Day 24 Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Today’s excursion through the ship was to visit Ream National Park in Sihanoukville (See-HAN’-uk-vil), Cambodia.

We had our usual early start (6 am wakeup, 6:45 breakfast, 7:45 am meeting in the Stardust Theatre) and boarded our bus to our destination about 8:30 am.  Our guide, Ray, spoke excellent English and shared all kinds of information about Cambodia.  I took notes on my phone and ordinarily would double check the information (on Google or with English signs) before sharing on my blog, but sadly my Asia e-sim card doesn’t seem to work in Cambodia and I am down to 18 minutes of internet coverage with the ship.  So I will share unvetted information today!

 

Cambodia has the Riel for currency (which we could not purchase in advance in Canada).  I now know why – 80% of the currency exchanged in Cambodia is the US dollar. Only 20% of workers get paid in Riels.   $1 US is equivalent to 4,000 Riel. Cambodia has a population of 17 million people and 2 million of them work in the textile industry (the ladies were happy to support that textile industry at the end of the day by buying a selection of silk scarves!)

 

Sihanoukville was built in 1955.  That was the year the King decided to build a deep sea port (where we docked).  Because Cambodia is a developing country, you can buy land first and build on it later.

 

Our first stop was at the Statue of Love, built in 2022. The statue height was 21 m tall with another 6 m for the pedestal.

 

Our second stop was at the God Shiva Statue with his wife Parvati by his side

 

 

We then headed to Ream National Park, established in 1993, the year Cambodia got their independence back. 

 

We got to walk to the boat launch area through some beautiful beach scenery.

 

 

We boarded a little motor equipped with one captain and seated just the four of us!

 

 

We floated down the river amongst the mangroves for about 25 minutes.  J saw one kingfisher and one yellow bird.  No other wildlife was spotted!

 

We arrived at a shelter made of palm fronds, where we disembarked.  We then walked along a boardwalk for about 15 minutes where the bus picked us up.

 

On our drive back to the ship, we stopped at a Giant Tree, which was thought to be 2,000 years old.  It didn’t look as big as the Sitka Spruce on Vancouver Island – so we didn’t bother to pose for a picture with it!

 

Once back at the ship, we were delighted to see a couple of little stalls at the ship where they were selling souvenirs.  The silk scarves were attractive and well priced!

 

We played Five Crowns in the Spinnaker Lounge after dinner (Deck 12 Forward) and appreciated the “Jazz Meets Latin with Sun Showband” instrumental music being performed in the background.  After our two games, Jessica had a hankering for some ice cream so we went to the buffet on Deck 11.  In addition to ice cream, J and Lynn shared a crepe and they all shared some freshly carved roast lamb!  Pass!  No thanks.

 

It was a fun evening!  We learned that going to pick up tender tickets 20 minutes after they started distributing them, meant we collected tickets for tender number 7 in Ko Samui tomorrow!!

 

Just three more nights on the ship and our cruise will be done.  It has been lovely.

Day 23 At Sea

One of the challenges of preparing for four weeks at sea is being aware of what electrical plugs are available on your ship.  J dismissed my concerns about this and said – they always have 110 Volt plugs (typical North American plugs) on ships.  My spidey senses were working overtime when I chose to buy an international adaptor the night before we flew to Asia. I knew the adaptor would be helpful when we Taiwan and Thailand at the start and end of the trip where we would be staying in hotels.  What I didn’t appreciate was how essential the international travel adaptor would be on the ship.

 

On the Norwegian Sun we have one 110 volt plug at the desk in the room and two 220 volt plugs.  Beside the bed you can also find two USB – A plugs – now the old style of USB’s which most iPhones don’t use anymore.  Phones in the last few years have been moving to the smaller, universal USB-C plugs.  There is a convertible plug from 110 to 220 V in the bathroom for razors that we never use. For the record we are in an Oceanview room, but the same electrical plug configuration seems to be the same in the verandah staterooms.

 

This is the PlugBug 120 international adaptor made by twelve south and purchased at my local Apple store – it has four USB-C ports.  Three are constantly in use (one for my computer, one for my anker charger that chargers my phone and my watch overnight and one for my recently purchased power bank).  J uses the one North American plug for his phone charger.  If I hadn’t purchased the adaptor – charging electronic devices would have been much more stressful.  I could have brought my very inexpensive extension cord that could have saved grief too!

