Mumbai, India

Our first port of call after leaving Muscat was Mumbai, for those of our generation Mumbai will be remembered as Bombay, capital of Maharashtra state, and the country’s financial and commercial center and is the principal port on the Arabian Sea. We had been looking forward most of all to India and for some reason I was a little disappointed with it. As expected it was very busy with many poor people and cars of all sorts of makes and conditions but for me there was something missing and was maybe like many cities where no-one really makes eye contact and I didn't get a sense of personality anywhere.

We had a pre-arranged tour of the sights of Mumbai which included a train ride from the iconic Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, previously known as the Victoria Terminus, to the Dhobi Ghat which is the world's largest open air laundry where the washers, known as dhobis, work in the open to clean clothes and linens from Mumbai's hotels and hospitals. The washers use traditioanl methods based on bleach and detergent water; soaked clothes are washed by beating on a laundry stone and starced by dipping them in starch obtained from boiled rice.

This and the Tiffin system were for me a highlight of Mumbai as they showed age old customs that are probably not seen anywhere else other than India. The Tiffins are authentic home cooked Indian meals that are delivered to your home or place of work by Dabbawalas - a sort of Uba eats without the technology. Dabbawalas deliver hundreds of thousands of meals on foot and by bike every day using a network that extends across the city; one Dabbawal may deliver direct or taken to an intermediary and taken onward to the customer or to another intermediary....quite amazing. Deliveroo and Uber eats are trying to break into this service but the Dabbawalas dismiss them as unable to keep up with them and more expensive. It would be a travesty if this custom was lost to modern practices.

Another place of interest we visited was the Gateway to India which was built the early 20th century to commemorate the landing of King George V and Queen Mary at Apollo Bunder (now Wellington Pier). Ironically the royal couple saw just a cardboard model as construction of the Gateway was completed much later, in 1924.

Mormugao, Goa

This is what most visitors go to Goa for, secluded beaches and idyllic places to swim - this not what we saw!! We arrived at Mormugao port to find that immigration was a long walk from the ship and there was no shuttle bus. Even though we had been through immigration into Inda at Mumbai we had to walk to and queue up again here which took ages and seemed completely unnecessary; the army officials were untrained and very slow and this was not a good introduction to Goa; also the berthing pier (known as Mole Berth) was leased to the Navy and not a more sophisticated cruise port geared up for cruise ships. Unfortunately we found this to be a recurring theme at other ports (more about this later) as most were for cargo ships not tourists.

We took a Marella tour to Old Goa ('The Historical Highlights of Goa') which was celebrating the annual novenas (feast) of St Francis of Assisi. Old Goa, capital city of Velha Goa, dates back to the 15th century and was abandoned in the 18th century due to the plague. The Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa, completed in 1605, is famed as holding the mortal remains of St. Francis Xavier and is today one of the most popular places to see in Old Goa.

The Churches and Convents of Goa have been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.Bom Jesus” means ‘good Jesus’ or ‘infant Jesus’ to whom it is dedicated. None of us had any clue as to what was taking place except it was clearly a religious celebration.

Colombo, Sri Lanka

On our first day, we took advantage of a Tuk Tuk ride around Colombo which was interesting and culminated in a walk through Viharamahadevi park which was gearing up for the 58th Colombo Scouts Camporee on the 8th December. At the end of the walk before returning to our Tuk-Tuk we visited the Independance Memorial Hall built to celebrate independance from Britain on 4th February 1948. I can't remember our driver's name but he made our journey more enjoyable with a tour round some of the back-streets to see places such as the following before returning us to our pick-up point and onwards to the ship:

Sivasubramania Swami Kovil - a hindu temple hidden in an inconspicuous side street
SLAF-HQ) is the Headquarters of Sri Lanka Air Force
The Lotus tower (in the distance) - when complete, the design and structure is influenced by the lotus flower, which symbolises purity in Sri Lanka's culture.
The Colombo National Museum
Nelum Pokuna Theatre (no photo)
Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall

On arrival back at the ship we had a look at tours for the next day; there were a number on offer on the quayside and after some discussion we decided to book ourselves on a personal tour to a tea plantation and elephant sanctuary. Tea is a major produce of Sri Lanka which of course was once called Ceylon. Our driver took us to Sunil's Tea Factory who took us round the factory and explained the process before sending the packed product to the wholesalers; a very basic process using basic equipment and a lot of manual labour (mostly women - better and lower paid I assume!).

Afer this we had a nice lunch followed by a visit to the elephant sanctuary, known as the Elephant Freedom Project. There was only one elephant there at the time as they had taken others to a river for a treat, nevertheless it was an interesting trip out for us; I came away not sure how the elephants were actually happy chained to a tree?

The last slide in this sequence shows Chittagong port where the ship was berthed and emphasises the comment about being moored amongst the cargo ships.

