Mr. Editor's Vacation Part 3

Hello! This post is Part 3 in a five-part mini series! Go read Part 1 and Part 2 first so you don't miss out anything. 

Day 4 - Penang! Sort of.

The first discovery of the day is that the magical food change time between breakfast and lunch is 11am. Once the clock strikes 11, one by one, the breakfast spread is exchanged for the lunch spread.

We continued Breakfast Part 2 out on the deck. Yup. This is the life. Relaxing on a poolside deck chair while reading a book and letting the soft afternoon breeze lull you to dreamland. 

A little while later, we went to check out rock climbing and roller skating. Roller skating was a no go again. It has not opened since the start of the cruise. It probably will not be open at all then. Oh well. So rock climbing. As we made our way up the stairs, the rock climbing staff were packing up to go for their lunch break. Bad timing.

So we headed back to Windjammer to wait for the staff to come back. About an hour later, we returned to the rock climbing wall to find that it was open! And there was no queue! I signed a liability waiver form, got a star punched in my card, and can now rock climb and ice skate all I want.

Notice the star in the corner? That's proof of having signed the liability waiver form

And yeah. There is a freaking ice skating rink on board. It was located behind the art gallery. Missed out exploring this place yesterday. It's really not my fault! How many people have a high sense of appreciation for fine art right? 

The wall here is about 2-2.5 stories high. And is actually pretty challenging. The instructor suggested me to try climbing dark green, but I didn’t manage to keep to that one colour. I had to grab a few yellow things towards the top as the wall sloped outwards and the next dark green thing was out of my reach.

Around this time, the ship started docking procedures at the Penang port. Somehow, the propellers were able maneuvour the ship sideways towards the dock! I watched as the ship moved closer and closer and finally stopped with a tiny gap left. Such an amazing level of precision! Now if only some drivers could park their car as nicely as that.

Docking procedure. If you hold a credit card sideways on this picture, that is about the gap between the ship and the dock

Instead of getting off the ship, we went for a dip in the pool. After all, it was only Penang. There are a total of ten pools on deck. But our aim was the heated jacuzzi aka whirlpool bath. The experience was simply blissful as the bubbles gushed out, gently massaging my body. The experience was further heightened by a gentle sea breeze and an overcast sky.

30mins later, we head back to shower and to get ready for dinner. Today, the dining hall was quite empty as most people opted to go for a shore excursion.

Back in the room, we discovered that our room attendant had made towel art in the shape of an elephant and a rabbit.

Cute right?

Day 5 - Patong Beach, Phuket

Woke up today to find a ship docked right outside my window! I found out later that there isn’t a place for such a large cruise ship to dock, so it had archored itself in the middle of the sea. The smaller ship I saw outside my window would be taking us to Patong Beach, Phuket.

As I surveyed today’s Windjammer spread, I noticed that the menu is largely the same every day. There were a few specialties of the day, but other than that, it’s just more of the same. After breakfast, we headed to the Main Dining Hall to collect our tender ticket. These tickets are used to group passengers such that there won’t be too many getting off at once.

Once ashore, we slowly made our way to the biggest mall in the area: Jungceylon Mall. There was nothing much to see along the way. And the atmosphere here is strangely similar to that of Bali. Jungceylon Mall wasn’t really big after all. It is only three stories tall, with one basement floor. Though it is probably as big as Bangsar Village 2. After exploring for a bit, we decided to stop for lunch at the basement food court. The food wasn't so interesting or special so there are no pictures of that.

Can you spot the ship?

By about 3ish Phuket time, we started to make our way back to the ship. Instead of walking along the shops, we walked along the beach. I saw a few naked kids playing with sand. Oh and a topless lady. Saggy boobs.

Does the rope over the gangway look familiar?

The room attendant had left us more towel art. This time it was a bat and a monkey.

We reverse engineered the towels later and kind of learnt how to fold them! It's similar to origami. Just using towels instead of paper.

My trip is coming to an end! But there's 2 more vacation post coming up! Keep following Pillow Talk Till Dawn for more!

-Mr Editor-

Ps: To usher in the new year, Mr Editor set up a countdown clock! The code can be found here. Oh and a special message will be shown when the countdown hits zero, so be sure to check back first thing in the new year!