12/30–Sapphire Princess

We are up at a relatively normal time this morning, after sleeping really well straight through the night (well, with the exception of being woken up twice with the baby screaming across the hall).  The clouds are gathering outside, but we decide to try to walk anyway.  We make our half hour circuit alongside one of the canals that has a nice promenade running on both sides.  There are lots of people out running and walking, and using the exercise machines alongside the walkway – which gives us plenty of people watching opportunities as we walk.

We are ready for coffee now, but Tolido’s doesn’t open until 9:00 today, so we head back to the hotel to the coffee shop in the lobby.  But unfortunately they are not open because their system is down.  Bummer.  Upstairs we go, to hit the instant coffee we have brought with us as a back up (smart thinking!).  After showering and suitcase organizing, it is time for Tolido’s to open, so we wander over there for another great cappuccino.

The interesting thing about this place – besides the fact that it has great coffee and lovely, young servers – is that you have to make reservations to get a table.  It is this teeny little coffee shop with fresh cooked food – breakfast/brunch stuff – and it is crazy busy.  We are just lucky to get a table this morning since the 4 top in front of us was “granted” a table as long as they are out by 10:00 because it is reserved after that.  Amazing!

Duly caffeinated, we stroll back to the hotel, check out and grab a cab to the port. . 10 Singaporean dollars later (less than $8USD) we are deposited at the port facility and in the waiting lounge to board the ship.  Smooth as silk.

Let the people watching begin!  We are in Boarding group 1 with the suites and Elite group – we’ve finally risen to Elite status on Princess.  There is a little special area to wait – but it is full, so they show us to chairs right outside the “elite” area, but tell us we can get refreshments located inside the “elite” area.  Cool.  Well, cool with us.  Oh geez, the people who walk up and refuse to sit “outside” the elite area.  Really? Come on, it’s not even 10 feet away.  Too funny!

Boarding starts around 11:45, and we all shuffle through immigration, which is about as crazy as the airport immigration.  But they have these automatic machines, and one of the immigration officials takes a lady out of line and asks her to try it – saying if it works for her, we can all do it.  Yay! Shorter lines!  The automatic machine works for her, so we all go scooting over (and under the Disney-esque line place holders) to the automatic machine where I breeze right through, but Ed gets stuck because his fingerprint won’t work.  He gets shunted off into the exception line, and soon is free of immigration too.  Even with that little snafu, it was still totally quicker than the other lines.
Once onboard we go to our fantastic cabin!  E731 – last cabin on Emerald deck, a mini-suite with that awesome balcony that goes almost to the stern of the ship – and since we are under Dolphin deck, the balcony is covered.  Which comes in handy since it is pouring down rain outside!  But we can stand on the balcony and watch out over the storm totally dry.  Love this room!  Except for the fact that it brings back memories of my first Vasal Vagel incident – but otherwise – heck – it’s a great cabin!
Our bags come right away, so we are unpacked and organized really quickly. Then off to the Muster drill, and back to the cabin for sail away.  Nothing remarkable about the sail away except for the oil rig we pass on the way…

…then its out in the open ocean for our 2 days at sea before Bali.  Happy almost New Year!

12/29–Singapore

Our cabbie, “Joe,” was a talker, and he kept us entertained our entire ride into town.  Told us about the best restaurants around, and asked tons of questions about the cruise ship – when it docked, etc. –so he could plan out his day tomorrow.  Quite the entrepreneur – very smart! 

We arrived at the Hotel Boss about 7:30am, and it was a hive of activity.  Good Lord! The people!  Ed specifically picked this hotel because it had early check in (we paid extra – but definitely worth every penny).  We walked right up, checked in, and were in our room before 8:00am.  Totally worth it! 

The hotel is pretty new, and incredibly basic. Teeny, tiny room but on the 10th floor with a decent view of the city.  It has over 1,000 rooms and 2 elevator banks on either side of the hotel. Crazy.  But all we cared about was that we had a place to put the luggage as soon as we arrived, and then had a place to lay our sleepy heads when we were ready to nap/sleep the night.  Worked perfectly.

