I do like Hong Kong. It’s not as cheap as it used to be, and the people can be annoying but I do like Hong Kong. It’s a very cheerful city, even in bad weather.

One of the things we did twice was we took the Peak Tram, which is a wonder of Victorian engineering. Built in 1888, it is the steepest tramway in the world, and runs up to the top of Victoria Peak. It’s a slightly hairy ride, but it’s a fascinating experience, in lovely old Victorian cars. The view from the top is spectacular. Apparently. The peak has been shrouded in mist for almost all of the two days we have been here. We caught a glimpse on our first trip up, but on the second, it was a complete white-out. Visibility was down to a matter of about twenty or thirty feet. I felt bad for those who hadn’t done the morning tour. They essentially got the top and saw nothing. Absolutely nothing.

As part of our morning tour, we were taken on a sampan ride. Sampans are small motorised boats that seat ten or eleven and are essentially motorised rowing boats with a canopy over the top. They are not particularly stable and the harbour is surprising choppy, but it was a very enjoyable ride. It only lasted about twenty minutes though, which was a shame. Oh well, can’t have everything.

Overhyped. The light show in Hong Kong Harbour. Seriously, don’t bother. When we came before, we went out on a harbour cruise and saw all the lights on the skyscrapers. Very pretty. This time, they have apparently created a light show and set it to music. Well, you know what? They flash on and off all the time, anyway. We couldn’t tell the difference. The “music” was dire, the “show” virtually non-existent. As far as I could tell, the only difference was the apparition of green lasers on three roof-tops. There was one building that seemed to turn its decorative lights on and off ALMOST in sync with the music, but that was it. Big deal. Good thing it was free, otherwise people would have been very annoyed indeed! Granted, it was a bit misty, which may have muted the potential effect slightly, but it was singularly unimpressive, I’m afraid.

This morning, we went to the Peninsula (one of the world’s top hotels) for a cup of coffee. Has to be done, darling. It’s SO civilised. Imperialism was probably a Bad Thing, but the hotels left behind are Fabulous.

Came to buy electronics but totally failed to buy anything. Those who did want to sell either didn’t have what I wanted or wanted ludicrous prices (higher than London!). Others wanted to sell but seemed so shifty and untrustworthy, we walked out. Apparently, asking for a digital camera with a viewfinder that works well in low light is astonishingly overdemanding of me. They could or would only offer me one or the other. Moral of the story: do more research before you get here. Know EXACTLY which model you want before you arrive. Then go out and find it.

HK is nowhere near as cheap as it used to be. We were only here in 2005, but it is certainly not the bargain capital it used to be. Not by a long chalk. There are also now a LOT of fakes in the market. So you can buy something that looks like a Sony, has all the right blurb and bits, guarantees, holograms, the works, get home and find out when you ring for help that that model simply doesn’t exist. This problem also exists in Tenerife, but it makes shopping very trying. Moral of the story: as above!

So I’ve bought nothing. I bought a bag for mum for her birthday and some postcards. That’s it. That’s the product of my two-day spree in Hong Kong. So disappointing. And it’s not like I wasn’t eager to buy. My camera has a dead pixel which is ruining my photos, so I REALLY wanted a new one! But if you don’t have what I want, I can’t buy it from you. *shrug*

This is the problem with buying clothes as well. There’s some beautiful stuff and I really wanted to buy some, but they don’t make western sizes. I don’t just mean big enough for my fat rear, I mean anyone over five foot tall with breasts or hips, or (heaven forbid!) both, can forget it. It’s bizarre. They know what we look like. They act like they want the business. They survive on tourism to a large extent these days (Hong Kong now “makes nothing” according to our tour guide yesterday), and yet they absolutely refuse to make clothes big enough for their customers! Mum found one shop in Stanley Market that sold her type of stuff and bought all she (or rather dad) could carry. Maybe that’ll give the neighbouring businesses a clue as to what they need to do to get some business. Or maybe not. I’m getting very philosophical about it – although no less bitter or annoyed, bizarrely – if you don’t want my money, you don’t have to have it. No skin off my nose. If you provided my size, I’d probably buy LOADS, but if you won’t, I can’t, can I?

Today is our second Vietnam stop, Halong Bay. This morning, we went out on a junk cruise around the bay. It is a World Heritage Site and the scenery is stunning. Lots of tiny islands of limestone and volcanic rock rising vertically out of the bay, like James Bond Island in Thailand. Several hundred metres high and maybe half as wide, carved into different shapes by the wind and the sea. There was a heavy mist all morning, which kept things nice and cool (mid-20s Celsius), kept the waves to a minimum and also gave an air of mystery to the rocks as you couldn’t see the tops of them. Quite magical. Unfortunately, the tour would have been just as magical in half the time. Four hours driving round in one big circle wears a little thin after a while!

