When I say ‘by the sea’ I do mean ‘surrounded on all sides, no land in sight’.
Awake before 5am, up before 6, drinking coffee in the Lido for an hour before it opens for breakfast. Reading the news printouts; they’re dated yesterday and cover Friday’s news. It’s Sunday and I already know what happened yesterday so on the whole they’re fundamentally useless.
Instead I spent an hour watching the sea. When there’s no land in sight, other vessels appear once every ten minutes (but might take 20 minutes to pass) and the swells are 15 feet deep it all gets quite mesmeric.
Once the Lido opened for breakfast a conversation that now repeats daily.
“Good morning Sir, how are you?”
“I’m good thank you. Some scrambled egg please! More please. A little more? Thank you. Could I have a slice of bacon too please?”
“English bacon?”
“We call it bacon.”
I might vary it later in the cruise, go for the, “We eat it in Scotland too, stop insulting my heritage” line.
I took the scenic route back to my room. It’s a sea day so no shore leave, need to get some walking in somehow. On returning to my room another excuse for a walk, a request to return my Cambodian visa application form. So back to the other end of the ship and Guest Services.
Interestingly they acknowledged that they had received all my other forms without even checking. That tells me that it’s not my form missing, either they printed the wrong forms for everybody or they lost a stack of them. Maybe spilt coffee all over them.
An oddly long wait for them to print a replacement which I signed and back to my room. All this by 8am so a chance to relax before the 10am talk on Phu My and Sihanoukville, the ports we visit on the 20th and 22nd.
A fine quotation from the book I’m reading: “I can allow for the fears of the child, but not of the man. As he became rational, he ought to have roused himself”
Sounds like the French have roused themselves, violent protests over fuel or something. They’re French, they’re always protesting about whatever, I find it hard to take them seriously.
Into the 10am lecture on Phu My and Sihanoukville. Phu My is a container port with bugger all there. Apparently of the 1850 people on board there will be around 800 people looking for transport in a town with under a dozen taxis. Looks like the $60 transfer to Ho Chi Minh city may be needed, if I do want to go ashore – the taxi would be around $150 for the day. In a group of 4-5 that’s cheaper but travelling solo I guess it’s down to whether I want to visit Saigon or not.
The Cu Chi tunnels look fascinating. Viet Cong command post, field hospitals, barracks and general operations base during the war. However: They’re built for North Vietnamese soldiers, who were determined little buggers for sure, but emphasis on ‘little’. Some of those tunnels are a good width for one of my legs.
“If there’s a scooter coming, keep going. They’ll steer around you” – confirmation that my road crossing technique in Da Nang applies equally to Ho Chi Minh city. I’m finding myself reluctant to invest $60 in an overly hot (31C) day in an excessively busy capital city. I’m still not over Hong Kong and Kowloon, I’m going to be hitting Bangkok 2-3 days after and then it’s Singapore. This may be an opportunity to save some cash, avoid a lengthy bus ride and instead just stroll out through the container port, find a local cafe and accept that I’m missing a rich cultural experience.
Ah, ffs. Apparently most of the museums and areas of interest close for 90 minutes at lunch time. So not only 3 hours sat on a bus for 4-5 hours in the city but a big chunk of that time has limited options.
The talk is full of “be mindful of this” and “this is for some and not for others”. In other words, Dear Americans, This mentions the war and celebrates that the locals won it. Then again only 12.4% of Vietnam’s population were alive during the American War (as they call it) and they’ve moved on. I guess winning didn’t help longevity.
The post office and War Remnants Museum look interesting but a lot of the suggested sights are clearly “you’ll have heard of this from a film” and.. I haven’t. So nope, no Ho Chi Minh city for me. I have a possible alternative..
Just as we were learning about the beaches in Sihanoukville.. emergency alarm. “First response crew members: Report to your stations NOW” Apparently it’s been sounded due to an initial report of an incident onboard – a fire above (and about 40 yards away from) my cabin. Bad enough that they’re evacuating an area of the deck.
Ah, interesting. The fire is in an oven on the deck below deck 1 but the air vents are on deck 8. The initial announcement evacuating deck 8 came from the officer of the watch, a minute later additional information from the captain. I guess he ran up to the bridge when the alarm sounded.
20 minutes later, confirmation that the fire was out. 20 minutes after that, people above me are still not permitted to go to their cabins due to the smoke.
A small electrical fire in a bakery oven, the whole ship on alert, constant updates.. a couple of the elderly passengers that have poor to no English were looking a tad concerned. Me, I took the only sensible option in the circumstances: Coffee.
I took it back to my room, found Alex and Acep in there, hoovering the cabin and cleaning the bathroom. They apologised that my AC isn’t working and, even if it did, it would just spew out smoke at the moment. I assured them that a lovely warm cabin was just fine by me – plus I have my travel fan, plugged into a usb port by the bed.
Outside the wind has dropped a lot but the deep swells continue to make the ship sway, an irritatingly inconsistent motion. It’s raining; we appear to be catching the tail of a tropical storm and tomorrow’s forecast is now for rain too – no thunderstorm 🙁
Another update from Captain Mark. The fire is extinguished but there is still smoke. He’s being cautious, which seems very sensible. Inconvenient to passengers wanting to return to the impacted part of Deck 8 but they’d just have complained if they’d died from smoke inhalation anyway so he can’t really win on that front.
The rest of the day was spent in my cabin. It was raining outside, the view consisted of rain drenched water and the onboard entertainment was full of people. The Gala Night (i.e. wear a jacket to dinner night) was also busy, the main dining room far too full and noisy and the waiter missing for long periods. He also brought two mains while a starter was still being eaten, a terrible faux pas that he seemed to realise only when he discovered another main course needing to be brought out.
I had the four mushroom crostini to start, which wasn’t too bad, a nice chicken soup to follow and duck breast as a main. The duck was rather nice, properly cooked through but tender, firm and tasty, all at once.
Company perhaps less so, the four person table had just me and a couple from Australia. They weren’t Australian, they’d left South Africa 28 years ago for ‘political reasons’. She was rather critical of modern African leadership – across the whole continent, not just her country of birth.
Since we reached Vietnam the selection of films available via their digital TV offering has been updated. It now includes The Quiet American and Platoon. Classy. Annoyingly I can’t remember whether I’ve seen The Quiet American so I may just watch it in case. Caine’s always value for money.
The matching of titles to location is clearly intentional. A film set in Singapore has also been added, and one set in Cambodia. I’m looking forward to the cruise to Papua New Guinea, they’re going to have fun location matching that one.
Another tiring day, somehow. It’s hard work sauntering to find a lift that’ll take me to dinner. Only 2km walked but not even 10pm and I’m ready to collapse. The tender will be running from 8.15am to 3.30pm tomorrow but it took me almost an hour to get onto one at the last tender port so if I head down at 8 it could be nearer 10 before I’m on shore. Then again Nha Trang doesn’t have much going for it so that might suffice. Time to do some washing then bed.