Day 27 Disembarkation, Park Nine Hotel, Suvarnabhumi (Bangkok), Thailand

A quick little update to let you know we did self-assist from the ship.  This is the choice one can choose if willing to carry your own luggage when you disembark.  We all managed very well using the wheels on our luggage and carrying everything on our own.  We like to choose this option, rather than packing up our bags and putting it out in the hallways by 8 pm the night before we disembark, to be collected and moved off the ship by staff.  If the ship moves your luggage for you, you have to exit the ship at specific assigned times depending on your flights. 

We felt like pros when we disembarked because we had pre-ordered a taxi (van) to be available for our group of four.  That comfortable 1.5 hour ride to the Park Nine Hotel, Suvarnabhumi cost $95 US (the same cost as it was to go to the airport).  The hotel is closely situated to the airport and offers a free shuttle service to the airport.  We have a shuttle booked to take us from the hotel to the airport at 4 am tomorrow morning (for our 8 am flight).

 

As we arrived at the hotel about 10 am and our rooms were not ready, they kindly checked us in, stored our bags and offered us access to the beautiful pool until check-in time at 2 PM  The three women walked across the street to Robinson’s department store in the mall and had lots of fun shopping.  We discovered a Food Hall upstairs where they served ‘street’ food in a very sanitized way, for extremely affordable prices.  I ordered a seafood Sukiyaki soup for 65 Baht ($3 CAD), pictured below, and I ordered a delicious chocolate waffle (that was warm!) for 40 cents! 

 

We walked back to the hotel about 1 pm and our rooms were ready.  The girls changed and went for a swim and J came out of the pool after having relaxed there for 3 hours.

 

Jessica, J and I had a visit in our room and a game of Five Crowns while Lynn had a little nap.

If you ever need a hotel near the airport in Bangkok – choose the Park Nine Hotel, Suvarnabhumi.  It is amazing and costs about $135 CAD.

 

For supper we went to the restaurant on the premises called Eat Drink Love.  They prepared GF food for Jessica and we all thought our dishes were very tasty.

 

One last visit by the pool after dinner.

We said goodnight and goodbye to Jessica and Lynn as we will be flying out tomorrow, one day before they leave.

 

All being well, we will return home back to Canada after three flights.  Thanks for following along on this journey.  Writing the blog keeps me accountable to record what we did each day and when I read it in the future, it helps me recall exactly what we did in the cities we visited.  Farewell Asia!  Looking forward to seeing many of you back home!

Day 26 Laem Chabang, Pattaya, Thailand

Today we have a full day the port of Laem Chabang, the port for Bangkok.  We will disembark the ship tomorrow as it marks the end of this cruise.   We know from experience the drive to Bangkok can take nearly three hours so we chose to visit Pattaya, a one hour drive from this port, instead.

We first tried to call a Grab taxi – once it appeared in the system as a Toyota Yaris – I knew that was way too small to fit three of us in the back seat, so I cancelled the Yaris.  We chose to take a bus shuttle directly from the port.  That round trip cost us $14 US each.  We caught the 8:40 am shuttle and had the choice of return times of noon, 2, 4 or 6 pm.  As we exited the pier area, it became apparent we would have to walk several kilometres to meet the Grab because they are not allowed in the secure area.  So thank heavens we cancelled it right away.  Other taxis were available to book for the whole day to take you to a bunch of sights – but that didn’t appeal to us today.

 

We got dropped off at Mike’s Shopping Mall and walked to see some sights.  We walked on “Walking Street” and felt we should have done more research because this seemed like a seedy section of town – just one block off the beach.  The women all said “Let’s get off this street!”  And so we did.  We found the Bali Hal Pier, where there was also a tourist information booth.

 

 

We caught a Grab taxi to the Pattaya Floating Market.  That was a destination that made me think of Venice.  A person pays 200 Baht entrance (about $10 CAD).  The entrance ticket they try to push on you is by boat – a row boat (800 Baht/person) or a motor boat (950 Baht/person), so we were glad to figure out walking was an option.  We shopped and ate a teeny tiny bit.  Jessica and I had Corn on the cob.  Lynn had a pad thai that she shared with J (both reported it to be bland).  Food was cooked on primitive kind of cooking centres on boats – so we were happy to limit our food consumption.