There was a woman on the boat selling handicrafts and t-shirts. She spoke no English whatsoever, but she was very sweet. And VERY persistent! I bought a t-shirt and a silk shirt, but I think I’ll wash them before I use them. I particularly liked the fact that once you’d bought something from her, she just assumed you’d buy anything! She came back with the most hideous stuff, including some plastic toy crabs and a Duracell bunny toy banging on a drum (except white plastic rather than pink and fluffy). No thank you! There was also the fact that the engine fumes in the boat were so strong, I thought we’d be dead long before we got back to the ship! Surprisingly, the toilet on the junk was quite good. We’d been warned to expect “basic” so I was pleasantly surprised to find not only a proper, flushing toilet, but toilet roll, running water, soap, the works. All that was lacking was something to dry your hands on, which in this humidity is vital. Well, that’s what t-shirts are for, I guess!

When we got back to the ship, we grabbed some lunch (not pleasant, best glossed over – not sure how you can get cold roast beef and coleslaw wrong, but still…) and then headed to the shore on a tender (lifeboats used for non-emergency purposes are tenders). We went to a local market that had some lovely stuff.  Unfortunately, several of the stalls sold the same things, which got a little repetitive, but the people were lovely and their wares were beautiful. Mum and dad went back to the ship, intimidated by a sharp shower, and I carried on wandering on my own.

I decided to walk back, but got distracted by a 4 star hotel called the Halong Dream Hotel. The logo was a smiley face. It would have been rude not to go in!   Their interior designer was probably the person that designed the original Brent Cross shopping centre (Britain’s first purpose-built mall) – all big white shiny tiles and large grey marble panels and the wall signs were brass with black writing. The picture on the mens’ loos was a silhouette of a man in a bowler hat and the ladies’ had a woman’s head wearing a sort of Ascot-suitable headpiece. I’m not sure how many milliners there are in Vietnam, and I must confess that on my several visits I have yet to see anyone wearing a bowler, but I suppose it’s as good a differentiation as any! I used their (rather lovely) loos and their cheap internet connection and then they called a taxi for me so that I got back to the ship in style. I bumped into a mate back on board who said that walking back was a nightmare of beggars and hawkers, so I made the right choice. And it only cost 2 dollars.

Talking of harassment, nowhere in Vietnam is safe from beggars and hawkers. Even when we were out in the bay, on junks or tenders, there were beggars in small boats (sadly, mostly with small children on board) and other boats of people chasing our boats to try and sell us fruit or just stick their hands in the window and beg. One of the women begged while she rowed, while her two small children, probably no more than two and three years old, baled out the boat with their cups. It feels bad saying no all the time, but I can’t afford to buy tonnes of stuff I don’t need or want and have nowhere to put or keep it just because I feel bad. I can’t afford, full stop. Of course, there is also the risk that once you give to one, they all come swarming after you. I watched someone make that mistake at the Pyramids at Giza once. He disappeared under a stampede of small children and was never seen again.

Factoid of the Day: Hanoi means Dragon Ascending and Halong means Dragon Descending. The myths goes that dragons protected the country in a war and then lay down in the water to protect the bay in the future (they’re the rocks we saw). So there you go.

Funny thing, cruising. Humans are quite target-driven creatures. They aim for stuff and either succeed or fail. Other animals are more content to just be. Cruising, however, is, almost by definition, aimless. Yes, you go TO places, but they are not your destination. They’re a passing point. And the day to day existence of eating, sunbathing, filling your time with nothings – internet, learning a language, learning a craft or a new game or sport, bridge, table tennis, cricket – none of it has a meaning or purpose. It’s just filler. Filling the time between meals, theatre shows, parties. All of which is also filler, designed to distract you from the passing of time and distance, or the risk of piracy*. You go to places so briefly, they barely notice your presence, charge around in an air-conditioned coach for four hours or so, buy some tacky locally-made knick-knacks and ludicrously over-priced postcards, and then leave. It’s a good taster of whether a place would appeal vis à vis a longer return visit (Key West, yes, Colombo, no, for example), but it’s hardly in depth discovery of another culture or way or life. Everything on the ship is transient and everything is filler. It’s all really about the journey. Travelling across the ocean. Nothing but water in every direction. The horizon is visible up to about 15 or 20 miles in every direction and there is nothing but sea and sky. Elemental stuff, if you can only drown out the noise of all the filler long enough to hear it. Even a stroll around the deck is disturbed, by the health nuts charging past doing lap after lap after lap. They never turn their heads sideways. They never stop and admire the view. They never slow down and contemplate the enormity of what they’re doing here, their minuteness in the face of the endless seas. Too busy charging past trying to burn off last night’s trifle. You know what? If it bothers you that much, DON’T EAT THE TRIFLE!

