Penang, Malaysia

To make up for spending my last port in Malaysia at a mall, today I went on the "Grand Penang Tour." It was a really well done tour, and if it got back a bit late I was in no hurry since I had a night off to look forward to!

We started out visiting the Mansions of two Chinese millionaires who lived here more than a century ago. The houses were of course, lavish, beautiful, and filled with expensive antiques. The second one we saw, the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, recently won a major UNESCO World Heritage award for best project, regarding the major restoration some private investors put into the building a few years back.

After the mansions, we visited two contrasting temples, both Buddhist, but one Thai style and one Burmese. The Thai temple has the 4th largest reclining Buddha in the world, and yes, it was big. It was really interesting to me to see the urns of people's ancestors displayed in cupboards in the walls, like small gravestones stacked on one another along all the walls. Apparently, the higher up your ashes are placed, the more expensive the "plot."

We had a great lunch at the Golden Sands beach resort and some time for photos there, then our next stop was the Penang Butterfly Farm. I saw a sign claiming it was the first live tropical butterfly farm in the world...could it be true? Who wants to google it for me? :-) Anyway I love butterflies so enjoyed having a bit of fun with my camera. Next we headed on a drive around the island (about 800,000 population), with stops at a spice stall and a local village. It was really a great day and I enjoyed myself. I love feeling like I've picked the best tour. :-)
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Port Kelang, Malaysia

This port is the docking point for guests to access Kuala Lampur, the capital of Malaysia, with its famous twin towers (think Entrapment). I wasn't lucky enough to have time to get there, as it is nearly two hours each way. Instead I got off the ship with two of my friends, Ash and Eddie, English guys who work as stage technicians. We took the shuttle bus that was offered from the terminal, and it dropped us off at a really nice mall. Now there were all kinds of stores that I recognized, and plenty of ones I didn't. We went shopping in their grocery store, I tried a few local pastries (one, a roll with red bean in it, was pretty good and interesting). We saw a starbucks, but opted for the road less traveled, and did a bit of internet catch-up in a coffeeshop packed with Malaysian people. We got a few stares, but it was nice to try their food and relax. I had a potato curry. A few hours later, before we left the mall, I managed to eat again. We decided to check out the food court, where all the options were very decidedly Asian, the one thing very distinct from an American mall. I had a big plate of noodles and veggies. We passed a movie theatre in the mall, and I was tempted to take the time out to see a film and feel a bit like I was at home, but ended up doing quite a lot of wifi instead. As a nice surprise, I was able to skype my parents!!

We hurried back in the early afternoon as I had a reahearsal to get to (the reason why I couldn't get out to Kuala Lampur). We had a little hallway party each eating our cupcake from the box of 3 we had found for 5 Ringitts, less than $2.
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Singapore

Today I decided to tackle this brand new city on my own, without the aid of a tour. Jane and I took public trans into the downtown area of Singapore, and conquered their subway, or MRT here. Not to be confused with Hong Kong's MTR, the MRT is similarly easy to use. We walked around the city a bit and took photos of some of the amazing buildings. A visit was made to the famous Raffles Hotel, where their signature drink, the 'Singapore Sling', will set you back $26 singapore dollars (about $20 USD). Jane and I split one. It has 8 different ingredients, I can't remember them all, but one of them is definitely gin. There are plenty of yummy fruit juices too, so it tastes pretty good. After Raffles we walked along the main road of Orchard Grove for a while. On our way back to the ship we made a stop in Chinatown where I nearly got talked into buying an unlocked iPhone.

My overall impression of Singapore is that there is definitely so much more to see, I hardly scratched the surface of the city. It is clean and organized and interesting. I hope I come back someday!
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Ko Samui, Thailand

Ko Samui is actually a small island in southern Thailand. I was able to go on another tour today, which I really enjoyed. We had two leisurely stops at two different temples to admire the architecture and culture there. One temple was outdoor, and you climbed up steps toward a huge Buddah image - the place is literally called "Big Buddah Temple". Next we went to a complex of temples that our guide informed us were more Chinese in style, and they were stunning. They has been built on the fringes of a lake, and the setting was really beautiful. In both places we had a lot of time to wander and take photos of everything, it wasn't rushed at all.

The highlight of the tour was a visit to a coconut plantation, coconuts and their products being the main export in Ko Samui. At the plantation we observed a demonstration of coconut picking - by trained monkeys! Each monkey takes 5 months to train, at the end of which they scurry up the trees, take the coconut in their hands and/or feet, and spin it around until it comes loose from the stem and falls to the ground below. It was fun to watch!

