Yesterday we were in Phuket, Thailand and finally we felt well enough to get off the ship. We totally missed Bangkok and Singapore. We knew we wouldn't be up for Bangkok so canceled a few days in advance and changed to a less grueling day but even so we didn't feel up to it. The weather was very hot and unbelievably humid. We heard from other people that the bus ride to Bangkok was even longer than the expected three hours. One of the problems of being on a big ship such as the Queen Mary two is that you can never get close to the city you want to go to.
Missing Singapore was more disappointing. We did actually make it off the ship but after standing in the hot sun for about 15 min. waiting for the tour bus we realized we were not up for.
We did learn some interesting facts about Singapore. They have very strict laws that are rigorously enforced. It is illegal to chew gum. It is illegal to jaywalk. You will be fined or arrested if you do these things and they have plainclothes police all over the place. It is also illegal to criticize the government.
I know these laws would not have affected us as we don't usually chew gum and we would be on a guided tour so not likely to jaywalk but it does make you nervous that you might break some other law by mistake!
Our Singapore tour was free from the mariner club so we were not out any money. It wasn't even what we were very interested in being mostly about "Feng Shui". A little information about this subject would be fine but as dad would say they were giving us 40 pounds of jellybeans. For those of you who have never heard of this, it is the philosophy that how you place material things in your life has an effect on you. For instance the back door in your house should not be directly opposite your front door because you're good luck would come in the front door and immediately leave by the back door. The ease Eastern religions seem to be very big on good luck. At the shrine in Japan I told you about all they pray for is good luck.
Okay, so much for what we missed. Phuket was interesting and fun. We went to a set ferry Park and you can see from the pictures that we had an elephant ride although I realize there are no pictures of us on the elephant. Actually they took a picture of us but we forgot to go and look at it. All I can say is it would be a very uncomfortable way to travel any distance as you really roll around. We also saw an elephant show and a monkey show. An interesting thing about the monkey is that they are actually used commercially to get the coconuts off the trees. After we left this ferry Park we went to the most famous temple on the island-see pictures. The beehive structure is where they light firecrackers-very loud bangs. We missed the explanation of why they do this. Perhaps it is to call the gods.
The picture of all the shoes in front of the temple is to show that you have to take off your shoes if you go into the temple.
After the Temple we went to a very fancy hotel for a wonderful meal. Dad really enjoyed the Thai cooking but what I totally pigged out on was the dessert buffet-absolutely awesome! (Today is going to have to be a no sugar day).
After lunch they took us to a shopping center for about half an hour but the only interesting thing about this was that you went in one door and had to go through the whole place to get out again-you were reword for doing this by free drinks at the end in a comfortable place to sit.
Back on the bus we drove through the town of Pattaya on and got off the bus at that time beach. This is the place that had the terrible tsunami a few Christmases ago. Our ship was anchored offshore and although the weather had improved considerably we could see a huge black cloud over the ship and it looked like a storm is coming right for us. There were about 500 people waiting for the tenders to take them back to the ship. We had to stand in line on a long floating pier. Dad put on the plastic poncho you saw us wearing in the pictures (he bought those in York, England years ago and never use them. They came back with all our stuff when we sold the English house and I had just tossed them in at the last minute when we packed for the cruise). The wind and rain were tremendous when the storm hit but there were sections of the peer that had awnings over them and the rain was warm and kind of refreshing.
We now have two days at sea before we get to Cochin, India so we will relax and just enjoy ship board life. We do have a lecture this morning on India but if we don't feel like going to it we can catch it later on the TV and our room. There is another lecture this afternoon on political jokes. That should be funny.
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