And so the ship tips gently from side to side as each gust of wind lifts the waves, the wire coat hangers chime gently against the wardrobe doors, and the world turns. It’s a very, very big world and we are a very, very small ship tootling across the surface. Not as small as the ships that the discoverers and explorers travelled in, but small enough in the grand scheme of things. We’re a speck, even on our own maps and charts. And all most of the people on this speck are worrying about is getting a good sunlounger and what to wear for dinner.

* Footnote re: pirates. We emerged from the Gulf of Aden unscathed, but apparently, the ship behind us in the convoy (which was slower and lower in the water than us) was shot at. So there you go.

Two things I didn’t expect in Dubai .

1. The traffic. Absolutely solid. All day. Our tour bus took five cycles of traffic lights just to get away from its starting point!

2. The humidity. I just assumed that because it’s an oil/ desert- type country, the heat would be dry heat. But, it is much further north than most “Arabian” countries and is actually sub-tropical, same as Mumbai. The humidity was astonishing. Of course, as Dubai has the highest water consumption in the world (they seem oddly proud of this…), most of which they use to water their lawns and spray into the air via their myriad fountains, it’s perhaps not all that surprising.

Dubai is the manifestation of what happens if you have WAY too much money and WAY too much time on your hands. From a small pearl fishing village to a massive modern city in less than forty years. A city built almost entirely of follies. Not little bitty follies, like a miniature castle at the bottom of the garden. Big, massive, multi-billion dollar ones that glint in the sun. A massive ski slope with 250 million tonnes of real snow on 5 pistes. In a sub-tropical desert state. The World – a set of man-made islands that form a map of the world. Own your own island! Own your own country! The Palm – a purpose built set of islands in the shape of a palm tree, with Atlantis on the Palm at the end, one of the most extraordinary holiday resorts in the world at the far end. Another hotel built to look like a wave, which has it’s own PURPOSE-BUILT PRIVATE CORAL REEF 4km from the shore. The Burj Dubai, a hotel that looks like the sail of a yacht. With it’s own limo team to get you from the airport. By helicopter. And, of course, the Burj Khalifa (known to most as the Burj Dubai because they only changed the name on the day they opened it, after all the maps had been reprinted!), the tallest building on Earth. Half a mile straight up. I was hoping to go up it, but not only is it rather expensive to do, but the opening was so recent, that you still have to book over a day in advance to be allowed to go up it. Mind you, as the lift apparently travels at 18m per second, I’m not sure I’m all that disappointed…

Another thing the people of Dubai are not short of is shops. Of the twenty-odd stops on the Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour thingy, probably more than two thirds were shopping malls. Big ones, bigger ones, small ones, cheap local ones, ones built to look like Egyptian pyramids – Debenhams, Waitrose, Bloomingdales, Saks Fifth Avenue – you name it, they’ve got, not just a presence here, but a whopping great store that you need a rest halfway around. Some malls are so large, they have golf carts to get you from A to B, because B is just so far away from A. The largest shopping mall in the world is here, unsurprisingly. It has a 12 million gallon aquarium in the middle of it. Another is attached to the ski slope and is the biggest in… oh, I don’t know. Everything is the biggest. It’s exhausting!

Factoid of the Day: In the days after Nine Eleven, when all flights were grounded in the USA, the average temperature across the USA rose 3 degrees. This is because aeroplanes cause vapour trails and vapour trails cause clouds and the clouds reflect the heat of the sun back away from the Earth. So if we stop flying, global warming will actually get worse. There, that should mess with your head nicely for a while…

Anyway, back to the present day. Tropical night/ deck party night. Which means all the waiters at dinner wear Hawaiian shirts, we all got a lei with our dinner napkins, and we were asked to dress up “tropically”, i.e. Hawaiian shirts, flowery dresses, flowers in the hair, etc. I wore navy trousers with my silk Hawaiian shirt with the parrots on, and three scrunchies – one blue to match the shirt, one with a white flower and one with a sunflower. There’s a disco on the top deck, around the pool (well, one of them) – this is the “deck party” bit. Had a superb time, but discovered that the same cocktail on Deck 12 in the Riviera Bar is SIGNIFICANTLY stronger than the same cocktail on Deck 7 in the Masquerade bar. Got quite sloshed, frankly, let’s not mince words. I was swaying, literally. And, unfortunately, as the sea was smooth as glass, I couldn’t even blame it on the ship! So sloshed was I that there may have been dancing, there may even have been some Macarena.   Sorry… I do apologise, really I do. Mostly to poor Guy and Simon, with whom I spent the evening. Poor souls… Bed at 2.30am. Clocks forward another half hour.

