The days are rolling by quickly now that we are on day two in Benoa, Bali. It is a Saturday morning, and we are expecting a lot more water and airplane activity as seen from our veranda today. It seems hotter with temps in the low 90's, humidity up there at 70%, and the winds calm at 10mph. A few clouds were drifting by, and the sun appeared off and on. It may rain by this afternoon, and it would be welcomed. We can say that because we stayed mostly on the ship today.
There were fewer guests at breakfast this morning in the Pinnacle Grill. Most all of the tours were repeated from yesterday and we suspect that many guests were exhausted from the heat. Our Seattle buddies had returned from their hospital stay in Darwin. The good news was that all went well as they stayed in a hotel in Darwin after being released from the hospital. HAL has a group of folks (the name escapes us) that deal with the passengers that leave the ship due to illness or whatever. We had the same connection when one of us came down with Covid in 2022 while on the Nieuw Statendam. At that time, we were on back-to-back Caribbean voyages and had to miss one and stay in a nice Covid hotel for 11 days. We had a daily call from this service, and they took care of the details for our stay and return to the ship. Our buddies had the same treatment and were grateful for it. One good reason to consider buying medical insurance while traveling abroad. We had been compensated for every dime back then.
As always we stayed onboard until 11am, then headed off the ship. This time, there were no officials to scan our QR codes. Once was enough. There were a lot more guests shopping today, which works better for everyone. While the vendors are dealing with other shoppers, you have a chance to look closer at things you really don't need. One t-shirt and a couple of hair clips were purchased by us. Then most of our time in the marketplace was used chatting with many guests we know and some we remember but never really met back then. Before we left the market, we caught a glimpse of Captain Rens pass by with his wife following in his tracks. She must have boarded here in Bali for the last few days he has left before heading home.
Returning onboard before noontime, we headed for the Seaview Pool for much-needed lemonade. The deck fellows were busy hanging the flags for the sail away activities around 4:30pm where drink specials and live music were promised. There have been far fewer sail away festivities on this world cruise compared to previous trips.
Room service lunch with one salad and some chicken nuggets was enough while we worked online catching up with yesterday's exploits. Captain Rens came on with his update mentioning that some people were still not back from their tours, so we would depart when they returned. Later on we heard that the all day tours that traveled to the high mountains had problems with potholes in the narrow and twisty roads making the trip uncomfortable. Then the traffic was so bad coming back, they were delayed even further. Now that we think about it, the same thing happened on the last Mt. Batur excursion we did well over 10 years ago. Eventually, the police boat cleared the jet-skiers and small craft out of our way, while the Captain blew the ship's horn many times because he likes doing that we suppose.
It was time for dinner, and we ordered one bowl of soto ayam chicken coconut milk soup, a crab, shrimp and scallop cocktail, and a Indian appetizer called a samosa. One of us ordered the cheese- stuffed manicotti and the other had Indonesian nasi kuning with a meatball, ayam kecap and fried banana fritters. Pretty exotic meal for one of us. A small bowl of rocky road ice cream and a plate of watermelon slices were the desserts.
An instrumentalist, Liam Cooper, an Aussie piano-man headed the entertainment tonight. Music of Elton John and Billy Joel were his top hits.
We are now heading towards one of the best countries of the trip in our humble opinion….and that is Singapore. It will take two days at sea and 997 nautical miles to get there.
Bill & Mary Ann
