Category: 2023 World Voyage

Bangkok is an interesting city, population 12 million. It took 2 1/2 hours to get there from the ship. We did a small group tour in a mini-van, only 8 of us. It was pretty much a temple tour so in addition to the Golden Buddha, we saw the 66cm Emerald Buddha (actually made of jade) and the outside of the Royal Palace. The city is an interesting mix of old and new, not nearly so many highrises as ’newer’ cities like Singapore or Dhubai. We wished we could have stopped at the 24-hour flower market area or even their Chinatown which looked much more interesting than many of the other Chinatowns we visited.

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The traffic was pretty horrendous but the amazing thing was that we did not hear single car horn! There was just lot of ebb and flow between lanes – road rage is not a thing in Bangkok. And everywhere, mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles—90% of drivers wore helmets. Major stop lights also had a countdown in seconds as did the green light. On our return on the freeway, our driver spent much of it driving in the paved shoulder and no one seemed put out by it.

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What does US$250 millon worth of gold look like? The Golden Buddha at the temple of Wat Traimit in Bankok – according to Wikipedia:

At US$1,400 per troy ounce, the gold in the statue (18 karat) is estimated to be worth 250 million dollars.[8] The body of the statue is 40% pure, the volume from the chin to the forehead is 80% pure, and the hair and the topknot, weighing 45 kg, are 99% pure gold.

The statue dates back to the 13th/14th centuries, it has an interesting history, check out Wikipedia.

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31C – feels like 35C

Feb 14 was change over day for the ship so lots of people getting off and new passengers getting on. The previous evening we said goodbye to our wonderful table mates since Southampton—they were a pleasure to be with each evening.

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Getting off the ship this morning was a breeze compared to the day before because of our “blue dots”. We took the shuttle bus to the Convention Centre beside the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. There is a very very high end shopping centre attached to the complex. We walked about 20 minutes to a smaller shopping centre that had stores with merchandise we could actually afford. Tarja scored some nice linen stuff and Bob was very excited to get some new dress socks (with nautical stripes!). We met our new table mates at dinner that night, the jury is still out on that.

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Raffles Hotel Long Bar update … one of the folks we were with on our Bangkok mini-van tour said that they had gone to Raffles when we were in Singapore and the latest price of a Singapore Sling at Raffles Long Bar is (Singapore dollar is roughly equal to the CAD) $57 plus 8% local tax plus 15% service fee so approx $71. Wowza. Raffles, where the Singapore Sling was invented in the early 19th century, was the local watering hole for the well to do. We were told that, unsurprisingly, locals never go there now

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Only 26C in the morning !!! – and yes it got hotter and more humid. The guide said it was a cool day for a change :-/

Aside from the over officious customs staff, Singapore was a very interesting place to visit. Everyone who was getting off the ship had to complete a special online entry app, which we did once we had access two days before arrival. The problem was getting through customs. Once we got into line, it took an hour for us to be cleared. But as travellers, one accepts that. However, we had to do the whole thing in reverse to reboard the ship. Fortunately, after being cleared to reboard, we had a little blue dot placed on the back our passports which made getting off the next day waaaaaay faster, although we still had to go through customs to get back on the ship. :-/

On Monday we did a highlights of Singapour tour. Our first stop was the National Orchid Garden which was part of the Singapore Botanical Garden. It was fabulous. It’s tempting to post way too many pictures from the garden but I’ll just do some highlights for now. The garden has what they call a VIP section. Various VIPs, including politicians, who were official visitors to the garden had orchids named after them and many of these orchids were dotted around the building where the VIPs were pictured & listed. I was pleasantly surprised to see a picture of Tarja Halonen, a former President of Finland, who visited in 2008. Sadly, we could not find the orchid named for her. However, we did find a former Canadian politician. A new type of orchid can take up to 4 years to create! Interestingly, the clocks show 4 timezones: Singapore, London, Tokyo, and Vancouver!

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We were then taken to the esplanade river walk area with its lovely parks and views of the river and buildings both modern and colonial including the Singapore Cricket Club.

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We had a stop in Singapore’s Chinatown which is quite a large area. Singapore’s population is approx 70% Chinese. We had already visited Chinatowns in Panang and Kuala Lumpur (sort of) so it was much the same but a larger area. We meandered a bit and then found a place to sit down and wait until we were getting back on the bus. We watched some men play a board game we did not recognize.

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Singapore is a beautiful city. It is trying to be as green a possible so in addition to trees, there is a lot of vertical greenery on buildings.

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The city is not by the port but a 90 minute drive in. We did a “KL on your own” tour which provided transport to the city and back but we were on our own after that. There was a sort of tour guide on the bus who gave us lots of info about KL. He also told us about his health history 🙄. KL is very green, aside from all the high rises, due to its tropical climate.

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We took the LRT transit to the Central Market which was full of small stalls with all manner of consumer goods, souvenirs & food.

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We saw the tallest flagpole in the country but not just any flagpole but the one where the Union Jack came down and the new Malaysian flag went up in 1957. A pretty site on a River with several colonial buildings.

