John and Leslie's Asian Adventures

DAY 33  -  Muara,  Brunei   January, 30, 2024 The country you have probably never heard of is on the north side of the Island of Borneo, sharing it with parts of Indonesia and Malaysia.  This island is ALL about the Sultan.  His palace, his mosque, his carriage, they even took us to the museum that holds all of his gifts from other foreign countries and dignitaries.  Now that Queen Elizabeth has passed, he is the longest reigning monarch in the world.   But everything is paid for by him for his subjects.  Education, medical, single family homes (for $100/month).  Oil money has paid for Everything ...and everyone is happy!   No traffic, rain every night, and lots of hot sun in the daytime. But due to following the Islam law, no alcohol, no tobacco, no gambling, no unmarried couples sharing a hotel room,  and no bad words about the Sultan! After the visit to the Regalia museum, we walked around the very quiet downtown.

DAY 32  -  Sea Day  -  Cruising the South China Sea January 29, 2024 Rough Seas today.....mostly spent the morning on the couch trying to "enjoy" the rocking of the boat.  We watched the Lions (live) blow their lead...a Black and White Submarine movie.....took a nap.....even had to cancel our dinner invite rom the ship's General Manager in the private dining room. Finally waking up about 8:30 pm, we caught the tail end of the buffet and had to "settle" for prime rib and mashed potatoes with sparkling water. Only one pic today...  Theses were all around the ship. Gladly we did not need it!

  DAY 31  Singapore, Singapore  (Day two) January 28, 2024 After a late night we decided to sleep in and stretch by walking on the track.  One of the easily missed highlights of the ship is the "open view" track on the very top deck.  Here are the views as you take the trip around in the port of Singapore.       Singapore is actually the second busiest port in the world after Shanghai.  And the country derives much of it's wealth from refining.  We could not figure out where in this small country they did that, but soon found out while leaving port! So as we begin part three of our six part tour, we celebrated many new crew and new passengers with a new bottle of Champagne, as we again watched the sun set heading on to our next port.  We dressed up for a nice dinner and then danced until after midnight to the automated jukebox in the lounge as the bartenders and other passengers had long headed off to bed!

DAY 30    Singapore, Singapore   Day One January 27, 2024  Today was supposed to be easy.  Day one of a two day hop-on hop off bus trip, and then a Singapore by night tour. But Singapore is really strict about entry.  Tons of warnings for drug trafficers..... special packaging for tobacco....and even fines for bringing in chewing gum! So after two hours waiting in line for immigration even after submitting our online arrival cards in advance....and then another half hour bus trip just to get to the hop on hop off bus origin.....we had had it!  So we took the bus route (one of two), never hopped off, got off at the starting point so we wouldn't miss the bus back to the ship...waited in the mall for 90 more minutes (had a nice western lunch of fish and chips and a wagyu cheeseburger) and then walked around the mall..... The trip was fun, not too hot (we are just about at the equator) and enjoyed the upstairs views on the bus.  It is getting clo...