From Bali, we spent a day at sea and then two days in Indonesia. For whatever reason, the Immigrations department had an early, 7:30, manditory face to face meeting for all guests and would not let us back on until everyone cleared. Then, the next day, they did it again before we could leave port. So, two days in a row, I walked on land.
There were two of these cool little Islands that people spend the day.
Kim brought back some delicous fried chicken that a crew member form Indonesia recommended. Mouth watering doesn’t even come close to describing this chicken. Okay, go get a snack, I’ll wait, but come back and finish reading.
Okay, I owe my wine drinking friends and family an appoligy. I made fun of a guy that saved $250 on a $1,000 bottle of premium wine because he was Diamond Elete. I just realized that I am the most intense beer natzi in the world. Price would not matter if I could taste a better beer. So, sorry wine guys. I saw our bar manager loading several small cases of something at our last stop in Indonesia. I asked him what was in the shipment. He told me that one of the officers had a good friend that owns a vinyard in this region. The officer and his friend went scuba diving in the morning and he gave us 83 bottles of vintage wine. Sean said he saw the price list and it was over the top, never seen wine so expensive. I said I don’t understand, there are several free wines on board. He reminded me that I was the worst beer snob that he ever met. ” You should understand”. I brought you several beers two years ago when we ran out of Lagunita IPA and you rejected all of them. I get it now.
I was sitting on deck 9 in my assigned seat when two fighter planes buzzed us, I didn’t see them, but with the current unrest in the world, it gave me a moment of panic. Then, they buzzed us again and I did see them. They were bright red and vintage propeler fighter planes out for a spin. Sorry, not fast enough on my camera.
Even the pilot boat was Indonesian style.
So, if you are old enough to remember “Laugh in”, you remember Artie Johnson, he is on board with us, or a great look alike. Artie was a guy that walked with little steps and rode a tricycle only to fall over. If you are not old enough, I can’t find enough words to explain.
The other thing that “Laugh in” did was coin the phrase “Flying Ficklr of Fate”. I saw it in Indonesia.
The barmance continues.
Gerard & Alexandra
These are our extremely excellent room stewards.
I can’t leave you with any sunset pictures because where we are in the land of white skies and no sun.
As Ross our Cruise director says, ” Love you all”
I’d like a champeigne, can you make it a double? Almost pool chronicles material.
It’s a lake out here. We have left Indonesia and are headed to the Philippines. We are traveling due North and crossed the equator in the middle of the night. So, we are still a day ahead of you, but we are no longer upside down. It feels good for the blood to rush out of my head.
We are now in the land of dirty water, white skies and 82.4 temps, 24/7. I’m not handling the heat so well, so I am staying in the A/C areas. As we travel north, it will become cooler, and people will again complain of being cold.
In Bali, the hostess of the dining room brought her family on board. I was sitting in my designated chair on deck 9 when she brought them by. She stopped and addressed me. “Mr. Sharp. This is my family, my mother, my brother, my uncle, my cousin, etc”. They all bowed to me, it was moving that she took the time to do that. That’s Seabourn.
Speaking of the Seabourn experience, I would like to share with you 2 stories that I have witnessed. First, a couple from Germany were supposed to disembark in Darwin. Their flight was to go through Dubai. Because of the war in Iran, that was no longer possible. Seabourn could not find a reasonable alternative flight, so they let the couple stay on board an additional two weeks and fly out of Bali. Free two week cruise, wow, go Seabourn. Then there was a passenger that didn’t have a passport that expired 6 months after the cruise ends and have a certain number of blank pages. In the very beginning, we are told that our passport has to be good for 6 months after the cruise ends. We had to get new passports because we didn’t have enough blank pages, so we know the gig. This passenger was 5 days short of having 6 months left from the end of the cruise May 15th. Indonesia said that they could not enter the country because of that, so Seabourn flew him to the Philippines and put him up in a hotel until we arrived there, go Seabourn again. This is all stuff that costs the passenger nothing. Can you say all inclusive and mean it, Seabourn can.
When they say lobster dinner, they don’t mean little bits of lobster, all you can eat.
So, we were sitting with our normal lunch mates when he said its going to rain. I said, no it isn’t. About an hour later, I said it’s going to rain within 15 minutes. When he said it was going to rain, there were clear signs of the rain.
When I said it’s going to rain, there were no such conditions. Sure enough it started raining. He asked how I do that?
It’s easy, when the sky bar phone rings and the bar crew picks up the towels, it’s because the bridge just called and told them to prepare for rain. Simple observation, not genius.
Eat your heart out Trump, I have more buildings with my name on them than you do!
Bali
In our clearence process for Hong Kong, it ask if we had had contact with a bat, I guess this guy’s in trouble.
Just for my linemen friends.
Care to monkey around a bit? Nice Banyon Tree.
