March 20, 2024

We are now looking at the Philippines through the rear-view mirror.  We made three very diverse and interesting stops in the Philippines.   The first two, I have already written about.  The third stop, Manila, was an overnighter. 

We were scheduled to dock at noon, so at 10:30 there was a very special “sail in” party at the pool deck. 

We were told that of the 370 crew members, over half were Philippine and of those, over 90% were from Manila.  They brought all of the Philippine crew members and gathered them around Deck 9.   

They passed out flags and then they sang their national anthem for us, it was moving.  Several sang and danced and entertained us.

Cavar was served from the pool.  Many of the crew were allowed off ship overnight to visit their families.  They had a special buffet lunch for families in the cruise terminal and then they all came aboard to see how their loved ones lived and where they worked.  It was great to see children running around and the joy filled hearts of the crew members.  It is so good to see how Seabourn treats their crew, it’s like they are family instead of employees.

Kim went on a tour in Manila that included China town. 

She bought me a fried Sapaio (hum bow), it was great.  

This picture is for my friends who work for Wahkiakum PUD.

We woke up this morning to Armageddon, the temperature dropped 20 degrees, the calm seas were at about 20 feet waves and the wind was blowing at 40 MPH.  It was wonderful, the editors’ opinion only.   This is what I live for.   

 I had to laugh though, all around the ship were barf bags, wimps.

Kim is on a trivia team and trivia is every sea day at noon.  She left our room at five ‘til noon to get ready.  I like to sit in and listen, it’s entertaining.  Five minutes later, a water pipe burst just outside of our room.  I ended up trapped in our room for almost an hour.  They were using our bathroom to dump buckets of water; I’m talking hundreds of buckets.  They managed to stop the leak in about 15 minutes, but not before damaging decks 6,5, and 4. 

Our floor was closed off, so in order to go anywhere, we had to go to the bow stairs.  Not convenient at all. 

I was able to get out of my room to go to lunch and had to laugh when I was escorted by a crew member through the atrium with an umbrella because it was literally raining. 

After lunch, I took up my post at the pool deck, but I was the only one out there. 

The waves were so big that the spray from the bow was coning over the deck 9 railing and raining down on the pool deck. 

It was a sunny day, but as you can see the pool deck was wet from the spray.  Kim would shoot through every so often to make sure I was okay.  One time, she said to me “you are absolutely loving this, I can see it on your face”.  She was exactly right, at that moment, there was nowhere I would rather be. 

After a sea day today, we will enter Taiwan, too close to China for me.