Spanish class today was interrupted and curtailed by announcements from the bridge. Which was forgivable because we were passing Krakatoa. How cool is that?! Unfortunately, this meant twenty or more minutes of blathering nonsense from the onboard speaker who twittered inanely over the tannoy system, talking and talking without actually saying anything. Knowing when it exploded (27 August 1883) is all very well and good, but he didn’t seem to know much about it! He mentioned the size of the explosion and how far away it was heard (3000 miles), but I didn’t hear him even mention the nuclear winter that ensued or WHY the eruption was noteworthy. The explosion blew the island apart (which he didn’t mention) and created a new one, called Child of Krakatoa, which is an active volcano that spews out enough gunk to cause it to grow in height by 16 feet a year. That’s a centimetre a day in height. A foot since we set sail. Currently. Right now. As we speak. It’s a foot taller now than when we left England. Wow. How DEEPLY cool is that? Instead he just kept talking about each US warship sunk near here by the Japanese, which although is important to know and appreciate, seemed of limited relevance when we could be talking about a volcanic eruption that caused death and destruction all over the globe. Seriously? Could you not maybe do SOME research before you do this stuff? How hard can it be? You probably only mentioned the thing about the film “Krakatoa: East of Java” being dodgy because Krakatoa is WEST of Java (seriously – did no one in Hollywood get fired for that?!) because the Captain said it last night in his announcement. Most people who have heard of Krakatoa know about the nuclear winter. How can you not, when you’re being PAID to know this kind of stuff?! Really? Crops failed, people starved to death. Hello? Duh? Maybe just one iddy biddy mention of the dust cloud? Blocking out the sun ALL OVER THE FACE OF THE EARTH? For MONTHS? Affecting harvests, tree growth, human and animal health and growth, even the colour of the sky in contemporary paintings? Just one? No? No mention of the dust layer in the tree ring record? In EUROPE? Or in the Arctic ice record? Nope. Just lists of dead Americans. No idea. Not a ruddy clue. *sigh*

Anyway, Krakatoa. I’ve seen it. It’s amazing. It just looks like a triangular/ pyramidal island with trees on, but when you know what happened here, it’s awe-inspiring. And very slightly unnerving. After all, we were VERY close… *gulp*

Geraldton. Our last stop in Australia before the home stretch. Never heard of it? No, neither had we. This was P&O UK’s maiden visit, which is always nice, because they make that little bit more of a fuss over us! There was a welcome tent on the quayside, a free shuttle bus service and free refreshments at the hotel next to the shuttle bus stop in town. All very nice. Trouble is, that was about it.

Don’t get me wrong, Geraldton is a pleasant little town, but it has very little of interest. It’s a beaches and watersports mecca, which is all very well and good if you’re into lying on beaches or giving yourself saltwater enemas behind speeding boats, but if you’re not that sort of person, you may struggle here. There were tours out into the countryside – which is apparently breathtaking with gorges and national parks and stuff – and the possibility of a passing visit to Hutt River Principality (a group of farms that declared independence when new Australian wheat quotas threatened to bankrupt them). They have their own stamps and money and are, for Australian tax purposes, non-doms. No, really! They had to declare war on the Commonwealth of Australia to get it, but they ended hostilities after four days, so no harm done. I would have loved to have gone there. This kind of thinking fascinates me. But it was too far out of town for such a brief visit.

HMAS Sydney II sank near here after a confrontation with a German ship in 1941. All 645 souls were lost. There is a beautiful memorial on the hill overlooking the town, which is a metal domed canopy made of flying birds. Beautiful. What the Germans were doing down here, I have no idea. The British tested their first nuclear device nearby and when Skylab crashed to Earth, it was near here. Donald Campbell got one of his water speed records nearby as well. For an isolated mining town, it’s had a lot of visitors!

They have some interesting thinking here, too. When a boat was recently seized in a criminal investigation, they stripped it of all the noxious chemical bits and then sank it to form an artificial reef for the marine flora and fauna. I LIKE that kind of thinking. That’s cool.

Nice place, though. Very pleasant little town. Highly recommended. But don’t eat at the Freemasons Hotel or the attached Gilroys Irish Bar. I’m told the Tides restaurant is nice. Try there instead.