Finally some sea life. I was talking with an officer that has been at sea for over 30 years and he too said that he never remembers going this long without seeing sea life. Odd.
We had a little visitor on our veranda.
Finally, before the sun sets:
Pool chrnicles, you just can’t make this shit up.
A Guy orders a virgin Bloody Mary, okay. And my wife will have a virgin Screwdriver. For the non drinkers out there, to make a Screwdeiver, you mix Vodka and Orange juice.
It’s a lot cooler today. I checked it was still 82.4 drgrees.
Sitting in my deck 9 chair while at port and the Chief Engineer walks by. He asks if I went ashore today. I responded, as I told the Captain, I’ll only leave the ship if you tell me it’s sinking. The Engineer said, well the Captain and his wife are ashore right now, I hope he didn’t forget to give you the message.
Mid day sky.
Never a lack of beautiful sunsets. And I said to myself, what a wonderful world.
More later, I promise! Thanks for the comments, it keeps me connected………
Well, I apologize for the long break since my last post. I guess I needed a vacation from my vacation. I feel like the little boy that never spoke a word until he was 5. Then he said very clearly, “soups cold”. His parents were so surprised that he finally spoke and asked him why he had never spoken before. His answer, “everything has been perfect until now”.
Well, I’m back.
This trip is amazing. We finished our tour of Australia, and we can now claim that we have sailed from Sydney North to Darwin and from Sydney South to Darwin. I doubt that there are many people that can put that on their resume. It really doesn’t mean anything, but I think it’s kind of cool. We had several stops and several sea days. As I said, Australia is huge.
This is an open iron mine, it is said that the iron is so pure that one can take two rocks and weld them together.
Learning about Western Australia was fascinating. The people make sure that you know they are from Western Australia as opposed to just Australia. It’s kind of like in Oregon, you’re a Duck fan or a Beaver fan and don’t even think they are equal. Western Australia (WA) is rich in mineral deposits. The country is divided into states, much like the US. Each state gets to keep the revenue from the mining, so, WA is very well off, government wise. At every stop, we were treated to a great transportation system and infrastructure. The government buildings were modern, as were the schools. Very different from the “other “side. As I have said many times before, this is an educational experience.
Kim found this fun sphere.
And this memorial to the fallen.
The weather has been, for the most part, very good, low 80’s. We had a couple of days in the 90’s, not so good. It rains for a few minutes every so often, but that’s where we are. The tides are extreme and at one port we went into, we had to wait until noon to get in and had to stay until 10 PM to leave. Today, we are 9 degrees south of the equator.
At one port, a brewery enticed me to get off the ship and walk a mile each way for a local beer. It was very good. I was reminded of the old commercial, “I’d walk a mile for a Camel” I walked a mile for a beer.
I’m not telling you how many times that I have left the ship, but the sushi bartender has caught me off the ship twice.
As I told you, we now have Diamond statis and got the “priceless” diamond pin. Refer to couple of my previous posts to find out just how priceless they are, not.
One of our stops was at a place that had a bunch of towers, over a thousand feet tall. It is a communication system for our US submarines, it transmits at less than one megawatt in power, so it’s hard for our enemies to listen in. I checked it out with my brother, the submarine Captain, and he verified that until this system was activated, they had to reel out an antenna to the surface to get and send communications, this would allow the enemy to locate them. With this system, they can have the antenna below the surface and not be detected. Also at this stop, there were several large white towers that were part of “Trumps” space wars and could track and communicate with others. It is how we get the detailed photos from China. Who knew?
What time do you close?
We also had our third close encounter. We had lunch with a couple from Walla Walla. Something came up about Cycle Oregon and they said, “I guess you know Jerry Norquist then”, Jerry was the director of Cycle Oregon when we started our journey with them. Turns out, he’s, their neighbor!
We were quite pleasantly surprised when we got a Whatsapp call from our new Canadian friends that we met and they got off in Sydney, it was so good to hear from them.
I am also missing Savas, one of the bartenders that I have made friends with. On his last day, he came to me early on and asked for a hug goodbye. He said if he waited any longer, he would cry like a baby. The connection between crew and guests is real.
Sheep ship, stay up wind.
As always, there is;
Pool chronicles, you can’t make this shit up.
We were sailing along, and the guy at the next table said, “the clouds just stopped moving”. I immediately started singing “where were you when the world stopped turning”.
“We’d be a lot richer if Seabourn hadn’t found us”. True, but I think we found Seabourn, really?
Victor, a waiter on the pool deck came to me and complained that the guests were first complaining that it was too cold, so I told them to get in the hot tub, now, they are too hot and I told them to get in the pool. I said, you are dealing with a lot of Goldilocks.
Once we left Melbourne we stopped in Tazmania, and then sailed west(.net), and we are still sailing west 3 days later. Even though we have been here several times, I didn’t realize just haw big Australia is. It’s as big as the continental US. Crazy.
