20231110 AAAA Trip - Sea Day - South China Sea sailing - faith in humanity restored

2023 Alaska, Asia, Australia, Arabian Peninsula Trip 
Day 55/105 - South China Sea sailing

As I start to write this entry, it is about 3 p.m. and we're reaching the south end of the Malaysia/Thailand/Myanmar peninsula. In the map above, you can see where we are, making our turn to the west to head into the Singapore Strait.  Looks fine, right?  That map is from Cruisemapper.com. It shows cruise ships, hence the name.  There is another website, Vesselfinder.com, that shows all marine vessels.  Check this out.

That is the current insane traffic going through the Singapore Strait right now.  Some of the data is older on this website, but still, there are ships everywhere.  Sitting on our port-side balcony that currently faces south-southeast, still a ways from the Strait, we could count at least 50 ships.  More than 1,000 vessels navigate the roughly 70-mile-long and 12-mile-wide Singapore Strait daily.  Today, we'll be one of them.

Let me digress from the usual blog fodder for a minute to provide an update on Arlona's phone.  We have one on order.  It will be at the house on Saturday.  A neighbor will activate it and friends will bring it with them when they join us in Bali.  But wait, there's more...

Yesterday at lunch, my phone rang at about the same time I received a Facebook message from a stranger.  Odd timing.  The number was a 210 area code number - San Antonio, Texas.  Also odd.  The Facebook message was from someone I've never met who told me Arlona's phone was in the hands of the Pattaya, Thailand police.  That's weird.  The called, a man named Michael Brewer (not the same person that messaged me), said he was a volunteer at the Pattaya police department and they had Arlona's phone.  This all sounded a bit scam-like to me.

Without boring you with all the details, it is all legit.  Whoever took the phone from the bathroom in the mall did so intending to turn it over to the Pattaya Police.  It turns out there is a large, American ex-pat community in Pattaya - mostly ex-military.  They have a large VFW post there with its own Facebook page.  Michael took a photo of Arlona's driver's license and posted it to the VFW group to see if anyone knew her.  The man who messaged me looked me up online and thought he'd let me know where it was.  Viking contacted the port agent in Laem Chabang, Thailand and they will pick it up from Michael and get it shipped to our next major port, most likely Bali.  Those details are still being worked out. Michael handles things like this all the time for tourists, working with Pattaya police, the US Embassy, and other organizations.

So, while it looked like Arlona's phone was being taken, it was being taken with good intentions and the right people saw the phone.  All the items were still in the phone case, including the cash, her driver's license, Village ID, insurance card, and the phone itself.  Wow. Out of all of this, Arlona is getting a very nice phone upgrade and a restored faith in the goodness of people.  I will still feel better once everything is back in our hands, but for now, we're breathing a sigh of relief as it looks like everything will find its way back to us.  Whew. Her penalty for all of this is having to go through the hassle of setting up a new phone and one night of restless sleep.

On to today.  Sea Day means Baggo and trivia.  The men avenged our humiliating defeat yesterday by defeating the women at least twice as badly as they did us. Insert grunting noises here. :-)

Our passports have been held on the ship until today to facilitate immigration procedures.  From here on, we will have our passports as immigration procedures are different.  It’s fun looking at all the new stamps and stickers that have been applied.

With all our travel recently, I’ve run out of pages in my passport.  I have four pages left.  International travel almost always requires at least six pages open and six months of life left before expiration.  My passport doesn’t expire until 2027, but I’ll be biting the bullet when we get home and doing an early renewal.  We have travel booked for 2024 and I’ll need a new passport with room for visas and stamps.  I will be asking for the larger book like Arlona did on her last renewal, so I’ll have enough room for a while.

