Our gorgeous weather continued today. The ocean remains as calm as it has been since we boarded on November 28, and the day was very hot and sunny. This is the monsoon season in Southeast Asia, but we have been extremely lucky. We have had rain, of course, sometimes heavy thunderstorms, but not during the hours we’ve been in ports…so far. Fingers crossed it continues.
Beyond that, it was a typical sea day: breakfast in the Horizon Court Buffet, lunch in the International Dining Room, lectures by our new Destination Expert Narelle Proude from (I believe) Australia, a BIG!!!!!! $1000 Treasure Hunt Drawing*!!! (*must be present to win), and, unbelievably we won something which ended up being worth NOTHING, dressing for formal night #47 of the season, the Captain’s Welcome Aboard Party and Champagne Waterfall and a production show (Let Me Entertain You).
The destination lecture on our first port of call, Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia, was excellent. I am so happy to have another good port lecturer on board! We are heavily relying on the information we get in these talks, and, so far have not been let down. In fact, we formulated our plan for tomorrow based entirely on the port lecture. We’ll have to catch today’s second port lecture when it is replayed on TV. I can only process the information on one at a time. ;-)
Our big win at the BIG!!!!!! $1000 Treasure Hunt Drawing*!!! (*must be present to win) was an Effy gift bag. Frankly, the gift bag was worth more than its contents, a sequin-y mini pen that is too short to grasp, a bling-y panther key ring, and a coupon worth $200 off a $600 jewelry purchase. So I might as well say it was a BIG!!!!!! $1000 Treasure Hunt Drawing*!!! (*must be present to win), and, naturally we won NOTHING.
Also notable today, we had lunch with a lady named Cindy from Florida who is traveling with her sister in law. She was telling us about her daughter who is following a blog online written by a lady who will be on the ship for awhile. I wasn’t sure if I should say anything but ultimately thought it best to quite immodestly suggest that it might be me. So if Stephanie is reading, I loved meeting your mom and hearing about her travels.
We don’t arrive in Kota Kinabalu (autocorrect will NOT let me type that!) until noon tomorrow, which is my favorite kind of port day: the kind for which I don’t have to set an alarm. I was quite excited today to learn that the island on which Kota Kinabalu is located on is called Borneo, but more on that in tomorrow’s blog post. It’s just that Borneo sounds so exotic, like Bali or Bora Bora.
Maybe it’s a B thing. ;-)
And, finally, a follow up to my comment that our unused internet minutes from last cruise would not roll over to this cruise. Well, that’s what happened. We lost over five hours of internet between us. We’ve been told that, because they were a Captains Circle perk, and not purchased, the internet minutes will disappear at the end of each cruise. Frankly, that’s exactly like having any unused minibar items taken away the last night of each cruise. It’s not right, and it’s particularly unfortunate that this is handled so differently on the Sapphire Princess than on other Princess ships.
And that’s another B thing. Bummer. :-(