On Our Way Home

In less than 2 weeks we will be in the port of Long Beach hauling our luggage off the ship for the last time. We can tell the cruise is almost over because the ship keeps running out of things. The fresh pineapple which I have had for breakfast every sea day is long gone as are the mixed nuts in the bars. There are only peanuts now. The major change was in the cookies. All of a sudden they just weren't as good anymore. I finally asked about them and was told that they ran out of the frozen cookie dough so were making them from scratch. Whoever the baker is needs a new recipe! They taste like they have no brown sugar. Probably just as well, the others were very tempting. 

We do still have some wonderful ports. Four days in a row at 4 different islands in French Polynesia should be wonderful. Then after another day at sea yet another FP island. Then we will have 6 days at sea to pack. I can only imagine what our cabin will look like during that time. We have a lot to pack! 

I think this has been the smoothest cruise we have ever been on. The roughest area was between Vancouver and LA! Our captain has done an excellent job of keeping us safe even if it did include a couple of disappointments. He has avoided the many typhoons that have wrecked havoc in Southeast Asia this fall. Skipping Yap and heading straight south to avoid Typhoon Hayain was a very smart move. That one was devastating for the Philippines, where we had just visited. 

We have been healthy on this trip also. Other times we have gotten the colds that went around the ship. Early in the cruise there were people hacking like crazy in the lectures and shows. Then it calmed down a bit. We had a lot of new passengers get on in Hong Kong and Singapore. Again, hacking all over the place. We have been very lucky. Toward the beginning there seemed to be an ambulance at every pier also. We know one couple who got off in Shanghai. He had had a heart attack. He was in the hospital in China for a week before returning to the states. They do not provide food in the hospital so his wife was having to bring some to him. Couldn't have been very easy in a strange city like that. We haven't heard of any deaths this trip. When we had the smell in our room there was a rumor that it was a decaying body that hadn't been found for days. Amazing what people will say. Stewards are in our rooms daily and that smell would have been a lot worse if it had been a body! We kept asking but they always say they are looking into it then hope people will stop asking, as we did. 

HAL hires Indonesians for their stewards and wait staff. They have a school there for training as well as one in the Philippines for the bar staff. The Indonesians put on a cultural show for us today. It wasn't perfect but was very entertaining. The room was packed which was nice. The show is usually at 11 pm, too late for most passengers including me! Our steward and table server were both in it. It looked like they were having a lot of fun. On a long cruise like this we get to know those who serve us quite well. The Amsterdam is headed to dry dock in San Francisco after we all debark in LA. We have invited Hasto, our steward, to a day of sightseeing. Hope he will get the time off. 

Passengers are starting to hand out cards so we can stay in touch. If we continue cruising on HAL I have no doubt that we will see some of them again. Some of the people take long cruises like this every year, or even 2! It is an entirely different society than we'd known before. We have just under 300 days on HAL. Most of our table mates have over 700. There are people onboard with over 1000! I don't think we will ever reach that level. I would rather watch the grand kids grow up.