I should have started with a picture of a bus. The harbor in Bangkok is shallow and can only allow small ships to dock. Our ship only has 930 passengers but that is way too big. So we docked in Laem Chabang. Love that name! And we took a bus into the city of Bangkok. That took about 3 hours with heavy traffic.

Bangkok is the hottest city in the world. Its record cold temperature is something like 50 degrees and is at least 90 degrees most of the year. And very humid. They have many tropical fruits like dragon fruit and durian. But fruits we know like apples, cherries and pears are nonexistent. It is too hot to grow them.

We actually drove by several famous Buddhist Temples. All were explained. But of course I don’t remember the stories. We did get off the bus at this one so we walked around and took some good photos, saw many Buddhas etc.

But we could only look inside the Temple because there was a young man being questioned to become a monk. That is a very important ceremony for him.

We walked thru the flower market with all sorts of interesting flowers that we don’t know. And they make large braids especially of the yellow flowers.

There is also a section of the market that had vegetables. This photo was the bags of ginger. Can you imagine this amount of ginger.

But what depresses me the most about all of Thailand is the utilities. The wires and cables are everywhere. How they know where they are or where a break in the cable might be I will never know. What a snarled mess. And it is everywhere.

This is the Malaysian Coat of Arms. The tiger is the national animal much like our eagle for us.

The hibiscus is the national flower. There were many that we saw as we travelled.

And they even used the image of these flowers on many of the light poles. Cute.

We drove by the Blue Mosque. We didn’t get to go inside probably because it would take so much time. Shoes have to be removed and proper dress is mandated which means no shorts or bare arms. Plus our excursion had several other important stops.

There is a statue celebrating the victory in WWII. The artist was the same person who created the Iwo Jima statue in Washington DC.

Again Kuala Lumpur is like other Southeast Asia cities with many very tall buildings. We went up to the observation deck on the Telecom Tower. We walked all of the way around to see most of the city. The most famous and most photographed buildings are the twin towers. I got a better picture from the ground than from the observation deck.

The skypath (walkway between the two buildings) is at floors 41 and 42. That is about half way to the top. There are several buildings in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur that have these sort of walkways. I don’t really understand why.

So after a full day of driving around the city and stopping at a fancy hotel for a delicious buffet lunch we drove back to the ship. It started to rain almost as soon as we got on the bus. It was a monsoon rain. Amazing! By the time we got to one particular toll booth there was only one lane of the road that had water shallow enough to drive through. Notice the truck in waist high water. And stalled out! It took several hours to get back to the ship. But we never got wet. The rain stopped before we got off the bus.

By the way I had 3 different preparations of lamb at the restaurant.

We had a long but fun day in Singapore. Then we followed it up with an even longer day in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. So I got behind in my blog. Fortunately today we spend the entire day at sea. I will get caught up.

Singapore’s symbol is called the Merlion which is a large statue of a fish or mermaids tail with a lion’s head spouting water. This photo is not the symbol but is called the baby Merlion. A much smaller version. The real symbol was under scaffolding and being cleaned. Oh well. The photos on line look just like this except bigger and spouting water into the bay.

One of the oldest buildings in the harbor area is this building built in 1928 as a government building (post office, library and who knows what). But the most interesting part to me was the lighthouse on the top. It was used to guide ships into the harbor until so many tall buildings were built around it to block the light. So it was turned into a 5 star beautiful hotel. The city is all tall buildings. But the architecture is the craziest I have ever seen. Lets see some of that.

This is the most photographed building called the Marina Bay Sands. Everyone calls the top a ship. The 3 towers have multiple uses. we didn’t get inside and it costs a few dollars to take an elevator to the top. I would have paid had there been time.

Right near the marina was this twisted bridge. What was the architect thinking?

But even worse. Many of the tall buildings have character built into them. How does the elevator work from the ground floor to the top floor? Do you get seasick on the way up.

Singapore was extremely clean as I expected. People were very polite. It was so much nicer than Indonesia and definitely very prosperous. We drove by an International School but so quickly that I couldn’t take a photo. And we drove around the Chinatown and the cathedral areas so I am certain we were near to where the Schon’s lived. It’s not like Ankeny!

At 11 AM on Monday April 1 we crossed the equator and are now back in the Northern Hemisphere. I know. many will see this before 11 on April 1. You are just behind the times.

The ships crew who had never crossed the equator all went through the ceremony which included jumping in the pool and kissing the fish. This lady is one of the singers in the ship’s company. She wasn’t too excited with her opportunity.

Leaving the ship in Indonesia was always interesting because of the traditional entertainment provided on the dock. Music and dancing always.

But the air quality and the commercial shipping view in Jakarta took away a lot of the glamor. This was a sunny day and very hot. You can’t tell by the photo.

Jakarta urban area is the second largest urban area in the world only beaten by Tokyo. There are over 30,000,000 people living here. And I swear every one of them was on the road yesterday (Saturday). We took an excursion to see the highlights of the city. There were very few in my opinion. We saw the government buildings, a large Mosque, the Catholic Cathedral, and Liberty Square. It was planned as a 3 hour excursion. As we left the last site we were just past 3 hours. Since we were late the guide told the driver to take a short cut. Yea! That worked well. The road was blocked so we had to find a place to turn around. Eventually we got back to the ship at 5:30 which was 1 1/2 hours late.