Albany was a wonderful little town. Picturesque, lovely architecture, friendly people, interesting history. The only niggles that marred the day were: (a) The Ulysses Club were in town (3000 bikers with the motto “Grow Old Disgracefully”) which meant noisy bikes and every single photo I took had a bloomin’ bike in it and (b) we only had half a day. Back on Board was 1pm, for pity’s sake. I know the town is small, but it’s not THAT small! Still it meant a leisurely afternoon on board eating Magnums and napping, so not all bad news then…

Today was Fremantle and Perth. Lovely towns, both. Did a tour in the morning, which consisted of a coach trip to Perth, a little tour thereof, then a boat trip back up the Swan River to Fremantle and a coach tour of Fremantle. It was 38 in the shade today, which was so hot even the locals were complaining. I think it’s equivalent to about 100 in English money. We wandered a bit, shopped a little and had a lunch in a lovely little tea room. We pootled a little further and then Mum and Dad caught a heritage tram (really a trolleybus, not a tram) back to the ship. I took a taxi up to Cottesloe Beach, where there was a sculpture festival on the beach, which we had driven past on the way to Perth. It was truly astonishing to see people sitting on the beach in between large modern sculptures, leaning on them and eating their picnics in the shade of them. You know by now how I feel about public art and it was a truly wonderful experience.

All the sculptures were for sale, and the catalogue included a comment from each artist. One, Ken Sealey, had done a piece which was a swimmer made of layered plywood suspended in a block of laminated safety glass. Think Hirst and sharks and impossibility of death etc. But the swimmer isn’t in formaldehyde but encased in green glass. The comment the artist gave was as follows: “We have salt in our tears, sweat and blood. We came from the sea. We can never return. We are trapped in our ideas.” I’m still trying to decide whether this is the most pretentious thing I’ve ever read or quite possibly the most profound…

Melbourne was a lovely day. Mum’s old schoolfriend, Hannah, and her daughter, Jenny, met us at the port. They’re lovely. And I met up with a friend I made on the internet about three or four years ago, Fiona. She was lovely too! We all piled into Jenny’s people carrier (she has four kids so…) and they drove us around town showing us the sights and the architecture (old and new). Then we drove into the Dandenong Hills, via Pin Oak Court (yes, Neighbours’ Ramsey Street!). We had a lovely lunch, served to us, oddly, by a lovely bloke from Shropshire. Then we boarded the Puffing Billy, a small gauge single line steam train that took us from Belgrave to Lakeside, where Jenny met up with us in the people carrier. I love steam trains. I have no idea why, but they just make my heart stop. They’re so beautiful, they smell so good and they make such wonderful noises. When it was waiting at the station and picking up steam pressure, prior to departure, our engine was making noises just like Ivor the Engine and when we got to a steep incline, you could hear him saying “I know I can, I know I can, I know I can”. Stupidly enjoyable and amazing views across the countryside above the city. Surprisingly green, this part of Australia. I’ve always imagined Oz to be more Alice Springs/ Uluru/ bush-like, but this bit is actually very green indeed.

Adelaide was brilliant. Despite the 40 minute drive into the city (and, ergo, back again) and the fact that it was a Sunday, so the Central Market and several other shops were closed, the architecture was interesting (again with the art deco and some really interesting modern stuff literally next to beautiful old Victorian and Edwardian frilly bits), the people were lovely, the clothes were expensive but available in my size (so it would have been rude not to buy them, after they’d gone to all that trouble…) and the weather was lovely. We were predicted 71 (19/20ish) and 60% chance of rain. It actually was over 80 (28/29) and sunny and the rain didn’t come down until after 4, when we were already on our way back to the ship. There is a circular bus route in the centre of town which is every half hour, every day and completely FREE. (If you’re in Adelaide, you’re looking for the 99C route.) We took a ride on it, which allowed us to see more of the city without our legs falling off. We were all particularly intrigued by a series of thirty foot inflatable astronauts climbing over several of the buildings and standing in the parks. Advertising for the Adelaide Fringe Festival, apparently, but very entertaining to find when you turn a corner! The little girl astronauts had pink skirts on their spacesuits! Very cute.

