Day 37 ~ A Passage to Singapore

“Surely some of the carriages rolling by are headed for the docks. And perhaps a fortunate few of the passengers will board ships, bound for far off Zanzibar or Madagascar or . . . or some other exotic place that ends in –ar.”
~ Lady Caroline Lovell, from my upcoming Mia Marlowe novel,
The Singular Mr. Sinclair

Sunrise on the Indian Ocean

I’m feeling a bit like my wander-lusting heroine today, except that I’m actually living out Lady Caroline’s dream. We’re sailing through a narrow straight (the Sunder Straight, I think) between the islands of Sumatra and Java. Borneo is dead ahead. I’ve heard of these beguiling and mysterious places for years, and now I’m almost near enough to touch them.

But not quite.

The island of Java is about the size of the state of North Carolina.

The DH heard one lady complaining that we were missing Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia and a city she adores, by such a few miles it was positively maddening. She advocated staging a mutiny and forcing the captain to take us there. The DH found a reason to leave her conversation circle pretty quickly. Even in jest, I don’t think the captain would appreciate talk of mutiny.

Besides the bridge crew has its hands full with this narrow passage. It’s rife with sand bars and shifting currents, oil platforms and other ships. The last thing they need to deal with is a passenger revolt.

On March 2^nd, we’ll be in Singapore—an Asian powerhouse of a city. It’s reportedly modern and pristine and extremely strict. Here are just a few of the things on our not-to-do list while we’re a guest there:

And for fines we’re not talking a slap on the wrist. The penalties are hefty—in the hundreds of dollars. Caning is still meted out for some offenses. And if that doesn’t get your attention, take a look at the friendly warning on our disembarkation cards.

Granted, we weren’t planning to smuggle any drugs into the country, but this has made me decide not to even carry a cough drop in my pocket.

We will be expected to conform to a modest style of dress, too. Knees and shoulders must be covered for both men and women. When we visit a Hindu temple we will be expected to leave our shoes at the entrance and go barefoot.

With such strict laws and stiff penalties, I’m not a bit worried that they won’t be there when we get back! 

In recent years, a number of Americans have run afoul of local laws in foreign countries. We may find those laws oppressive, but sovereign nations are allowed to regulate their societies as they see fit. Travelers have a duty not to offend their hosts. We’re going to do our best not to flaunt local custom. When we’re abroad, we need to be respectful Americans, not ugly ones.

Me & Oscar, our Maitre D

In other news, we had our second Cruise Critic luncheon today. (In case you haven’t discovered Cruise Critic, it’s a message board style website where cruisers can meet to discuss their travel experiences or join a roll call to become acquainted with their fellow passengers prior to a trip.) Oscar and the Main Dining Room staff did a terrific job of making us feel special, but then they always do!

P.S. Time for a historical note. 75 years ago to the day, two allied vessels, the USS Houston and the Australian HMS Perth, faced a Japanese force of five ships in this very strait we just traversed. After three days of intense fighting, both allied ships were sunk with a loss of over 600 American and 300 Australian sailors, including the captains of both ships. The American captain was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for his valor in the action. The Japanese lost three ships—two to friendly fire.

We passed through these narrows in safety and peace. They went through hell in the same spot. A moment of silence please, for all the souls—on both sides of the battle—who left this world through the entrance to the Java Sea all those years ago.

   

Day 35 ~ 4 Sea Days to Singapore

“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” ~ Andre Gide

I’m really enjoying cruising the Indian Ocean. It’s been much smoother than the Pacific. I’m on day 5 for my scopolamine patch and I usually need to change it every 3 days to avoid motion sickness. No worries. For the moment, we’ve got fair winds and slight seas.

It is, however, getting hotter as we travel north back toward the equator. As we circumnavigated around Australia, we were treated to days in the high 60’s low 70’s with low humidity. Now the mercury shoots up to the 80’s by early morning with matching humidity. It’ll only get worse as we continue north. If you want to find out where we are on a world map, look northwest of Australia to the islands of Java and Sumatra. We’re heading for the narrow strait between them as our entry point into the Java Sea en route to Singapore.