When the tour was over, I took a little time to walk around the port area and explore a little bit. At my guide's recommendation, I went to a certain restaurant in town for lunch. It was wonderful food! I had pad thai with tofu, and some fried rice with pineapple and raisins in it. And a mango drink that was to die for. I was told that the time for mangoes is only 2 months of the year, March being one of them, and that they just don't taste as good other times of year. I can definitely vouch for this smoothie being amazing, and I really enjoyed eating the couple of mangoes that I bought in a market. They really do taste great when they are fresh, local, and in season! Yum.

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Bangkok, Thailand

For anyone who might be wondering, I've skipped blogging about our stops in Vietnam, since I didn't actually get a chance to go ashore. In Chan May, heavy fog prevented us from docking at all, so the day became a sea day. In Phu My, the port for Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon), I had port manning, so stayed on board and had a rather productive day instead. Cleaning and laundry, etc.

So now on to Thailand! Yes, I have been to Bangkok before a couple of times, but that didn't stop me from hopping on another tour since I had the time. We docked in Laem Chabang, which is about a 2 hour drive to Bangkok, Thailand's capital. My tour was called "Highlights of Bangkok", and was a little less heavy walking that the others, and saw some different places. We visited a couple of beautiful temples, and a Pavilion and grounds of the cremation and burial for Thai royalty. We had a lovely lunch at the Siam City Hotel, and did some shopping as well. I got to see a few things I hadn't seen before. Unfortunately, something was amiss with my bus, and we had to switch it out and wait for another one. We were back to the ship an hour and 15 minutes late, and I missed my rehearsal. Luckily my boss was very understanding, and the rehearsal was only a run of one of the 15 minute cast bumpers that kicked off the show. This particular one is a tribute to Swing music, and I must admit that I absolutely love it. Love the music, love the dancing, even get chills a couple times during it. It is definitely my favorite thing that we back up the cast on. I really play my heart out on it.
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Hong Kong

Its been three years since I visited this amazing city, which is really hard to believe. It is still just as vibrant and exciting, crowded and polluted, and cosmopolitan. On my first day I caved in and took my begging friend Jane to Hong Kong Disneyland. I wouldn't have bothered to go again, but she really wanted to, the crew tour was cancelled last minute, and she wasn't comfortable to get there by myself. So I became the tour guide. We had a great time, laughing ourselves silly over Mickey and Goofy speaking Chinese, and the antics of our guide and fellow passengers on the jungle cruise. I had some great Japanese and thai food for lunch in the park, something that would never happen at the park in SoCal, and the entrance fee is only about $50 USD. Of course it sounds like a lot at HK$399, but we had to get over the fear that the prices visually instill. What else...well I completely destroyed Jane at Buzz Lightyear AstroBlasters, proud to say. :-)

We had to head back to the ship to work in the afternoon, but after the show Jane and I headed out again to meet my friends in Hong Kong. Unfortunately several are out of town, but two were still around. We had dinner at the Chinese equivalent of Denny's (open 24 hours, decent prices, average food), then went out for drinks nearby. We stayed out late enough that we had to take a cab back (trains had stopped running). One of my friends speaks fluent Chinese, and it was really handy to have him around all night!!

The next day we did a bit more shopping, explored a bit and experienced the night market before we headed back to make the ship before midnight sailaway. I did more shopping than I meant to, and my bargaining skills need work. But it was a lot of fun, Hong Kong is so easy to get around once you are comfortable with the MTR (subway), its really easy to use, there are trains constantly, everything runs fast and makes sense.

Once again, my friends tried to convince me to move here, certain they can find me work as a trombonist. We'll see...I've promised to put some kind of a demo reel together anyway just for fun, see if there's anything out there. Another succesful visit to the crazy city/state of Hong Kong!
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Kota Kinabalu

Kota Kinabalu is in Borneo, Malaysia. So this port made for a brand new country for me! I went on a tour in the morning. We visited the Tun Mustapha tower, a very interesting designed building, and the tallest in the area. Kota itself in the its own flight path, so no tall buildings are allowed downtown. We drove past some very interesting and ornate mosques, and then visited the Sabah Museum. One neat thing they had there was a heritage village, with typical tribal houses. We saw a 'skull hut', reminiscent of the head hunting days. It was considered a show of strength to cut off your enemy's head. We saw many weapons in the museum for just this purpose, but also saw some neat costumes and musical instruments. In the heritage village, I got to try a blow-dart gun. I hit the target board!!

