We're in Hong Kong

Easter Monday


Since the sea is overcast, the sun isn’t bad through the drapes in the morning and so we woke up gently. Tomorrow we are in Hong Kong but we won’t have very much time. We plan to see some sites, especially museums, on our own. There is so much to see and do in Hong Kong that it is hard to choose. I’ve been there twice before with Ed so we’ve experienced the high lights of a sort. Many folks are looking forward to simply shopping as they also will be doing in Singapore.
I went to the Casino Lounge rather early to check email and upload a set of photos and yesterday’s blog. I still am not caught up on photos though.
Port Talk: Cai Lan
This is the gateway port for Hanoi and is over 2 hrs away. We have been discussing which tour to take but Ed wasn’t keen about the ones I listed so I have no idea what we’ll be doing in the end. None of us look forward to these long drives unless there are sites along the way even though it is always interesting to see the country sides. Apparently the “Hanoi Hilton” is open visitors—not to be confused with the Hilton Hanoi Opera Hotel. The harbor where we were anchoring (as this is a tender port which elicited some groans from some folks in the audience as I guess we were originally scheduled to dock at a container port) has been declared a World Heritage Site.
Trivia
Both were tough today but the morning was the harder one. Truly we all said we’d be lucky to get 5 or 6. We wound up getting 11 and the winners (show offs) got 13. This afternoon was a similar experience. Clearly the staff is trying to include more esoteric British and Australian facts. We have a good compliment of Aussies but the Brits are in a smaller minority.
Lunch
One of the ladies had introduced Ed and I to another woman. This is because the latter will lose all the folks at her dinner table at Singapore as will we. They didn’t want just anyone at their table and we came recommended as folks who can engage in intelligent conversation (the exact phrase used). We we visited over lunch and enjoyed her and her husband very much. And the final irony is that we both have the same wait staff and the latter are at the table we left when we got on in Honolulu. It also seats only six these days so we hope that remains as well. So they are going to speak with the matre d to see if this can be arranged after Singapore. It is a small world. But I especially found it amusing that Ed and I were recommended because of our ability to converse intelligently. Ha.
Islam and it’s role in Brunei and Malaysia
This was our anthropologist and there was a lot of new information for me. I always enjoy the photos they show and I learned a lot more about Islam.
Computer practice session
Well I was able to obliterate the extra people in the photo Ed took of me with the volcano erupting from my head. But it is a slow slog and as Ed says: very tedious.
I went to wait for trivia in the Pacific Lounge and listened in to some of the discussion of the “Travelers’ Century Club.” Ed and I had started listing the countries we’ve been in out of curiosity after seeing this listed in the patter. We are up to the mid-60s at this point and discussing what counts and what doesn’t. What little I heard was mostly folks bragging about what they did before the current modern times. For example, one fellow was telling how he sat on the Emperor’s throne in the Forbidden City whenever it was that he was there. He was Asian so I suppose he blended in better than round eyes would have back then.
Ed was talking about going to hear the discussion with a fellow passenger who was actually in the perfect storm upon which the movie was based. In the end, he came for trivia.
Today’s talk
We all kept talking about how fantastic last night’s show “Dancing with the stripes” was. Perhaps we all had very low expectations to begin with and so we were completely wowed by how GOOD they all were. We expect the dancers to be good but the neophytes! They were phenomenol.
Ed just now said that there is not Fox News but we have CNN. He keeps checking to be sure this is true. Since there are all Aussie’s at our table, there won’t be any lamentations because Fox isn’t on. Ha.
Dinner: All present. And we had plenty of laughs about the everyday experiences of life.
Weather: definitely warmer and not so much breeze but it has been foggy steadily since Pusan while on the sea. The ship has been kicking up the inside temperature in the colder climates but it isn’t all that comfortable. When we are in warmer weather, they keep the A/C on and folks complain that it is too cold. Of course, when you go into a room where there will be an event, it usually is colder but that changes quickly as more bodies are present.
Entertainment
This was a short session with two people who had appeared before. The woman who began we had not stayed for. She reminded me of Sofie Tucker. Her humor and songs were primarily British. She wasn’t awful; she just wasn’t very memorable. The second was the comedian we all enjoy so much. Even though many of his jokes are ones you’ve heard before, he presents them in such a funny and engaging way that you love hearing them again as he tells them.