Third day at sea after Callao and 600 miles to Easter Island, it’s 24 degrees and sunny again. We spent some time in the sun today and went to a lecture by Lynne Truss, an English writer on manners, or the lack of them in today’s society, she was quite funny.
Today I also spoke to the pursers desk about our overland trip from Vietnam. Our conversation started by me providing an itinerary of our trip from Ho Chi Minh City to Bangkok, to which he commented “We will need to know where you’re going” I pointed to the itinerary. “Ho Chi Minh City is in China” he said “Where will you be staying in Hanoi” “Ho Chi minh City is in South Vietnam, Hanoi’s in North Vietnam” I said. The lady next to him confirmed my statement and I said “it used to be called Saigon”. “Oh we’re going to Saigon ok” he said. I continued requesting that we not be charged for Vietnamese and Cambodian visas, since we had to purchase our own for the overland. His immediate response was that they couldn’t do anything about that, I should have arranged that with Princess head office. I produced my email from Princess head office saying they couldn’t do anything for me, I would have to arrange it with the purser on board the ship. He disappeared through to the back office and returned to tell me I would not be charged for the visas. Unfortunately they could not tell me exactly where we would be docking in Brisbane, Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok as they did not know yet, they would get that info some time before docking. They seemed to make it as difficult as possible to make independent arrangements, I’m not impressed by their organizational skills.
Before going for dinner we squeezed in a game of trivia and were rewarded with a first place win, the fabulous prize was a coupon (3 coupons get you a baseball hat). Dinner was good as usual and of interest to anyone planning a world cruise, each segment of this cruise has 4 ‘formal’ nights and the rest are ’smart casual’ . I’d guess that on formal nights, about 10 to 15 percent of men wear tuxedos, another 50 to 60 percent suits or sport coats, the rest ‘shirt and tie‘s. On smart casual nights, dress varies from mostly golf shirts to a few ‘suit and tie’s. After dinner we went to the evening show which starred Kaitlyn Carr, Scotland’s premier singing sensation. She was very good and after the show we spoke to her for a while, she grew up in Shawlands, Glasgow, an area I knew well. She’ll be on board ‘til Tahiti, so will have another show between then and now.
Fourth day and when we awoke the sea was mirror calm, like the cling wrap covering my room-service delivered morning muessli. They cover everything with cling-wrap and we’ve wondered how often some short sighted old person adds milk to their cereal without realising there’s a transparent film between them and their breakfast. No wind and as the relentless sun continues to beat down we found a nice shady spot by the pool and I caught up on reading my newly acquired book ‘The Second Plane’. It’s not about any new age religion, rather it’s about 9/11. Tomorrow we arrive at Easter Island, 2000 miles from the coast of South America. It’s hard to believe, Easter Island, one of the remoter places on earth and we’ll be there tomorrow, it’s one of those iconic places I thought I’d never see.
