March 7, 2024

Culture shock?   I’m saying night and day here. 

We are seeing Dirty air, trash everywhere, floating trash, major changes overnight.  About all that remains the same is the heat and humidity. 

Another culture difference is several times a day, there is a call to prayer broadcast from the Mosque.  People would stop what they were doing to pray.  People who booked excursions were warned that most buses were not air conditioned.  Making it even hotter. 

There’s a couple that brought their folding bikes on board and go riding at every port.  They are the couple that won the boat building competion.  When they returned today, Kim talked to them and their big news was that she went to a barber and got a haircut, cost $1.  Yep, a whole dollar.   When I saw her at the sail away pool side, I asked her if she tipped him.  Answer was, of course.  The hair cut was actually 85 cents, so I gave him a dollar and told him to keep the change. 

One of the drawbacks to this heat is that I don’t spend a lot of time at the pool and therefore limiting, my material for the “you can’t make this shit up series”.  But today Kim got me this one.

And now another episode of Pool Chronicles. 

There are two sisters that are always off the ship first at every port, today was no exception.  Their sticht is “shopping”.   Kim was getting off the ship just as these two sisters were getting back on board.  One said to a few passengers waiting to debark, “There’s nothing here, nothing! And the taxi driver said the nearest shopping was about a 30-minute drive away.” The lady listening to her replied, “Why would they bring us here?”   Well, I have to ask, “what the hell were they thinking when they picked this stop”?  As I said earlier, what a culture shock it was from yesterday to today, but these shoppers totally missed all of that, totally blind to their surroundings.  We do love going to the local markets and seeing what each vendor is selling, and I am in heaven when we find the local fish market.  I’m looking forward to picking up some live bats in China too. 😉 

We’ve met this couple, Chuck and Nancy, Kim goes to trivia with them, and we sit together for lunch.  Today, Chuck asked if we had heard of Seabourn’s free cruise policy.  Of course we had not.  He says that it’s a little known secret and Seabourn does not advertise it.  If you collect 140 sea days you get a free week and if you sail 250 days you get 2 weeks free.  Well, this cruise alone id 145 days, so we qualify for a free week.  I went straight to the future cruise consultant and asked if this were true and he confirmed it.  So, he applied for us and now we get 7 days off of next year’s cruise.  Sweet!

Well, the extra hour they gave us last night is being taken away tonight.  Does time really matter?

For dinner tonight, Kim is going for Thia and me, of course Sushi. From bottom to top, squid, tuna, shrimp, yellow tail, and salmon.