We’ll have 4 sea days in a row now. Some passengers are starting to whine about them a little. I personally don’t understand it. I love sea days. We can get involved with as many activities as we wish or do nothing at all. And the crew tries to offer new activities all the time.  For example, yesterday in addition to our usual morning Trivia and Harmony Choir, I went to a fashion show put together by the shops on board. My mom would have loved it because they spotlighted lots of jewelry. Then the DH and I went to a movie—Search for the Wildepeople—a very funny, poignant story set in gorgeous New Zealand.  (Note: Kiwi humor is a bit like British humor. You have to be in the right mood for it.)

Then in the evening, we were invited to a pre-supper party at the suite of one of our table mates. Vicky and her husband (whom I’ll refer to as He Who Must Not Be Named, since he jokes about being in witness protection!) are wonderful hosts and our whole table a very congenial lot. Here they are from left to right:

Cathy and Vaughan from Brisbane (think I mistakenly said they were from Melbourne in an earlier post. My bad.) She’s a hairdresser and he’s a retired accountant. They’re such good fun and are avid caravaners (campers). Sadly, they’ll be leaving us in Dubai.

Vicky and He Who Must Not Be Named (AKA Craig) from San Francisco. He’s a retired fire department captain and Vicky is a nurturing grandma. (I know. She doesn’t look old enough, does she?) They only have the Owner’s Suite for this segment and then they’ll move into a mini-suite for the next segment that will take us to Venice. Unfortunately, we’ll be losing them then.

Shirley and Dave from Farmington, MO. They boarded with us in LA. In fact we stayed at the same hotel the night before embarkation and first met on the shuttle on the way to the ship. Then we discovered we were seated together for supper. That first night, Shirley told me she was looking for a blogger she’d been following but she’d lost the blog address. “It’s me!” I told her, and gave her one of my RoundTheWorldWriter cards. Needless to say, we clicked like magnets and will be together until we all disembark in Ft. Lauderdale.   

A world cruise is more than seeing exotic ports. It’s making connections with people from different places and sharing new ideas and being willing to let the journey take you in directions you don’t expect. Sea days are an important part of that journey. I’m sure once we reach the Mediterranean and are hitting a new port every day, I will miss them sorely.  

Day 34 ~ Sea Days Highjinks

“A line is a dot that has gone for a walk.” ~ Klee
(Klee was the answer to one of our  trivia questions. He was an artist who said he painted in order to keep from crying.)

On the evening of the sail away from Exmouth, I convinced the DH to enter the Princess version of “Dancing with the Stars.” Our cruise director Lynn was asking for 3 male volunteers and 3 female to dance with members of the crew from different departments.

It made perfect sense to me for the DH to do it. After all, until this cruise, the best gift the man ever gave me was ballroom dance lessons. We had 8 weeks of date nights and learned the basics of the waltz, foxtrot, swing, cha-cha, and rumba. We tried the tango, but couldn’t get past the “Tango face.” All we could do was giggle at each other whenever we attempted that smoldering glare. Anyway, over the years we enjoyed dancing together, but my lung condition makes that difficult now. However, there was nothing to stop the DH from giving it a go.

I was tickled to pieces when he was paired with Lynn. Since she started with Princess as a dancer, I figured that would give him a leg up, so to speak. However, the DH told me afterward that the first thing she said to him was “I hope I don’t embarrass you. I’m supposed to play this for laughs.”

She wasn’t kidding.

The first dance they had to perform was the jive. The DH started out great, but before he knew what was happening, Lynn told him to spread his legs. She dropped to all fours and crawled between his knees. The audience roared and the dance went downhill from there. 

Before the next dance, Lynn slipped back stage and came out with pink fuzzy slippers and a big hairpiece that made her look like a 1960’s country-western star. It was hysterical and I have tons of blackmail-worthy video, but I won’t be able to post it until we get home. It would take until we reach Dubai to upload. But here’s a pic of the DH and Lynn afterward.

