Thursday, November 27, 2025, Goa, India

While everyone else was out on tour, I made all the phone calls, unsurprisingly leaving a lot of messages, but it was the best I could do as the cocktail party was tomorrow and the guests needed to know. 

It was Thanksgiving and Nona has brought little plastic turkeys for everyone at the table.  The ones the ship served were more delicious, but it’s fun getting gifts. The Production Cast did a very good show called “On Broadway”. 

Friday, November 28, at sea

Quite a few people came to the desk, mostly to bring in their waivers to attend our shore excursion.  I was still fighting with trying to get photos on to my computer.  Irish tried to help and ended up selling me too much Internet to do the job with when all I wanted was to be able to put a wire into phone at one end and computer at the other.  (I’m back at home now and it works fine.) 

Our DV Cocktail Party went off without a hitch. The ten of us were at the table for dinner and the entertainment was Duo Mystery, a circus performing couple.  Excellent.

Saturday, November 29, Cochin, India

Cochin is a shopping port for me.  Patrick, Rose and I grabbed a taxi and went to Jew Town, where we bought some nice, and inexpensive, quality clothing.  Joan had got separated from her bus and we were glad we were there to get her back safely on to it.

We celebrated Nona’s birthday at the table and the entertainment was a singer named Leslie Mc? (oops, forgot) whose show, “Women of Rock” honored about 15 women including four names I recognized and only one song, Tina Turner’s Proud Mary. I must be older than I think I am.

Sunday, November 30, 2025, Colombo, Sri Lanka

We were still at sea in the morning.  The ship was overnighting in Colombo. We docked at three and got right off.  I was taking my  Ten Little Indians to Galle Face, a fabulous Grande Dame of a Hotel, with a nice Tea Buffet on a Sunday.  It did not disappoint.  It never has and, of course, that tea served as dinner.

We got back to the ship in time for the show, I even managed a quick nap.  I smelled smoke in the corridor on the way to the show and got my steward to check.  He involved some officers and was last seen knocking on doors to do a room check.  It turned out to be nothing, but this veteran of the 2017 wine country fires will never be too careful.  I tipped my steward nicely for his response.

It was a local show called SriLanka Rhythm and it was excellent.

Monday, December 1, Colombo Sri Lanka

Those who had not been to Colombo before got out and explored, which I highly recommend.  It’s a nice port and there’s lots of jewelry to buy. Sri Lanka is famous for it.  I stayed aboard and started work on a newsletter.  There was another good  another good Production Show that night, Hollywood cabaret.

Tuesday, December 2, Hambantota, Sri Lanka

I had an afternoon tour. It was a safari.  It was supposed to be Yala National Park but there was flooding there, so we had been rescheduled to Bandala National Park.  I found it pretty disappointing, but it was a nice rest.   The show was Johnny Balance, an ordinary magic show, until he balanced a deck of cards, a chair, a table, and a ladder on his chin.  It was no puny little stepladder, either.  It probably went up 340 feet.  How he do dat?

Wednesday, December 3, at sea

All of my office time, and then some, was consumed with Thailand arrival cards, mostly for my own clients.  I am not enjoying this new trend one bit, but it is another opportunity to serve our clients. I found out the name of our restaurant in Penang, so I’ll be able to share that.  I had plenty of work to keep me busy all day, then enjoyed dinner at our big table, and The Other Guys, doing Frankie Valle and the Four Seasons.

Thursday, December 4, at sea      

I did Thai Arrival cards for most of my own clients, and walked a good few of them through our Singapore tour sketch, which they were finally starting to focus on.  Towards the end of the day, I had all the Thai Arrival Cards printed and distributed them, most of them at dinner, which was easy.   Duo Mystery were on stage again, with a sketch called “The honeymoon” and it was delightful.

