"Live" Coral Princess, 32 Days, Oct 17th to Nov 17th, Singapore-Asia-Los Angeles (+Week in Singapore pre-cruise)

[LACruiser88]

Pool towel art!

 

Tonight's extra dishes in the RC Dining Room were Chilean Sea Bass with Mashed Potatoes and Penne Alla Puttanesca.  The Penne was great!

 

 

 

 

[CruzinNoony]

I'm following along on your travels and am totally enjoying it.  Loved the elephant pictures!  Very interesting about the percentage of passengers buying the packages.  Thank you for sharing that.

[Yehootu]

 Last night went to see Ventriloquist Jerry Goodspeed in the Universe Lounge. The place was empty.  Not rip roaring funny, but had several good one liners. Usually it's the same old cruiseship jokes, but he was different. 

[DavidsNana]

@LACruiser88As always loving your Live From!  And I envy you so seeing those pictures of the elephant sanctuary visit.  Elephants are my favorite animals and I would so love to do that.  Thanks so much for sharing these and all your other fantastic pictures and information.  

[LACruiser88]

Good morning Laem Chabang, Thailand!  Port for our day in Bangkok.

 

 

 

[c-boy]

I ❤️ Bangkok.

[leck57]

1 hour ago, c-boy said:

I ❤️ Bangkok.

 

I don't mind it but I won't do the trip in to Bangkok from the port again. Last time was a slow moving crawl in to the city.

I'm pleased to see Princess offering a shuttle to Pattaya. Last time we cruised this part of the world you had to do a tour of some sort, whereas shuttles are good if you just want a cheaper way of going and having a look around. Princess seem to be doing this a bit more of late and advising people a few days ahead so that they don't necessarily have to book a high priced shore excursion. 

[expattraveler]

On 10/15/2024 at 3:31 PM, LACruiser88 said:

One item of caution, if you flag a taxi down on the street they will charge you a $4.60 SGD ($3.51 USD) additional surcharge.  Why?  None of the drivers gave us a satisfactory answer, "it just is" is their answer. 
 

Was fortunate in my career to live in Singapore for 5 years. One of my favorite sayings from the locals was “same same, but different lah”….

 

On 10/15/2024 at 3:31 PM, LACruiser88 said:

One item of caution, if you flag a taxi down on the street they will charge you a $4.60 SGD ($3.51 USD) additional surcharge.  Why?  None of the drivers gave us a satisfactory answer, "it just is" is their answer. 
 

Was fortunate in my career to live in Singapore for 5 years. One of my favorite sayings from the locals was “same same, but different lah”….

 

 

 

 

 

[OzKiwiJJ]

If waiter Jose is still in the Bordeaux dining room, first section on the left as you enter, please say 'hi' to him from Julie & Rolf. We miss him! He looked after us so well during the Austaluan world cruise. 

[wallyj]

49 minutes ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

If waiter Jose is still in the Bordeaux dining room, first section on the left as you enter, please say 'hi' to him from Julie & Rolf. We miss him! He looked after us so well during the Austaluan world cruise. 

Many times the wait staff are rotated so Jose may not necessarily be in the same section or Dining room. This makes it so the same waiters are not stuck in the farthest section from the kitchen having to carry the food the longest distance.

[LACruiser88]

5 hours ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

If waiter Jose is still in the Bordeaux dining room, first section on the left as you enter, please say 'hi' to him from Julie & Rolf. We miss him! He looked after us so well during the Austaluan world cruise. 

We are in the Reserve Collection section on the port side.  No Jose there. 🤷‍♂️

[LACruiser88]

This morning started with a 6:00 am wake up call.  We had to meet in the Explorer's Lounge at 7:15 for our 2 hour bus ride into downtown Bangkok.

We were on the bus and on our way by 8:20.  We arrived at our drop off spot, the Asia Hotel, by 10:30.  And we were off!

We walked to the enormous Siam Shopping Center.  After Debbie verified that there were no deals to be found, which entailed walking at least a mile, we left and flagged down a Tut Tut.  We then Tut Tut'd ourselves all over the city!

 

 

 

Check out our Tut Tut video.  We felt like we were on the Amazing Race!

 
Bangkok is huge and very diverse.  We did some shopping for our family and had a really good lunch.  By 1 pm, we finally made it to the Grand Palace. By this time our energy level had Tut Tutted away!  The high humidity really sap's it away. 

 

 

 

 

 

I was wearing shorts and would have to buy "tourist" pants to wear over my shorts, to enter the Palace.  They were available at the many souvenir vendors that line the streets outside the Palace, only 100 bahts ($3 USD).

We were so sweaty and beat that we decided that seeing the outside of the Palace was ok with us.  We have seen several YouTube videos of the Palace prior to this trip.

We then Tut Tutted back to our pickup location, the same Asia Hotel, and waited for our bus.

Here are some random photos from around the city.
 