Liberty Square is basically just a statue celebrating their independence from The Netherlands. It was okay.

Sunday morning we took a shuttle bus to a shopping mall close to the harbor. We have been to Mall of America and Mall of Norway (in Flam Norway). But how about Mall of Indonesia. The mall was huge and gave us an opportunity to walk. Our excursions are mostly bus rides with some walking at specific venues. This was free time. But the Mall had far more food vendors than stores. And the large stores were more like Target than like large department stores. There were large numbers of small clothing stores, bed stores, luggage and even kids rides.

But the one that blew my mind was ACE. It was 3 floors. It had tools of course, but also clothes, kitchen stuff, lighting. It was the biggest store in the complex. I almost bought a hand drill just because I could.

Early on our voyage there were pistachio cookies as a dessert. I had one at dinner and brought a couple back to the room. They were great! But then we kept looking for them again. About 30 days later we didn’t have them again. So last night Kathy saw the chef and asked why. She told me she talked with him. What she didn’t tell me was that he asked her what our stateroom number is. 3038.

At about 9 PM there was a knock on our door. The staff brought a plate of 6 cookies for me. They were still warm. Yum! No, I did not eat them all. Matter of fact I only ate one that night.

Okay, I got a few days behind with my blogs. Full day excursions especially in the heat and humidity meant I spent much less time at my computer.

Borobudur is the largest Buddhist Temple. It is also the most visited tourist spot in Indonesia. Even more than Bali. We walked the entire temple. The guide told us the story which was somewhat interesting but way too complicated to remember. I did remember that it has three layers. The bottom is for desire and the top was Nirvana. 9 is an important number for Buddhists. The middle layer has 432 buddhas. 4+3+2 = 9. The top layer has 72 buddhas. Also a 9. And if 432 and 72 are added it is 504. Again 5 + 0+ 4 = 9. Lots of buddhas.

This temple was so far from the port of Semarang and there were 6 bus excursions from our ship. We had a police escort for the buses. We never stopped at red lights. There were police directing traffic on the roads to get us through. It still took 3 hours of driving each way. This time it rained at 5. We got back to the ship at 6. And it had stopped raining by then.

Surabaya is the second largest city in Indonesia. It’s symbol is the shark attacking the croc. Supposedly both died in the attack and the city was built over the two bodies. Even though it is a large city built right in the ocean with millions of people, there is no swimming. It has the most crocs anywhere in the world.

We were greeted at the dock with music and dancing. Actually there has been music in every port in Indonesia. These dancers were a bit unusual so I took some pictures.

So we took a fairly simple excursion to the market. Traffic. Everyone drives a motor bike. In and out of cars and buses. It was crazy.

And then we walked through the outdoor market in the blasting heat and humidity. It was very crowded. The flies were more numerous than the people. It was really great fun even though we couldn’t buy anything.

It also seemed like everywhere we went there were beautiful flowers. I took photos of orchids just growing on the side of trees. This thing whatever it was. And there were many bushes with yellow flowers. Again I have no idea what they were.

We got back to the ship at 4:30. The rain came down in buckets at 5. Lucky for us.

We sat at breakfast with some of our new Canadian friends, Rosemary and Bob. After some coffee, Kathy decided to get a plate of tropical fruit to try. Most we are not familiar with.

Somehow Bob and I thought her plate seemed to be looking at her. With just a little bit of reorganization it was proven to be looking. We laughed so hard that other servers came to look. Many took pictures. Then other passengers from other tables took pictures. Breakfast was a hoot!

Yesterday we were in Senggigi. I took a couple pictures but won’t share them with anyone. That was the filthiest city I have ever seen. And it looked like the unemployment rate had to be well over 50%. All afternoon people were just sitting around doing nothing. Meanwhile there was trash on the ground and in the streams everywhere. This was a very Muslim region of Indonesia. There was a Mosque every kilometer it seemed. They were mostly well decorated but many had severe earthquake damage from last August. Enough! On to Bali.

Bali is very much a resort area. Lots of beaches, boating and summer sports.

Last year we saw the Italian Hydro Fly Championship in Puglia, Italy. This year we got to watch a least some Hydro Fly in Indonesia. I don’t think it was any competition. Just for fun. Plus there were many parasailing boats. All kind of fun. And clean!

Our excursion was to visit the Arts and Crafts area. So we drove through some of the region which is very Buddhist. The architecture was completely different from yesterday. We stopped at a wood carver where we could watch them carve – boring. Or we could look through there shop to buy something. It was beautiful but very expensive. We bought nothing. Then we went to a Batik Fabric Factory. We could watch them sort of showing how the fabric is prepared using wax prior to dying the cloth. Too difficult to explain unless you are into Batik Fabric. Then we went into their shop and bought. So we have 4 one meter pieces of fabric.