Friday, December 5, Phuket

Phuket is another port that I like a lot, but I never got off the ship.  It’s a tender port, which involves too much time to just pop out for a bit.  I had lots of work to do, for clients here and on shore.  I leave again on January 2, and will have 3 cabins, plus my own, on the Holland America 2026 world Cruise.  The on board work was a newsletter about the shorex in Penang, which was now tomorrow.  So I wrote and delivered that and made it to dinner and the very nice Production show, Elysium.

Saturday, December 6, Penang

Our Shore excursion got off to a chaotic start.  The meeting room Celebrity gave us was the same as the one we had on the host retreat, down the hall from the Connect space, behind the midship elevator.  I had had a cancellation the day before of the four people in the suites, who doubtless preferred something more private. 40 good DV people gathered on time in the meeting room, were counted, name tagged and ready to move out on time. But the ship had docked late and we weren’t free to go.  After about a half hour, the announcement came and we started to move out.  We were so orderly and had just all made it out of the room and into the corridor, when the ship sent us a mob. Some ship’s excursion was filing into the dead end we had just came out of. It was starting to get dangerous.  I tried to tell them all it was a dead end, but they kept coming.  I am not very big.  Then, two of my people, spread their arms across the whole corridor and refused to let any more through.   Finally, ship’s staff managed to guide them down the stateroom corridor, which led to the stairs, but not before at least 50 had joined us and had to be sorted out.  I finally got my 40 counted and we could move again.  Luckily I had Rose and Patrick, a couple of retired schoolteachers, to bring up the rear and see that we never lost anyone.

Our tour took us to Chew Jetty, Yeng Peng Café, which was delicious, the Burmese Temple and a lovely Perankan mansion. There was another fun dinner for 10 at our table and The Other Guys were on stage again, with “other legends”.  They were better as the Four Seasons.

Sunday, December 7, Port Klang for Kuala Lumpur

This is a port that’s not quite ready for the big cruise ships.  We were docked in the container port and shuttled to the cruise port to meet the tour buses, taxis and anyone else who might be picking us up.  In my case, that was a young MBA student named Bo E, whom my friend from HK days, Linda Chew, had found, and paid, to come get me.   Bo E’s communications were perfect.  She sent me a picture of her car and exactly where it was parked.  But first I had to get there.  There was a traffic jam getting into the cruise port on the shuttle bus.  When I arrived, I found the car right away but it was empty.  She had got out to go to the bathroom and decided to stay out and meet the buses.  Luckily, I was able to call her and we were soon together and on our way.  Or rather, we would have been on our way, if we could have got out of the cruise port.  That traffic jam took almost an hour to get through, doubling the time it would take to get to Linda’s house in KL.  It will be my last visit to that nice big house that has been home her entire life.  Linda has a bunch of health challenges, a nerve disease that started as a drop foot and now has her in a wheel chair, dialysis twice a week, heart stents and God knows what else.  But she has good help in the form of her housekeeper, Maria, whom I have met at least twice before, and her care giver, Niki, from the Philippines, who is new, and delightful.  They’ll all be moving to an apartment together next year.  The house has to be sold.  It’s all alone in a cluster of high rises.  KL has grown up around it. 

Linda’s friend, Dolly, whom I have met in KL, and in Hong Kong, came over for lunch and would be driving Linda to a wedding banquet that night.  It’s good to see her keeping active.  Linda is still my wonderful, happy, positive friend and I love her for it.

I had Bo E pick me up much earlier than intended, because of the traffic around the port, and that either worked, or there was less of it, but I was back in the ship in time to deliver my farewell letter.

By that time I was beat so I had dinner in Buffet. Where I met our nice Sri Lankan folk. I missed Wanda’s birthday and Sunny Chen, the magician.

Monday, December 8, at sea

I love my last day at the desk, when the nicest of my nice people take the time to stop by to thank me and tell me how much they appreciated having the DV.  My own people just wanted to know more about what we would be doing in Singapore.  It was plenty, but this tale ends here.