Greetings from the South China Sea

Hello! We are sailing across the South China Sea, en route from Malaysia to Thailand. We'll post more details once we are in a location with cell phone coverage, because we have photos to send to this blog from our phone. Right now, we cannot post photos because the cruise ship won't allow passengers to transfer files from devices to the ship's computers due to the risk of viruses. Anyway, here are the basics of what we've done so far:

Thursday, April 2nd - We flew from Boston to Heathrow, and from there to Singapore. We arrived in Singapore after 18 hours of flight time, very jet-lagged. Holland America arranged for someone to drive us to the hotel. We checked in, and saw that they had placed an anniversary card in our room, and a cake for us to wish us Happy Anniversary. The view from our room was spectacular! It had a balcony that looked out over the Singapore skyline. Pictures to come soon. We walked around and saw the Raffles Hotel, where we had a "Singapore Sling," the signature drink of Singapore. We headed back to the hotel to sleep!

Saturday, April 4th - We made the most of our morning in Singapore, visiting some of the sites, including two beautiful temples. We then raced back to the hotel to catch the bus to the seaport. We boarded the ship, and it was absolutely beautiful! We are so happy that we were upgraded to a verandah room. We have so much space, and a lovely view. We rested, explored the ship, and had dinner in the formal dining hall.

Sunday, April 5th - We docked in Malaysia, and we ordered breakfast delivered to the room (no charge for this!) We had the breakfast in our room while looking out over the balcony. Beautiful! We took a tour of Kemamen and Kuantan. We visited a batik center, where the artists make beautiful designs on cloth. We also visited a basket weaving center, and saw a monkey pluck coconuts from a tree. We headed back to the ship for our first formal night. Brian got to wear his tux!

Monday, April 6th - We are at sea all day today. Tomorrow we will arrive in Thailand, and we will do an overnight trip to Bangkok. We will have cell phone coverage there, so you should see some more posts and perhaps pictures if we can figure out how to send them to the blog.

More to come!