{"id":251,"date":"2018-11-12T23:23:58","date_gmt":"2018-11-12T23:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travel.stua.rts.co.tt\/wp\/?p=251"},"modified":"2018-11-15T03:51:42","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T03:51:42","slug":"leaving-hong-kong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travel.stua.rts.co.tt\/wp\/2018\/11\/12\/leaving-hong-kong\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving Hong Kong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ah, a blissful afternoon spent testing the softness of the cruise ship’s paper. More experimentation needed to find out whether it was the burger, the coffee or the water I drank in my room.<\/p>\n

A brief interlude to visit Guest Services and confess that I couldn’t find the light switch for one of the lights in my room. There are seven lights and nine light switches. I hadn’t found the ninth. Two lights come on as a pair, operated by any of three switches. A different two lights also come on as a pair, operated by any of a different three switches. The other three lights have a single switch each, one of which is cunningly disguised as a plug socket and USB charge port. Guess which one I couldn’t find.<\/p>\n

The room doesn’t get dark anyway. The TV has a red LED on when it’s off and I have far too many electronic devices to ever sleep in the dark. But sleep I did, a nice hour’s kip before lifeboat drill.<\/p>\n

That went a bit wrong, but I guess that’s why you do it. Everybody buggered off to their lifeboat on the second signal, even though that’s actually the ‘go to your stateroom so the crew can focus on fixing the ship’ signal. It’s the third one that requires you to don a lifejacket and stand nervously on deck, wondering who amongst you gets eaten first if you’re adrift for five weeks. If they go youngest or oldest first I’m safe, and I’m not the tallest or shortest either. It’s if they go by weight that I may be in trouble..<\/p>\n

The other issue a few of us discovered is that Assembly Station 14 is different to Muster Station 14 and that’s different to Lifeboat Station 14. I smell the involvement of a six sigma black belt. Still, made it to the right place, had my room card scanned (everything works by scanning a barcode. Figure out the barcode sequence and you could drink all cruise on someone else’s tab) and that confirmed I’d turned up. Everybody at Assembly Station 14 was present, but 12 and 16 either side of us (odd numbers on the other side of the ship) came up short and were calling out room numbers and names. Given the penalty for not participating in the drill is “You will be removed from the ship” this causes an interesting dilemna of how they find them to remove them. Plus of course they may have been participating in good faith and merely failed to find the Assembly Station – perhaps turning up at the Mustering Station instead, as I did. Although a crew member kindly educated us, which is how we reached the right spot, about 80 yards away and in line of sight.<\/p>\n

A quick return to my room to collect my passport, and I could finally officially leave Hong Kong. I did this by handing my passport to a Hong Kong immigration official in one of the bars on the ship. He looked at the picture in it, looked at me, shrugged and put my passport in a small wicker basket that already had another 20 or so in it. I’m not sure when the passports are returned but it’ll be before I leave the ship in Singapore.<\/p>\n

Curiously Hong Kong immigration didn’t check my passport at any point when I left and rejoined the ship, and had no way to tell I hadn’t arrived on it that morning. Clearly the Cruise company have an arrangement, with the ship stateroom card acting in lieu of Government issued documentation.<\/p>\n

No scope for mischief there at all.<\/p>\n

Another quick cabin visit to collect my kindle and it was time for some dinner – the main dining room and the Lido both shut at 9pm, so 8.30pm was cutting it a tad fine. In the ten minutes it had taken to do immigration (technically emigration) someone had entered my room, switched off all but one of the light and left me the next day’s ship schedule, a breakfast menu, a cruise line branded bag and a small chocolate, which is now in the cruise line branded bag. But dinner took priority and I didn’t fancy the options in the main dining room so headed to the Lido to see what was on offer there. Roast beef with yorkshire pudding was a very unexpected option and one I gladly took. In a genuine and insightful homage to British pub grub the yorkshire was cold and the mashed potato lumpy. A fine bit of beef though.
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\nBack to my room again, skipping the main stage’s entertainment (an introduction to the performers for the next two weeks; I’ll just go to their performances) and a chance to write this up before heading off once more to find the blues room, where dancing has been promised. I’ve seen the dance floor, I could use it all myself or, if I was being tidy and generous, share it with one other couple. If I do end up dancing with anybody it’s going to need to be close hold and compressed moves \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