 

The Norwegian Sun is an older ship that is slated to be sold off in 2027.  I don’t recall the same limitations for electrical plugs on the Norwegian Prima when we sailed it in 2023.  So if you are going on a cruise in the future, you might want to try to investigate what kinds of plug ins exist on the ship on which you are sailing, so that you are prepared!

 

On this hot day at sea, J, Jessica and I all went for a walk around the ship on Deck 6 for fresh air and exercise.  We followed it up with trivia in the Bliss Lounge at 9:15 am.  J was too modest to say we deserved the win with only 17 answers, because we had seen the questions on the last cruise, but on the last cruise we only got 9 correct!  The next best team got 16 questions correct!

 

The bridge players had a game in the library at 10 am.  I went up on deck 11 to enjoy the warmth and drink a hot chocolate.  Many others were using all the pool deck chairs today – and deck chair saving was in full force!

 

Then I had a lovely face/audio call with our oldest son JG and showed him the Thai silk shirt we bought for him.  It will coordinate perfectly with an outfit he has planned for a wedding in March!  Mother’s intuition!

 

After lunch we went to the room and we both promptly had a nap – and then J struggled with getting our Thailand Digital Arrival card updated.  It has been a challenge – because you need to identify all the countries you visited in the past 14 days (and that has been a lot for us).  You have to know abbreviations for all the countries (that are not necessarily intuitive) – and the drop-down menus on the website were not working – so the process took him a patient hour to complete Thai Arrival cards for both of us.

 

The four of us played Five Crowns in the library at 4 pm.  We then had our second specialty restaurant meal of this cruise at Los Lobos, the Mexican restaurant.  Jessica got GF corn tortillas, which she was craving yesterday. I loved the guacamole, made tableside.  J’s favourite part was probably the decaf coffee he ordered at the end which turned out to have tequila and kahlua in it!  Best coffee of the cruise!  I am not sure what Lynn liked best – but we were all glad to eat here!

Lynn retired to their room while J, Jessica and I had one more quick game of Five Crowns.

 

Tomorrow we have our one and only stop in Cambodia – so we headed back to the room to make sure we were organized for the early morning once again.

Day 22 Cam Ranh, Vietnam

We awoke at 6:15 am to find we were pulling into port and the Holland America Westerdam was already docked in Cam Ranh, Vietnam.  Usually, the Norwegian Sun is the only ship in port so seeing a HAL ship was a surprise. 

 

Cam Ranh was a deep port and as such acted as a military operations base during the Vietnam war.  As we disembarked from the ship around 7:30 am, we hopped on a bus that drove us for about 30 minutes through a military operations zone to Cara World – a resort on the beach.  The area has a stretch of 5 or 6 km that is beautiful white sand beach.

 

Here we disembarked the ship shuttle bus and quickly found a taxi driver to take us to Nha Trang, another 45 minute drive to see some sights we had researched.  Ping was our driver and we believe he understood some English, but he had to use google translate to ensure he communicated critical information to us.

 

 

We drove into the city and experienced the chaos of being surrounded by motorcycles and few law-abiding drivers.  Our first stop was Long Son Pagoda, founded in the late-19^th century.  J, Lynn and I climbed the 152 stone steps leading to the giant white Buddha seated on a lotus blossom.  We were rewarded with bright blue skies when we reached the top!

 

 

After that, we made a stop at Ponargar Cham Tower.  This tower complex called ‘Thap Ba’ was built between the 8^th and 13^th Century.  Currently 4 temples and 10 pillars of a mandapa (pillared meditation hall) remain.  What is interesting about the Cham people is that property is passed down through women, not men!

 

We then tried unsuccessfully to stop at what we think was a church – but we weren’t allowed inside because a service was going on (it was a Sunday morning).  Our driver, Ping, asked us if we wanted to eat rick or seafood – and we said yes seafood.

 

He dropped us off at Hai San Bo Ke, Xom Con 79, a very interesting seafood restaurant.  We picked out our seafood (8 shrimp and 2 crabs) and they took it away and prepared it!

 

The shrimp we chose to eat.

The shrimp fully cooked and presented at our table!

 

The tables we sat at were comically small, like for a kindergarten class!  The food was delicious.

 

After that, our driver took us to Dam market – where clearly busloads from our ship were being dropped off. Lynn bought a beautiful bamboo dress that she wore at supper tonight.  I bought a few little things, and Jessica bought toothpaste!

