vacancyforbloggersBloggers meet here

Well, technically I’m already back in Singapore because you’ve to pay to blog on the computers on board the ship. Besides, given the short amount of time on board the ship, there’s really not much time for blogging. 

My friends and I started our cruise by meeting up at the Cruise Centre on Tuesday,  5th Sep at about 8.00pm.

We collected our boarding passes before proceeding to board the ship.

When we had finally got past the officials (who issued us access cards in exchange for keeping our passports) and boarded the ship, we made a hasty group from the group of Indians by deciding to climb from the 5th storey to the 9th storey where our cabins were, a decision made by Zhihui. So we huffed and puffed our way up and nearly died on the way because it was no mean feat to carry heavy luggages up so many flights of steps. Needless to say we had to endure weird looks from the other sane passengers on board the ship we unfortunately ran into on our hasty ascent. -_-” My arms ended up aching for the rest of the cruise. 

Our cabin turned out reasonably sized. It wasn’t as small and claustrophobic as I thought it would be. Here’s the best shot I have of it before we took over later on and messed it up.

After depositing our luggage and surveying our new sleeping quarters for the next two nights, we made our way to the Mediterranean Café for our buffet supper! Our first pig out session! The food was not too bad, especially the fish fingers and the delightful little slivers of cake that they put out for grabs. The variety was quite wide too. 

Here’s us finishing off our pig-out session. I think we were tucking into our 5th helping of food!

Afterward, we hurried to the Lido Theatre to catch a show “Kungfu Action”! And therefore missed the ship departing from Singapore because it left earlier than the expected time! ): 

So when we went out onto the deck to enjoy the sea breeze, the Superstar Virgo was already zooming past Sentosa and the rest of the southern islands. 

We returned out to the decks supposedly to admire the stars in the night sky but it was sadly too cloudy. 

So anyway, we paid a visit to the casino. It was definitely exciting to be old enough to be able to enter a real casino. Especially since casinos aren’t allowed in Singapore.

The casino was rather small and nothing like you see on TV and all. Firstly because it was a lot calmer. The gamblers were all calm and collected. Oh and it stank of cigarette smoke because so many people were smoking. 

Initially we just hung around watching the professional gamblers make their bets. It was definitely cool to get to watch some of the games real time. Later we moved on to the “big and small” areas. That’s the one with 3 dice, yea. I got quite traumatised after we watched this guy lose 1000bucks in the short span of a few minutes. And he just walked away puffing on his cigarette.

Oh well. We thought that was a poor way to use his money but whatever.

Therefore we refused to participate when the other two decided that they’d give it a go. It’s definitely more nerve-wrecking when you’re worried for your friends who are betting. In the end they had a success! They got a net return of 5bucks each after investing 20bucks. Not bad for first-time gamblers! 

Satisfied with their victory, we decided to return to our hotel rooms to retire for the night. Only we did not of course, retire that early. The four of us had to bathe and played a little card game before we decided to off the lights. We only got to sleep at 5am.

Thanks to our screwed up sleeping time, we woke up 2 hours later than initially planned at 9.30am. We didn’t respond when Zhihui’s alarm rang and with the absence of a window in our cabin (it’s an inside stateroom after all), we had no idea what time it was in the darkness of our cabin. So we also missed seeing Malacca, where the ship docked at for a short period of time from 7am to 9am. Oh well. Nothing lost I suppose.

We took almost an hour to fully rouse ourselves and get ready for a day out. 

The rest insisted on me brining my cake out for breakfast so we could eat it along with breakfast so yet again, the cake attracted a lot of weird stares. Some really nice strangers even wished me happy birthday when they saw me carrying the cake! (:

We arrived at the Mediterranean Café to find the whole place empty because we had just missed breakfast! Thanks to sleeping late and waking up late.

Thank goodness for my cake. It saved the day. One slice of chocolatey goodness each!

Then visited the activity room to play Jenga and “The Game of Life” before heading over to The Pavilion Restaurant for an early lunch since we were all of us starving.

Lunch wasn’t too bad especially the soup they served. Only it was quite weird having to share a table for 8 with two other strangers, who weren’t that bad because they were quite nice.

We returned to our cabin for a short after-lunch break during which Zhihui and Maryann took loads of unglamorous shots. Tsk. Oh and to pack up our room a little and prepare for an afternoon out in Kuala Lumpar.

We disembarked from the ship at Port Klang and joined our “tour group” for the day. We had previously signed up for the half-day shopping trip to Kuala Lumpur which included a stop at the Petronas Twin Towers followed by shopping in the Bukit Bintang district.

The bus ride into the city sure was long. The bus ride took almost an hour, during which all of us ended up falling asleep because the little amount of sleep we had the night before left us feeling really tired. It kind of reminded me of our secondary 4 geography trip to Malacca, this sleeping on the bus. And the jerky wobbly roads that I associate with Malaysia. 

