Travel log - Cruising life on board

Here comes December  and the count down has began for Christmas. I ended my last few days of November cruising on the Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Sea, Spice of SE Asia. It  was a last minute decision . We set sail from Marina Bay in Singapore . Travelling by road took us close to 6 hours from where we are to Marina Bay, crossing the causeway into Singapore was horrendous. It took us close to two hours before we finally arrived at Marina Bay.

By the time we have settled in and  had lunch, a late lunch at Windjammer it was time for the fire drill which Mr G wasn't thrilled, as we were made to wait longer than expected . I didn't get to explore the ship before it sets sail as I have planned, literally there is very little time left but to scroll through the Cruise Compass and just jump in with the activities of the day on board.

View of the Marina Bay, Singapore as we sailed away with the city in the distance.

We arrived at our first port of call, Port Klang the next day. We skipped the shore excursion here, since it's our home shore. We decided to explore the ship and enjoyed as much as we could what the ship has to offer with lesser crowds. So we thought, but we was so wrong, apparently a little bird told us  that there were about 2,000plus Singaporean cruising with us that week and most had stayed on that day, which means only half left the ship. So the crowds were there. Nothing is stopping me thou.  I was literally running from one end of the ship to the other end with my cruise compass in hand just to catch up with the activities scheduled for the day, I think I would have never walk as much on any day at work on a normal day compared to my time on board.

Breaking Dawn,  the view from my balcony at 6.40am as we entered Port Klang. I was hoping to catch sunrise but the sky was too cloudy, nevertheless the sky was awesome at that hour.

I was so immersed with the activities on board;  the napkin demo, paper craft demo and line dancing. Drag Mr G along and went Cha-cha dancing but missed the fruit and vegetable craving demo, the towel folding demo was overly crowded, I just wished some parents would adhere to the instructions with the "adults only", and left the kids out instead of letting their kids meddling in with the demo and grabbing the materials offered which were limited when they were too young to apprehend with the demo; missed all the movies previews and only went to the pool on Day 4, when I thought I would have a splendid time by the pool. I think Diane and Vincent did better with theirs activities.

The Park West Art Gallery held an auction on board, where I took a peek

Swimming means doing a few laps and then a dip in a Jacuzzi for less then 15 minutes,
that's all the pool time I get.

No basking in the sun or  grab a book from the library with  a cup of coffee in hand and watch the sunsets. The only sunsets I get to see was at Patong Beach, Phuket, Thailand

The Mariner anchored at Patong on Day 3.

View of  Patong beach as we headed back to the ship that evening

That's the sunsets I got to see as we headed back to the Mariner

We didn't sign-up for the shore excursion in Phuket either, we went out on our own instead, exploring Patong Beach &  Bangla Walking street . The sun was scorching hot that day .
Pubs and bars lined it's street

The rather impressive Tiger Cave Disco

I supposed the night life of  Patong has yet to awaken. The streets are rather deserted except for the beach goers

Jungceylon, the shopping Mall where we had lunch at Urban Food.
It was such a relieved to get out of the heat for some cool air conditioning

Lunch at Windjammer, the buffet spread and a brunch one afternoon,

literally eat till you drop

Our last day breakfast at the Main dining

Rhapsody in Blue
I love my plate of fruits comprising of pineapples, fig, prunes, Chinese pear and watermelon

Dinner on the third and forth nights, I won't bored you with the daily food we had on board

except our favourites here

With the daily good food daily , I need to burn, burn, burn.
 Seriously,  I didn't burn enough

Strolling the Royal Promenade one evening, where the DreamWorks parade  and plenty of  exciting activities are held every evenings. And I missed a lot too

In the 4 nights and 5 days, I didn't get to go ice skating or wall climbing . There just isn't enough time. I got to watch Ice Under the Big Top and the Farewell Production Showtime at the Savoy Theatre, both are simply a must watch . There is so much to do and so little time. I didn't try my luck at Bingo either, LOL

The crew were amazing and creative,  it was a joy to return to our room to find a  cute towel folded animal waiting for us on our return nightly

On the last night of our cruise, Royal Caribbean had their unique ways of biding us farewell. One of the highlights was the performance at the Main Dining Room . The crew from the Kitchen and dinning congregated from 3 different levels and took stage and sang for us.  It was a nice surprise and a wonderful goodbyes.

(28 Nov 2016 - 2 Dec 2016)

Time flies when one is having a good time. Before we know it, we've docked at Marina Bay, Singapore and our cruise has come to an end. With so much of running around, did I stitch? Come back for my next post will you ?

Thank you all who came by and commented, please be known that I do read all your comments and appreciate it very much. I am still getting messages from Failure Mail Delivery Notification Status everytime I posted a reply/comment, which I still can't figured where goes wrong and I actually don't quite like this new blogging format. I am a little confuse here.

Till then, keep warm from the winter snow or hopefully the sun is warming up for a lovely summer at your end or if you are like us with stormy weather, stay dry ...which ever it is, take care everyone.