Cruising 2

Water traffic

DARWIN, the top end of Australia. Far from anywhere, it took us 3 sea days plus to get here. The days at sea were fairly pleasant and we settled into a routine with some power walking, reading and trivia. Darwin was an arduous stop, being extremely hot and humid  and not a very accommodating town. The shore excursions were pretty long and expensive so our main chores that day were to do some laundry, catch up on the computer and a little shopping. The town has no close and convenient laundry and after scouring all the hostels to see if we could use theirs (no, only for guest), finally took a bus to the outskirts of town to the car wash, of all places. A small garage type building had 2 washers and 2 driers in it and we finally got the laundry done. Took about 3 hours for a normally 1 hour job. By the time we got the bus back to the shopping mall, most of the stores were closing, being open only  till 2 on Saturdays. We did manage to get a little time on the computer, but the free city WIFI was a bit slow, so no blogs got published or doing anything except check mail. The library, our best WIFI standby was also closed by now. ARRGGG. So back to the ship, extremely worn out and exhausted because of the heat. I think the forecast that day was for 91 degrees and 70% humidity, and it’s going to get worse here. But we’re leaving!

Then it was off toward Bali, another 2 days to get there but the weather was great and seas or oceans we sailed through were like glass. And onboard, we have become trivia champs, several times. We’ve hooked up with some nice people and we are cleaning up on the prizes! Some of it good stuff too. The crew members who administer the trivia refer to the prizes as crap.   All fun.

Wood carving

Next stop BALI. Bali is one of the many islands of Indonesia but it is different . Of course it’s very tropical, very warm & humid and overall looks to be the same as other third world countries. It is congested with traffic, although a bit more orderly than some places but the majority of traffic are scooters. Since we haven’t been here we did take a tour to get an idea of the place, but it wasn’t nearly long enough. We spent all the time in city environments and didn’t get to see the countrysides, the lush terraced rice fields or temples. Guess we will just have to do that when we come back for a longer stay. We did visit an artist community, thousands of paintings, all styles, sizes and done by people of all ages. Next was a wood carving community. Here were intricately carved pieces, all sizes, some massive and very detailed. Last stop was a silversmith community. The fine silversmithing was all done by women with basically pliers, solder and fine wire. They made beautiful pictures, bracelets, pendants and large silver pieces. There are a lot of these stores around but these were ones of the better quality. We would’ve like to have visited a Batik factory but it wasn’t on the schedule. But we caught a glimpse of life on Bali and feel it’s worth coming back. It is very inexpensive for food, services and shopping. One friend on the ship when to Kuta town for shopping and got a manicure and polish for $4.00. Her husband had his feet nibbled (little fish in a tank eat the dead skin away) and a massage for $15.00.  And you can bargain the prices down and get some really good deals. I was able to get 3 silver pieces for basically one price by the time we were done.

Bhuddist temple

Tomorrow we dock in Port Headland which is where we hope to publish this blog and the previous one that we didn’t get to in Darwin.  No one can really understand why