Steve and Cathy's Blog

Today we have another early start, 7:45am, in order to take the Experience Local Life in Thanlyin excursion. This is a small village (small is a relative term in Southeast Asia in terms of population. It’s a bustling place full of people) about one half hour from where our ship is docked. First of all, we are grateful not to have to slog through ninety minutes of commuter traffic. It’s near the ship and it’s Saturday.

This is going to be a busy day. Our excursion, Golden Glory of Yangon, begins at 8:15 and will last all day. We board our bus around 8:30 and begin the slow trek during the rush hour into the city. We learn that one of the reasons that the traffic is so bad is that the railroad that parallels the road is in terrible shape. We will be talking about the condition of the country’s infrastructure

This is a semi-Sea Day, because we are scheduled to arrive at 5:00pm. We attend a really interesting Peter Croyle lecture entitled Buddhism and Rice Cultivation that is a great introduction to both subjects. Later in the day, we attend Afternoon Tea in Horizons. This good idea is Cathy’s and we go because we are due to leave the ship at 6:15 on our evening excursion, so we stoke up on little sandwiches, desserts and tea

Another quiet day, although that is our choice.  There is plenty to do on this cruise ship every day, and many people take advantage of the activities available.  Except for Cathy’s Coffee Chat and Needlepoint activity, we don’t really.  I’m not at all certain why that is, but we still fill the days happily. The one event for this day that stands out is an anniversary party that we attend tonight in Horizons.  Mike and J

We have left Cochin, India, and so I chose a photo of an Indian family on one of the house boats we saw on the canals near Alleppey.  The Indian people are so friendly and so polite that I thought it represented what we experienced there. We have since rounded the southern tip of the country and have headed up through the strait the separates Sri Lanka from India.  From there we will cross the Bay

Insignia had a Continental Breakfast at Oscars event that began at 6:00am in Insignia Lounge. From what we hear, attendance was as disappointing as was the television viewer numbers. Disappointing for Hollywood; not so much for America. It’s nice to be so far away from all of them. Our day was pretty quiet. The only thing of note, and it was pretty special, is that we were invited to have dinner with Captain Maroje Brajcic. Every

We arrive in Cochin (locally called Kochi) and join the cruise ship World Odyssey at the dock. Today’s adventure is called Tranquil Backwaters, and it is a day spent in the maze of canals in and around the town of Alleppey, a town about fifty miles south of the city. Our day begins with another Immigration face-to-face meeting and paperwork event in Horizons, which actually goes fairly quickly. Again our paperwork is checked two or three

We slide into Mangalore pretty much on time. Cathy and I are going on the Highlights of Mangalore excursion to get a taste of this very busy, industrial city. Cathy is looking out at the city from our veranda , and then spies about a dozen cows on the dock. Yes, cows. Hmmm. Before we continue, a word of caution about these posts: India is a huge, complex, diverse place. We will touch two cities in

Some Sea Days are more eventful than others, and today would qualify as eventful.  It started off quietly enough, what with sleeping in until 6:30 (!) and then having breakfast.  Our room steward Slahvy (I have no idea how to properly spell his nickname, but this is how it’s pronounced) needs an opportunity to make up our room, so we head down to Deck 4 to hang out.  We often wander around after breakfast to give

We have been heading for this archipelago of twenty-six atolls for three days, and for three days, the question has been “Will the ship stop there?” The country has been under a state of emergency since early February owing to a political crisis. If you look up the country’s political history since independence in 1965, you begin to see that this is business as usual. Their politics reads like the food fight from the movie Animal