 

 

 

 

All in all, we had a very pleasurable day!

 

 

 

Edited Sunday at 02:21 PM by LACruiser88

[LACruiser88]

I apologize for the horrible menu photos tonight, I'm mucho tired!  The extra dishes in the RC dining were Rack of Lamb and Cherries Jubilee.  It was Italian night.  The Branzino with polenta was excellent!

 

 

 

 

[brucedodge]

On 10/18/2024 at 2:40 PM, wintrev said:

 Have never had cold water come out of a tap on any Princess ship.

FWIW, when I attended an officers' Q&A several years ago (don't remember which Princess ship), a passenger asked the Engineer why he couldn't get cold water to of his taps.  The Engineer appeared a bit sheepish and told the passenger the "cold" water could never be colder than the temperature of the sea water they were passing through, as they desalinate the sea water, and don't use chillers as that would be too expensive to install and operate. Sounded logical, but I've never worried about it.

[loge23]

4 hours ago, LACruiser88 said:

I apologize for the horrible menu photos tonight, I'm mucho tired!  The extra dishes in the RC dining were Rack of Lamb and Cherries Jubilee.  It was Italian night.  The Branzino with polenta was excellent!

 

 

Those 6am wake-ups will do that - let alone Tut-Tutting around Bangkok all day! 

Need a good sea day!

Edited Sunday at 06:56 PM by loge23

[leck57]

I see Nathan Foley is performing tonight. We saw him on a cruise last year and his show was good.

[OzKiwiJJ]

14 hours ago, wallyj said:

Many times the wait staff are rotated so Jose may not necessarily be in the same section or Dining room. This makes it so the same waiters are not stuck in the farthest section from the kitchen having to carry the food the longest distance.

I think Jose has dibs on that section so might still be there if he's still onboard. I think he's one if their more senior waiters. He did get rotated off breakfast and lunch service there for part of the world cruise - all the waiters do - but it was his section every night for the full cruise. 

[OzKiwiJJ]

1 hour ago, leck57 said:

I see Nathan Foley is performing tonight. We saw him on a cruise last year and his show was good.

He is such high energy! We've seen him a couple of times.

[OzKiwiJJ]

4 hours ago, brucedodge said:

FWIW, when I attended an officers' Q&A several years ago (don't remember which Princess ship), a passenger asked the Engineer why he couldn't get cold water to of his taps.  The Engineer appeared a bit sheepish and told the passenger the "cold" water could never be colder than the temperature of the sea water they were passing through, as they desalinate the sea water, and don't use chillers as that would be too expensive to install and operate. Sounded logical, but I've never worried about it.

It's a pain when you're in the tropics and have just come back to the ship, hot and sweaty, after a full day excursion, just wanting a cold shower and you find the water temperature on full cold is almost too hot! That's happened to me a few times. 

[EDVM96]

1 minute ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

It's a pain when you're in the tropics and have just come back to the ship, hot and sweaty, after a full day excursion, just wanting a cold shower and you find the water temperature on full cold is almost too hot! That's happened to me a few times. 

It's so true. 😄 You want a cold shower after a day on a hot and humid Caribbean Island? Not really a chance. You want a hot shower when traveling Greenland? Well, maybe. 😄

The only showers they really cool down are at the Enclave. "Cool Mist: at 68ºF". Well. In theory. 😉

[Yehootu]

We prearranged with Djtumsambar taxi Service for a 0900 pickup. We went outside the terminal building at 0830 and our driver was already there. We knew it was going to be a good day as he had our welcome sign upside down.Our plan was to see The Sanctuary of Truth, the Big Budda, and shopping at Pattaya Beach. We had a new very clean Audi cab with awesome A/C. The beginning of the Sanctuary tour is hiking down stairs in a very humid jungle where at the bottom you’re given a hard hat. The Sanctuary is all hand carved and the wood is interlocked. There are No Nails. It was very impressive.

Edited Monday at 01:44 AM by Yehootu

[Yehootu]

After a cold Singha we got back in the pre cooled car and went to The Big Budda.

[LACruiser88]

Good morning Sea Day!  Check out the rainbow!  🌈

 

 

Btw, we sent out laundry on embarkation day, it was back in 48 hrs.  All items Debbie hang dries at home, she washed at the laundromat and hung in our cabin.  Everything was dry overnight!  We always have the couch covered with a bed sheet.  

 

 

[LACruiser88]

We made it to breakfast this morning.  The extra dish in the RC dining was Banana Pancakes.  They were soooo good!  

 

 

[LACruiser88]

Here are the Captain Circle stats for this voyage.  There are some heavy hitters onboard.  We have sailed with the Most Traveled couple several times as they are also from the Los Angeles area.  They are very nice.

 

The MTG Luncheon to be held on November 4th.  The cutoff was 565 days.  We are #8 and #9.

 

#1- 3,051 days

#2- 2,183 days

#3- 1,919 days