At trivia, we once again finished a single point out of first with 12/15 correct in general knowledge.  The goofs:

• What artist is known for the 1981 song, Key Largo
• Bertie Higgins - absolutely nobody got this one
• What country created salsa dancing?
• We had this before but forgot - Cuba, but it was made popular by Puerto Rico
• What English singer's real name is Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner?
• Sting - we had no idea

Lunch was quite interesting.  For those who followed the blog from our world cruise, you may recall the story from our third day.  We dined next to a couple, and after comparing notes, found out that he and Arlona went to the same junior high school and high school, a few years apart. He knew several of Arlona’s friends’ older siblings. We live about three hours apart in Florida. Small world, right?  

Today at lunch, we met a lovely New Zealand couple.  We were all talking about future cruise plans and they mentioned they would be trying a Seabourn cruise.  I mentioned that we just booked our first Seabourn cruise – a 90-day cruise.  They said there was also 90-days, from Barcelona.  Next November?  Africa?  Yes!  So, we have met our first passengers on our Africa circumnavigation cruise next November.  How fun is that?

We popped up to the Explorers' Bar a little early to watch the entry into the Singapore Strait.  The traffic was amazing as were some of the views of Singapore as we sailed past.

Arlona was looking out the front of the ship and kept hearing her name - a friend was up on deck #8

Ships

More ships

It was amazing just how many ships were in the Strait

Near the eastern entry to the Singapore Strait, we passed this freestanding pair of lighthouses and a pier - not near land at all

I'm fairly certain this is a Panamax ship that is capable of going through the new locks in the Panama Canal carrying over 20,000 containers - it is massive

Our glimpse of Singapore as we sailed by - we'll be back in two days

Marina Bay Sands

Tonight, Viking hosted a reception for multi-segment cruises - folks on this journey that booked more than just one leg, sailing from Vancouver, Tokyo, or Hong Kong to Sydney or Aukland. 

Travel Consultant, Hâmed, presented this poem - think Sound of Music...

Searching for grizzlies and fishing for salmon,

Such natural beauty in Mineral Creek Canyon,

Bald-headed eagles with 2-metre wings,

These are a few of my favorite things,

 

Watching for humpbacks, oh there goes its tail,

Post it on Facebook, now I’ve seen a whale,

Only the joy that the glaciers brings,

These are a few of my favorite things,

 

Alaska to Asia and crossing the line,

From glaciers to geishas and plenty of shrines,

Towering Mount Fuji and Beppu’s hot springs,

These are a few of my favorite things,

 

When I’m back home, and I’m waiting,

When I'm feeling sad,

I simply remember cruising with Viking,

And then I don't feel so bad,

 

From Hong Kong to Ha Long, a cruise through the bay,

Ho Chi Minh City, by night then by day,

Go to the temple, receive a blessing,

These are a few of my favorite things,

 

Bangkok and Bali, let's venture beyond,

The sites of Malaysia of which I’m so fond,

Equator crossings and Singapore slings,

These are a few of my favorite things,

 

Going down under, let’s stay here a while,

Koalas and “roos” and of course crocodiles,

The sail into Sydney is captivating,

These are a few of my favorite things,

 

When I’m back home, and I’m waiting,

When I'm feeling sad,

I simply remember cruising with Viking,

And then I don't feel so bad.

It is nice that they do this, but for us, we are disappointed that this is really five cruises.  I've mentioned it before, but for each cruise, the entertainment restarts, the dining menus restart, and so on.  They really need to consider these long voyages and the folks that book them and reconsider how they treat the voyage.  That is our not-so-humble opinion.

Diner tonight in the World Café featured a taste of America for I believe the third time. That works out OK as the last two times, we were eating at either Manfredi's or Chef's Table. Options included Wisconsin cheddar beer soup, shrimp and grits, California swordfish tacos, Tennessee honey hot chicken, and Oklahoma chicken fried steak – you get the idea.  It was a very nice dinner, and again, at the World Café, we can take a little of this and a little of that and we like that.

The plan is to reach Port Klang tomorrow morning before 8 a.m. as a gateway to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  Unfortunately, like many places in this part of the world, Port Klang is 1.5 hours away from Kuala Lumpur, meaning that our 5.5-hour excursion tomorrow includes three hours of bus riding to and from the actually interesting stuff.