Carry on Cruising

Leaving Singapore in the gloom of a tropical storm the previous evening (The first rain we’d actually seen since leaving the UK!), our parting impression was of the colossal size of the docks at Singapore and the literally hundreds of ships either loading or unloading, or moored in the bay awaiting their turn. How on earth did anyone know which was what amongst those hundreds of thousands of metal shipping containers??

Waking the next morning after our first night afloat, Singapore was far behind and we were heading North West up the Malacca Strait, with Sumatra to our west and Malaysia to the east. We could see neither of them (It was still overcast, although stifling hot) but there were still very many ships about, of all shapes and sizes.

S was aware of little of this – because she had embraced shipboard life with a worrying degree of enthusiasm. I was shoved out of bed at 8.00am because “we need breakfast early because there’s the excursions briefing at 10.00am, and then the ‘how to use the iPhone camera’ at 11.30am.” I didn’t dare query the need for yet more selfies but instead looked with horror at the piles of dirty clothes being assembled in front of me..

“.. and of course, we need to find the laundry”, she went on. Of course we do?!

So that was how the morning unfolded except that by the time we’d actually found the laundry, S had to go to the iPhone class. Leaving the washing with me.

“Now there’s a man on a mission” chuckled a passing Aussie guy, as I lurched down the passageway with a ‘Whites’ load. And of course, it’s not just washing it, but ironing as well….

S and I rendezvoused for a very quick lunch, because the she had to dash off to for a ‘Facial’ at 1.30, followed by something else (it may have been watercolour painting, but I can’t be certain) at 3.00pm.

“The colours load is all ready to go”, she explained, “be a sweetie and put it in because I won’t have time before Pilates at 4, when you can join me in the gym for a workout”

Thinking that the last thing I needed was a workout, off I went to the laundry again, inevitably to again meet the same Aussie chap in the corridor;

“Christ mate, you really drew the short straw!”

I couldn’t help but agree.

I finished the washing just in time to get to the gym…

At 5.05pm, some 27 hours after first boarding the ship, I finally collapsed onto a sun bed by the pool.

“What are you doing there?”, demanded S, “ You need to be getting ready for pre-dinner cocktails!”