After the tour I took the shuttle bus back into town, and met up with my friends Jane and Dave for lunch. We had Japanese-style "shabu shabu", where you make your soup yourself at your table. It was a really interesting new experience for me, though not exactly typically Malaysian. Afterwards I did some wandering and got a massage, which are very cheap in Asia in general. I also tried a "satay style" donut, basically like a donut kebab. Awesome.
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Tours of a different kind

On this long stretch of sea days on our way to Malaysia, the Personnel manager took the initiative to offer crew tours to some areas of the ship that are normally off-limits. This is something I never got a chance to do here last year, the timing never worked out. Today I got to go and see the brigde, with a few of my friends from the stage staff and dancers. I have seen the bridge on several of my past ships, but this is definitely the newest and most technologically advanced I've ever visited. It was neat to learn about the different controls. I also learned that the bridge officers have a collection of signs they put up for the sunbathers on the crew forward deck, things like "turn over now", "looking good", "get down off of there, you aren't allowed on the railings", go inside, its dangerous conditions now", "do you come here often", and "will you marry me". I also got to get a picture in the captain's chair wearing a rather official-looking hat.

While the bridge tour was very cool, it was definitely trumped by my tour of the engine room, something I've never ever done before. I was completely stunned by the sheer size of the area that is taken up by the engines, it runs the whole length of the ship and is actually really open. I guess I always envisioned really small hot spaces here and there that weren't really connected with each other. Well, I wasn't wrong about the 'hot' bit, but the engine rooms are huge, so much bigger than I expected. I was duly impressed. Yuri, one of the Scottish engineers, led the tour. I was very interested the learn that strictly speaking, we don't have propellers. We have impellers, which pull us throught the water. Amazing. I can also see why guests aren't allowed in the engine spaces, we had to climb down a few very steep stairways and even up an escape ladder (awesome!!).

Through both these tours, I loved learning more about how this ship works. The magnitude of everything involved is just incredible. Happy to be a part of it!
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Port Douglas

This little resort town in hot and tropical Northern Queensland, Australia, is accessed via tender boats for ships like ours. A couple dozen crew were up early by 7am to try to catch the first tender. We were lucky and got one by 7:30, ashore before 8am. We didn't have big plans for the day, which made for a really nice feel to our time in port. We really got to take our time to properly explore the main street of town. First the walk into town, then a leisurely morning coffee at Origin Espresso and a bit of internet catch-up whilst there. I got my favorite, a soy "flat white", probably closest to our latte (have I blogged this before??). After our coffee we walked all the way through town to 4 Mile Beach at one end of town. We were suitably impressed by the numerous warning signs for jellyfish, sharks, and, yes, saltwater crocodiles. Yikes....we decided against swimmimg, even in the netted-off area allocated for that purpose. Instead we enjoyed a walk along the beach, and then up a few steps of a trail to a lookout point on the coast.

Back in town we did some leisure shopping at our whim, stopped for ice cream, did our essentials shopping at the grocery store, and having walked past every restaurant in town were able to chose the most affordable one, which had great food. While the others went into a few last souvenir stores, I ran ahead back to our morning coffee place to enjoy one last Australian flat white before leaving the country that afternoon. It was a wonderful day, spent with friends (Jane, Eddie and Dave), and was so relaxing.

The relaxation ended there, as once on board I had to run up to the outside deck for a sailaway dixieland set. We were in full sun in about 100 degree heat...suffice it to say we were sweaty miserable messes before we had even started playing. Luckily no one passed out, though several of us came close. The deck was virtually empty of guests, but for a few appreciated and encouraging ones sheltering in the few spots of shade. We survived....we were promised it would never happen again. Whew...reminded me of a bad day at drum corp. The nice thing was that we had the night off after that one set, so went out to dinner in the Lido.
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Brisbane

I promised a post for every port, so I reckon I should write something for Brisbane even though I had IPM all day. We did a crew drill in the morning, and then we IPM card holders had to man the pax drill for embarking guests, of which we had a couple hundred. Cunard seems to be much more flexible about arrival and depature dates, not nearly as prepackaged with their itineraries as other companies I've worked for. As a result the ship is rarely completely full to capacity.

While we were docked here I reminisced about the last time I was here - my friend Tim and I explored the South bank of the city and rode the big ferris wheel there. Tim was underwhelmed by it, I enjoyed the views of the city. And a previous Brisbane my friend Beau and I went to a chinese massage place, and Target. This time....well I did laundry and read a book. Very relaxing!
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Sydney

This might be a long post...