At each stop, Kim found a trail to hike.
She also went on a couple of tours and saw a large variety of wild life.
A Mom and baby Kanggaroo.
A Wallaby.
An Emu.
Baby Seals.
Tazmanian Devil.
We stopped in Portland Australia, yes, they have one. There we were with the Coral Princess. They were also on a 131-day World Cruise that is very similar to ours. Started in Miami and ends in Los Angelas.
Kim found this door painted like the Australian Flag.
Another one bites the dust.
We are coming to the end of a 16 day segment, and here’s the breakdown for this portion of our world cruise..
We are in Australia, the land down under. And now we are in Melbourne, the very south point of Australia. So, we are, down under in the down under.
We arrived in Melbourne at noon, it’s kind of like Portland in that we took on a pilot at 8 this morning and wondered through the bay in a narrow channel until we finally arrived in Melbourne.
A bit over an hour later we boarded buses for our second GALA event. Exclusive to World Cruises. As you recall, our first GALA was in Los Angeles and was the most amazing time.
The buses took us to a beautiful valley of grape vines as far as you could see. We stopped at an amazing vineyard and were treated to three sparkling wines that were better than any sparkling wine that we have ever tasted. We were “treated “to an opera performance.
Well, I’ll tell you right now that I do not like the soprano voice of any opera.
As the first song was introduced, there was a loud clap of thunder and lightning. Then it started raining on us. I was laughing and thinking I’m not the only one that hates this. The performance lasted about 45 minutes and as soon as she said this is our last song, the rain stopped and I saw blue sky. I don’t want to tell you what to think about that, develop your own conclusion.
On top of the fantastic sparkling wines, they served amazing tapas. Scallops, shrimp, and wagyu beef to mention a few.
Too soon, they loaded us onto the buses for a five-minute drive to another vineyard. Again, it was spectacular. We were treated to a four-course dinner with paired wine with each course. Seabourn flew their President in to address us. They think of everything.
We are here at the optimum harvest time and one of our courses included grapes from the harvest. I noticed that we all had different grapes, so we started trading around. These grapes were absolutely amazing. The taste, the sugars, the future wines were all there for us. I especially enjoyed them because of my brewing background. I could appreciate how the sugars would become amazing wines.
It was an incredible experience. We got back to the ship about 10. Kinda late for us old people.
We were in Melbourne over night, so when we woke up, we moved out to our veranda, we heard a very unique bird song. Trying to identify where it came from, it was clearly coming from the ship. It was getting louder so we really wanted to find the source. Then it appeared right in front of us, from above, not a bird at all, but the gondola they use to wash the windows. Fooled again.
We had a lazy day Saturday in Melbourne, Kim took a walk on the beach. There were lots of activities on the beach, sports, sailing, and an unusual relay race type of tic tack toe.
And lots of shells.
In just one week, Melbourne will host the formula one race and it will be anything but a lazy day. I know my brother and nephew would love to be here.
NFL will be here too. The Rams and the 49ers will play in the iconic Melbourne Cricket Grounds.
The other night when I went to dinner and Kim had room service, I had to go to two restaurants to get what I wanted. At the first place I got a lobster tail.
When I got back to the room, I called room service for my desert.
Our room now has a Australian Indigenous Flag on the wall. At the sail away party there were both the Austrailian Flag and this one. Kim said she loved this flag and wanted one. So, I talked to my favorite bartender and all of the sudden it magically showed up in our room. It’s Seaboourn, just ask.
As I told you before, there are a lot of visitors that come on board at our stops. This is a first for us, we’ve not seen this before. While in Melbourne, this passenger couple brought on eight guests. They had a free lunch and then gathered on my new deck 9 for drinks. They had three rounds of drinks before saying their goodbyes. After they were gone, I asked Savas, the bartender, do they at least tip you for your service? His answer was never in my career has a visitor given me a tip. That is so wrong, if I had visitors come aboard, I would explain ahead of time that food and drink are free but bring tip money for the servers. Is that not reasonable?
I’ve already introduced you to my friend Engin, the bartender. I try to stay away from him because he is more a drink pusher than a drink server. He constantly brings me drinks that I did not order. I was surprised to see him yesterday morning on deck 9, but he asked me what I wanted to drink and I said iced tea in a short glass with easy ice. When it came, it was in the right glass, it had six ice cubes and looked exactly like it should. Then, I took a gulp and immediately spit it back into the glass. It was a full glass of bourbon! It’s barely 11 o’clock in the morning. When Savas showed up a few minutes later and asked how I was doing, I told him to smell my iced tea. He did and made a face, that;s not iced teas. I told him that Engin was trying to kill me. He laughed and took it away. Soon, all was well and I was drinking Iced tea for real.
I also told you about Samuel, the voice of room service. He didn’t join us in Melbourne as expected. We found out he was still in the hospital in Sydney. We couldn’t get any more information about him.