Ships have two main kinds of movement: pitch and roll. If you’re standing in the middle, facing forward, pitch is front to back up and down. Like boats do in cartoons, or the little car does on the Bupa advert. Up the hill and down the other side. Like the start of a rollercoaster, for want of a better analogy. Rolling is side to side. The left side goes up as the right side goes down and then down as the right side goes up. My cabin only creaks when we’re doing both at once, pitching AND rolling, which doesn’t happen very often because the captain usually turns into the wind/waves to reduce movement.  Anyway, now we have two sea days as we traverse the Australian Bight towards Albany. Bit bumpy today. It’s funny. I don’t THINK this ship is made of wood. It seems to be all metal and stuff. Yet when the ship moves in certain ways, it creaks just like a wooden ship. If you’ve ever seen Hornblower or Amistad other seafaring films or shows, you’ll know the sound. Maybe it’s the wooden wardrobes?!

Brisbane is AMAZING. It is beautiful, modern, clean, interesting, historical, friendly and is the first place in the southern hemisphere I have ever considered as a possible place to live. Just wonderful. We met our cousin, who drove us around a bit. We then had brunch with him and then went back to the ship to catch our afternoon tour. We got a guided coach tour of the interesting bits in the centre of town, followed by a paddle steamer trip up the river that runs through the centre of the city. The whole thing was wonderful, although the full Devonshire cream tea on the boat seemed a bit odd!

If anyone is wondering what particularly got to me about Brisbane, it’s the public art. I LOVE public art, it’s a passion of mine. Well, all art affects me, but public art is so exciting. Brisbane has a sculpture on almost every street corner. It’s extraordinary. I tried to photograph as many as I could, and I got even more by accident just by snapping buildings and not noticing what was in front of them! Seriously, there’s sculpture and art and interesting architecture on every street. The place is amazing. Loved it. HAVE to come back here. HAVE to.

We got to Sydney early because we had to do repairs which we’re not supposed to know about or talk about because travelling in that condition probably breaches several maritime laws.  Suffice to say, we arrived at midnight, instead of 8am. This meant that I could get off, meet up with Simon and Guy and go out for a drink. We got turned away from the Star City casino – the security guard either doesn’t like English people, or goatee beards, or gay men, or check shirts, or, oh, I don’t know. He said Guy had had too much to drink. Two glasses of wine with dinner four hours previously hardly constitutes too much to drink. Maybe he just didn’t understand that he was listening to an English accent, not a drunk Australian! Anyway, we found a pub nearby and we had a great time just hanging out and catching up. Got to bed about 6am.

Met up again for lunch at a pancake place on the Rocks, which served me beef ribs which turned out to be roughly half a cow. I managed half. Literally half. Heartbreakingly delicious, though. I wished I had the room to eat the rest of it, but there was no way! Then I dragged them both on an open top bus tour, which is my new favourite way to see new cities. They showed me some stuff they’d found that I wouldn’t otherwise have seen, including an amazing fountain in the shape of a spiral. We went to QVB (Queen Victoria Buildings) which is a seriously posh shopping centre that was once described as the most beautiful shopping centre in the world. It was amazing. It was carpeted! Seriously, I kid you not! And the loos contained the biggest toilet cubicles I have ever seen. Astonishing. It has that over-ornate beauty that you only get with Victorian and similar era architecture. It looks rather similar to Harrods, but designed by someone who had a real love for curlicues and extra bits. Even the clocks were astonishing. About twenty foot long, suspended from the glass roof and so over ornate, I can’t even begin to describe them. You’ll have to wait for the photos, I’m afraid. Then back to the Rocks for dinner with my parents and then Simon, Guy and I went to Darling Harbour for a drink at Pontoon, which is a wonderful bar. I heartily recommend it. The view across the harbour is amazing.

So my day in Sydney was the best part of forty-eight hours long.  We sailed late, because we mislaid a crew member (and eventually sailed without him/her) at about 1ish.

I give up. Three hours I got this time. And I was SO tired. I went to bed at 9.30 and it is now quarter to one and I’m wide awake. Ironic, really, as Timmy Mallett disembarked yesterday.