Penang, Indonesia

We arrived in Georgetown with no clear plan of what to do, other than walk into town which we did. We realised later that we did miss having a look round Fort Cornwallis (inset), which is right next to the cruise terminal. It was built by Captain Francis Light, in 1786, following his settlement of Penang Island (then known as Prince of Wales Island) when news of war between France and England broke out in 1793; the original wooden structure was replaced with a brick building in anticipation of an attack.

Other than walking round a few touristy shops we were on our way back to the ship when a tourist taxi pulled up and offered us a drive around town (at a cost of course) with maybe a visit to Penang Hill, famous for its monkeys, and with nothing better to do why not. When we got to Penang Hill the cost of going there turned out to be very expensive and with not a great deal of time we decided not to go there and instead visited the Wat Chaiyamangalaran Temple which is a Thai Buddhist Temple founded in 1845 by a Thai Buddhist monk in the middle of Georgetown which was quite interesting. Other than this there was not much to see and we returned to the ship.

Kuala Lumpar

Our next stop was Kuala Lumpar and we decided to take up a Marella tour, in part because the ship moored up around 3 miles from the port exit and organising something would have been very difficult. This issue is one of our major complaints about this Marella cruise, i.e. distance from the port exit, and in part due to this issue, we will not take up another cruise using this company (part of TUI).

The lady tour guide on this trip, whose name escapes me, I have to say was excellent and delivered her spiel about KL in an informative way with humour. Our first stop was at the National Museum of Malaysia (Muzium Negara).

The Muzium Negara is built in the style of a Malay palace and is intended to be the guardian of the nation’s history.

This can be seen in the strange array of exhibits on show from quite modern, Malaysia today through the Colonial Era to early Malaysian civilization. The museum is very informative, if a bit dull, and needs time spent reading the bulletins behind the exhibits, which of course for us there was not enough time. In August 2015, the National Museum was given recognition as a National Heritage Building, under the National Heritage Act 2005.

We left the museum and visited the Central Market, known as the Pasar Seni market. Having now research these places it is clear that we missed an awful lot of interesting parts of the Central Market, mainly due to insufficient time, including the Kasturi Walk, a covered outside walkway of exciting kiosks and street food. and supposedly a must-visit destination for tourists, shoppers and visitors alike. I never even saw this which is at the back of the main building and houses the Annexe Gallery, which is the place for the exhibition of contemporary art.

After a nice buffet lunch we visited our last site, the famous Kuala Lumpar Tower. We decided not to go up the tower due to walking distances and the queues of people waiting for the lifts. Instead we waited in the coach and did a bit of people watching as well as admiring the 'upside-down' house with a VW beetle upside down on the top of the house which was next to the tower (photo included.

We returned to the ship after an enjoyable day before our final evening aboard and our last day sailing to Singapore where we were to leave the ship and fly home.

Sea Days

The days we spend at sea sailing from one port to another are, at least for me, usually an enjoyable part of the cruise. Apart from just relaxing, reading, swimming in the pool or just eating, which can be done at any time during the day, there are also many activities laid on by the crew and entertainment such as live music in the bars and communal spaces.

One of my favourites, are the guest speaker(s), who for this cruise was a guy called John Chapman. John now speaks on many subjects relating to Bletchley Park, including the wartime Code-Breaking activities, Alan Turing, The Women at Bletchley Park, Ian Fleming, and the life of Winston Churchill. These are all subjects I am especially interested in and I enjoyed his lectures very much. His talks were 'The Imitation Game (Turing), 'Set Europe Ablaze (SOE) and 'The Life of Winston Churchill'

Also sea days are taken as an opportunity to prepare for Formal Dinners and Evenings which we like but on some cruises, especially those from America and with younger guests are less popular. Most of our cruises have been with P&O and the entertainment has always incuded top performers flown in for 2 or 3 shows before flying out. There would always be an on-board crew team who put on shows on other days, who would usually be very good and quite professional, unfortunately this cruise only had the crew shows and we didn't go to see any: shame really as they were reported to be very good.

Another downside to days at sea is that, whilst I like them, for some there can be too many where you do not get to see the places of interest on the itinery. On this cruise out of the 16 days, 2 were flying and 6 were at sea, leaving just 8 port days.

Our final port day was Singapore where we were also disembarking to fly home but not before a short tour of Singapore; however, due to some sort of organisational cock-up by Marella we were unable to leave the ship for this tour before leaving for good to go to the airport. Consequently we never got to see Singapore apart from the deck of the ship. The other complaint I wish to air here is that most of the ports we visited were mainly cargo and not a purpose built cruise terminal, something we have never experienced in the past. The consequences of this are the distances required to get out of the port which are only possible if shuttles are available which as we found this cruise is not always the case and bearing in mind the general age of many of the passengers can be difficult.