Day 12 - Yup, still at sea - August 6th

Not the best of nights for a change but we were up a little earlier than usual and the first people we bumped into were the last ones we spoke to last night, so another pleasant breakfast!   We have noticed that although we didn’t join this cruise with a “gang”, just Mal & Megan, what with previous cruisers and new contacts, we still feel very much at home on this great ship and there is virtually no settling in period.  Part of that is the fact that we know the layout and the way the systems operate and part is due to the gregarious nature of many cruisers.

We don’t really have too much of  a fixed routine at the moment but we did opt to attend the excellent port lecture on attend the excellent port lecture on the Vietnamese stops of Phu My (for Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City) and Nha Trang.  Wouldn’t my old geography teachers be impressed...  By attending these lectures you often change your mind as to what tours you have already booked and as you can cancel up to 24 hours beforehand, it usually pays to book your tours early and then cancel, rather than leave it until later, as by then, many are sold out.  I think it is also often cheaper to book on line before your cruise.

After a coffee, we headed off to Alana’s dance class, for the last part of the Mayfair Quickstep and another session of the Argentine Tango.  With a fair bit of leg waving for the ladies and hooking their leg over the guy’s, the potential for a vertical wrestling move (the step over leg lock springs to mind) and crashes on the floor are a delight to look forward to, especially given the lack of athletic prowess and balance by many of the participants, not to mention their erratic centre of gravity.  I think I might take the video camera to future classes and practices...

A light and very late lunch followed but the internet was too slow to be of any use at all.

A quiz disaster. We started off well, then crashed and burned with a miserable 12/20.  Mind you, during my grammar school years, 60% was rarely achieved, in any subject, so maybe that wasn’t  a bad score at all.

Once again we had to skip the formal dinner as we wanted to watch the Alan penned “Sherlock Holmes Mystery” radio show in the Vista lounge.  Once again, the room was packed.  Although this was a repeat of the first one we saw last year, I elected to video it and once again, thoroughly enjoyed it.  Maybe the crew taking part this time didn’t quite have the same sort of rapport and support of last year’s, probably as they used a couple of dancers who we wouldn’t normally get to know anyway, replacing DJ Lee and Brazilian Barbara.  The prize for over acting went to Marcos, whose death scene (Captain Bates, Master of the ship – work out the possibilities and you’ll get the general idea) was well overboard.  All great fun of course and to fully enjoy it, you need to possess a very British sense of humour, which most passengers do.  Alana’s “typos” or “faulty glasses” quips, such as “they ate a farty” meal, instead of “hearty”, gives you an idea.  For us, part of the cruise we hate to miss, so we look forward to the next one.   

Alan of course had to rush straight off to the Atrium for a slightly later evening stint at the keyboards.

We managed to teach at least one other passenger, the Rock and Roll Waltz, whilst the main group were doing yet another New Vogue dance we didn’t recognise.

Internet was still diabolically slow, so no apologies if this is late – I did my bit.  I can’t go into the blogs to shuffle the pics either, so sorry about the boring layout.

Singapore (again – 4 times in a year!) tomorrow but as we have nothing planned, no alarm clocks set and we know it will be warm.  But will it be wet?