender that we are not sure who supplied it. But it was big and roomy. We made the tender with three seconds to spare! We did not have to wait for the next one to show up. The tender docked at a jetty that stuck pretty far out from shore, and of course, they docked at the very end of the jetty. The beach was right there, but there was no shade and we could see beaches farther down the road that had chairs and umbrellas. It didn’t look that far, but distances are deceiving. With the way I am walking and with the heat, it turned out to be a tough walk for me, but I got there. Very, very hot. Michael rented two chairs and an umbrella for $2.50! Try doing that in Hawaii. 

Michael went first to check the water out and came back and said it was absolutely perfect, the bottom was all sand and it was easy to get in and out. I had a chair massage having my neck and arms worked on.  For 20 bucks for almost an hour. Can’t beat that. As I was having the massage, Michael went looking for pharmacies that might have the medication I lost, and for lunch. I couldn’t wait for him to get back because I was so blasted hot. There was no way we were going to leave our stuff  unattended.  

As soon as he got back with lunch, I took off for the water. I walked in and kept walking, and kept walking until the water was up to my knees. I kept walking and kept walking and kept walking and finally was up to my waist; no matter how far I walked it did not get deep so one had to dunk to get wet. It was delightful. So did I get out OK? I was doing pretty good until this man walked up to me and asked if I needed any help as I’m standing there wobbling back-and-forth, and I thought yeah I’ll take it.  We took turns going in the water, and I am proud to say I got out of water all by myself the last time – – with no sand in my suit!

Back to lunch for a minute.  Michael came back with a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches, Lays potato chips, a Diet Coke for me and a Singha beer for himself.  Singha is Thailand’s most popular beer, and served all over the world. Now, Michael has had many Singha’s in Thai restaurants all over the world, but this is the first time he's had one sitting on the beach in Thailand, so it was worth the attached picture.

It was so hot and having to take turns to get into the water, we decided to go back. I struggled to get back, but I made it and we made the tender without having to wait. All totaled I walked 1-3/4 mile. I just can’t walk that much and not pay for it.  When on the tender we happen to pass something that look like an island with the house. Closer inspection showed it was a resort!  In the middle of nowhere. We arrived back on the ship and we went directly to the pool, which was more like a bathtub unfortunately. It was now time to take a shower and then get ready for our guests to arrive at our new room.

In our old room, there was barely enough room for 2 people let alone guests. We had Melinda and Duncan over for a champagne celebration, and we all had a place to sit! After cocktails it was time to go to dinner in the restaurant.  We went to a very delightful show after dinner.

George Town, Malaysia

George Town is the capital city of the Malaysia state of Penang. It is Malaysia's sixth largest city, with a population of about 708,000, with 1.7 million in the metro area, as of 2020. The city of George Town has a diverse set of attractions. Aside from George Town's living heritage, colonial-era buildings interspersed with towering skyscrapers, modern shopping malls and other amenities, the city is lined with sandy, tranquil beaches. Over the centuries, the city has evolved into a melting pot of sorts and is now home to a cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic populace. Due to its unique architecture, the old core of the city is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  George Town is also regarded as the culinary capital of Malaysia.

I went on a panorama tour of George Town and we had a crazy driver. He looked like a schlump, not very professional. Our guide was ok. I got the impression that Malaysia is very socialistic; our guide kept referring to the government this the government that etc.  We seemed to drive around in circles. There was one portion where we were able to get off and walk for about half an hour, but I decided to stay on the bus.  Again, the bus driver drove like a maniac with four of us on board.  We picked up the rest of the group and then proceeded to view the Kek Loc buddhist temple. Michael went there on his tour climbed and it; we just had a 10 minute stop just to take a few snapshots.

Colonial buildings 

Trikes

Chinese temple 

Kek Loc Buddhist temple 

We returned to the ship, and fortunately the walk from the bus to the ship was not all that far.  

Later that evening, we had dinner with Melinda and Duncan and Stuart and Jenny. We were talking about our excursion and Melinda told me that she took pictures of what I had missed. So she shared these beautiful wall art and the street with umbrellas pictures with me.

Today I was tasked to escort a 7.5 hour excursion in Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia. This excursion was entitled Penang in a Day, and that’s exactly what we did. Penang is one of the smallest islands in Malaysia and we were actually able to circumnavigate the entire island. Penang is also interesting in that it’s the only Malaysian island that is predominantly Chinese.  The largest industry in Penang is tourism, including medical tourism. This used to be a Singaporean business, but Singapore has gotten so expensive that people are now coming to Malaysia for operations that would be prohibitively expensive at home.  Many of the major American hospital chains have caught onto this, and now have constructed world class hospitals here in Penang.