For those who led a more sheltered existence in childhood, Timmy Mallett presented a Saturday morning television show called Wacaday. WAC stood for the Wide Awake Club. So now you see why it is relevant to my insomnia. Clever, innit, this writing lark. 😉

I used to love Wacaday, used to watch it religiously, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to him much, as he was being hogged by old people who watch I’m a Celebrity, Please Torture Me in the Jungle and wanted to suck up and have their photos taken. Most of them probably didn’t have the faintest idea who he really was (and I heard several say they didn’t even like him!).  He’s now an artist, and a rather good one at that. Rolf Harris taught him to paint, so he’s quite fearless with colour and the results are stunning. He painted live for us several times and did scenes of places we have been to. Needless to say, the paintings have all been snapped up, despite the four-figure price tags! I’m hoping that some will be made into prints, so that us normal people can afford to buy them, too, but this is apparently by no means a certainty.

So, anyway, I can’t sleep. My body clock has officially given up the ghost. My computer tells me it is 4pm in London, my bedside clock says 1am and my internal systems have thrown their cards up in the air and walked away from the table in disgust.

Osaka was fun. And I finally got to part with some money! In the morning we met up with two of our tablemates, Sonia and Mike, and shared a taxi into Den Den Town. This is the electronics quarter, where all the computer, camera and similar shiny things are sold. Osaka is quite like London in the 1500s – shops are grouped together by product. Hence in London there is Fish Street, and Milk Street and Pudding Lane and so on. We walked down a covered street (nice touch, that) and every single shop sold kitchenwares. Every single one. Chopsticks, pepperpots, ovens, condiment dishes, signwriters, lighting, air conditioning and so on. Everything you need to fully stock a brand new restaurant was available in the one place, in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours. You nearly all got bamboo pancake warmers as souvenirs until my dad whispered in my ear “How are you going to pack them, exactly…?”

Of course, when I say “shared a taxi”, I am glossing over somewhat here. Every single taxi in Osaka is licensed to carry four people and four people only. Sonia, however, is tiny and could quite easily fit in my pocket – well, sit on Mike’s lap, anyway. (I kid you not. She’s four foot eleven and thin as a rake.) We managed to find a taxi driver who would take five of us, as long as Sonia agreed to duck if we saw a policeman, but we weren’t so successful later in the day, once the police were up and about, and we ended up coming back in two cabs, rather than one. Made for quite a giggle in the morning though, I can tell you! Good thing we all like each other!

Anyway, Den Den Town. If anyone tells you that Osaka shops open between 10 and 11, just slap them round the back of the head and be done with it. 11.30, if you’re lucky, thank you very much. This meant a fair bit of rather fruitless wandering past rolled down shutters that may well have hidden precisely what we were looking for! Anyway,  we finally found a store that sold what we were looking for. Mike and I bought blank CDs to burn photos onto and flash drives for further storage. I relieved the nice people at Mastercard of about a hundred quid, all in all.

We then found another willing taxi driver who drove the five of us to the Sheraton Hotel. In the basement, there is a rather good restaurant (well, actually there are three, but we went to the President Chibo), which I highly recommend, if anyone’s going to Osaka at any point. They served lovely, simple Japanese food (which has an astonishing obsession with garlic, which surprised me) which they cooked in front of us. It was delicious. I had Japanese tea after. I’d never tried Japanese tea before. Well, you know how Chinese tea is Green Tea with Jasmine in? Well, Japanese tea is black tea with nothing. Just ordinary tea, like we have at home! So now when you serve someone tea, you can ask if they would like Japanese tea or whether they would like milk as well!

We then went back up into the Sheraton proper to use their rather lovely loos (heated seats were a bit startling though!). We then grabbed (two) taxis to Bic Camera. I understood Bic Camera to be Osaka’s biggest camera store. It’s WAY more than that. It’s six floors, for a start, and is basically a department store that is REALLY obsessed with electronics. But it also sells children’s clothes, golf clubs, cosmetics, air conditioning units, white goods, you name it. There’s even a McDonalds on the 2nd floor (apparently).

I’ve been wondering if we should have gone on an organised tour. We did have one booked, but it was eight hours long, so we cancelled it. I’m wondering if we missed out on the “traditional” Japanese stuff. You know, girls in kimonos, temples, cherry blossom, tea ceremonies and the like. Oh well, maybe next time, but even then, not eight hours of it, please!