Except that of 1400 passengers that boarded today, 400 were late handing in their immigration slips (and passports) and 135 still hadn’t so far after the appropriate time that departure is delayed. As they were using the Blues room as a customs office there was no music. Instead I checked the view from the rear outside deck and went hunting for a bow view.<\/p>\n

There is no bow view.<\/p>\n

I even checked with Guest Services. The girl was very helpful and keen to assist and went to find out that the bow is off limits and the only deck with an open deck at the bow are decks 3 and 11. Deck 3 is the deck you gather on for the lifeboats so I headed outside and found you can circle around the edge of the whole ship outside, with some nice mini tripod stand opportunities in the forward section but nothing in the actual bow. That didn’t surprise me, all the ship plans suggest deck 3’s ceiling at the front of the ship is the is the bow deck the forward looking camera shows. Deck 11 was even worse, every edge occupied by a ‘must pay to sit here’ secluded tent. Sorry, “Cabana”. Tent. Every edge except the bow, which is occupied by a metal wall. On top of that is an actual crow’s nest, reachable by ladder, dodgy metal railing. I could get a lovely view from there, until they threw me off the ship for breaching security.<\/p>\n

So the aft deck it is, which gives nice side and rear views. I found a man up there with a tripod, trying to capture long exposure shots of the harbour. He seemed frustrated that there was enough motion in the ship to make his photographs blur; my shots are pin sharp but they’re also high ISO (so sensible shutter speed) and they’re also taken with a camera with serious IBIS. Have to see whether they’ve worked out when I get home. In February. Be a bit late to pop back and take another by then.<\/p>\n

All this returning to the room might take advantage of the ship’s lifts but helps explain why despite getting up, catching a taxi to a terminal, boarding a ship and mostly just eating, I’ve still managed to clock up 12km of walking today. So much for giving my body some respite.<\/p>\n

It’s a sea day tomorrow (no land) so maybe I can actually sit and do bugger all. I doubt it \ud83d\ude42 I’m already planning to head back on deck after we cast off so that I can admire some of the bridges in these parts. I saw the bollocks long one from the aircraft as we landed and came over the exceedingly long suspension bridge but still haven’t seen them from ground level. Or sea level. Or ten decks above sea level, whatever the hell level that is?<\/p>\n

Paper update: While out scouting viewpoints yet more paper was abandoned in my cabin. That’s five full sheets of paper, two small cards, two brochures, a bag, a towel and a chocolate since boarding. The latest additions can be easily summarised as ‘please buy overpriced trinkets from our onboard shop’ and ‘try out our placebo effect based therapies in the spa’ so it’s maybe a good thing the room bin has a section for recycling paper.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure why the towel. It was left folded on the pillow but I already had plentiful towelage in the bathroom and two beach towels that I’ve hidden in a cupboard. Why did the steward perceive I needed another hand towel, on my pillow? Wait! No.. surely not?<\/p>\n

On that topic. Tomorrow’s shedule has (and I had time to count these because we’re so late casting off) 79 events and activities listed. Of these 20 of them are explicitly trying to sell you something – and I’m not including the $20 wine tasting session, the $15 international beer tasting, the non-free gym classes, the multiple real money poker tournaments.. On the plus side there’s a tour of the main dining room kitchens so I’ll pop along for that.<\/p>\n

Tonight’s hotel is.. nah, no hotel. Ask me again when I reach Singapore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ah, a blissful afternoon spent testing the softness of the cruise ship’s paper. More experimentation needed to find out whether it was the burger, the coffee or the water I drank in my room. A brief interlude to visit Guest Services and confess that I couldn’t find the light switch for one of the lights […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eighty-eight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.stua.rts.co.tt\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.stua.rts.co.tt\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.stua.rts.co.tt\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.stua.rts.co.tt\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.stua.rts.co.tt\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/travel.stua.rts.co.tt\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258,"href":"https:\/\/travel.stua.rts.co.tt\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.stua.rts.co.tt\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.stua.rts.co.tt\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.stua.rts.co.tt\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}