Day 54 Thursday April 30th (66 days to go) — We stayed on the ship again today for a couple of reasons. The first thing is that since it was the end of a month, we had a few things to do in the cabin like update the calendar and fix meds for the next month. Also, further down you will read about the experience that John and Joan had in Phuket yesterday. It convinced us to stay on the ship today as we did not have any excursions. Then, today at lunch Kevin and Holly told us about their experience in Phuket yesterday and it was more than enough to convince us to stay on the ship.
Tonight is the Captain’s Cocktail Celebration so the group of eight of us will meet before dinner and share the experiences of Phuket. All we have to share is our sunburns, but the other six have had some wild and exciting experiences in Phuket so this should be a fun night. Of course, I feel bad for anyone sitting near us.
Short video of Phuket from the ship today
A large Buddha that Jackie was able to capture with her iphone from the ship.
Phuket Big Buddha, or The Great Buddha of Phuket, is a seated Maravija Buddha statue in Phuket, Thailand. The official name is Phra Phutta Ming Mongkol Eknakiri (Thai: พระพุทธมิ่งมงคลเอกนาคคีรี; RTGS: phra phuttha ming mongkhon eknakhakhiri), shortened to Ming Mongkol Buddha. Sitting atop Nakkerd Hill (also spelt Nagakerd) near Chalong, construction began in 2004. Expansion of the base was ongoing as of 2015. By 2017, 80 percent of the project had been completed. It is the third-tallest statue in Thailand behind only the Great Buddha of Thailand and Luangpho Yai.
The Buddha statue depicts Gautama in a sitting position (Maravichai: มารวิชัย) and is 45 metres (148 feet) tall and 25.45 metres (83.5 feet) wide. It is made of concrete and covered with Burmese white marble. Facing towards Ao Chalong Bay the statue is the main Buddha of the Wat Kitthi Sankaram temple (Wat Kata). The statue was declared the “Buddhist Treasure of Phuket” by Somdet Phra Yanasangwon, the Supreme Patriarch of Thailand, in 2008.
The statue’s official name is Phra Phutta Ming Mongkol Eknakakiri (Thai: พระพุทธมิ่งมงคลเอกนาคคีรี), which means “The Cherished Auspicious Lord Buddha atop Nāga Hill”. The name is a blend of native Thai, Sanskrit, and Pali words – the first element Phra Phutta (Sanskrit varabuddha) means “Lord Buddha”; the second element Ming Mongkol means “cherished and auspicious”; the third element Eknakagiri (from Sanskrit/Pali ekanāgagiri) means “atop Nāga Hill”.
The statue cost 30 million baht (approx. US$950,000 in February 2019), sourced primarily from donations. It was built legally in a national conserved forest with the approval of Thai Royal Forest Department.
The Tiger Muay Thai tryouts notoriously concludes with a gruelling run up the Big Buddha hill.
Hard to believe that it was time to fill my monthly medication container for month #3 already. The first two months have flown by.
Updated the calendar for the month of May. You will see pink M on Tuesdays which means I need to take my weekly Malaria prevention medicine (Mefloquine) that day. Jackie will start her daily Malaria prevention medicine (Lemal) on May 10th in Madagascar although we might start her earlier if we can find some in Sri Lanka or the Seychelles. It has been a total shitshow with the Malaria prevention medication as the ship’s General Manager told everyone in an ATW group meeting that there is no concern about Yellow Fever or Malaria in the African countries. But, then we find out there was a need to get with the medical clinic to order Malaria prevention medication and a port agent in Singapore would supply the medication with a service charge of course and since you needed to see the ship physician first you would be charged for an office visit if you had a previous visit to the medical clinic. Total black-market operations in my opinion. I attempted to find some medication in Kuala Lumpur and I could have purchased some but had to wait 2-3 hours for delivery to the pharmacy. With only 4 hours in KL, we did not have time to wait for it to be delivered.
15 out of 31 days in May will be sea days. I still think they should have skipped all of western Africa and got us to western Europe like originally planned.
Since we did not get off the ship in Phuket, I decided to take photos of staff members as my Faces Around the World.
Ketan is the butler for our cabin. He is from Southern India. It is neat to hear his thoughts on the places he has visited. We take joy in hearing his excitement about being able to visit some of the ports. Ketan is always quick to respond to any of our requests. Like our assistant cabin steward Rohit, we are going to lose Ketan in Sri Lanka as he gets to go home. We are happy for him but have tried our best to convince him that he should remain until Miami.
This photo is Ivana. She is the chief cabin steward and lives in Serbia. She moved to our cabin in the first week as our first cabin steward’s contract was up and she departed from the ship. We absolutely love Ivana!! She is professional and also can be funny taking and giving jokes. We try to keep her happy with chocolate candy when we go ashore. The thing I will always remember about her is that we have hallway meetings and after a few minutes she opens the cabin door and says, “Mrs. Jackie can you come save me!” 🙂 When we had a third overnight stay on our own, she asked why do you stay away from the ship? I told her because hotel housekeeping is better than ship housekeeping. Right away she said Ugghhhh and opened the cabin door and asked Jackie to come outside and help her…laughing We are happy to know that we have her all the way to Miami.
Our other cabin steward is Rohit. He is from India and it has taken some time to break him in as he very seldom spoke at the beginning, just focused on doing his work. But, over the last six weeks we can get him involved with the hallway meetings and he has even made a few jokes which we have enjoyed as he is now more comfortable with us. Some good and bad news about Rohit though is the good news for him is that he goes home in a couple of days. He will fly from Sri Lanka to return home. The bad news is that we are losing him, but we are extremely happy that he gets to return home as it is very difficult for staff members to be away from home for such long periods of time. We will certainly miss him and have enjoyed the opportunity to meet him.
Khriza is the staff member who assigns tables in The Grand Dining Room. We are always greeted with a “Hello Mrs. Jackie and Mr. Lane”. When you walk up, she needs to know your cabin number, and I would always tell her, “You know it is upstairs by the elevator” and then Jackie steps in and says 11024. But Khriza has outsmarted me as she wrote down our cabin number and has it memorized. She is just super and always has a smile on her face even when things become hectic at the entrance to The Grand Dining Room and she is trying to accommodate passenger requests for certain tables.
Sang is a dining room steward. We have seen him in a number of places doing his job as a waiter. Again, always a smile and will stand and speak to us for as long as we like. He has good information about upcoming ports and will warn us if it will be very hot or rain for the day. If you look closely at his photo, you will see an Oceania tie clip. I have one like this from a few years back. So, when I wear it like tonight, the staff looks and wonders who I really am? 🙂
This is a photo of David and Marta taken from the excursion they did today. It was a motorboat visit to the island used in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die.
Captured a picture of them exiting the tender boat today after their excursion.
I also got a photo of John and Joan on their return from their excursion. I think they had to meet for their excursion at 6am or 6:30am this morning and returned to the ship after 3:00pm. We are hoping they had a much better day in Phuket than they did yesterday. They had issues with a taxi driver trying to charge them more than the price they had agreed upon. The driver locked the backseat doors and basically held them hostage. John laid back in the backseat and measured the distance to the backseat window and threatened to kick out the window. This convinced the driver that John was crazier than he looked and agreed to let them out. The scary part is that there was another man in the front seat of the taxi and if John had not threatened to kick out the window, there is no telling what outcome they could have had.
Dave took a photo of us sitting in The Grand Dining Room Lounge before dinner tonight. I think only Marta, Jackie and I knew he was taking this photo.
A couple of photos of the group at the dinner table tonight.
Tomorrow is a sea day and I think our plans for tomorrow are to do nothing. 🙂