It was all in good fun and several other passengers told us this was the funniest show they’d seen since they boarded the ship. The DH is quite notorious now, but he was pretty well known before—as the devoted husband who wears the backpack version of Herkimer for me when we go on excursions. Everyone thinks I’m a lucky girl.

I couldn’t agree more.

Day 32 & 33 ~ Sea Day and Exmouth

One’s destination is never a place, but always a new way of seeing things.
~ Henry Miller

Feb 24^{th ~} Last night we skipped out of dessert and made our way to Deck 11 in the bow of the ship for a stargazing session. This time we arrived early enough to get a coveted pair of headphones so we could listen to the Discovery at Sea commentary. Promptly at 9 PM, the captain turned off as many of the deck lights as he could and the stars popped against a black sky. We were able to see even the faintest of the four stars that make up the Southern Cross. The constellation actually looks like a kite lying on its side. Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to us after our sun, was burning brightly beneath it. We also saw a familiar sight in the southern sky—Orion. But the Hunter was standing on his head, which makes a perverse sort of sense since we’re at the bottom of the world. After thirty minutes of wonder, the ship’s lights came back on and all but the brightest stars faded.

We enjoyed another restful sea day.

Feb 25^{th ~} Exmouth Our final Australian port of call. It’s an odd little place, remote, and lonely. The town of 2000 souls is tucked into a little crook in the northwestern coastline that renders the water smooth as a pond. Before the mid-twentieth century, there were only 40-some fulltime residents in the shire—the light house operator & his family and folks who lived and worked at sheep stations in the area.  As we sailed in to drop anchor in Ningaloo Gulf, just looking at the dusty horizon, unbroken by a rise of any size and hardly any trees, makes me wonder why anyone ever settled in this isolated spot.

The answer is the United States military.

The Pacific Princess resting at anchor

During WWII in a joint operation, the US and Australia Navy and Air Force established a strategic air and submarine base under the code name Potshot. In 1963, as the Cold War heated up, the US came back and asked permission to  build a series of VLF (Very Low Frequency) towers to communicate with our nuclear warhead equipped subs. 2500 military personnel descended  on the area and the town of Exmouth sprang up to support the base. It was called the Harold E. Holt Communications Station, after a former Australian Prime Minister who disappeared mysteriously while swimming in the ocean.

The 13 towers at Harold E. Holt Communication Station are the 2nd tallest man-made structure in the southern hemisphere.

When the US pulled out in 1992, Exmouth turned to eco-tourism and is now a haven for snorkelers and divers who want to frolic with the whale sharks that call these waters home from March to August. Ningaloo boasts a “fringe reef” just a short swim from the shore so, unlike the Great Barrier Reef which requires a long boat ride to reach, it’s very accessible.

My new friend, Elaine and a 4 month old joey. This intrepid lady is making the world cruise on her own and having a ball doing it! She's in a cabin near ours and has been on several excursions with us. I got to hold the baby kangaroo too!

After playing with the joey, we boarded our airconditioned excursion bus.

That thing that looks like a pile of fossilized dinosaur poop is actually a termite mound.

 I have a lot more pictures, but our wifi has decided to go AWOL. I'll try to update  this post later.

Day 30 & 31 ~ Sea Day and Fremantle, Australia

Wherever you go, go with all your heart. ~ Confucius

We had another rocky sea day as we rounded the southwestern corner of Australia and headed north toward Fremantle (AKA Freo to the locals. Aussies dearly love to shorten names!) Don’t let these relatively passive seas we encountered as the Pacific Princess threaded her way through the archipelago of islands around the mouth of Esperance’s harbor fool you.  The ocean is vigorous in this part of the world and becomes more so as it joins with the Indian Ocean. Still we enjoyed our sea day and have started incorporating an afternoon nap into our busy schedule.

I’m over the worst of the cold I picked up, but I’m still not singing much, not the way I’d like to be. My larynx is swollen. I can feel it, and worse, I can hear it when I try to join in for Harmony Choir. Unfortunately, this isn’t unusual for me. Because some of my meds suppress my immune system, it takes longer for me to heal, especially since I did some serious coughing for several days. I should really go on a complete talking fast so I can rest my chords. Once when I was singing professionally, my doc ordered a week of silence for me. It was hard because our girls were little and didn’t understand when I started just making signs to them. (By the end of the week, they were wiggling their little hands back at me and neither of us knew what the other was trying to communicate!) But it did get my voice back on the mend.

