Memories of our last visit to Port Kelang were of my least favourite Princess guide on the city tour of Kuala Lumpur, who rabbited non-stop all day long and ended each sentence (there were many…) with “Right? All right?” His mannerisms were such that I was just about ready to throttle him by the time the tour ended. We had already decided that the alternative this time, of the Princess coach dropping us off in town, then collecting us 4 hours later wasn’t for us either, so we settled for the shuttle to town ($16 return).
As the Klang shopping centre wouldn’t be open until 10am anyway (why does NZ open at 9am, when the roads are still clogged with commuter and school traffic?) there was no rush to get up and out. Perhaps as well, as once again, not a good night’s sleep, waking at about 2:30am. We went up to the Horizontal Court at about 9am and I enjoyed my sausage, beans, hash browns and an English muffin, washed down by two glasses of orange juice. You can only go so long ignoring the good food on offer.
At 9:45am, there was a crew drill. Every crew member (including people such as port lecturer, entertainment staff etc.) has to take part in a crew drill at least once per month. The company takes this very seriously and their systems are very thorough. Unless you have put the privacy notice on your cabin door, every cabin has to be checked and staff are stationed on each landing on all stairwells, dressed appropriately with their fluoro caps and with lifejackets. As we went through the atrium, staff were obviously taking part in an evacuation type drill and not doing the conga (see pic).
We walked along the covered way, through the terminal building and straight onto the coach. In the two years since we were here last, roading around the port area has been completed and there was ample evidence of progress on local housing, with many smart modern blocks, recently completed, but still with apartments for sale.
We were dropped outside a super modern shopping centre and were glad to get inside away from the heat. As far as modern shopping centres go, this was as good as they get. Nice atmosphere. Immaculately clean and a decent number of shops and food outlets. As it wasn’t much after opening time, 95% of the shoppers were wearing cruise lanyards, carrying Princess shopping bags or Princess backpacks.
By the time we were thinking of taking a drink, we conveniently bumped into Col and Jude and we settled on Starbucks. They didn’t take anything other than local currency or Visa, so Visa it was. The card came out again not long after as Paula found a nice pair of sandals for the equivalent of about $22. Overall, another cheap day!
We did spend a bit of time in Harvey Norman’s photographic dept., where the assistant patiently ran us through the current Canon compact camera range. He also sorted out immediately why I thought my camera was slow. It was my fault for setting the review image time from 2 seconds to 9 seconds… Duh!
We spent a few minutes at the pet shop, watching the baby hamsters. Fascinating, even thiugh my pic isn’t too sharp, taken through glass and a Perspex enclosure, we were intrigued to notice that when not trying to sleep in the wheel, hamsters only ran in one direction on the wheel. We are not sure whether or not hamster wheels are one direction only or hamsters have an instinct for heading in one direction.
The shopping centre was certainly getting busier at lunch time and although my pic is of a Thai menu, the locals seemed to be flocking to a Japanese restaurant for lunch.
As many cruise people by now are rubbled out, cathedralled out, museumed out, walled cityed out, even HO-HO’d out, visiting a modern shopping mall and a return to westernised normality, isn’t as silly as it sounds, as we near the end of this busy 90 day adventure. Most, especially those who boarded in Sydney, now have so many memories and photographs, that remembering all the ports is a bit of a test.
We were back on board about 2:15 and I finished off the last but one can of cider – which has lasted quite well. Once again, I wasn’t able to upload the blog or read emails. (Internet access can be very erratic at times.)
Our table at sailaway, opted to skip the dining room and invade the pizzeria at 7pm. We were joined by Deb & Bob, making 12, then later by the two Sharons, David and Peter. The manager is getting used to us… We ate very well indeed – too well in my case, but we still managed a late coffee with M & M and hit the sack about 11pm.
We have now cleared our last overseas port (we’ll count Australia as local) and have 4 days at sea before Darwin (again). We have been to distant Darwin more times than Melbourne in recent years. Theoretically, almost home now, yet we still have 11 days to go. Amazing.
We have just booked a Princess Sydney City tour ($35) on the way to the airport, as our Air NZ flight is 3:30pm. Those with earlier flights have the option of a $29 direct transfer. It means we don’t kick our heels for the day. M & M are on a QANTAS flight leaving about midday and we thought that the earlier NZ flight (11:30am) landed in NZ rush hour and might have been a bit tight if there were any delays leaving the ship (which can happen).
No comments:
Post a Comment