I’m back on dry land and wishing I was at sea again! This cruise was truly quite an experience. I hadn’t gone with too much expectation, so that definitely worked in my favour! Was a bit apprehensive about being trapped on a boat with people from work, but it turned out to be a blast! For starters our phones were out of network. So there was no real worry of being trapped by the Devil!
Our cabin was a snug to say the least – just about large enough for 2 beds, and a bunk, and space for all out trash to be strewn around! Awesome planning for such a tiny space! Think I’ll follow the same principals if I ever intend to live in the tiny apartment I’m buying in Jaipur (don’t ask!!!) Most of our time was spent in one of the restaurants – a meal in one, desert in another, a mid night snack, tea time muffin, some friends from the sea!!! I didn’t manage to teetotal, but I limited my drinks to a glass of beer or wine at night – which I must admit is quite unlike me!!! I don’t believe in drink ONE GLASS of anything!!! But I think I must’ve been high on PRAWNS!!! Big huge tiger prawns! And calamari! And everything else!!! Hehe!
Our first stop in Penang was spent exploring little parts of the city on our own – 3 girls & 1 guy just making our way around on our own – quite unlike the people coming off our cruise liner! We managed to escape from the millions of taxi guys trying to rip us off – its difficult to explain to someone that you really our a BUDGET traveler when you walk off a Star Cruise liner!!! So anyway after bonding with some kind Tam-bram food sellers, they directed us to the bus station 100m away! From then on it was a bus, lots of walking around in a random shopping centre (where we didn’t buy a thing!!!), a visit to the beautiful Reclining Buddha temple (Wat Chayamangkalaram), and the Burmese temple across the road, eating fresh fruit – the pineapple was juicier than any I’ve ever tasted before (truly!!!), a taxi ride to the jetty, and a cyclo ride to the place we were told was called the Esplanade – but honestly everyone had a different name for it – I’m just glad we made it there! We spent the next hour eating oysters, prawns, sunflower seeds, beef & chicken satay and drinking Tiger beeyah!!! Absolute bliss!! Hopefully my colleague will be back soon, and I’ll be able to post some pictures from her camera soon.
The next day we spent off an island in Phuket (called Coral Island). I spent about 2-3 hours with my bum sticking out the water and my eyes glued to the gorgeous, gorgeous fishies!! Having snorkeled just once before in Vietnam I was sure we’d see nothing coz there was just a lot of dead coral where our boat anchored, but swimming out just a little with a slice of bread in one hand proved excellent!!!! While swimming back to the beach I felt like the pied piper with my trail of aquatic friends following my hand of bread back!!! Back on land I devoured some more prawns!!
Our evenings on the cruise were spent either at one of the shows at discos or at The Lido – some fun Broadway thing by the crew & Streetlife – excellent dancers & acrobats. Having been subjected to an entire cabaret once before I decided to give PASSION – the cabaret, a miss!! The karaoke bar was hilarious – watching and trying to sing Chinese songs along with the people there – 90% oriental! The videos were hilarious – don’t know how Chinese people manage to take karaoke so seriously!!!!
Finally on the last day I spent the entire afternoon swimming & playing rubbish games with my boss’ kids in the pool! And as expected I’m properly roasted yet again!!!!
I think it took us a while to realize we were actually on a cruise!!! Just never imagined I’ve ever make it to a cruise liner!! My earlier experience on a Junkboat was the closest I thought I’d ever get to a night on the sea! But yeah, this was so so fine!!! I hope everyone goes cruisin’ some day!
On that note – cheerses to the festive season – I hope to add pictures to this post when I have them, but in the meanwhile – Mewy Kwismiss to efwybody in the blogosphere! HO! HO! HO!
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