Final thought. There are a LOT of teetotal people on this ship…and they’re a grumpy bunch…

No, don’t worry, we haven’t hit stormy seas! Just the usual peaks and troughs of daily life.

Up

Today, the new couple on our table provided several moments of entertainment. Firstly, Sonia decided against ordering the soup. She said she didn’t like the sound of plum soup. When we’d all finished crying with laughter, we pointed out that the menu had said plum TOMATO soup.

Then her husband, Mike, told about their visit to the Coliseum in Rome. He went to the toilet and found himself standing next to a Roman Centurion. As you do. So he took his picture! In the loos! Poor bloke couldn’t even pee in peace! They’re lovely but a bit mental, the new couple.

Down

Dinner was a bit of a disaster, really, all in all. Both our waiters disembarked today (they’re almost all Goan, so Mumbai is their stop), so we have new ones, who don’t know our foibles or peccadilloes, and they struggled to cope. Simple things like remembering to refill our water glasses (which bearing in mind how hot it was in Mumbai today and the average age of cruise passengers is actually slightly dangerous) or giving me a teaspoon to eat the ice cream I had ordered with (triple chocolate with chocolate sauce, before you ask). (I am aware of the grammatical clumsiness of that last sentence but “with which” sounded so pompous, I decided against it). I’m sure they’ll get the hang of it in a day or two, though.

Down

Today I didn’t get off the ship. I’ve seen Mumbai several times, and I don’t much like it, to be honest. It’s such an assault on the senses – sight, sound, smell – and the crowds are ceaseless. I’m not a big fan of crowds at the best of times, but crowds of people with no concept of personal space is beyond me, I’m afraid.If you’ve never been, you should, but once or twice is plenty.

Up

Instead, I decided to pamper myself. I had a massage, a pedicure and a manicure. In future, I’ll do it the other way round. I ruined my manicure getting changed for dinner. Next time, if I have it first, it can dry during the massage. I’ll have to have at least two fingers redone tomorrow. Bum. Left thumb and right little finger, fact fans. Dionne, the nail technician, is obsessed with Justin Timberlake and plays no other music. Gabriel, my (male) masseur, is brilliant and lovely. When I waved at him with wet nails to say my water bottle was empty, he offered me the hand sanitising gel to drink! Well, it has got alcohol in it, but I’m not sure that that qualifies it as potable… The pedicure chair has a footbath and is also a massage chair, so I actually got TWO massages!

Up

Australia Day. All very silly. Drinking games and competitions between Brits and Ozzies. Good fun. The Ozzies won, resoundingly. I joined the Ozzie side, but I wasn’t much help!

Up

Went out on deck with a smoker friend at midnight and found a man (passenger) playing Meat Loaf songs on a banjo. No, really. He did other stuff, obviously – Dolly Parton, Eagles, Tom Jones, all sorts – but it was Bat out of Hell that really stuck in my mind. Can’t think why…

Ear ache. Not more loud Egyptian musicians, or norovirus handwashing nagging, but actual bona fide physical earache. I think I have a mosquito bite in my left ear. It’s agony. I’ve been given antibiotic drops and am knocking back the ibuprofen, but although the pain subsides, that just means I get to sleep all day as the pain keeps me awake at night. Every time I turn over onto my left side, the pain wakes me up. In the past two days all I have done is eat and go to Spanish class. The rest was all sleep. I did manage to kill her last night, so hopefully, I’ll have no fresh bites tomorrow. She ate well before she died, though. I have bites on my toes, calves, thighs, fingers, shoulders and arms. All on my right side, now I come to think about it, so how she got to my left ear, I have no idea.

As regards the sleep, though, it doesn’t help that the clocks keep going forward, so the nights get shorter and shorter! Twice in two nights isn’t fair, frankly. Seems a bit harsh to me. My body clock doesn’t know which way is up.

