20231109 AAAA Trip - Sea Day - we have a plan

2023 Alaska, Asia, Australia, Arabian Peninsula Trip 
Day 54/105 - Gulf of Thailand and a phone plan

We're on day #54 of our 105-day trip so yesterday, we passed the halfway point. Thailand was our 56th country visited and Malaysia will be #57 in a few days.

We're in the Gulf of Thailand today, traveling south toward Singapore.  We'll pass through the Singapore Strait before turning north through the Straits of Malacca to Port Klang.  

This will be another long-drive port since Kuala Lumpur is around an hour away from the port.

Yesterday, I successfully ordered a new cellphone for Arlona. It will be delivered on Saturday. Our friend, Dave will get it and activate it. Our friends, Trish & Sue will pick it up and bring it with them when they join us when we reach Bali. It is amazing how dependent you become on a device, but especially on a cruise, you use it daily.  The cruise lines all have apps to track activities, check menus, and manage your cruise. It was a lot of hoops to jump through, but I'm hoping everything falls into place.

Since it is a sea day, Baggo was on the agenda.  Today, it was another battle of the sexes.  The men dominated.  Well, we dominated right until the second or third-to-last throw when one woman made an incredible throw, scoring 10,000 points.  She was the only thrower from either team who scored in that round, and that gave the victory to the ladies.  As usual, there were lots of laughs and everyone had a great time.

The sea was like glass this morning.

As we sail, we pass many ships including fishing vessels.

You can see the net dragging behind the ship

I expect that shipping traffic will increase as we get closer to Singapore.

We had another session of sea day trivia.  The Assistant Cruise Director left the cruise suddenly.  They talked our former Cruise Director, Harry, to come back from his break to fill in.  While we feel bad as he missed out on well-deserved time off, it was nice to see him.  Today, he opted to do flag trivia.  We were shown 15 flags and had to identify what country each belonged to. He gave a few clues and a few multiple choices.

From left to right, and top to bottom:

• Row 1
• Madagascar, Seychelles, or Botswana?
• Botswana
• El Salvador, Paraguay, or Chile?
• Paraguay
• No clue was given other than it is a popular cruise destination
• Mexico
• Row 2
• No clue given
• Finland
• No clue given
• Japan
• We were recently there
• Cambodia
• Row 3
• St. Kitts, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba?
• We guessed Antigua and Barbuda - it was Aruba
• African country
• Kenya
• South American country
• Uruguay
• Row 4
• No clue given
• France
• Croatia, Montenegro, or Serbia?
• We didn't recognize it and guessed Serbia - it was Croatia
• No clue given
• China
• Row 5
• Cayman Islands, St. Maarten, St. Lucia
• St. Lucia
• Oman, Saudi Arabia, U.A.E.
• Saudi Arabia
• No clue was given, but we know Harry and he always includes something about himself
• Philippines

Our 13/15 only got us second place as one team had 14/15.  It was fun and we look forward to a general knowledge trivia tomorrow.

With a relaxing sea day, we've spent some time on the balcony.  We have both noticed just how much junk is floating in the Pacific.  It seems like there is a lot more junk in the water than we're used to seeing when sailing in the Atlantic.  Bottles, boxes, just junk floating by.  And in a huge ocean, if we're seeing in this incredibly small area that we're sailing, there must be much more all over.  It's a bit sad.

The fact that these three were all in a line made us wonder if these were net markers

We have no idea what this is – several went by

This looked like a huge piece of Styrofoam

We had our usual evening, starting in the Explorers’ Bar and listening to guitarist, Indra before dinner in the World Café.

Tonight marks a significant change in the cruise because, for the first time, we are changing our clocks tonight and losing an hour rather than gaining time.  We’ll move to UTC+8 or 13 hours ahead of the US East Coast.  We will continue losing time as we move toward Sydney as we have three more hours to move to get to UTC+11 when we’re in Sydney.  Then, we’ll gain it all back and more when we fly to Dubai on December 12 and move to UTC+4, gaining seven hours all at once.  World travel is exhausting!

Tomorrow is another sea day as we make our way around the Thai/Myanmar/Malaysian peninsula toward Port Klang, Malaysia.