20251022 Viking Gems of China and Japan Day 18 – Sea Day - East China Sea

Viking Gems of China and Japan Day 18 – Sailing the border between the Yellow Sea and East China Sea

We sailed out of Shanghai overnight, as planned. We awoke on the boundary of the Yellow Sea to the north and the East China Sea to the south. A strong cold front in the area was whipping up the waves, and the 15-foot waves were having their way with the ship. Not a big deal for us, but we saw a bunch of folks wearing Scopolamine patches or getting Dramamine from the medical center.

We had breakfast in the World Cafe, watching the huge amount of marine traffic we found ourselves in. It appears that this is a major shipping channel. This morning, we passed several channel marker buoys. We had ships on both sides of us for most of the day.

The sun really accents the lovely dirt-brown of the water here

We played Baggo against the officers again. The guests didn't just lose today. We lost in such an overwhelming way that it was one for the record books. The first round was standard. The second round involved sitting on the middle landing of the stairs and tossing while seated. The final round was from the top of the stairs. The boards were placed next to each other, and they added a wine bucket behind the boards. Landing on the guest board (left) scored for the guests, regardless of who threw the bag. Landing on the officer board (right) scored for the officers, regardless of who threw the bag. Scoring in that round was silly with 10,000 on the board, 100,000 in the hole, 1,000,000 in the bucket, and 5,000,000 if you hit the bucket and hung your bag over the edge - something nearly impossible to do. Or so we thought. The second or third officer did just that, setting an impossibly high bar to get over for the guests. The officers then continued to toss multiple bags into the bucket, adding millions to their total. It's almost as if they had practiced this before. Hmm...

As always, it was all in good fun, and everyone was laughing and having a good time.

We went from there to the Star Theater for a lecture on Giant Pandas given by Cruise Directors Wan and Arann, or as Wan said, Cruise Director Wan and Cruise Director Two.

It was educational and informative, and of course, there were plenty of cute videos.

We met our team for Arann's 12:15 trivia. It was much easier today. The picture round had us identify brand logos with wording/lettering removed. They were all pretty simple - Taco Bell, BP, Shell, Amazon, Adidas, KFC, Pringles, and Pepsi. Almost everyone got all those. We only missed one question today:

• What African country is known as the land of 1,000 hills?
• We visited the valley of the 1,000 hills in South Africa, so we figured that was it. It wasn't. It was Rwanda.

There were eight teams tied at the end, so that meant another tiebreaker. The closest team without going over would be the winner.

• What is the length of the song, Paradise by the Dashboard Lights, by Meat Loaf, in seconds?
• We knew it was longer than a typical song, so we guessed 4:30, or 270 seconds - it is actually 8:55 or 535 seconds long - we weren't close enough

So for the third time, we were second-place finishers. At least we're consistent.

Viking served a Taste of China lunch on the pool deck today. Nothing grabbed our interest, so we got food in the World Cafe. This afternoon, we had nothing on the agenda, so it was just a relaxing, bumpy, wavy, rocky afternoon in the Pacific.

We caught the sunset from our room as the day said goodbye for the evening.

After pre-dinner cocktails in the Explorers Bar, we hit the World Cafe for dinner and returned to the room to watch the recorded port talk for tomorrow's port, Jeju Island, South Korea. After that, we watched the live stream of tonight's Star Theater performance from the acoustic duo.

Tonight, we move our clocks ahead an hour to UTC+9 or 13 hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast. We will remain on that timezone for the rest of this cruise. When we disembark and fly to Mongolia, we'll drop back to UTC+8 or 12 hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast. Tomorrow, we'll visit Jeju Island in South Korea, the second new country for us on this trip.

20231022 AAAA Trip - Sea day en route to Hong Kong

2023 Alaska, Asia, Australia, Arabian Peninsula Trip 
Day 36/105 - Sailing the East China Sea between Taiwan and Hong Kong

Ahh, breakfast.  What a great way to start a day.  The chef whipped up one of our favorites this morning, biscuits and sausage gravy.  It is great that Viking is willing to handle special requests like this as their breakfast selection, while wide, doesn't change, ever.  Being able to get a special breakfast like this from time to time breaks up the breakfast monotony.

The water is a little rough this morning, but nothing terrible.  According to Windy.com, we're in 9 to 11-foot waves and will be all the way to Hong Kong.