The Southern Cross Band greeted us at the pier this morning. It's nice to be welcomed!

Early this morning we slid into the mouth of the Black Swan River and the port of Fremantle, our fifth Australian stop. In each of the places, we only get a taste of the area, but with six Aussie ports in total we at least have a sense of the bigness of the country.

This may look like another cruise ship, but it hauls livestock, not people!

Fremantle is their most important port for goods shipped from China and Singapore and is the jumping off place for Aussie exports too. Right now, one of the more controversial exports is live cattle and sheep on big transports called Ocean Drovers. Imagine a seasick herd crammed into a tight hold and you get an idea why it’s causing a stir, but honestly, how else could livestock be transported?

Downtown Freemantle

We had originally thought we’d go to Yanchep National Park on an all day tour, but when I looked at the tickets closely, I saw that the activity level was marked “strenuous.” Herkimer and I don’t do strenuous, so we cancelled for a refund and walked into town. Even though we go slowly, I managed to log 7000 steps before we returned to the ship for lunch. I’m okay with walking, but if I have to go fast enough to keep up with a group, that’s where I get into trouble.

After a stroll around the historic downtown and some people watching, we caught a Hop-On Hop-Off tram that gave us an hour long tour with commentary for $25 AUS each. Since one of our goals was to use up the last of our Aussie dollars, this worked out well.

This is the Uniting Church—a combination of Methodist, Congregational and Presbyterian congregations. There are a number of churches in Australia, but not many church-goers. The people are welcoming and extremely nice, but it’s a fairly secular society.

A big group of school kids were lining up to tour the prison.

Fremantle was originally founded on the premise that there would be no convicts. Everyone would come there of their own free will. But one of the first ships to dock at the new port was transporting—you guessed it!—75 convicts from England. The first thing the poor fellows had to do was build their own prison out of the abundant limestone in the area!

In addition to a maximum security prison, Fremantle was home to a large insane asylum. However, it wasn’t just for mental problems. Any number of things could earn you a bed there. If, for example, you suffered from epilepsy, or alcoholism, or if you gave birth out of wedlock, you could be committed…for life. Like the Hotel California in the old song, you could check out any time you like, but you could never leave! 

This street has been painted with removable yellow stripes in preparation for an upcoming arts festival.

The downtown area is protected as heritage site, so no matter how the interior is updated, the exterior of the buildings need to retain their Edwardian styles.

  

This is the Fremantle train station which offers commuter rail to Perth, a scant 12 miles away.  Perth is the terminus for the Indian-Pacific Line which runs from Sydney 1500 km in the longest stretch of straight rail in the world. 

Tonight we hope to do some stargazing again. The captain will turn off the bridge lights for us at 9pm. Hopefully, the clouds will stay away.

Tomorrow is another sea day and then our last stop in Oz--Exmouth! 

Day 29 ~ Esperance, the town that means Hope

We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment. ~ Hilaire Belloc

 

We woke this morning in a working port. Cruise passengers are not allowed to just walk off the boat. It’s not safe. There are humongous cranes and conveyor belts used to fill freighters with wood chips and a narrow gauge rail system that delivers iron ore to the port from 600 km away. We either have to board an excursion bus or the shopping shuttle that will take people within a few blocks of a Target store and strip mall.

Excursion bus it is!

Our first stop was to a life-sized replica of Stonehenge. The difference is that this one is complete, where the one in England is missing several large stones. Plus this was done with modern equipment and stone dressing machines, but everything is positioned so the solar effect is the same on the solstice. Even with large cranes to position the monoliths, it was quite a piece of engineering. Really put me in awe of those ancient stone masons and mathematicians who built the first one.

The real question is why. The one in Esperance is there to build up the area as a tourist destination. The one in England? Who knows?