But we definitely saw Osaka, which is, much like Hiroshima, not a pretty town. It’s just a big city – and don’t let the Port Guide map fool you, it’s HUGE – although with the same temporary-looking overhead wiring we saw yesterday. It is by no means a beautiful place. I’m starting to see why people make such a fuss about London, Edinburgh, Paris and the like. They are very PRETTY cities, particularly if this is what you’re coming from, if you see what I mean. I suppose it’s true of all war-ravaged cities. When you rebuild, you rebuild fast and useful, like I said yesterday about Hiroshima. This is the same, only WAY bigger. And with a rather cool double-decker road bridge, with one level going each way.

I could barely stay awake during dinner, so afterwards, I took the money I owed back to the cabin of the lady who lent it to me and then I went to bed. And here I am, four hours later, wide awake and talking to you. Good thing tomorrow is a sea day. I have a feeling I will be spending most of it asleep!

The ship was moored, incidentally, at the foot of the World’s Largest Ferris Wheel, which Mike went up on. It looked a bit vertiginous for my liking. The pods are grouped into colours and one of each colour contained a giant Winnie the Pooh. We never did grasp why, exactly. Just half a dozen four foot Winnie the Poohs going round and round and round and round every twenty minutes or so. Deeply strange.

Today I finally set foot in Japan for the first time. Big anti-climax. HUGE. No taxis, no one who spoke English to meet, greet or assist. A ludicrously long wait for a taxi, actually. There was a well-meaning old taxi marshall, who eventually rang someone up and yelled at them until they sent more cabs to the port. Mind you, it was long conversation. The person at the other end was clearly unwilling!

We went to the Peace Park. This is the park that the bomb was dropped on. It’s big and T-shaped and easy to spot from the sky (and probably wasn’t called the Peace Park back then…). There are a series of memorials and fountains set up, including an arch with the names of all who died on the day and as a result over the longer term from the effects of the radiation. There is also the Children’s Memorial, which is in the shape of the bomb but has a bell hung inside, which you ring for world peace. If only it was that easy! The symbol of longevity is the crane (bird) and a young girl called Sadako who had leukaemia tried to make 1000 origami cranes so that she wouldn’t die. She did 1300 but she still died, but the crane has now become the symbol of Hiroshima’s hopes for peace in the world and the bell clanger is a brass origami crane. We rang the bell, for what it’s worth…

Hiroshima is not a pretty city. In fact, it is downright ugly. Hardly surprising, considering, but still… When the air was safe and they started to rebuild, the thinking was clearly “Get it up fast and make it useful – to hell with pretty”. It is a very utilitarian place. Only marginally less stark than some Soviet suburbs in Eastern Europe. They were often just concrete blocks with window holes. At least in Hiroshima, they have tiled over the concrete, but they just bunged them on – no need for pattern or colour. It’s also a surprisingly untidy place. I expected a Japanese city to be clean, efficient and modern. Not here. The electricity supply that was strung up all those years ago is still there – the streets are a spaghetti maze above your head of telephone and electrical cabling. We were surprised they hadn’t buried it all by now, but, as I said, it’s a very utilitarian place. Ain’t broke? Don’t fix it. Mind you, if it costs 30 quid to get a taxi for 15 minutes, maybe they just can’t afford to dig holes!

The important thing to see was the Peace Dome. This is an old brick building near where the bomb hit. It was the Industrial Promotion Hall, built in 1914 and had a dome on the top. The roof of the dome was vaporised by the bomb blast, leaving only the struts behind. They left it just as it was, as a permanent reminder of what happened on 6th August 1945. Very poignant. And very necessary, because the entire city was razed to the ground and nothing whatsoever remains other than that.  But anyway, we came, we saw, we paid our respects, we took photos, bought a t-shirt, some postcards and a couple of cranes and then we left.