 

After our shopping, Ping took us back to the shuttle bus – another 45 minute drive back.  When we returned to where the ship’s shuttles were, we paid our driver, with a combination of Vietnam Dong and US dollars.  It worked out to about $45 CAD apiece for the custom taxi cab today.  We added in a tip and felt that was an excellent value.  We would have paid about $89 apiece US for something similar (without the lunch stop) and been on a huge bus to do something similar through the ship.

 

We were able to walk a few hundred metres to go to the beautiful white sand beach.  J had bought some local fruit – rabutan and a mangosteen – that we ate on the beach and were delicious!  J walked in the water – where the surf was strong.  We were all surprised to see the beautiful white sand beach was littered with plastic garbage.

 

 

We then caught a shuttle back to the ship and again enjoyed the stellar views.

 

Once cleaned up back at the ship, we all met for a sailaway view on Deck 12 up front in the Spinnaker Lounge to see the beautiful views as we pulled away from the dock.

 

Lunch in the Four Seasons dining room was its usual stellar affair.  I will be ready for bed as soon as this post is done!  A great day in Vietnam!

Day 21 At Sea, Not Ho Chi Min :(

Not much to report on this unplanned day at sea.  We had wonderful service in the dining rooms for all three meals.  Lynn and Jessica again reiterated how happy they were to be served in the dining room, rather than joining the congested areas of the buffet to eat our meals.

J and I played trivia and were only 3 questions off winning (which isn’t saying much because the winners got 10 out of 20 right!)  The bridge players then played bridge this morning.  I watched a formula one movie with Brad Pitt – and I unpacked my overnight bag which had been packed for our original plan to stay at a hotel in Ho Chi Min.

 

We had a lovely table in the Seven Seas for lunch – a four person table right by the window with our favourite serving team Sarah and husband Dan – so I used the QR code available at each table to praise them to the cruise line.  So hopefully the right people see the review.

 

 

It was another rough day at sea as they had sea sickness bags available at all the stairwells.  Lynn keeps taking medication for sea sickness and it is working so that is a win!

 

And the pool was netted off.  It had been cloudy in the morning but the sun did break through in the afternoon and the pool got a little busier.

 

I am down to one stem of flowers in my pringles chip containers turned vase.  Those flowers purchased in Taipei 3 weeks ago have served us well.

 

After dinner, we played a game of Five Crowns in the library.  There was a table full of Portuguese teens that were playing Monopoly in the room too.  There was so much delightful laughter in the room that Lynn had to turn down her hearing aids!  Those kids were fun to be around!

 

We have our modified plan to visit our new port in Vietnam tomorrow morning.  Sorry Kate that we didn’t get to come see you in your amazing city today and tomorrow!

Day 20 At Sea

Today was a welcome sea day where we could do exactly as we pleased.  Jessica, J and I all played a game of trivia.  Together we scored a respectable 15 (but the leader was being generous in allowing 4 points for one question!)  After that, the bridge players met with their fourth in the library for a few hands of bridge for two hours. 

 

I tried to walk the deck – but deck 6 was closed due to high winds and deck 12 had portions closed off.  For safety the staff didn’t put out deck chairs on the upper level.  Instead, people just laid on towels directly on deck 12.  You can see from the picture below, deck 11 is much more sheltered, so there were chairs being used all around the pool.

 

One of the good things about NCL is that they control the distribution of their pool towels (you provide your room number when you sign out a towel or return it) so people don’t use them to save extra pool loungers.  And usually, you can find a pool lounger anytime you want!

 

I went to talk to Guest Services to advise them that we would be staying in a hotel on the night we were in port near Ho Chi Min.  That is our plan for tomorrow as it is an overnight port.  More on that later.

 

Lunch in the dining room pleased Jessica especially, because she was able to have a GF cheeseburger!

 

After lunch the bridge players had another game and I went back to the room and fell asleep watching tennis!  It is surprising that I fell asleep, and equally surprising that we get coverage of the Australian Open!  Sport 24 is offered as one of the satellite channels on the ship so a person can watch games quite clearly. (Most of the five TV channels get poor reception).

 

I then sorted out clothes to go to the laundry to get me through till the end of the trip.  I also packed a carryon bag to overnight in the city of Ho Chi Min and to go on a cycle tour the next morning.  We plan to meet J and Jessica’s niece in Ho Chi Min for dinner and stay at a hotel with a rooftop pool!  The following morning we have a cycle tour booked to see the city, then return back to the ship by the all aboard call.