Then we drove along country roads lined with Tasmanian blue gum trees (a rather disastrous scheme for a cash crop that went south when the wood chip market plummeted) on our way to Cape Le Grand National Park.

First up, the oddly named Hellfire Beach. It’s beautiful—fine powdery sand and pristine water. The walk down to it is a gentle slope on a brick walkway through a fragrant stand of juniper-like bushes. A wonderfully fresh smell.

On Lucky Beach (so named because only 100 yards inland there’s a freshwater pool that early sailors were delighted to discover!) we encountered several kangaroos, that showed no fear of people at all.

This spectacular rock is known as Frenchman's Hat. 

The beaches are spectacular, but the water is cold, the currents strong, and as I understand it, this is the season for box jellyfish—a particularly nasty little beastie.

I noticed that many homes had water catchment systems and asked our driver about it. (The nice thing about using supplemental O2 is that I feel no guilt about taking that first seat on the bus reserved for handicapped folk. I get a good view and am close enough to the front of the bus to ask questions. It’s one of the strawberries in my situation.) Anyway, he said the ground water in Esperance is crap. It’s so heavy with minerals it destroys a house’s plumbing in no time at all, so everyone uses rain water.

Esperance is about the same size town as the one we live in, so I found myself wondering what sort of excursions we’d offer if a cruise miraculously turned up alongside City Hall. We could have tours of the Opera House, a 19^th century building on our town square. They’d probably offer an excursion to take people to Mammoth Spring about 30 miles away or the collapsed cave that’s even closer. There could be trout fishing, hiking in the Mark Twain National Forest, or kayaking on the White River.

And we could always have a shuttle to Walmart…

   

Day 29 ~ Crossing the Bight

“I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted my routine.” ~ Caskie Stinnett

The southern coast of Australia (AKA the Great Australian Bight) was first discovered by European explorers in 1627. This is our second sea day after leaving Adelaide, en route to Esperance. My inner compass is a little turned around. The sun (when we can see it) travels its arch in the northern part of the sky instead of the south, so I get the feeling we’re sailing east when we’re really heading west. We’re still facing 12 foot swells, low hanging clouds and rain, but I’m sure those earlier sailors had a rougher time than we. The Pacific Princess slices through the waves pretty well. Even though she’s much smaller than most cruise ships (for example, on our recent Alaskan cruise, the Holland America Eurodam held three times the number of passengers!) she handles a rough sea as well as the bigger vessels.

But the step counter on my phone is convinced that I’ve climbed 15 flights of stairs today. I guess the pitching deck does that. It also makes for restful napping in the afternoon. Our bed is like a big cradle and the PP rocks us to sleep.

A couple of other Book Club members have asked me how I’m enjoying My Absolute Darling, the book for this segment. I had to admit I didn’t have it yet because they’d run out of copies and I am waiting for my friend Kristy to finish hers and pass it on.  So far, no one I’ve talked to likes the book and would hurl it across the room if it wasn’t a book club selection. I may tell Kristy there’s no rush.

Life is too short to read annoying books.

We continue to hack our cabin for all the available electrical outlets. There isn’t one in the bathroom, but the DH has discovered another plug behind the TV.  Now we can power up our electric toothbrush without taking up the desk plug. After nearly a month on board we are still so very comfy in our balcony cabin. Keeping everything picked up and tossing out clutter (advertisements from the spa and retail shops) as soon as it arrives helps with that! So does Ramona—our excellent cabin steward!

I saw on the news that there was a bit of a brouhaha on a cruise ship recently—an actual fistfight involving both passengers and crew. I can’t imagine that happening on the PP. For one thing, the small size of the ship means we’re all going to run into each other again. We may as well be on our best behavior. We’ve made a number of friends on board through our activities—choir, trivia (We won again today!), book club—and because of the passenger talent show, lots of people recognize the DH and I and have kind things to say about our singing. And a surprising number of people have been following this blog too.

Our table mates for supper are a congenial group, though Vicky’s husband has decided he’s in witness protection and I can’t use his name on the blog. Henceforth, this retired firefighter will be referred to as “He who shall not be named…” It makes him sound vaguely sinister, but he’s okay with that.