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However, temp was 31C, felt like 36C. The heat and humidity really got to us so after taking a few pictures in the area near the market, we took the LRT back to the drop off point which was by a huge downtown shopping centre – think Toronto Eaton’s Centre on steroids. And here’s the irony of the day for you. The shopping centre had a really nice Marks & Spencer’s, Bob bought a pair of shorts there 😀.

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We booked a walking tour so it was nice experience to get off the ship, meet our guide, and start the tour — no bus.

It was a great day in Penang Island but it was HOT, 31C, feels like 37C. We did a half day walking tour, tried to stay in shade as much as possible. The old part of the city, George Town, still has a lot of the British colonial influence. The population of immigrants is a mix from Burma, Thailand, China, and India who came when the British established a trading port here in the late 1700s. The Indigenous population is only 0.7%. The green area below was reclaimed swamp that the British turned into a park and sporting field; cricket anyone?

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There were several religious buildings built near each other between 1790 and 1830 reflecting the religious diversity: Anglican, Buddhist, Mosque, Hindu.

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Mansion Built by the merchant Cheong Fatt Tze at the end of the 19th century, the mansion has 38 rooms, 5 granite-paved courtyards, 7 staircases and 220 vernacular timber louvre windows.

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The captain announced at his noon hour address that we can now stand down from “face masks highly recommended”, which we began in the eastern Med, due to now falling rates. Assume this is falling rates of infections and not deaths having not heard any splashes. 😉

We left Darwin several hours late due to waiting for a communications part damaged by all the winds we’d been having. By the afternoon of the next day we travelled through the Torres Strait which has the same depth as the QM2. However, the tide was high enough to float us through. The following day the weather got better and it was a pleasure to look out at land rather than sea. It is much more mountainous and green than we had imagined.

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Early March 6th we arrived just off Airlie Beach near Whitsunday Island and dropped anchor.

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We had booked to go snorkelling on Hardy Reef within the Great Barrier Reef Park. The boat picked us up from the ship and took us the 100 Km (at 40 kts) to pontoon platforms they have there. Unhappily because of our hacking coughs we didn’t feel it was safe or advisable to snorkel. We did take the “sub” out over the reef but it sure isn’t the same as snorkelling. On the sub, just to make the case that we shouldn’t go snorkelling, poor Bob had trouble breathing in his surgical mask at the same time as he had a hacking coughing fit—-effectively sucking and blowing at the same time. Some very interesting noises were produced! Unhappily for us, other than lunch, there wasn’t a lot else to do so we had a lot of down time.

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The trip back was nice though—we saw many sailboats in lovely anchorages along the way.

Tarja really liked Muscat, such a contrast to the very modern high rise forest of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The harbour is surrounded by mountains so it’s a lovely setting. She did a half day tour led by an excellent tour guide who realized it was not necessary to talk non-stop while the bus was in motion !

The first stop was the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque which was truly beautiful and felt like a place of worship, not an opulent showplace like the mosque in Abu Dhabi. The walkways that surrounded the mosque had varying themes/styles of mosaics on the walls between the pillars. The rug in the main prayer hall took 4 years to complete and it was woven in place by hundreds of weavers. The pictures don’t do it justice.

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There was also a stop at the souk by the harbour. Tarja walked around a bit but mostly sat outside on a bench in the nice walkway around the harbour and people watched.

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The QM2 moved overnight arriving early the next morning at Dubai.

Talk about being in a different world yet again. I think I said that also about Egypt. To us us Egypt, which we saw very briefly, was real and interesting. Both Abu Dhabi and even more so Dubai, is mostly like Disneyland for rich adults. Bigger and better rules the day. 

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Dubai was first settled in the late 1700s. It has a very good protected river & harbour which made it an active trading port.

Dubai was definitely over the top. There were architecturally interesting buildings in the race for higher and higher. We did a half day coach tour there and groaned we we saw it was the same tour guide as we had in Abu Dhabi. One of our stops was the spice Souk (market) with its typically very aggressive merchants. It had open stalls so it hard to avoid the merchants if you want to explore. Interesting to see, but to us westerners, mostly an uncomfortable way to shop! Some people love to barter – not us. We also visited the gold Souk, where you could avoid the merchants by not going into the shops as they were like traditional western stores. Bob called it bling on steroids. Tarja bought 2 scarves from the chap in the wine-coulures shirt—claims she got a good price.

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Abu Dhabi was our first stop in the United Arab Emirates. We did a half day coach tour to get an impression of the city. Our tour guide was less than sterling. He kept repeating himself and felt compelled to talk non-stop while we were on the bus. The main stop of the tour was at the 2 billion USD Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque named (funnily enough) after Sheikh Zayed who was largely responsible for the formation of the UAE. He was also the driving force behind building the mosque.

The mosque was built of the best materials, lots & lots and white marble and the mosaics were truly beautiful. The chandeliers were Swarowski crystal.

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But to us, and other we’ve spoken to about it, it felt like a a show place mausoleum, not a place of worship.

We also visited an outdoor museum showing what Abu Dhabi was like in to the 1960s—kinda like Upper Canada Village. But then oil was discovered and well …

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Abu Dhabi is really just a modern city full of competing sky scrapers. Never been on our list and still isn’t.