Finally the long-awaited cruise! This is our very first cruise, so everybody's excited. Even more so when we saw how big the ship was.
We had a Deluxe Oceanview Stateroom on Deck 12, at the front end of the ship. Window view was magnificent!
Father and son enjoying the view together
On our first day, it was raining quite heavily. It was supposed to be the rainy season in Hong Kong, but the weather was fabulous during our 2 days of outing there, and only started pouring after we got on board the ship. So we took our own sweet time to settle down, check around the ship, and looked through the activities for the kids. And then it was dinner.
After dinner, there was the first Dreamworks parade, where we met King Julian and Po.
Besides them, during the 5 days that we were on board, we met many other characters too.
Skipper and Kowalski
Puss
Po again
and a Stormtrooper
2nd day, we went for galley tour. It was really interesting to walk through the galley and see how food, loads of them, is prepared, cooked and stored. Everything's on such large scale. And it was certainly nice to hear that uneaten food is thrown into the sea to feed the ocean life, so that no food is wasted.
After the tour, we had a sumptuous lunch. The food was way better than the buffet. Rightly so, since we paid for this tour-cum-lunch!
After lunch, it was off to the kids club the children, leaving Daddy and I to explore the ship ourselves.
The first show we watched was the ice-skating show, which was soooo good! The performers were all previous world ice-skating champions, and their performance was so inspiring that Nadine kept asking to go to the skating rink after that!
Nadine loved ice-skating. She was such a natural. Most people who skated at the rink were probably first-timers like her. There were only a few who knew who to ice-skate. For those who don't, all would start off by holding the railing at the side and moving extremely slowly and cautiously. Not Nadine. She moved right to the centre of the rink, and skated like she's done it a few times already. No fear at all!
3rd day was a port day - Nha Trang.
Nha Trang is a coastal city. The tours offered for the day were pagodas and temple visits, including a cable car ride. Or one could go to the beach. So we opted to stay on board, to relax and enjoy the facilities.
Well, actually, the real reason why we stayed on board was because this cruise was full of PRCs. While the ship is big enough for us to sort of avoid them, we had not gone to the pool area because throngs of them were there, soaking in all 3 pools and 5 jacuzzis all the time! So we stayed back to enjoy the pool!
It was indeed nice and peaceful, with few people on board. And we learnt something new about Aaron and Nadine. Aaron was just like Daddy and me - happy like bird that we had the whole ship to ourselves, almost. But Nadine was miserable. She didn't like the emptiness and not having anyone (besides her brother) to play with. Such a social butterfly!
4th day was another port of call - Danang. This time we disembarked and joined the city tour. I've been wanting to visit Danang. Well, actually I'm more interested to visit Hoi An but it takes 2 hours to reach Hoi An from the port and we didn't think the kids would be ok with the long bus ride. So we settled for Danang.
The Vietnamese restaurant that we went to for lunch, and the pagoda we visited after lunch both had lots of bonsai. Daddy and I were amazed that Aaron was s intrigued in the bonsai, particularly the little figurines, "mountains" and "caves" used to decorate the bonsai. He looked closely at every pot of bonsai we passed by!
The best part of the Danang tour was the trishaw ride around the city. The kids and I loved it while Daddy thought it was extremely dangerous.
Other than that, the rest of the Danang tour was quite boring actually. The Cham Museum was very small, and the kids were not interested at all; the market is a typical Vietnamese market, but do not have as much things as those in Ho Chi Minh City; and the marble village stopover was really one of those tourist traps, to get tourist to buy overpriced stuff. I was quite disappointed with the tour actually.
A family shot before we board the ship again.
Day 5, Daddy managed to wake up at 5am to take some sunrise shot!
Nadine went for a cupcake decorating class in the morning.
While Aaron and Daddy went round to explore the ship.
In the afternoon, Nadine went ice-skating again. This time, Daddy joined her. But he too, like most first-timers, was hanging on to the railing all the time, and marvelled at how Nadine could move around so freely and boldly.
Nadine's Korean friend, whom she got to know at the Kids Club, was at the rink too, and the 2 had fun skating together.
The kids loved the kids club, even though there were not a lot of kids. The activities were fun enough to engage them, and they, or rather, Nadine, enjoyed making playing with her multinational friends - from Dubai, Korea, and France.
Here's Aaron the Alien.
The one thing that amused us was the towel origami that our room attendant made for us every night. A different animal every night.
Doggie
Elephant
Monkey
On the last night, the cruise staff put up a small performance for the guests.
Overall, our maiden cruise had been a good experience, and we really enjoyed ourselves. It was relaxing, and certainly lovely to wake up in the middle of the sea, and to be able to read by our room window in that tranquility.
The kids enjoyed themselves so much that they've been asking to go on another cruise since we came back! Yep, we will!
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