We left Australia headed for Indonesia, with fortune in our sails, as Cyclone Rusty had moved inland to Western and Northern Australia giving us only large rolling swells, but no danger whatsoever.
The poor people in its direct path did not fair so well, as the 160km winds were relentless.
We attended the lectures of one of the new lectures - Aileen Bridgewater, originally from the UK, but for the last 43 years living in Hong Kong. Aileen hosted a radio talk show for 20 years which had an audience of over 90% Chinese and ran between the end of the Cultural Revolution and Tiennimen Square. What a fabulously fascinating person she is, and what a career she had, even after that radio show. She is an excellent speaker, and she told stories of some of her famous interviews which included an American born doctor (who walked with Mao on the Long March, and survived, and became "The People's Doctor", much revered in China, ) Sir Bob Hope, and Indira Ghandi (3 months before her assassination) and her son Rajiv (before his) among many others. She had little sound clips of these interviews which really brought the lecture to life.
She like us, loves Hong Kong, and all its richness. She said her father phoned one day, many years ago from London and said he would like to come and visit for 2 months, and when he arrived he stayed for 23 years, such was his passion for the city. Wow our appetites are whetted even more than ever for our amazing 3 day stay in this city in a week or so.
Of course I am keeping up with my exercise program, actually starting to see some very marginal results in my stamina at spinning class, but it takes real will power to stay with it. As one of my new friends, Tom said about his 2 mile walk, I feel really holy after I finish.
Our Amsterdam performers gave their last performance, before most of them disembark in Manila. This group of young people from all over the world, never performed together until they met on the ship, and each one of them is truly extraordinary.
Stein Kruse, the CEO of Holland America and Seaborn, came on board in Perth for Mariners Appreciation activities - something he does annually, only on the World Cruise. Most of the attention, rightly goes to the President's Club (those with over 1400 sailing days), and 5 star Mariners. There was a grand formal event on Thursday night, with presentations by Stein to top crew. Everyone was really dressed in their finest for this event. The evening entertainment was Rockappela - fantastic! No instruments, but one man is a "mouth drummer" with mikes on this throat - just astounding. We ran into one of them right after the show, as he was putting one of his mates to bed, as he had become really sea sick mid show and had to go off the stage. The stage is at the bow of the ship, and it was really rocking that night, and not just from their music.
Friday, Stein had a question and answer session which was very informative about new itineraries and new ships. This crowd is pretty proprietary about the Amsterdam, and the ideal size of this ship which holds 1300 passengers and are not very keen on the new class of ships that will hold 2500. Stein is an impressive CEO, with a terrific sense of humour, and he is a quick and polished, but authentic speaker and he was great with this tough group of experienced travellers, who differ from the guests found on shorter cruises.
We had dinner in the Canaletto with Jeff and Corrine. We met Jeff last year, and he was inducted into the President's Club on Tuesday. He also writes a blog, which has a large international audience of followers, who appreciate his astounding photographic skills. (amazingvoyages2.blogspot.com) His friend Corinne, is Canadian, and doesn't live too far from us. We had a really nice evening with them. Then we raced to the Queen's Lounge for "Phoenix", the Mentalist from Australia, who was a wizard of trickery, that still has us trying to figure out how he read people's minds, even though he says he is not psychic.
We were later to bed then we wanted to be, as we were supposed to arrive in Bali, our favourite place in the world, at 7:00 a.m.
No comments:
Post a Comment