We’ve finally got a decent internet satellite signal (and BBC World is back, although CNN remains elusive), so I’ve been catching up with some of my friends’ news from home and several seem to be having a particularly rubbish time at the moment. I feel bad that I can’t log on more often or be of more help. All I can do is send virtual hugs, which feels a bit lacking, when they’re facing job loss, health problems, bereavement and mistreatment at work.

No pirates, so far…

Weather forecast for Salalah tomorrow: 24 – 26 degrees (depending on which tv station you watch!). My sun cream seems to have curdled somewhat. It now has the consistency of cottage cheese! Still seems to work, though, oddly enough…

As regards the sleeping and the ear thing,  it doesn’t hurt as much as it did yesterday, but it’s still quite swollen and sore. Hopefully another day or so should finally knock it on the head and I can get a decent night’s sleep and get my days back! Mind you, as we are currently in the Gulf of Aden (pirate waters, arrrr), we’re not allowed out on the Prom deck (Deck 7), so I couldn’t walk my mile, even if I did have the energy. Which I don’t, so it’s all moot, frankly.  Am astonished how draining earache is.

Salalah

It may have been 26 degrees but it absolutely fell down with rain. Marvellous.  Didn’t go ashore at all.

A quick P.S. re: Piraeus. Non-smokers should not go there. Ever. Under any circumstances. All Greeks smoke. Everywhere. Constantly. I honestly believe that the smog in Athens isn’t car pollution, it’s lung output. Absolutely DEEEEEEEEEEEEESGUSTING. Bleurgh.

Cairo

Factoid of the day #1: There is currently a trend in Egypt for novelty covers for car headrests. I’ve had pairs of Minnie Mouses (Minnie Mice?) grinning out at me and a couple of very disconcerting panda heads. It’s all rather odd and not a little creepy.

Got up hideously early – 6am or 4am to you and my body clock. Instead of booking an expensive P&O tour that went to places we’d already been, we booked something independently, courtesy of the ‘tinternet. We were met by Mohammed and Mahmud and their nameless driver in a little minibus-type thing at 7am. The drive into Cairo and down to Memphis took four hours, almost exactly. The roads are bumpy, to say the least, even the tarmac ones, and the suspension of the little minibus was extremely soft, which made for a rather disconcertingly bouncy journey. Sleep catch-up was NOT an option.

Factoid of the day #2: Mido is short for Mohammed. When Mahmud told us he has an eleven-year old son, I very knowledgeably said, “So his name is Mohammed?” (all firstborn sons are named Mohammed). “No,” says Mahmud, “it’s Mido”. “What does Mido mean?” asks I. “It’s short for Mohammed,” he says. *sigh* He was very chuffed that I was a Spurs fan and knew who Mido was!

Memphis is very odd. It was the first capital of Egypt after the two kingdoms were united, but virtually nothing remains. There are the ruins of the temple, but you can’t go to them, as they are fenced off behind some houses. So you get taken down the road to a “museum” of bits they found. This is sort of like a miniature sculpture park, only some of the sculptures are 30 foot tall limestone statues of Raamses II. There’s no context, there’s no explanation or history or even little signs to tell you what you’re looking at. If your guide doesn’t know, you’re stuffed! Luckily ours did. There’s also a small sphinx whose face is still in tact. It looks very different to the big one at Giza! There is also a building which is called the Mit Rahina Museum. It’s a one room building and contains precisely one artefact: an absolutely massive statue of Raamses II. This one is lying down, because he’s lost his legs, but he is absolutely colossal in scale. That’s the museum. One item, in one room. I tell you, it’s a good thing the Trade Descriptions Act doesn’t cover Egypt!

Factoid of the day #3: Cairo traffic jams really should be a Wonder of the World. We were on a clearly painted three-lane road. In FIVE very neat lanes of traffic. In Cairo, the width of the lane is the width of your vehicle, if you’re lucky. Those who undertake and overtake will give you just that amount of space, no more, no less. No need to go into a whole other lane just to get past you who takes up less than half, now, is there? Didn’t see any cyclists all day. Not surprised, they’ve probably all long since been squished between over-friendly car manoeuvres. Lots of donkeys and carts, however, who have the sense to stick to the hard shoulder. So would I have done, give half a chance!

