Around the Ship

Sea Princess

Sea Princess Antrium

Pianist

Comedian

Singer and guitarist

Seasickness Cures

This list comes from conversations (seriously) discussing how to combat seasickness – always a favourite topic on cruise ships. I will let you be the judge!

Special bracelets
Motion sickness pills
Look at the horizon and don’t lie down
Eat green apples
Tape your second and third toes together
If you are left-handed, put a finger from your left hand in your left ear; if you are right-handed, put a finger from your right hand in your right ear

Singapore

Thursday, March 10 saw us in Singapore. Having been here several times, we decided to do our own thing.

So after breakfast we braved the hot, humid weather to grab a cab for Chinatown. To our amusement, the cab driver very helpfully dropped us off at the jewellery store, then we were taken to the camera store. We know what they do, but you can always say no!

As it turned out, Alex bought me a lovely jade bracelet and he purchased a new lens for his camera which turned out to be a very good deal, compared to the price in Australia.

Chinatown is fun and you can find some very nice souvenirs. We were very happy to sit down for something to eat and a couple of Tiger beers. Up to our usual thing of checking out the beers in every country!

After lunch we made our way to the highlight of the day – Gardens by the Bay. This was still being constructed last time we were in Singapore, so we were looking forward to seeing it.

Gardens by the Bay consists of two glass conservatories and towering supertrees covered with dramatic, vertical plant displays. The tour started with an audio shuttle tour which took us around the huge expanse of gardens. There was so much to see – lots of themed gardens with many sculptures and the range of plants was breathtaking. We even saw cherry blossoms in bloom.

Then there were the two cooled conservatories to explore – in the Flower Dome we saw thousand year old olive trees and unusual Baobobs as well as wonderful flower displays.

The Cloud Forest had beautiful orchids, pitcher plants and ferns amongst many others that we did not know the names of, all growing happily together as well as a man-made 35-metre mountain and waterfall.

This is truly a diverse plant display from the world’s four corners with lots of info along the way about the intricacies of plant life. We spent about 3 hours just exploring the two domes. A very enjoyable day!

A Total Eclipse of the Sun

On Wednesday morning March 9, we witnessed one of nature’s great spectacles. A total solar eclipse from the Sea Princess. We were fortunate to have an astronomer on board who gave an interesting lecture yesterday on what to expect and was on the bridge today to give a commentary as the event occurred.

Having set ourselves up on the top deck at around 8.30am we saw the sun rising higher as the moon progressively covered the sun. We were provided with special viewing glasses, and even then, were warned to only look through them for 10-15 seconds at a time to avoid permanent eye damage. We were also advised to avoid using our cameras to as not to damage them, so we are relying on the ship’s photographers this time, as they had the correct filters.

Unfortunately, we had some cloud cover so we were not able to see the moon when it covered the sun, however we were able to observe other things that occurred during totality. Where it had been humid, suddenly it felt very cool. The light began to disappear like a fast forward sunset, and the ship’s emergency lighting came on. We were opposite a small vessel and her lights came on also. At that point, had we not had the cloud cover, for a few minutes it would have been safe to look up without our safety glasses to see the moon fully obscuring the sun.

After exactly 2 minutes 16 seconds, the sea changed colour as the sky became brighter, it suddenly felt quite humid again and things returned to normal. The whole process took two hours from when the eclipse began. The captain did a great job, doing his best moving the ship to get us into the best position and stopping for the duration of the eclipse. However, he could not control the cloud cover!

Even though we did not get to see totality, it was still quite eerie and a once in a lifetime experience. We were told that, on average, there is a total solar eclipse somewhere in the world around every 16 months. If you simply stayed at home, on average you would wait between 360 and 410 years. So we think ourselves very fortunate to be here, and being in the middle of the ocean was a great place to be part of the experience.