I got up early to watch our arrival into Sydney harbor - I was outside by 5:45am and surprised by how warm the air was already. A couple dozen crew slowly assembled to watch the sail-in, and the sky gradually lightened and took on some beautiful colors as we passed the opera house, the sun finally rising as we docked. It was gorgeous, I am so glad I got up for it.

A nap and a shower later I was out and off the ship for my main Sydney adventure - doing the Harbor Bridge Climb. This is something I've always been interested in doing, but never had gotten around to it. So this time it was do or die! I might not have made it happen, but I found a friend of mine here who was also keen to go, so we were each other's motivation. Simon is one of the singers on board, one of my good friends. We had an awesome time doing the climb together, and it was so worth it. By far the best thing I did in Sydney. We were both so glad we did it, and grateful to have found a buddy to do it with. We were really lucky and had beautiful weather, which degenerated later after our cl imb into a rain that was unrelenting for the rest of our 2-day stay in Sydney. But we got sunshine for our views of the harbor, city, and opera house. Such an amazing experience! It is expensive, but I do recommend it. Worth it!

In the afternoon I met up with some friends of mine, a trombone-playing couple that I had met on the Rhapsody and even visited last year during my traveling in Australia last year. I gave them and their visiting cousins a tour of the ship and got to play hostess for the afternoon, which was fun. They stayed for the show. It was great to catch up with them.

Later that night I went out on the town for a little bit. I enjoyed the ambience at an expensive sushi bar with my friend Bryan (our tenor sax player), and then met up with Viktoria the dancer at a very busy and fun salsa nightclub. It was a great night, we hid from the rain and enjoyed ourselves.

On the second day Jane and I headed to the Powerhouse Museum, which highlights art, space, and transport exhibits. Before you become too impressed with how cultured we are, let me reveal that the real reason we went there was to see the special Harry Potter exhibition that is there temporarily. And the kicker? We both wore Hogwarts house shirts, me Griffindor and her Slytherin, that we had bought at a comic book store in Melbourne. We are so cool. It was actually a really neat exhibition though, very well done. We saw all the clothes, props, and actual wands from the films. The wands were actually my favorite part - in the films you don't notice how detailed and unique each one is, but close up they are really cool and different from each other.

We picked up some Uggs for Jane at Paddy's markets, the same place where I got mine last year. I knew they'd be better priced there than near the port. We stopped for the obligatory Pancakes on the Rocks before getting back on board. On my break between rehearsal and the shows I got out one more time to enjoy being in Sydney, having dinner and a coffee (and some internet) at the quayside cafe called the City Extra.

Later that night we bravely went out on deck for the sailaway, despite the wind and rain. We were all soaked by the time we passed the opera house. But even in the rain its a nice sight! I always enjoy Sydney. Hopefully it won't be too long before I'm back!
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Melbourne, Australia

What a beautiful city! I had forgotten how much I love this place. The streets are clean and open, there is a beautiful riverfront area, gorgeous buildings, great food, music and coffee. Jane and I made our way into town on tram 109 - it was really nice to know my way around and be familiar with how the port works, so I felt comfortable and confident getting in and out of town.

Once in town we had a wander around what's known as the CBD (central business district), the U.S. Equivalent would be maybe downtown or city center. All the Aussie and Kiwi cities refer to it as the CBD. We hit some shops that interested us, and I revisited the awesome coffee shop my old buddy Nick from the Rhapsody had showed us. It was really nice to see everything again, and instead of wanting to see new things, I found myself drawn to those places and sights which were familiar to me and held pleasant memories.

For lunch I decided to go on a mission to find a good vegetarian place, as it really is that kind of town. Jane was game to check one out with me, but it turned out most places in the CBD were closed due to it being a Sunday. Finally the barista at Brother Baba Budan (awesome coffee shop) told me that there was a "wicked" place called the Vegie Bar on Brunswick Street if we had access to public trans and could get a ways out of town. Luckily our tram tickets were "Sunday Savers", good all day. So we ventured out there and succesfully found it eventually, despite missing several trains while looking desperately for a pit stop for Jane. The Vegie Bar was a really big place, full of very bohemian and hipster types, mostly 20's and 30's I'd guess. It was packed, and for good reason - the food was incredible. What a find! Best meal I've had in a while. The whole street and area around the restaurant looked really neat, we wished we had time to explore it. Jane had to rush back to print, so I helped her find the right tram, then made my own way back a bit more slowly, extending my day in the city as long as possible. I sat on a boardwalk near the ship, drinking an orange juice and soaking in my last 20 minutes ashore.
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