Friday 13^th February 2015 – Singapore.

 

We did the battlefields tour of Singapore in the morning which took us up the west coast across the north and back down the east coast.

 

Several people on tour looked for, and found, the graves or names carved into the memorials of family members who lost their lives during the war.

 

As you may imagine it wasn’t a “barrel of laughs” tour but very interesting and poignant. Man’s inhumanity to man demonstrated once again.

 

In complete contrast – in the afternoon we met up with Andrew and Linda (fellow smokers) and took a taxi to Raffles Hotel. Here we met up with “the crowd”. The three of us plus Leanne, Gary, Jenny and Diane bade a fond farewell to Norah, Sharon, Tom and Hannah over a Singapore Sling in the courtyard of the hotel. Very plush but at over £20 a go, we all just had the one!

 

Nesta bought herself a Raffles Hotel T-shirt (well it was cheaper than a Singapore sling!) and then we got a taxi back to the ship – and made it with 20 minutes to spare…

 

There are approximately 800 new passengers on board all seemingly doing a 7 night Chinese New Year special as they’re getting off in Hong Kong. Unsurprisingly the majority of them are Chinese and there are lots of children and people in their 20’s. Good grief! What is the ship coming to?

 

At 7-30pm there was an “Asian Cultural Show” with local performers which was very interesting and the good news is that our favourite wine is back on board!

 

You know how much we like dressing up (not) – but we do as required by the dress code. After all, we knew what it would be like before we got on. The dress code doesn’t seem to have been communicated very well to our new passengers however. Lots of people were allowed into the restaurant wearing trainers, jeans, t-shirts and in one case a bright red hoodie. We were told that the dress code will be enforced tomorrow night (it is a formal night). We can’t wait to see what they think formal wear is! Mr & Mrs Grumpy, or what?!