 

The four of us ate dinner at Cagney’s, the Specialty steak house on the ship.  It was delicious.  I chose the small filet mignon, while the others all had the prime rib.  My meal was delicious – the best I have had on the ship.  And Cagney’s steak house was the busiest specialty dining room we have seen on the ship.

 

The Captain came on for an announcement during supper – which is highly unusual.  I knew to listen carefully.  And the Captain delivered what we considered to be disappointing news.  The Norwegian Sun will not be docking in Phu My port (near Ho Chi Min) tomorrow as planned.  They couldn’t secure a berth to dock the ship due to all the shipping traffic.  So our two day plans for Ho Chi Min just evaporated.  We will instead be going to the port of Cam Ranh, Vietnam.

I logged into my ship’s wifi to try to see where Cam Ranh was located and what a visitor could do there.  It appears to be about a five hour drive northeast of Ho Chi Min.  It is supposed to offer 5 km of beaches.

 

The General Manager said he would be in the Atrium to answer questions so Jessica and I went to the Atrium on deck 5 with our questions.  I didn’t expect Norwegian to cover the cost of our hotel and bike trip we had booked – as they were independent of the ship (and the GM confirmed they won’t cover that).  I did hope they would offer more minutes of wifi because Jessica had to reach out to the hotel (difficult when you cannot phone), our niece and the bike tour company to cancel everything we had booked in Ho Chi Min.  We expect we will lose about $660 for the two hotel rooms and $270 for the bike tour which have all been paid by Jessica.  Maybe somebody from those companies will acknowledge that the cancellation was beyond our control and reimburse us, but I won’t hold my breath.  That is one of the risks when you book excursions outside of the cruise line.

 

Jessica asked the GM how far the port was from the city – and he said he didn’t know – they have never docked there.  She also asked if the excursion desk is going to offer excursions – and he said nothing has been arranged yet because it is now evening hours and none of the companies are open.

 

So kudos to the officers for making themselves available to answer questions, but I feel even less satisfied with the answers than I did after my google search about Cam Ranh, Vietnam.

 

We then all went to Jessica and Lynn’s room to investigate our options and cancel everything.  We came up with the decision that we will see what the ship offers for excursions when they open tomorrow (Cam Ranh will be a single day stop the following day).  If nothing appeals to us, we will get off the ship and hire a taxi to take us to the local sites.

 

Tomorrow will now be a Day at Sea, rather than Day 1 of 2 in Ho Chi Min.  We are even more disappointed that we didn’t choose to go ashore when we were here on our last cruise (Day 9 Phu My, Vietnam of my blog) – because that visit was only one day – and we had planned to visit it for two days on this cruise.  Sigh.  We are still on vacation where somebody else cooks our wonderful meals and cleans our rooms, so there is much for which we can be thankful, but we may not get to see Ho Chi Min in our lifetime.

Day 19 Port Klang (Kuala Lumpur), Malaysia

An early start for today’s tour had us meeting in the Stardust Theatre at 7 am.  We had paid for an excursion through the ship to Kuala Lumpur (referred to as KL).  The drive into the city took 1 hour and 45 minutes, during rush hour and the ride home took about 1 hour.

 

Our guide, Nicole, on the bus prepared us well.  She had maps for every two people onboard.  She had prewritten her phone number on it for emergencies in getting back to the bus by 1:45 pm.  She also had circled six different areas on the maps and described sites to see in each of those sections.  The Petronas Twin Towers is probably the highlight of KL that many people go see.

 

We took a more local approach having Jessica as a tour guide.  We were dropped off at Sungei Wang Plaza (known for knock off electronics).  Our guide had suggested traffic was very bad and perhaps not a good time to call for a grab taxi.  So we elected to walk to the MRT – the underground train system.  We paid cash (1.60 Ringit or 50 cents CAD) for the MRT to travel two stops to the Central Market. 

 

 

We walked around to a few textile shops and bought a couple of things.

 

We then chose to call for a Grab taxi to get to the Butterfly Park.  Our Grab cost us 10 Ringit ($3.33 CAD) to travel about 10 minutes.  We then paid to enter the Butterfly Park, which was covered by netting to keep the butterflies contained.

 

 

We had planned to go to the Orchid Park but found it wasn’t across the street but one kilometre away, so we felt the time was too tight so we opted to call a Grab to get back to the zone where we could eat lunch at The Pavillion.  Another successful Grab trip – costing less than 14 Ringit (less than $5 CAD).  If you are travelling to Asia – you must get the Grab app (the Asian equivalent to Uber).  It is efficient and inexpensive!

