Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Our favourite swimming pool on board the
Diamond Princess doesn't allow children and is reasonably protected from wind and offers shade during different times of the day. The Sanctuary overhead is an area offered to passengers for USD20 a full day of USD10 for half a day. We never saw anyone using the facilities.
We had to tender off the ship to see Cairns. Passengers elected to go on the ship's tour to Kuranda, using the railway and sky rail to get to this popular town. Other tours offered were snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef.
We had meet quite a few passengers who choose to see the Great Barrier Reef in Airlie Beach and were disappointed to miss out when the Captain decided not to allow the ship's tenders ferry service to proceed due to predicted strong afternoon winds.
The second to last day of the cruise found Paul and I singing carols in the Atrium with about 500 odd passengers. The ship had been decorated with Christmas Trees and lights around the main service decks inside the ship. Each cabin had a decoration sticking into the letter box which really gave a festive feel. The bottom floor in the Atrium had a village display of gingerbread houses.
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The ship docked at Stokes Hill Wharfe, Darwin, where we caught a local taxi to take us to the local car rental location. We hired a Tarago and drove with 2 other couples from the ship, to the Jumping Crocodile Cruise tour, via a quick look at the Ghan which left Darwin for Adelaide on it's 2 day trip, that morning. Fortunately I had booked for 6 people before leaving Adelaide, as the tour was full. On the way back from Adelaide River we stopped off at the Humpty Doo Hotel for lunch. Our American friends were chuffed to experience true local Territorian pub.
Once back in Darwin we did some booze shopping, buying a couple bottles of wine from Woolworths and a 12 can pack of coke to take back on board. Paul and I sat in the shade, alongside one of the aft swimming pools as the ship sailed out from a picturesque Darwin Harbour, sipping our brandy and coke. By the time the ship had sailed left the harbour and steered an easterly course, the late afternoon storms had gathered over the coastline, displaying its flashes of lightning.

Bali 12th Dec 2010

Bali was a tender port into Benoa for the passengers of Diamond Princess. I was expecting rain on the day, as we were there during the start of the rainy season but the day was warm, not hot, and dry. I think it rained for those who toured the mountain area of Ubud but not for us checking out the shopping in Kuta. The marina where we landed from the ships' tenders had the local transport stitched up. We had been informed by another CC that taxis into Kuta would have charged around the equivalent of AUD10, but the bus on offer charged USD30 each into Kuta or private taxis charged USD80 for the trip in and return the passengers when they were ready to leave Kuta! So we headed out from the marina and ended up negotiating with a private driver to take us into Kuta for 100,000 rupiah.(AUD 12). Things were looking good until we went to pay the driver with our Rupiah we had kept from a previous trip to Bali 4 years ago......wrong! The driver wouldn't take the notes we had by declaring they were old money and no good. Bummer. Fortunately I had AUD100 on me for that emergency.....which was then. I cashed them into rupiah and asked the money changer about the 'old notes' only to be informed the banks would accept them when they open the next day! We did a little shopping but found their prices weren't as good as Vietnam and wanted to make sure we had enough money to get a taxi back to Benoa Marina. We caught to first taxi that came along to drive us back to Benoa Harbour and were fortunate to discover the driver spoke English well and charged us metered rates. It cost us 52,000 Rupiah to return.