After getting settled and changed, we wandered out into the surrounding area, checking out the Hawkers Market down the street for dinner possibilities and trying to find the wine store.  Never found the wine, but found a 7-11 that had wine and beer, so we bought our supplies there, then headed to a cute little local coffee shop, Toledo’s Espresso Nook, and filled up on double shot cappuccino. Yum!

Back at the hotel, we dumped our purchases, reconnoitered our neighborhood maps, then headed out again snapping pictures of the two mosques in the neighborhood.

The little streets were crowded with small restaurants and silk shops – all getting ready for business.  The whole area reminded us a lot of Warorat market in Chiang Mai - the stores, the portico over the sidewalks, the mix of people.  Very familiar to us.

Meandering around, we found a side street with great murals behind the mosque…

...then continued our explorations, checking out lunch options.  We settled on a little cafe on the corner of Arab Street, with”authentic Persian cuisine.”  They had an “all day happy hour” and the owner was very sweet, so we grabbed a nice table under the fan and ordered our Persian meals.  A Lamb “set plate” for Ed (typical Lamb Kabob with rice and salad for lunch), and a Lamb Doner Wrap for me.  Both excellent, authentic, and filling.

Afterward, we strolled the streets again, looking at restaurants, then headed back to the hotel where we actually napped for a couple of hours, a rarity for us, but definitely a necessity after all those hours flying.

Later that evening, we decided just to go to the little Hawker’s place next door for dinner – it’s a little more pricey (everything being relative, like $1USD more), but it is close and we don’t feel like walking back to the Golden Mile stalls. Ed gets some sort of soup bowl, while I try to get chicken satay, but after waiting 5 minutes for the girl to come out of the kitchen, she tells me they are out.  Ugh.  So I go to the Japanese place for a bento box, I want the BBQ chicken with udon noodles. The girl says it is spicy, and I say a little? Yes.  Ok, I can do a little.  Turns out she gives me the Udon noodle soup – which is not what I wanted, and it was spicy!  I ended up just eating the noodles and picking out the chicken  But really, it filled me up, so it wasn’t a huge deal 

Back in the room, we watch Raiders of the Lost Ark and start to watch something else, before we fall asleep in our teeny little room overlooking the city.

12/27–The journey begins

After a lovely morning and lunch with my parents and niece Stephanie, we Uber to IAD for the beginning of our long journey to Singapore.  We are early enough that we can go to the United Lounge and use our last free visit coupons for the year.  While the food is definitely less interesting (there was at least some decent salami and good spicy mustard), at least we had a place to hang out and recharge our electronics before the flights.

The first flight to London pushed back on time, and went really quickly. We obviously had a huge tail wind, because we arrived over an hour early.  The flight itself was fine, Virgin Atlantic, decent food, good movies.  We both watched the Zoo Keeper’s Wife (book was better, but movie was ok), then I watched Baby Driver and Ed watched a Diana documentary and something else.  We decided not to sleep on this flight so we could sleep on the long one from London to Singapore.

In London we had a little snafu while waiting at the transfer desk – we stood there for over 40 minutes while the desk clerk tried to help these 2 guys who were re-routed.  She finally told us just to go to the gate, which we did (after a 15 minute walk) and got checked in and settled.

Both these flights were slam packed – but they loaded them quickly and we pushed back early.  First time we have ever seen this – but the plane was decorated for Christmas.  Very sweet!  We watched Wind River (excellent), had dinner, then tried to sleep.  I did, Ed not so much.  But overall, the flight went pretty well, and again, had some sort of awesome tailwind, because we arrived in Singapore an hour early. 

We used that extra hour waiting in line at immigration.  So frustrating!  We have no clue what the immigration officer was doing, but she was agonizingly slow.  And a few people even got turned back.  Uh oh!  When we finally made it to the front of the line, she was so nice and personable to us – we had no idea what the hold up was with everyone else.  Crazy.  But, we got through without any incident, picked up our bags – which were off the baggage belt by the time we got there – and walked out to grab a cab to the Hotel Boss.