Travail and tours

Hi. I have finally gotten to post. Joe has been using up the minutes taking care of the visa card business. The ship has not been very helpful. They won;'t take Paypal, or bill pay. They will only accept a money wire transfer. We have had Larissa drawing money out of our account and then will have her wire that from her bank to the Ociana hdqrs in Florida. what a mess. I don['t know what we would have done if wasn't around. Anyway, we are hoping this will work.

A few days ago we saw pods of dolphins... neat. We stopped in phuket. it is on the western side of Thailand up from Singapore. We went to a cashew nut factory. There is on nut in each fruit. very hands on..can't believe we can buy them for such a low price considering. later we went to a sea shell museum...saw some of the most beautiful shells i have ever seen. i was frustrated. We have always done all of our touring with OAT where you get a fair amount of free time to explore on your own. Here we were on a bus and we went where the bus went. i will know better next time and arrange our own tour ahead of time. Lots of people are doing this.

After Phuket we were in Burma. it was exciting. Tourism has only been open a few years. the guide says it grow by 20% each year. In Rangoon(Yangon) all of the building were old and very dirty. If you had the power wash company you would be a rich person. We went to the major temple  The Shwedogon.. there was a novitiate program going on for the new monks. Most of the young men of the country are a monk for a short period of their life. Some stay as short of time as three days or up to two weeks. Others stay longer. This ceremony involved all of the family members. The noviates were all dressed up as were the families. lots of picture taking. I asked and the guide said that everyone goes through this (probably expensive) ceremony whether they are going to stay 3 days to 5 years!

It was really hot and on the second day we were doing a lot of walking  i had had enough..the humidity was really getting to me. i think they said the temp was 101 and the humidity was 65%. After our walking we rode a small cart pulled by a horse. Then later we rode on a seat that was attached to a bike.. one person to the bike. Some of the tourist on this ship are quite large so don't know how they did.

There are lots of stupas and temples all over Burma  many more then even in Thailand. Even when were were in the capital we didn;t see any new buildings, especially like in Singapore.

The food on the ship has been incredible...have to take it easy. The time seems to just fly by. There is a retired Brit. army officer on board who gives lectures on all sorts of things. Today he did one on the Railway to Damascus. All of his lectures have slides so they are very interesting. There is also a guy on board who gives talks on photography and architectural.

Today we had a mandatory drill on evading kidnappers. We are to go to the inside hall and sit on the floor. Later in an elevator there was one of the main officers of the ship. I said something to the effect that i didn'[t think anything would happen as the Somali's haven't done anything for a long time. He agreed and said they also had extra security on board. Someone on the ship said he had heard they used Mossad from Israel.
Tonight we eat in one of the special restaurants  At night we try to shard a table..really meeting some nice people. yesterday afternoon i was stitching and waiting for a lecture to start. the team quiz program started while I was waiting. I gave them some answers and they invited me to join their team. Probably a good think as the team had only one American,. ..

the servers on the ship are from all over .Bulgaria, Ukraine  Phillipimnes, Burma, etc. No Americans. The servers work 11-12 hours per day....all are very nice and always greet you. it just be a tough life. I hope they get paid enough.

The sea has been relatively calm although Joe said when he gopt up today all of the water had sloused out of the pool during the night. This is our third sea day in a row. We are just noe rounding Sre Lanka. When we hit Colchin we will have four days of tours...Colchin, Goa and Mombai...I am missing one place.

Better close for now. Hope Larissa send the money soon. As you know when you take a cruise you have to present your credit card at the end to pay for your expenses on ship....We may be on here for life!!!
Love Barb