Today's Baggo pitted the men against the women with officers joining their respective gender's team.  The last toss was from the very top of the atrium stairs, all four bags simultaneously in a single toss to the two boards that were placed side-by-side.  A bag on your team's board was worth nothing.  A bag in your team's hole was worth 5,000 points.  A bag on your opponent's board or in their hole was worth 5,000 points for them. It was close with the men in the lead the entire game, but in the end, the women triumphed in large part because several of the men scored points on the women's board, netting them 15,000 points and the win.  There was a lot of laughter and smiles.

Trivia today had a nautical theme.  All the questions were related to sailing, cruising, or songs and movies about boats.  We missed one question about distance because we needed to calculate it correctly - I had the wrong nautical mile-to-statute mile conversion factor.  Several teams were perfect but one team was first to answer the tiebreaker about Leonardo Dicaprio's famous line from Titanic: "I'm the king of the world!"

After lunch, our planned Villages get-together went perfectly.  Everyone on the ship from The Villages met in the upper deck of the Explorers' Bar and spent a wonderful hour together, getting to know each other. 

Villagers love to travel and socialize!

The area between Taipei and Hong Kong is a very busy shipping lane.  We were constantly passing other ships in multiple directions.  

The amount of containers on the move all over the world at any given moment is staggering.  When you consider that once these reach their end port, they all have to get loaded onto trains or trucks, the logistics behind it all is mind-boggling.

We had the usual pre-dinner drinks and then dinner in the World Café.  Tonight was surf and turf night.  Show me another buffet where you can grab and go with lobster and filet mignon, and both are great.  We both were still dragging a little and tomorrow will be a busy day in Hong Kong with a five-hour excursion.  Based on that, we opted for an early retirement to the room.

One nice thing is that as cruisers who are continuing on the ship after Hong Kong, we are not required to go through immigration like passengers who will be disembarking, or visiting areas like Macau.  I'll take my wins where I can get them.

Hong Kong tomorrow for three days.  

20231020 AAAA Trip - Sea day - East China Sea, Japan to Taiwan - cooking and eating

2023 Alaska, Asia, Australia, Arabian Peninsula Trip 
Day 34/105 - East China Sea sailing from Japan to Taiwan

Chefs Margo & Arlona

Today, we're at sea.  That's a good thing as we could use a breather.  Today should be a little more relaxing.

After breakfast, Arlona jumped right in and headed to a cooking class.  They learned how to prepare wild mushroom risotto, veal with prosciutto and pasta risotto, and tiramisu.

This is a tomato - the chef peeled it, leaving the bottom as a base, and wound the peel to look like a rose

Whisk-y business

This stuff runs about $100/bottle!

Wild mushroom risotto

Pasta risotto

Pounded veal wrapped with prosciutto

Tiramisu

While she was cooking, I helped the men in the Battle of the Sexes Baggo match.  It was a close match, but the men held on to win by a slim margin.

Viking held a gathering for all of us cruising to either Sydney or Auckland.  It was a nice time in Wintergarden with mimosas and hors d'oeuvres.

Arlona was still cooking when it was time for trivia, so I joined part of our former team plus others for today's trivia - logo trivia.  Harry presented 15 company logos and we had to identify the organization.  We correctly identified 14 along with five other teams.  We were first to identify the tiebreaker logo, giving us the win and more mimosas, but more importantly, bragging rights.

Here are the logos - don't scroll beyond if you want to guess.

Left to right, top to bottom:

• TikTok, Pepsi, Starbucks, World Wildlife Fund
• Wikipedia, Toyota, Versace, Windows
• Instagram, Mastercard, Miss World contest, New Balance
• Spotify, Turkish Airlines, Subaru, Snapchat

Winners!
Harry, Karen, Garry, Vina, Stacey, Mark, Betsy

This afternoon, Arlona had time to wrap up her latest crochet project - another hat.

Working with the Explorers' Desk, we have discovered that beyond us, and Jon & Margo, there are six other couples from The Villages on this leg of the cruise.  We have put together a meet and greet on Sunday afternoon, so we hope we will get to meet the other Villagers on this cruise.  It is always fun to meet someone from around the corner when you're halfway around the world.  I'll update you on Sunday with the results.

Tonight, we planned a special dinner in Manfredi's private room.  We got our trivia group, their friends that came on in Tokyo, and our friends, Jon & Margo together for a nice evening, getting to know each other better.

Garry, James, Karen, Margo, Arlona, Betsy, Stacy, Mark, Jon
Manfredi's private dining room

It was a nice meal with great conversation.

Tomorrow, we will be docked in Keelung, Taiwan, Province Of China, for a day in Taipei.