When I awoke a good while later, nearing the end of our journey into the city, it was to be greeted by the sight of a tremendous downpour of rain from the blurry windows of the coach. Yes, thanks to global warming and all, Malaysia’s been having these unseasonal bouts of torrential rainfall. Nice. 

And therefore we didn’t manage to get off for our photo-shoot in front of the Petronas Twin Towers because it was quite impossible to do so. What a bummer. The only glimpse I had of the famous structure was through the windows of the coach which were drenched with rain. 

If you look very closely at this photograph you may be able to see something. Which is really only what I saw. Sigh.

KL was therefore having a massive traffic jam because of the storm. The bus dropped us under the monorail at the Bukit Bintang district. Only the pokness of the place meant there was no proper shelter. So I had to dig out my umbrella. Not like the umbrella helped because we jumped off the bus right onto a slightly flooded road. Therefore our jeans and shoes got very wet indeed. Plus, my friend jumps on my umbrella and as I noticed later, caused one of the spooks to bust. Nice.

Needless to say the shopping trip did not get off to a very comfortable start. We decided to shop at Sungei Wang because it was rumoured to have the best shopping bargains. 

As for the rest, they did buy quite a lot, from the fake Roxy shirts on sale for 15ringitt to some brandless tees which they found that they quite liked. Sungei Wang by the way, is rather like the kind of shopping complex Far East is in Singapore. Even the shop holders are mostly Chinese. Therefore it doesn’t really feel like shopping in Malaysia at all. Strangely, haha. Except for the parts where they tended to greet us in Cantonese. I supposed we can pass off for real Malaysian-Chinese. Shrugs.

Later, after the shopping spree was over, we treated ourselves to waffles from the waffle booth outside this huge shopping complex. The waffles with chocolate sauce and vanilla ice-cream were heavenly. And cheap too! 3.20ringitt each. That’s about $1.80 here in Singapore!

We hurriedly finished our waffles and caught the coach back to the ship because we didn’t want to be late for our planned dinner at the Bella Vista restaurant on board the ship. The ride back in the glow of the sunset was quite pleasant, talking to M about the unique Singaporean culture (how we are Chinese/Malay/Indian/etc. but our national language is English and we pretty much have trouble communicating in any other language) and TV dramas that we love.

Before we boarded the ship, we took a lovely photograph with our ship. Only I don’t suppose it turned out too well because my camera was having some kind of problem with the night function.

That’s a slightly blurred picture of the ship against the sunset.

Once on board the ship, we rushed back to our cabin, dumped our stuff and changed into more appropriate footwear for our dinner at the Bella Vista Restaurant. Dinner was delicious. I loved everything about it, the ambience and of course, the food. We did feel a little out of place at times because we were sitting in the midst of a whole lot of Caucasians  

Well, as I was saying the food was not too bad, except I thought the beef was a little too raw for Medium-well. 

We attended another performance at the Lido Theatre at 9pm, this one more interesting than the previous night’s performance because it involved dancing, acrobatics and a magic show! So it was really enjoyable. And the magic show really left us quite awed! It’s the first time I’ve seen a magic show live on such a big scale.

After the performance, all of us decided we wanted to pay another visit to the casino. This time round all of us chipped in to play the “big small” game once again. Alas, luck was not on our side tonight. All of us ended up losing $7.50 each. 

We decided we needed to drown our sorrows in food so we went for supper at the Mediterranean café. Whoops. We’re such pigs. And that was only about 2.5hours after we’d finished our dinner too. Tsk.

I admired the lovely night sky instead. The wind was great too although it made our eyes rather dry. And oh yea, there was the occasional blot of lightning way out at sea which made watching the night sky even more exhilarating. The stars were lovely. Perhaps they could have stood out even more clearly (since there weren’t any lights that far out at sea) if it wasn’t so cloudy out but I suspect the approaching storm made the skies a little clouded.

Anyway, we woke up later than planned again at about 8.30am so I missed seeing my sunrise. ):

Still, we did make it in time for breakfast, which we had planned to eat at Bella Vista. The breakfast was huge and good! And we got a table near the windows so we could enjoy ocean views while eating our breakfast! (:

After breakfast, we packed up and proceeded to pay our bills. Then while I shopped for souvenirs, the rest wanted to take photographs in front of the casino. After located my friends we went off for lunch at The Pavilion. We ended up sharing a table with this lady who turned out to be a compulsive gambler. I believe she practically does not disembark. She stays on the cruise the whole time to gamble. 

Finally it was time to disembark.  

So I’m home. Home sweet home. I’ve even finished unpacking which was tiring but it was definitely satisfying to get it all done! (:

Right now I’m trying to get back my “land legs” because I’m still kind of wobbling back and forth like I would on a ship! Haha.