From Memphis to Dahshur to see the Red Pyramid (which isn’t red any more cos someone nicked all the red sandstone covering it) and the Bent Pyramid, two of the oldest pyramids found. Then to Saqarra for lunch. The itinerary said we would return to Cairo to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe but we begged for this not to happen (!), and instead we went to the Restaurant of the Pharaohs in Saqqara. The food was superb, surprisingly Mediterranean (lots of aubergine and things in yoghurt). There was also a barbecue of chicken and beef with rice (no risk of accidental pork here!) which was yummy. There was a band of three men playing traditional instruments. However, this mostly consisted of the one with the oboe-type instrument (you know the one – the one you see in pictures of snake charmers) blasting it til your ears bled ONLY when you were walking right past them. The rest of the time, they were virtually silent. My ears are still ringing, six hours later!

Then round the corner to Saqarra, which was what it was really all for. The Step Pyramid of Imhotep is believed to be (at least currently) the oldest pyramid on Earth. We were astonished to find that, instead of just a pyramid, there was a whole complex of buildings leading to it – including a dramatic colonnaded entryway, a courtyard with other buildings and, underneath, 28 feet underneath, no less, the tombs of the high priests and those who held positions of authority. Imhotep was the architect, not the occupant. I think his name was King Zoser, but don’t hold me to that. It was hot and windy and there was a lot of sand in my eyes and ears at the time!

By now our body clocks were chiming tea time so we retired to the J W Marriott Cairo for tea and cakes and posh loos (most important!) before beginning the two hour drive back to the ship. When we got back, I had a shower (sand, lots of it) and then we had dinner in the Orangery (the self-service cafeteria on the top deck that currently isn’t self-service to reduce the risk of the norovirus being re-spread around). And now, here I am, uncertain whether I need to pass out or go out, but definitely leaning towards the former as of now… Oh, did I mention it was 24 degrees in the shade today…?

Last night may not have been the best night for the 18-35 Get Together (with free booze!). I didn’t get to bed till 2 and I’m a bit hungover today. Met a lovely couple, on their honeymoon, Guy and Simon from Eastbourne. Ever so sweet, and Simon shares my love of the Pet Shop Boys, much to Guy’s dismay!

We didn’t have a “To Do” list for Piraeus. We’ve been to both Athens and Piraeus before. We went to Carrefour and M&S, had a cup of coffee in a bar and lunch snacks in another (I didn’t eat anything cos I feel like poop). Then we wandered around the marina for a while looking at the boats. All different sizes, from itty bitty to OMG! Then back to the ship.

I may have hit a new personal best today. I bought two Christmas presents. On January the 12th. Oh yes. Trouble is, I didn’t think to bring the Christmas present book with me, so I can’t note down what I’ve brought for whom. I just hope I can remember when I get back in April!

Walked a mile and a third today. Would have done more but I hurt my knee doing the twist last night and it started to complain. Got to be fit for Egypt tomorrow, so I had to give in. It’s 18 degrees, now, which is very nice indeed. Just right. 24 tomorrow in Cairo, so I’ll have to dig out the sun cream tonight. I wonder if I need mosquito repellent. Can’t remember.

“Dear Passenger

On the 18th of this month we will sail out of the Red Sea and head toward the Indian Ocean. This will involve a transit of the Gulf of Aden [the world’s second hotspot for piracy after the Somali coast].

We have a comprehensive security plan for this transit. As a part of this plan, you should be aware of the following:

The external Promenade deck area of deck seven will be closed on both sides and no passengers or crew will be allowed access for the duration of the transit.

During hours of darkness, only essential open deck lights will be on as it is important to reduce the ship’s external lighting. With this in mind, please turn off your cabin lights and close the curtains of your cabin window or balcony.

In order to familiarize (sic) you with these additional measures there will be a passenger and crew drill at 10am.

In the unlikely event that an incident takes place, the ship’s alarm bells will be sounded followed by a broadcast from the Bridge. Please listen carefully to all the instructions given to you.

Initial action will be as follows:
Go directly to your cabin
If you have a window or balcony you should go into the corridor outside your cabin and sit on either a chair or on the floor.
If you have an inside cabin you should remain inside your cabin.
All passengers will be accounted for by their room steward.

During this time you should not go onto any open decks or near any external windows.

I must emphasise that the safety and the security of every individual on board is my highest priority and the implementation of this procedure is an important part of the ship’s security plan.”

So we have the drill. I have an inside cabin, so I stay in bed! The announcements go on, so eventually I give up and pop my head out into the corridor to see what’s going on.

I hear a woman down the corridor telling her steward in no uncertain terms (I think I can use “imperiously” quite safely here) that she will only turn off the lights on one side of her cabin as she has “checked” and the other light cannot be seen from outside.

Now, firstly “turn off your lights and close your curtains” doesn’t seem like the most invasive and demanding of requests, at least to me. It’s hardly arduous, is it? What’s the big deal in just doing what you’re told?