The excursion began with a 1 hour drive out to somebody’s house.  I mean that’s really what it looked like; like the tour guide just picked a house at random and said, “let’s go see what’s growing in the backyard.”  I’m sure that wasn’t truly the case, but when we got to the backyard he asked “what do you see”? And people said, well we see a whole bunch of weeds. He said that’s exactly what I expected you to say but let’s check out some of those weeds. So one by one, he clipped off a bit of the weed, and we all smelled it, or tasted it, and it was one spice after another, and it was really quite amazing. Penang is known as one of the spice islands and properly so.

We next started driving up the mountain to get a good view, but halfway there we stopped at a roadside vegetable and fruit stand. And I really mean roadside. The stand, which had every kind of fruit, vegatable and spice you can imagine, was literally on the road, and we had to dodge cars just to be there. From there, we went to an actual spice garden. This spice garden, which had been a rubber plantation until a couple of years ago, grows every imaginable kind of spice, as well as fern. We had a professional spice grower take us through the garden, and introduce us to all the things that were growing there.

Roadside fruit and vegetable stand

Cocoa pod

Our next stop was lunch at a delightful resort, called the Golden Sands. We had a combined Malaysian and western lunch and it was quite good. After lunch we had a chance to go through the grounds and see their terrific pool and then out to the beautiful white sand beach. At that point I was asking why we weren’t spending the day at the white Sand Beach because by now it was beastly warm.

Now, it was time to tour several Buddhist temples, which was really the whole purpose of this excursion. Our first stop was at a combined Chinese and Burmese Buddhist Temple, which was literally over the top. So many Buddha’s, and so many different configurations that it was overwhelming.  From here we went to the Kek Lok temple, another Buddhist Temple, but much grander than the first. It was built on multiple levels, so high that we actually had to take a funicular to get just to the middle section. We saw sitting Budhas, reclining Budhas and every other configuration you could imagine. It was amazing.  By now the heat was oppressive, and fortunately, it was time to return to the ship.

Langkawi, Malaysia

The country of Malaysia is two separate areas of land known as Peninsular Malaysia and East Malaysia. The two regions are separated by the South China Sea by about 400 miles. Combined, they’d be roughly the size of the state of New Mexico. Peninsular Malaysia is on the tip of the Malay Peninsula, a long, thin landmass that snakes south from the country of Thailand toward the South China Sea. East Malaysia stretches across northern Borneo, an island Malaysia shares with the country of Indonesia.  Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, is located on the west side of Peninsular Malaysia, closer to the Indonesian island of Sumatra than to East Malaysia. East Malaysia is home to Mount Kinabalu, the country's highest point, which has an elevation of 13,455 feet.

It is a duty-free island and an archipelago of 99 islands.  It is described as having swinging coconut palms and island shores fringed by powder sand beaches and mangrove forests.  It is renowned for its swamps, towering hills and varied wildlife.  It has four seasons: hot, hotter, wet, wetter.  Today was no exception as it was hot and humid. I was not interested in any of the shore excursions so I opted to stay on board. And I am so glad I did. Michael came back looking like a drowned rat.  As I’ve mentioned before, he has ants in his pants and there’s no way he is going to sit on the ship if there’s something outside to do. As far as I am concerned, you can keep Malaysia. There’s no way that I’m going to walk in that blasted furnace.  

The day before we arrive at a destination, we get a port report about the history and the excursions. For some reason, Viking did not see fit to describe Langwaki as a resort with an amusement park and beaches. If we had known, we would’ve gone to the beach, it wasn’t until Michael came back that he saw all of this. He was not really thrilled with  the excursion he went on. As you know, we love going to the beach, even though I get beat up and get sand in my suit. 

This morning, I woke up with the usual pain.  I take some Tramadol before I get out of bed and stay there until it has a chance to work. It takes the edge off, but it does not make the pain go away. Michael goes to breakfast and he brings breakfast back to me. I have not gone for breakfast once on this trip. He has been just wonderful to bring me my breakfast on most days. One of the items he brought back today was something I had never seen — Longan berries.  It is related to the lychee nut.  It’s not really a berry.  You peel the skin and then you get this clear gelatinous blob with a huge pit in the middle. If you bite down on it, you could break your teeth.  It’s an interesting taste and it’s hard to describe. It is often described as sweet and musky tasting.  To me it tastes like clear, gelatinous blob.  That’s the best I can do.