The Pavillion has a large food court on the lower level.  We chose to eat at Madam Kwan’s because it had Laksa and Tea Tarek.  Jessica had to confirm it was gluten free for her and certain dishes were.  I ordered Curry Laksa and  tea tarek – that is kind of like an Asian chai latte, that was a real treat.  J ordered Char Kway Teow, one of the most epic noodle dishes in the world from the streets of Malaysia, which was a specialty of the restaurant.  We shared everything (including the chicken satay appetizer that Jessica bought).

 

We then went to a grocery store to buy Boh tea which is grown in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia.  Then we walked past the Chinese New year decorations in the mall and in the street to get back to our meeting point! 

We got back with 7 minutes to spare – so of course we had to race inside the mall for a little last minute shopping!

 

One couple was really late for the bus – like 25 minutes – and they nearly pulled away without them.  They were close to having to get a taxi back to the port at a much higher price!

 

Tonight we will have dinner and enjoy the Motor City Moves production show.  Tomorrow we have a day at sea, which will be appreciated after four busy days in port!  What a wonderful opportunity to see Asia!

Day 18 Penang, Malaysia

Today we were able to rely on Jessica’s history having lived in Malaysia and previously visited Penang! We confidently walked off the ship and bypassed all the folks selling tours by taxi and went on a walking tour instead.  We used paper maps that were handed out for free at the pier – and when necessary, we pulled up google maps on our phones.

In 2021, George Town was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site for “Creating public spaces through the revitalisation of backlanes in the World Heritage City of George Town”.  One of the cool things we discovered was metal sculptures on walls of buildings all throughout the back lanes during our walk.

 

Sculpture 28:  Duck was in a narrow alley.  The sculpture marks an area where formerly poultry was sold.  

 

Our goal was to get to the Blue Mansion for our 11 AM English tour.  We arrived with 1 hour and 40 minutes to spare – so we ventured off to explore more.  

 

 

We bought 4 tiny bananas here as a fruit snack to tide us over till lunch.

 

We also found a shop that sold Indonesian clothing for really reasonable prices so I bought a cool ¾ sleeve cotton top for 39 Ringit ($13 CAD).  I would have bought elephant pants too (and looked like an elephant in them too!) but they didn’t make them big enough!!!

 

Our tour was officially held at the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion (or The Blue Mansion) and told much of the history of the man who built the home. The Man Cheong Fatt Tze was also known as Zhang Bishi 1840-1916.  He has been called China’s Last mandarin and 1^st Capitalist.  Referred to as ‘Rockefeller of the East’ by the New York Times, Cheong’s death was marked by flags being ordered to be flown at half mast by the British and the Dutch in the East.

 

When he died in 1916, the mansion was left to his 7^th wife (said to be his favourite of 8!) and was to remain in the family’s hands until their youngest son, age 2 at the time, died.  The mansion came on the market in 1990.  The son’s wife couldn’t afford the upkeep of the home, so she rented it out as a rooming house.  It was in a severe state of dilapidation as it housed the Cheongs as well as 34 illegal squatter families. Conservation laws were non-existent, developers were hovering.  The current owners purchased the Mansion with the sole intention of conducting a Grad 1 restoration exercise of international best-practice standards.

 

 

An unexpected learning was to hear that one of the final scenes of Crazy Rich Asians was filmed in the main foyer of the Blue Mansion.  In case you have watched the movie, it is the scene where the main character plays Mahjong against her boyfriend’s unwelcoming mother and teaches her an emotional life lesson!

 

After the tour, we walked back to one of the Malaysian restaurants we had seen and ordered lunch.  It was a tasty lunch with many flavours of lemongrass and aromatic herbs like cilantro.  After lunch we started walking back the two km to the ship and it was dripping hot by that time.

 

 

I was glad we started back when we did – because I was overheating.  J took a picture of Jessica and I and described us as two ‘hot’ women – and not hot in a good way!  Ha ha!

 

Once back at the ship around 3 pm, we went straight upstairs for an ice cream!  A little clean up and down time in our rooms was welcome.

 

Jessica and Lynn had a specialty dinner tonight and we all met for a game of 5 Crowns in the library.  We have an early meeting time of 7 am tomorrow morning – so I best get this blog posted!