Secondly, unless you can FLY, you can’t see whether your lights show on deck B. It’s about 90 feet from sea level or about 75 feet from ground level. You just ain’t that tall, love. Even if you could, you can only get outside the ship during daylight hours, so you can’t see what it looks like in the dark.

Thirdly, seriously, just give it a MODICUM of thought. If they can see a light, they can FIRE AT IT. You stupid woman. Seriously. How complex a set of ideas is this, really? They have speedboats, AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. Why would you want to leave a light ON?! This from someone well old enough to have lived through the war and who must surely understand the concept of the blackout. I swear, these people are going to give me an ulcer.

I went to reception and told them what I had heard, because she could well endanger us all, after all, and the girl I spoke to thanked me for telling her, but she wasn’t surprised. She said that I would be amazed at some of the complaints she had received, particularly that there wasn’t enough seating in the corridor during the drill. It’s a drill. In a corridor.

It is important to remember at all times that it doesn’t require any amount of intelligence whatsoever to have the money to go on a cruise. Repeat after me…any idiot can afford a cruise, any idiot can afford a cruise, any idiot…

Just to be clear, don’t worry, I’m pretty sure we are armed to the teeth (although they would never come out and say so) and we saw them testing the water cannons yesterday. I’m not that worried. It does happen, but they have a system in place. Spare your thoughts instead for the inhabitants of Haiti instead. Their need is greater than anyone else’s. 7.0 is a big quake. The scale only goes to 8, doesn’t it?

Well, not exactly. In your case, it’s three degrees of separation. Yes, you, dear reader of mine.

A man and his friends plan a two year round the world trip on a yacht. They set off and he joins them a day or so in. On his first night on board, he steps out onto the deck to take over the watch and is swept overboard. They almost reach him four times, but the swell is over four metres and they soon lose sight of him. The coastguard and nearby vessels join the search, but he is found five hours later, dead. Instead of beginning their dream holiday, they now have to repatriate his body and arrange the funeral.

His name, as I said, was Richard Tapp. It turns out that he was a close personal friend of Mike Carr, one of P&O’s cruise ship captains, and a personal friend of ours from the Oriana Worldy in 2004/5. So there you are. Richard Tapp, Mike Carr, me, you. Three degrees of separation from a random stranger in Portugal to you, where you sit right now, reading this.

In case you can’t guess, It’s 4.30 in the morning and I can’t sleep. This is odd because normally on cruise ships, it’s all I can do to stay awake. It’s the rocking motion, honest! It’s probably because I have a streaming cold and breathing is requiring significantly more effort than usual and I think I may have a fever too, cos I’m hot one minute and shivering the next. Marvellous. Even better, I think my beloved daddy gave it to me. Thanks a bunch, daddykins.

Barcelona was a very pleasant day. It was dry and sunny, although, as we are only about one day ahead of the weather, it was fairly nippy. The high was forecast as 5 degrees, but I wore both coats and kept having to take them off! I bought a top in C&A, so mission accomplished there, and a pair of shoes in Aerosoles, which cost the same as the two pairs mum bought (mine are twice as pretty though!).

We stopped for an elevenses drink in a cafe in El Triangle, a small shopping centre built around a FNAC (French version of WHSmiths combined with HMV). Mum and dad had hot chocolates which turned out to be melted chocolate. Literally. A cup full of melted chocolate. No milk, no water, nothing. Pure chocolate. I can’t tell you how sublime they were! Even I had some, and I don’t “do” hot drinks, as you know! Mum ate hers with a spoon! If I thought hot chocolate was always like that, I’d drink it all the time!

Good luck to those taking part in the African Cup of Nations. I wouldn’t stay, if it was me, but I admire the bravery of those who decide to. The whole point of the cup is to promote peace between the African nations, but you can’t blame the Togolese for wanting to go home to bury their dead. Please send up a prayer for the goalie, who was shot in the back and is currently undergoing surgery in South Africa.

The world is full of people with nothing better to do than to hurt others, usually random strangers, and we are unbelievably lucky and blessed to have been born somewhere more sane than average.

Name that quote: “Don’t eat a muffin while I’m improving you.”

Walked another mile today. Was intending to do more, as I imagine I’ll do less once it gets really hot, but by the end of the third circuit, my legs were really tired, so I had to admit defeat. In fact, by the time I got back to my cabin, I was actually shuffling because I didn’t have the strength to lift my feet up! Hope I’m not coming down with anything. Losing an hour when the clocks went forward during the night has already started having an effect on me. Although I did drink a fair amount last night as well, which might not have helped… it was only one whisky sour and two tom collinses, but that’s three times more than I normally drink in a night!