Longan berry

Inside of Longan berry

I went to the spa with Melinda. We sat in the very warm water for about an hour.  Showered and then had lunch in the World Cafe. After lunch, we went back to my room and played BBO for a few hours. By then, the guys had come back. Michael was all hot and sweaty so he decided to have a quick bite to eat from the grill and then just jump in the pool to cool off.  We mer Duncan and Melinda for cocktails, and invited Tom and Kathleen to join us for dinner. 

Here is Michael’s report for the day:

Today, I participated in an excursion that I probably shouldn’t have. First of all, we are in the heart of Malaysia, where it is extremely hot and humid.  Second, the walk from the cruise ship to the bus loading area was a mile, each way. And third, there really wasn’t much to see.

We are in Langawi, which is a popular beach resort in the middle of Indonesia. Its principal industry is fishing, followed closely by tourism. It attracts people from Taiwan, Singapore, and all over Indonesia. It’s growing rapidly,as evidenced by the number of new hotels going up.

All in all though, there still isn’t much to see. Our bus, which thank goodness was a modern, air-conditioned vehicle, took us first from the ship terminal to the ferry terminal, where we got to see a huge statue of an eagle, which is the city emblem. It’s made out of aluminum and concrete and it is very attractive, though not worth the trip to see it. 

Greetings.  Eagle is symbol of Langwaki 

Next, we drove about 40 minutes to a very small rice patty, or rice farm, which is really more of a museum than an active farm. We got to see how they grow rice, and then the history of rice, which I didn’t find particularly interesting. Then it was back to the ship. Unfortunately, only later did we find out that Langkawi has a number of beautiful, white sand beaches that we were never told about. Nor were we told that we were docked right next to a beautiful resort. It turns out that for $10, you get daily access to the resort, and that includes a free drink.

Amusement park

African buffalo a.k.a. water buffalo used to plow the field

Plumeria 

Rice paddy

Rice field 

Thrashing the rice

Kuala Lumpur

I bet you can tell who writes what. I spent the day mostly in bed to rest my weary body. My great excursion today was taking a shower. By the end of the day, I was able to get dressed and join Michael and Duncan and Melinda for dinner tonight and go to the show.  There is no way that Michael could sit on the ship and do nothing so of course he went off and did the included tour. Here is his description.

I was on a very enjoyable excursion today in Kuala Lumpur. Unfortunately, the boat was actually docked in Port Klang, which is an hour and a half from Kuala Lumpur so there was quite a lot of bus travel to and fro. Once we got there, we stopped initially at the National Museum where we had approximately 45 minutes to explore something worth at least two hours. It was a very good museum. Interestingly, and while it was a fairly new building, with fairly new restrooms, the toilets were the old-fashioned hole in the ground, where one is required to squat.

From the museum, we traveled next to the Kuala Lumpur National Mosque, a beautiful, relatively new building. While most citizens of Kuala Lampur are Muslim, this is still not a Muslim country. Therefore, non-Muslims are able to enter the building at other than prayer hours.  

National mosque 

We walked a little bit from the national mosque to view the original Kuala Lumpur railway station, which was built in traditional colonial architecture.

Original railway station 

Our next stop was the National Memorial, which was a combination of memorials recognizing the veterans of World War I, World War II and the fight against communism, which didn’t end until 1957. The statue erected to celebrate that latter success was created by the same man who built the Iwo Jima statue in Washington DC. It is similar in several respects, although bigger and more intricate.

Our final stop was downtown Kampur, where we stopped next at the twin towers. Kuala Lumpur downtown is a very modern city and host to not only the second largest sky scraper in the world, but also the single largest  skyscraper comprised of two buildings. This 86 story magnificent structure connected with a walkway between the two towers on the 46 floor is quite something to see. From here, it was another hour and a half back to the ship, fortunately including a pee break.

Singapore, Day 3

The story of Singapore's transformation from sparse island to the economic giant of Southeast Asia begins with its cultural diversity. Malays, Indonesians, Indians, Sri Lankans and Chinese have all contributed to the city's rise as one of the world's most technologically advanced cities. Buddhist, Hindu and Taoist temples rub elbows with Muslim mosques and Christian churches, and you are likely to see street signs in English, Chinese, Tamil and Malay.