I really enjoy the other passengers. They come from all walks of life, mostly retired, but a few still working. I’ve met teachers, engineers, doctors, hairdressers, automobile restorers, funeral directors, city employees, nurses, business owners, farmers, real estate agents, product developers, pilots, the list goes ever on and on… There is no average world cruiser. 

For some, this is a yearly voyage made to escape cold weather without the hassle of owning a second home. For others, this is a once in a lifetime trip they’ve saved up for for years.  

The common denominator is that we’re tickled to pieces to be here. The food has been exquisite, the entertainment topnotch (Mostly. I’m still hopeful we won’t have any more ventriloquists!), and the service is second to none.

Tomorrow, we reach Esperance. More then…       

Day 28 ~ Divided by a Common Language

We’re cruising through the Great Australian Bight today and tomorrow on our way from Adelaide to Esperance, our fourth port of call in this lovely land. The sea has settled down quite a bit, the sun is shining and the temp is a comfortable 72.

I figured you may be getting weary of hearing about trivia (we were 2^nd again today) and Harmony Choir (I was able to sing a little, but the cold is not completely gone) so I thought I’d share some of my favorite Australian signs and unique usage of our common language:  

Wrong Way. Go Back.—This one is so delightfully direct. You messed up, mate. Here’s how to fix it.

Keep Left unless Overtaking.—The Aussies drive on the left like the Brits, so if there are multiple lanes, the left one is the slow lane not the right. Overtaking means you’re passing another vehicle.

Florist Ahead.—Isn’t it nice to be forewarned of what’s ahead? However, I’m not sure why I need to know there’s a bouquet with my name on it just up the road. I didn’t see signs letting me know I was approaching someplace where I could buy gas or food or anything else. Just flowers.

Give Way.—The Aussie version of “Yield.”

Coach Parking—Here’s where you’ll find your tour bus.

Beef Mince—Ground beef. Hamburger. Meat is sold by the kilogram.  At present, the exchange rate is $0.78 US for $1.00 AUS.

Caravanning—It’s the very popular pastime we call camping! We’ve seen several RV parks in Australia and New Zealand. Our table mates Vaughan and Cathy from Melbourne told us about a 12000 kilometer trip they recently took up through the barren center of the country to visit Ularoo (probably misspelled. It’s a big rock formation in the middle of nowhere that is special to Aboriginals and seems to change color spectacularly depending on the time of day). Then our new friends went on to Darwin on the north shore and back. Like camping in the US, it’s best to make reservations ahead of time because campsites fill up quickly.

Trap—Slang for police. This may not be in common use today. The Australian Empire Band used it last night and most of their songs were from the 1800s and earlier.

And now for those of you who wondered what on earth that stuff was on my hamburger yesterday…it was (drum roll, please!) onion jam! And it was delicious. I never would have thought of making jam out of onions but I suppose the process is similar to any berry type jam.

Try something new today. That’s my goal. Let me know how it goes with you.

Day 27 ~ Adelaide, Australia

People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the people they ignore at home. ~ Dagobert D. Runes

I do love to people watch, and we had opportunities to indulge in it today. But first we made port in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. Shortly after the Pacific Princess tied up, this sub slid in past us.

Adelaide is a shipbuilding port.

We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast in the dining room because we had a later than usual departure time (9:30AM) for our excursion for a city tour, a drive to the top of Mt. Lofty  (elevation 2100 ft.), and then a visit the German settlement of Handorf.

Adelaide is a city of over a million souls. The lion’s share of the people who live in the state of South Australia live here. It’s a charming mix of old and new construction and there seems to be a concerted effort to retain any structure with a bit of history to it. The town was founded in the 1800’s by a group of 600-some people who traveled from England in 9 small ships. The voyage took 8 months and the party was led by their future governor who wouldn’t allow the main sails to be let out for fear the “wind would disturb his livestock.”

Ah! There's my favorite view!

Sounds about right for a politician.