The sea is the colour of slate, today, as the sky is overcast and grey. It’ll probably start raining shortly. The view from my massage bed (I know, it’s a hard life…*) was of a fairly smooth ocean as far as the eye could see, the colour of slate, with white horses cresting the waves forming ripple patterns similar to those found in the surface of natural slate. It’s all rather pretty, despite the dark grey overall effect. Sometimes, I spend so much time running around “doing” stuff, that even I forget to look out the window and marvel at the magic of the water. It’s never the same colour twice or the same shade all over. It’s constantly changing and shifting, with the wind, with the clouds, with the sun, mist or rain. It is actually quite dangerously hypnotic and if you look at it for long enough, you’d never get anything done at all! You’d never move. It’s still bitterly cold out, though, so the effect is currently a little diluted from being witnessed through glass. It is still pretty, but it doesn’t have nearly the same visceral power as when you are outdoors, with nothing between you and the infinite but a waist-high barrier and a steady footing.

* In my defence, Beijing has done something catastrophic to my neck. Don’t ask me what or how, I’ve no idea.

Just the best day ever. Just brilliant. P&O offer rather expensive excursions at every port, but the ones at Beijing didn’t interest us. They offered us EITHER the Great Wall OR Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City OR the Olympic Stadia (although without going inside them) OR something else. We took one look at it (back in November) and said “Nah, we can do better than that”. We found a tour company on the internet and booked a tour with them. They picked us up from the ship in a beautiful Dodge minivan-type thing. Leather seats, air con (or rather, today, heating!), working seatbelts, just lovely and comfy. They drove us into Beijing which took a couple of hours, and we saw Tiananmen Square, Mao’s Mausoleum, the National Museum of China and the Monument to the Nation’s Heroes. We didn’t get out of the car because (a) it was bloomin’ freezing and (b) we could see fine from the car! You’re not allowed to see Mao, the Monument is an obelisk-type thing, the Square is… a square (not nearly as big as I expected, to be honest!) and we REALLY didn’t feel like doing a museum. Maybe next time…

We then went to the Forbidden City and a little electrical bus like a long milk-float took us around to the entrance (the entrance near the parking area is closed). We went in and had a look around. It’s very nice and Susie, our guide, told us all sorts of facts. Such as, although 6 and 8 are now considered lucky numbers to the Chinese, back in the Emperors’ times, it was 9 that was lucky. Which is why there are 9,999 rooms in the Forbidden City. And all the statues and gargoyles and bits and pieces add up to nine.

Factoid of the day: The ancient Chinese believed there was a purple star at the centre of the Universe, where God lived in a palace with 10,000 rooms. The Emperor’s Palace had 9,999 because he didn’t dare project himself as equal with God.

We were then running ahead of schedule, so Susie took us to a tea house. No, me neither. I associated them with Japan as well. We tried four different types of tea and were taught the different ways in which you’re supposed to drink them. You slurp Oolong, but only Oolong. We also had Jasmine (the one we get in Chinese restaurants in the UK), Puer (pronounced pure) which has no caffeine and is like whisky – thirty years old is best, apparently – and Litchi (lychee, to you) tea, which is naturally sweet, because of the lychees, funnily enough, which was REALLY nice, which is interesting, because I don’t like lychees themselves. Then we walked down the road and round the corner to a silk factory. We were shown how silk is harvested. Vegetarians shouldn’t wear it. Basically, when the silk worm is 5 years old, it builds itself a pupa from a single thread of silk about a mile long, so that it can become a moth. To get the silk, they drop them in boiling water, which kills the worm and softens the pupa, so that it can be peeled apart. It’s fascinating, but I did feel a bit bad for the worms.  They don’t waste the worm, they eat it. Apparently it’s a very nutritious, high-protein delicacy, but still…

Then we got back in the minivan and went to lunch. We took a detour, however, to find some posh loos. They had to be posh because due to the broken wrist, mum is currently one-handed and she needs a handle to hold onto in order to be able to stand up again! Only hotels aimed at Westerners seem to have grasped the concept of disabled toilets, which seems odd, no matter how low the average age of your society… We ended up at the Pangu Hotel, a SEVEN star hotel with VERY nice loos indeed! Then on to the Dragon Land Jade Gallery, the largest jade shop in Beijing, where we ate lunch in the restaurant. Lunch was yummy. Chicken in sweet chilli sauce, beef in black bean (I think), cucumber, broccoli, greens, mushrooms, all stir-fried, pickled cabbage (which is especially important at New Year), an egg and tomato dish, tofu and egg soup, steamed rice, green tea and watermelon for dessert. We then admired the jade on offer, including some ENORMOUS pieces, including a ship that was probably eight feet long and five feet high, a virtually life-sized bull and eagle and a set of eight virtually life-sized horses made from a single piece of jade. We bought a few souvenirs and then we drove to the Wall.