Singaporean cuisine, too, has been shaped by the many cultures that have converged here, and there is no better place to sample it than at one of the city's many "hawker centers," open air food courts established by the government to keep sidewalk vendors from clogging pristine streets.

Today, we say goodbye to Singapore and are on our way to Kuala Lumpur.  

Today we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with an impromptu performance by our cruise director and assistant cruise director. Aoibhin is Irish, and sang some wonderful Irish tunes that has us clapping and singing along with the music. Michael played the fiddle. It was a lively session. 

Singapore, Day 2

There is so much to see and do in Singapore. It is a fascinating city. And you walk a lot. Yesterday we walked 4 miles, today I walked 3 miles and Michael walked 5.5 miles.  

I decided to rest in this morning and then venture out one time only since you have to do the long walk just to get to the bus. In any event, I needed to rest up after yesterday’s 4 miles of walking.  Michael went on a fabulous excursion the afternoon and I got my nails done. While I needed to get my nails done, I would have loved to gone on the excursion he did.  So here is his description of his fabulous time exploring Singapore.

My excursion on Friday was probably the best I’ve had to date. We left the ship for a brief bus ride right back to the same boat we sailed on the night before. The difference, of course, was that this was daytime, and so the view was entirely different.  Singapore is a gorgeous, amazing city and you see something different every time you look. This time I saw the one and only Apple Store in the world that floats.

We re-boarded the bus for a short ride to the Flower Dome.  You enter the flower dome by first walking through Gardens by the Bay, a futuristic horticultural park which is nothing short of incredible. It is a national garden and horticultural attraction with more than 1 million plants showcased in ingenious landscape designs. Part of garden by the bay is the Super Tree Grove, an ecological marvel with vertical metal gardens shaped like trees (up to 160 feet), supporting a diversity of ferns, orchids and vines. These are maintained with photovoltaic cells, advanced water and air filtration systems, and other green technologies. 

Entering the flower dome, you get to take in the world’s largest columnless greenhouse, and a world of perpetual spring. The gardens are divided by areas of the world: African gardens, Mediterranean gardens, and Australian gardens. These gardens are mixed with some incredible sculptures and other art forms. The recently concluded lunar new year, which introduced the year of the dragon, resulted in additional decorations in the flower dome, which were also magnificent.

I walked into the next dome, the centerpiece of which is a five story tall waterfall, which was just lovely. I didn’t have time to do the whole thing, but I quickly glimpsed the orchid garden, which is beautiful. It was now time to board the bus for our next adventure, the Marina Bay Sands Sky Park.

The Sky Park is the 56th floor of the marina Bay Sands Hotel, which provides a 360° view of this incredible city. We glimpsed everything that we had seen on the previous two days but this time from the top which was yet another entirely different view.  One could see the nearly 100 ships waiting to unload in one of the worlds largest ports, the public housing where 80% of all Singaporeans live, and everything else. If you squinted, you could actually see over to the Malaysian islands.

Poor Michael came back from his excursion sweaty and exhausted and hungry. He was going to take the afternoon to rest up while I was going to get my nails done. As I said before, the terminal is connected to a mall, and a nail shop was conveniently located nearby. I finished just in time for us to board the shuttle to the Marina Sands Hotel convention center where we were being dropped off. We were going to watch the show at the tree garden. 

As I said before, a lot of walking is involved in sightseeing. We were told to walk through the convention center, through the mall (and hopefully find a place for dinner), then cross the bridge, go through the hotel skybridge, and then find the path to the tree garden. Whew! We never did find a suitable place to eat in the mall, but we sure did find some interesting things here. Every high-end shop you can imagine is here. The mall is underground as well as other shopping centers around town. If you can believe it there was a river running through it with a gondola caring passengers. You would think you were in Las Vegas! 

Up until now I have been not been sweating. That was about to change. After walking to a restaurant in the mall and finding a long line, we decided he better get walking to the tree garden, because it was quite far distance. So over the bridge and through the hotel to get on the path to the trees we went.

After emerging from the hotel, you find yourself in a horticultural fantasy land. We walked the path and finally reached the garden. Since we had not had dinner, and there was time before the show started, Michael went and search of something to eat. He brought back a chicken sandwich and a strawberry malt. I asked him where was his sandwich and he replied, the strawberry malt was it.

Now it’s time for the show to begin. It was surreal and beautiful. It was worth all the effort to get there. This way to see the show was to actually lie down on your back and look up. This is what I was doing when I took the video. It was a beautiful evening.