Monday, 18 February 2013 – Enroute Sabah, Indonesia
This is the first day of a two day sail from Bali, Indonesia to Sandakan, Malaysia in Sabah. This is one is one of the two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. (The other is Sarawak). We are 300 nautical miles south of the equator as we sail into the Makasa Strait between the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and the Kalimantan states of Indonesia on Borneo, just in case you were wondering. We left Bali last evening and had a premium single malt and then a special meal to celebrate our anniversary. They made me a dairy free chocolate layer cake with home made marshmallow frosting, and when we got back to our cabin, it was decorated with a weird but somehow appealing array of balloons and towels folded in the shape of swans. Don't ask. It's a cruise ship thing, usually not found on Silversea except when they rise (?) to the occasion. It was all so charming, maybe except for the butler stopping by this morning to ask if we enjoyed his and the housekeeper's efforts. I think the "everyone gets a butler" policy of Silversea might be improved if the butlers didn't feel so insecure, but that's another story.
We had an enjoyable afternoon onboard Silver Whisper after our beach outing on Bali. I took pictures to document the geriatric nature of this group of guests, no doubt a consequence of the cohort group who can book, pay for, and have the temperament for a hundred day plus luxury cruise. Did I mention this is an old group? There are exceptions of course. The World Cruisers comprise only about half of the 350 or so guests who as we are on one or a couple of cruise segments only. The afternoon was sunny and hot onboard the ship. So it was nice to lounge around and enjoy the pretty views of Bali.
The port authorities at Benoa were kind enough to provide very good WiFi coverage that even extended to some of the deck areas on the ship. I balanced my aging Acer notebook on the railing and updated the virus program and was able to do some financial and other activities that would be too time consuming on the ship's 35 to 50 cents per minute Internet access plans. I wrote yesterday's blog entry without the worry of the very slow and bursty satellite protocol cruise ships use as I had the anticipation of a quick and easy upload from Google gmail offline. Of course as things are with travel in general, I could not obtain an IP address when I went back to the railing and attempted to connect to the SSID, "Free-Bali.id". Fearing that the system was down, I swiped out of the ship and went into the terminal and immediately found a good portion of the ship's crew who were currently on break but also at least 50 guests all enjoying the no doubt no more than 56 possible IP addresses available from the terminals 255.255.255.199 netmask. (Oh, my, having the knack does have its burdens.) I stood behind an elderly (!) fellow guest who was looking at a blank screen and suggested that the ship had snacks onboard. I have no idea why I said that or what it meant to him, but he immediately shut off his aging laptop and got up. I let DHCP do its magic and uploaded my blog. So it goes.
Late in the afternoon, the ship started its main engines or perhaps showed that a replacement pope had not yet elected. Then we left Benoa port promptly at 6 pm after the ship's security officer rounded up the errant crew members who were Skyping their families from the terminal. We had a beautiful sail out by the upscale beach communities on Bali. It was cool to see the 10,000 foot plus high Mt.Agung volcano just as the equatorial sudden sunset was occurring, and we even got a glimpse of Sanur Beach in front of the Hyatt where we spent a couple of hours earlier in the day.
We are looking forward to our "In search of Wildlife" boat tour in Sabah on Wednesday. Who wouldn't want to see Proboscis Monkeys in their native habitat?
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