 

 

Note the colourful 'flowers' in the foreground.  They are made of pop bottles and painted - and found all throughout the Pattaya Floating Market.

We then took another Grab back to Mike’s Shopping mall – now 30 minutes away from where we were.  We walked through a clothing store with lots of options and good prices.  I didn’t bite.

 

Our shuttle bus back to the port was about 50 minutes.  J had bought a King mango that he cut on board and it was delicious!

We had our final supper.  Packing took up an hour or so in the evening.  Tomorrow we disembark.

We are in good health and I am ever so appreciative that we can travel to these destinations I have only ever read about.  I recognize we are very privileged to travel as we do, acutely aware of our good fortune and filled with gratitude to have been able to share these memory building moments with Lynn and Jessica.  :)

Day 25 Ko Samui, Thailand

Today we were on tender group 7 to leave the ship and go ashore at Nathon Pier in Ko Samui.  We had loose plans to catch an Asian Uber (called Grab) to a beach, have a beach day and seek out Thai massages.

 

We set our sights on Choeng Mon Beach.  The distance was about 25 km, but it takes about an hour to drive there.  We paid 750 Baht (About $35 CAD) each way.  Our driver Tu had a Honda CR-V with great, appreciated, air conditioning. Choeng Mon Beach is popular and has a number of resorts that have built access directly to the beach, but there is a public right of way to get there too.

 

J had visited this beach last time we visited Ko Samui (while I was at the Elephant Sanctuary) so he knew exactly where to go.

 

 

We chose a nice shady spot in front of Young Massage.  We got our lounge chairs for free because we all chose to have a one hour massage here.  Jessica and Lynn went first.  Lynn chose a deep massage, Jessica chose a foot massage (but they gave her a head and neck massage too!). One-hour massages cost 400 Baht (about $20 CAD).

 

J and I called my Mom and our youngest son by Facetime from the beach while we were watching our valuables.  Oh the marvels of technology around the world!  They got to see the beautiful blue water and white sand with palm trees.

 

We switched spots and J and I went for a massage – that proved just how tights and sore all my muscles are!  J chose a back and shoulders massage so his masseuse walked on his back – for about 20 minutes!

 

 

After our massage we went inside the Samui Honey Cottages Beach Resort washrooms and changed into clean dry clothes.  Jessica would consider staying at a resort like this for a few weeks long term in the winter season!

 

 

We called back our driver Tu to pick us up at 1:40 pm and he was there waiting for us with his lovely clean car, with air conditioning.  Locals remind us that this is winter – and cold in their opinions.  30 C is not cold too us!

 

J and Lynn had a lovely tender view returning to the ship.

 

We went for lunch, cleaned up with a shower then returned for supper at 5 PM.  We were pleased to be seated in Dan’s section tonight so we gave him a tip for all the wonderful service.  I also sought out Richelle and gave her a tip for being so kind to us for the these past two cruises.

 

Tonight is the WildCards Production show and worth seeing – so we wanted to be in the theatre by 6:40 pm to see the start of it.  Tonight the show didn’t start at 6:45 pm, but at 6:52 pm – still before the scheduled 7 pm.  It is the best entertainment that the NCL Sun has to offer so we enjoyed the high energy singing and dancing.  One of the female singers was absent tonight, so I have to assume she was sick.  The lead female singer was doing double duty filling in for some of her colleagues songs.  

 

As with last cruise, at the completion of the show, they brought up a number of staff onto the stage representing each of the different departments.  The crowd clapped and cheered and gave lots of thanks.  We were pleased to see our room attendant Manju and her colleague who works in our fourth floor hall, AJ, both on stage.  We smiled at them, waved and then high fived with them as we left the theatre.  That was fun!

 

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!