We were planning on going to the Badaling section, which is the usual one, but Susie said that this wasn’t very accessible for mum, so she took us out of the city to Ju Yong Guan, which is a section which is an almost complete circle built by the Ming Emperors. By now, the sun was out, so it wasn’t nearly as cold as it had been earlier in the day, so Dad and I climbed up. He did one tower, I did two. This means two watchtowers, which are dotted along the entire wall and seem to be the standard method of measuring distance on the Wall.

It is quite spectacular, the Great Wall, there’s no other way of describing it. It stretches as far as the eye can see, climbing mountains, running along ridges, 7000km long, several metres wide and very high indeed. It must have been very daunting to approach from the other side, as an outsider. It was daunting enough as a tourist, so what it must have looked like bristling with soldiers, I dread to think!

It’s cold out. I may have mentioned this. We are now running three hours late on our way to Beijing tomorrow morning. Why? Ice. The sea has turned to ice. I kid you not. It’s creepy. It doesn’t help to walk through the pub and hear ‘My Heart Will Go On’, I can assure you. (No, the band really were singing this)  Not iceBERGS, obviously, but large chunks, several metres wide some of them, and heaven knows how deep they go. So we have slowed down. We’re a cruise ship, not an ice breaker. We’re solid but we’re not reinforced to that extent! If I had to describe the sight, and I will have to, because it was impossible to get a picture in the darkness, it was like your local lake when it freezes over in winter. Small bits floating on the top, that gradually join together to form bigger and bigger bits, rather like the way the universe came into being. Then the bigger bits stick to bigger bits and form bigger bits, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera and so forth*. These bits didn’t look particularly big, but we were looking from a hundred feet up, so they were probably a metre or so across. And the whole sea was covered in them. Not just one or two floating past here and there. As far as the eye could see in every direction with nary a gap between them. Just like you see on documentaries about the Arctic or Antarctic. So cool. I wish I could share a photo with you, but I don’t think anyone got a good one. I’ll ask around and see if anyone did, just in case, but you may just have to use your imaginations, I’m afraid.

On the plus side, all this cold over the past two days has meant that the ambient temperature down in the bowels of the ship has dropped, which has meant that I have been able to brush my teeth in cold water for the first time since Egypt. Usually, it’s all a bit tepid, verging on the warm at times, which is singularly unpleasant, I have to tell you. It’s not a major problem in the grand scheme of things, which is why I haven’t whinged about it (there are plenty enough whingers on here without my joining in, I can tell you!), but it is nice to have cold water for a change! I have had to turn the shower up from 15 to 20 degrees though, to compensate! (cos when the cold feed is warm, you don’t need much hot!)

We make our own water. I think we can produce about 100,000 gallons a day, but we can only do this when we’re doing over 12 knots (the desalination equipment can’t run at less than that, apparently). This meant that we made no water for two days when we were in Egypt (Port Said and the Suez Canal transit, where the speed limit is 9 knots). Mind you, when we were running past pirates in the Gulf of Aden we were doing over 22 knots, so I guess we made up for it then! We got so low on water that we loaded several tankers-full at Sharm El Sheikh, but when it came out it was such a dodgy colour, they quarantined it and I think they decided not to use it in the end! The yellowness may have just been caused by sand, but I prefer my water to be as near colourless as possible with a vague tinge of blue, if it’s all the same to you!

I should warn those of you that have never taken a cruise that the tap water isn’t as lovely as that you get at home. Not by a long chalk. Some days it’s salty, some days they go a bit nuts with the chlorine, sometimes it just tastes plain odd, but it’s nothing that a couple of ice cubes can’t fix! And the bottled stuff we buy on is nice enough, usually. On a previous cruise, we had some bottled stuff that was absolutely horrid, but so far, the Buxton we loaded in Southampton and the Krivos we loaded in Athens have been lovely. Now we have stuff called Splash that we loaded in Singpoare, which is also very nice, so when the tap water is having a bad day (it varies considerably depending on which tank we are drinking from!) that even ice cubes can’t redeem, there’s always something drinkable somewhere on board!