The big news of the day is that the norovirus has arrived. Someone who filled in the health questionnaire when boarding, lied. We had an announcement at noon from the Captain that one or two people were ill, but not to worry, they would take extra precautions. At 5pm, they cancelled the Captain’s drinks parties. Tonight is a formal night and it is customary to have a drinks party with free booze to allow us to meet the Captain and crew and listen to him give a little welcome speech. At lunch he said it would go ahead, but people shouldn’t shake hands. At 5pm, he said more people were ill and it would be postponed for a week.

Funnily enough, yesterday at dinner, I asked why there was no alcohol gel available to clean our hands when entering the restaurant and the waiters said that the policy was that it wasn’t necessary. I pointed out that everyone coming to dinner either used a stair handrail or the lift buttons and it seemed unwise, but I was told that that was the policy and that was an end to it. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there will probably be some available tonight… What do you think?

9pm update

There was. Surprise, surprise.

2am Friday morning 8 January

Real life is never far away on a cruise ship. It’s not the isolated idyll that some holidays can be. On a ship, reality is always very close to hand, even when we’re miles from land.

At about 11pm this evening, an announcement was made that we would be slowing down, so the movement of the ship may seem more pronounced. This was because we were responding to a mayday call as a sailor on a nearby yacht had gone overboard. We duly lowered our search and rescue boats (different to lifeboats as they are open so that people can be pulled in – lifeboats have roofs and doors). We’re still looking.

It has now been three hours since we joined the search and although we are still following our search pattern, and the Portuguese coastguard boats and helicopters are also here, no one I have spoken to believes he can still be alive. Never mind the 4 metre swell. Think of the cold. Even if he was wearing a lifejacket to keep him afloat if he gets tired, the cold must be unbelievable and I personally doubt he’ll survive, even if he is found. We have our medical team and all their equipment standing by at the door, defibrillators, the lot, should he be recovered, but, call me a cynical pessimist, I’m not hopeful. I’m happy to cross everything, along with everyone else, but the current air temperature is 12 degrees so I reckon the water is as near freezing as makes no difference. The crew are all doing what they can to help, peering over the side into the darkness, but it’s a big ocean and one person is very small. It’s pitch dark, of course. There’s no ambient light whatsoever. Those of you who live in towns have probably very little idea of what true darkness looks like, but trust me, it’s black. Of course, we’re lit up like a Christmas tree, but that just pushes the darkness away by a couple of metres. After that, you can’t see your own hand in front of your face. I’ll offer up a prayer before I go to bed, and all we can do now is hope.

10.30am Friday

He died. They found him at about half 3 but he was dead on recovery.
It does puzzle me that it took five hours to find him. Surely the Portuguese coastguard have infra-red cameras? He should have glowed in the dark, surely? Even if he cooled down, he should have showed up as warmer than the surrounding water for quite a while.

I just hope he couldn’t see the lights of the ships looking for him. That would be too awful, if he could see them but they couldn’t see him and he slowly died waiting for them to come closer. Hopefully, he was unconscious before he hit the water.

Horrible.

But, despite the sadness, the cruise goes on, life goes on.
And so, we resume our journey – five hours behind schedule. If I thought we were pegging it before, that’s nothing to what we’re doing now. We have apparently made up two hours so far, and they’re hoping we’ll make up another hour or so, but we’ll be arriving in Barcelona late on Saturday. This is a Good Thing, as it means I don’t have to get up so early. Mum and Dad wanted to be off the ship an hour before the shops even open. No idea why. Not sure what they thought they were going to do!

Personally, I have a cold and I feel rotten. If I could justify staying in bed all day under the duvet, I would, cos I feel like rubbish. My throat feels like someone has been sandpapering it while I slept. It’s really very painful. In fact, I think I’ll go and have a nap before my Spanish class.

This cold has really knocked me sideways. I couldn’t walk a mile today. I was exhausted after one circuit, which is only a third of a mile. I thought about pushing it, but it’s Barcelona tomorrow, so I should probably conserve my strength. It’s only 10pm but I’m going to have an early night and hope I can sleep it off.

Still snowing in England, I see. You know you’re in trouble when you make the top stories on CNN, the world’s most America-centric news channel! Stay warm, my friends.

Further edit: His name was Richard Tapp. Coincidentally, he was a friend of the captain.