Small World Photos

Thankfully Conrad woke up this morning with no fever, a dramatically improved cough and feeling much better. We will continue to rest in the room today and make sure that he's feeling better before we head to the airport for our 11 hour flight to South Africa.We feel like the lack of sleep on the first day (he was up for almost 40 hours) just tired his body out and it couldn't fight the cold, but we're back on track. Our luggage from the cruise which we can't take on the safa

Unfortunately Conrad woke up feeling even worse this morning and with a high fever. We reached out to Steph and she suggested taking the antibiotics that we had with us because it was starting to sound like it was progressing to pneumonia. We have to fly to South Africa tomorrow night and we don't want to leave Singapore if a doctor is needed since they have good healthcare here. We spent the day inside our suite so as not to expose others to whatever he has. He had a small c

We arrived at the Singapore Airport and had a message from the Marina Bay Sands hotel that their representative would meet us just outside of baggage claim and telling us what gate our luggage would be on. Our bags had priority tags on them and unlike the US, they actually honor those tags here. Our bags were first off and within minutes of depaning we were in the car and on our way to the hotel. We are staying at the Marina Bay Sands hotel, a famous hotel in Singapore also

We got all of our bags out last night, and had an early start this morning so we went to The Veranda one last time for breakfast. We saw Joy our usual Veranda greeter as well as Ni Lui who was our evening dining room waitress and said goodbye. We had one last breakfast and one last sticky bun and headed off the ship. We collected our luggage and waited for our driver to arrive. Since our flight to Singapore isn't until 11:40 PM we booked at room at the JW Marriott in Mumbai r

We had breakfast and then checked out of the lovely Oberoi Amarvilles hotel. The Oberoi brand was exceptional. They have their own hospitality school and set the standard for service in India. They have a high turnover because other hotels poach their staff to learn more about what they do. We really enjoyed the 2 properties that we stayed at and would stay again in a heartbeat. We took the 4 hour drive back to the Delhi airport and got through security and to our gate in ple

We left the hotel this morning to go visit the Taj Mahal at Sunrise. Same procedure of transferring to the main gate by golf cart from the Oberoi, which was quite convenient. We were the first people to enter the gate so it was possible to get a lot of pictures without the crowds in the way, plus the lighting was very nice. We were able to walk around on our own as well instead of in a group so it was a peaceful morning. Taj Mahal views at Sunrise Taj Mahal views at Sunrise T

We got up early this morning and left the Oberio in Dehli headed for the Oberoi Amarvilles which overlooks the Taj Mahal in Agra. We took a somewhat round about route out of Dehli since it was our only day there and they wanted to show us some of the monuments and landmarks in Dehli and New Dehli before we left. The bus ride was about 4 hours with a short rest area break but overall not too bad. When we arrived at the Oberoi in Agra we were greeted by a handful of hotel staf

After a sea day yesterday we left the ship this morning with some of our luggage, headed for a 4 day overland tour to the Taj Mahal. The ship was docked in Cochi or Kochin India, and we went through another Idian immigrations process in the terminal at the port but it was brief. We met our local tour guides and headed off on a bus to the airport to fly to Dehli. After some discussion at the check in counter between our guides and the airline representatives about whether the

We woke today to bright sunshine and calm seas and the news that all excursions were a go. We had booked a day at a resort called Adaaran Vadoo on one of the tourist islands. We met in the theater as usual to be called for our excursions. The excursions are well organized and almost always on time unless we have trouble getting cleared at a port. Today were were right on time and took a tender ashore to the port where we switched to a larger speed boat which took us to the r

We arrived in the Maldives and anchored outside of Male the capital. The seas were quite rough and the rain and wind was strong so all of the excursions were cancelled. Since we anchor just offshore in this port and people need to go ashore via tender boats, it was too dangerous to transfer passengers from the ship to the tenders in the rough seas. We had a snorkeling trip planned and that was cancelled. it was a free included trip and only a couple of hours. Views of Male fr

Today was another sea day as we make our way to the Maldives. This is a stop that was added after they had to cancel Dubai and Doha. The weather was stormy most of the day and so we mostly stayed close to our cabin. Conrad got to the Gym in the morning and Shawn did needlepoint. We sampled the afternoon tea again but didn't do much else. After dinner we heard a loud bang outside of our room and found that the wall that divides our balcony from the front of the ship was blown

Today we woke up to monsoon type rains on a day when we were scheduled to go to a resort to have some beach and pool time. The weather called for all day rain but since we had been on the ship for the last 3 days, we decided to go anyway. We got off the ship in Colombo Sri Lanka and took a 90 minute bus ride to Wadduwa. The bus was mostly empty since so many people cancelled due to the rain. The ride was through the main part of Colombo, and then some smaller towns and eventu

We spent the last 3 days at sea sailing over to Sri Lanka. There are lots of activities on board but mostly we relaxed and caught up on things. We have additional entry documents for India, we went through India immigration on the ship, and Shawn went to soe needlepoint and Origami classes. We also started to attend the 4PM tea time in the Galileo lounge which we are enjoying. Conrad has spent lots of time on our balcony watching flying fish and other boats.

Today we are back in Thailand, and taking an early, full day excursion to the Sea where we will take inflatable canoes into the caves. As we read the details of the excursion we realized that we will each have a paddler so we won't even be paddling the canoe - nothing like living in luxury. We took a bus to the pier where we loaded onto a speedboat that would take us to the caves. There were inflatable canoes onboard as well as a group of young men who would be paddling for u

Today we docked in Penang Maylasia and our excursion took us to nearby Georgetown We first visited the The Pinang Peranakan Mansion (Malay: Rumah Agam Peranakan Pulau Pinang) in George Town, Penang, Malaysia, is a museum dedicated to Penang's Peranakan heritage. The museum itself is housed within a distinctive green-hued mansion at Church Street, George Town, which once served as the residence and office of a 19th-century Chinese tycoon, Chung Keng Quee. The mansion contains

Today we docked in Kuala Lampur Malaysia, and we had a tour scheduled that left fairly early in the morning. Our first stop was The Batu Caves which is the iconic temple in Kuala Lumpur featuring 272 vibrant, rainbow-colored concrete steps leading up to a massive Hindu limestone cave shrine. Located just north of Kuala Lumpur, this popular site is guarded by a massive 42.7-meter (140 ft) golden statue of Lord Murugan and offers a challenging climb We climbed the stairs to the

We had the day to ourselves in Singapore today and it was a scorching hot day. We decided to take the cable cars over to Sentosa Island where there are beach areas, Universal Studios, a water park and other attractions. We mostly wanted to get the aerial view of the city. We didn't expect that the cable cars would not be air conditioned and it was awfully hot but the rides were short. We purchased tickets online and took the Mt Faber line over to Sentosa island and then switc

We arrived in Singapore at around 10 this morning. We pulled in to the Harbor Center which is the cruise terminal for smaller ships. There is a beautiful bridge in front of the skyline. Today we had 2 different excursions from our ship into Singapore. We started the day with an excursion from the ship that would give us highlights of Singapore. First we had to get through immigration and customs at the port. That consisted of a relatively short line where we had to scan our p