The views from Mt. Lofty were pretty good, but I have to confess discovering a koala asleep in a treetop was the high point for me. It’s one thing to see the little fuzzballs in cages, another to encounter them in their natural habitat.

It's early fall here, as you can see from the one tree whose leaves are starting to turn.

The village of Handorf was established in 1839 when a town full of German Lutherans sold everything and relocated down under to escape religious persecution. (However, 1839 was a long time after the Inquisition and many years before the Nazis, so I’m trying to imagine what persecution a German Lutheran might have faced at that time…) Anyway, the village was more a retail exercise than a history lesson, so we took the opportunity to people watch and have lunch at a place called The Haus.

My burger wasn’t dressed with the usual condiments of ketchup and mustard. Instead I discovered this slightly sweet, shiny and dark substance between the bun and the lettuce. For 50 points, can you guess what it is? (I’ll post the answer tomorrow and I promise to remember this time.)

Before the PP left port, we were visited by some local talent—an aboriginal, who rattled his boomerangs together and invited all our ancestors to join us, a little girl who played the banjo and yodeled (I kid you not!) and a group called the Adelaide Empire Band. The band fully embraced the fact that there might be a convict or two in their pasts and sang and played about the glories of being an outlaw.

There does seem to be a “play the hand you’ve been given” sort of attitude in Australia. We finished the evening by having supper with Cathy and Vaughan, our new Aussie table mates. I like the country and its people immensely, even if I have to decode the language a bit now and then.

More tomorrow…  

Day 26 ~ It’s my Birthday. Or is it

Does anybody really know what time it is? ~ Chicago

Today is my birthday. Or maybe it’s tomorrow, because I’m a day ahead of myself here in the South Pacific. And to make things more confusing, we were instructed to turn our clocks back by a ½ hour last night. What kind of crazy time zones do they have down here at the bottom of the world? One way or another, we just have to operate on ship’s time, whatever the captain declares that to be, realizing it may be different than whatever time it is on land.

But land is a blue smudge in the distance today. We’ve been cruising along “The Bite,” the indentation that runs along the southern coast of Australia. Nothing between us and Antarctica but water, water, water! Swells have risen to 12 feet so we’re rockin’ and rollin’ and I’m once again so thankful for my scopolamine patch! 

The book club is starting a new book, but they ran out before I made it to the library this morning. My friend Kristy promises to read fast and lend me her copy, so it’ll be fine.

A new enrichment lecturer gave a talk about classical music, with emphasis on Bach, Beethoven and Liszt. He played the piano very well. Two of the three pieces were ones I’d played in the past. Makes me want to play mine more once we get back home.

I still wasn’t able to sing for choir, but, bless their hearts, they sang happy birthday to me. (Note to my choir friends back home: It sounded a lot like how we sing it there, but not on purpose!) And at supper, Raj and Kadek rounded up a gang of other waiters to sing to me again. I felt very special.

Two new couples have joined us at our supper table since Sydney—Vicky and Craig from San Francisco, and Cathy and Vaughan from Melbourne, Australia. One couple will leave us at Dubai and the other will stay until Venice.

Vicky discovered the launderette yesterday so she could iron a few things. It’s a pretty tight space, packed with 8 stackable washer/dryers and two ironing boards that are bolted to the floor so you’re facing the wall while you iron. She was alone in there until a fellow came in with his load of washing. They exchanged a greeting and went on about their business.  

Until she felt a soft pat on her bottom.

She jerked her gaze in his direction, but the guy didn’t seem to be paying any attention to her. She decided it was her imagination and went back to ironing.

Until he did it again!

Vicky whipped around, ready to tell him off big time, but just then the open door to the washing machine behind her swung wide to give her upper thighs a soft caress. The launderette itself had been getting fresh with her, not her fellow passenger!

I had a wonderful birthday with my DH. (I’ve told him after this trip, he’s golden for the next 10 years for birthdays, anniversaries and Christmases! Unless of course, he wants to give me another cruise!) We dock at Adelaide tomorrow.

More then…

PS. Please pray for my friend Kristy’s unborn grandbaby. God will know why.