Wednesday October 19 - Bali

Blaise Says . . .

I am consolidating the sea days with Bali mainly because there just wasn’t enough excitement worthy of the pen or in this case computer.  Gives a whole new meaning to the quip, “the computer is mightier than the sword”, oh well all things eventually give way to technology, the same holds for the pen and the printed page I suppose.  On with the story…

I spent much of the two sea days leading up to the excitement that is/was Bali by either reading Lords of Finance as well as catching up on the “On Demand” movies, so I was thinking that Whiskey Tango Foxtrot would be a pretty good movie, to the extent that I was really looking forward to seeing it, I was wrong, it sucked on every level, Tina Fey produced it as well as starred in it, glad it was her money that she lost.  There was only one memorable quote, which I pride myself on collecting, quips like “I’ll bend her over a barrel and show her the fifty states”, what’s that from, it’s new so it shouldn’t be a toughy?  Anyway, Billy Bob Thornton tells Tina Fey that there’s a 4-10-4 phenomenon in a war zone, which means a woman would be a 4 at home, then a 10 in a war zone, then a 4 when she returned home; Fey’s retort was, “You think I’m a 4?”, no response.  The only saving grace of this movie was Margot Robie, which I had forgotten was in this stinker, is always easy on the eyes; btw there is a scene where Fey and Robie discuss Fey being a 9.5 to which Fey asks Robie so what are you a 15?  Her very casual response was “yea”, I laughed out loud. 

Additionally the other movie was really pretty good, Dark Horse was a well done documentary about a bunch of lower middle class folks in Wales raising there own race horse from a foal to win the Welsh Derby.  Very well done from my perspective.

Bali was extremely exciting for me, just under the koala experience in the manner in which I was excited to see first hand, just because it had been lauded as the experience of a lifetime; it was that the experience of a lifetime.  We booked an excursion to Uluwatu, I’m sure AJ told you that it means head of the limestone which is quite appropriate.  We made the rounds to shopping and then a World Heritage Site, what isn’t these days, and then to Uluwatu.  Bali is 8 degrees from the equator, it was 87 on the day we visited, mind you it’s Spring; 87 with humidity of 1000%, it was like 108 at home, and to my amazement it is totally impoverished.  It reminded me of all the Caribbean islands that we’ve visited, the haves and the have nots, mostly have nots.  I was sooooooo disappointed; but I am glad I had the opportunity to experience it with my “besty”, what’s that from? I wouldn’t have had it any other way, it’s always very enjoyable to just spend time holding hands and enjoying making each other laugh.

This will probably be our final posts, the entirety of the rest of this adventure will be getting home, and switching airports in Japan with the tightest of margins without missing our DFW connection but I’ll deliver that one in person at the Christmas Party.  I will part with the ongoing discussion we’ve been having about a new bed, I know, I know, as BTD would say, “these are first world problems”.  We have had an ongoing discussion/disagreement about moving from a queen size to a king size for the past 10 years, I want the king so it stays cooler against the skin but AJ says that we will lose the ability to touch/snuggle/spoon each other at night, and is afraid that we will not be as close if we move up.  I don’t personally think that the size of the bed has any effect on how closely you sleep to one another but for now we’ll continue with our tried and true queen, she has served us well thus far.  So the question I pose, king or queen?

Get out there and travel, enjoy the cultural nuances and above all else remember that when you travel, you don’t represent yourself, you represent all Americans in the eyes of wherever you are, represent us well.  Be kind, patient, and compassionate, remember before you were a highly sought after lawyer, CPA, or Director you could have certainly used that extra 5 euros when you were waiting table or mowing lawns in college; don’t forget to pay it forward!!!

Here’s to seeing reading about your exploits, until we get home cheers!!

Ami Says . . .

It is the morning of Thursday, October 20 and as we sit in the Sky Lounge in the front of the ship, it is raining, the first rain we have seen on the trip.

Monday and Tuesday were sea days and yesterday we spent the day in Bali, Indonesia. Not much to say about the sea days, thus we decided not to post anything until after Bali.

Monday we spent sailing the Timor Sea.  This is probably the calmest sea we have ever been in. The ocean was nearly like glass and the only ship we saw was way on the horizon, barely discernable with the naked eye.

Tuesday, we entered the Indian Ocean which was a little rockier than the day before but not too bad at all.  No boats/ships to see that day either.

While on these sea days, we had to complete the customs cards for Indonesia and Singapore both of which had on their customs documents in big all-cap letters:

“WARNING

DEATH FOR DRUG TRAFFICERS

UNDER [INDONESIA/SINGAPORE] LAW”

I’m thinking they are serious about this.  Not sure I would want to violate the law in either location – don’t want to end up on an episode of Locked Up Abroad.  Not too fun.

Yesterday we arrived in Bali, one of our most anticipated ports of call.  I think Blaise was a bit disappointed in it but I found it fascinating.  Bali is eight decrees south of the equator.  It is spring in this part of the world and it is HOT!  Not sure I’ve ever sweated so much just standing around in my life as I did yesterday.  Not that we spent much time just standing around. In spite of the heat, it was a fascinating day.

We learned a great deal about Bali.  Until this trip, I’m not sure I really knew it is part of Indonesia.  I thought it was its own country, but it is not.  Although the whole of Indonesia is 75% Muslim, Bali is 90% Hindu. Indonesia owns very little of the land in Bali as most land is owned by families and passed down from generation to generation. Every home has its own temple and if you are a practicing Hindu, you MUST have a family temple.  As a result, you see Hindu temples everywhere.

We took an excursion to visit a very prominent Hindu temple at the top of a mountain – absolutely amazing views.  We also made another stop at a religious site that wasn’t really a temple but seemed to be in the process of still being built.  Both sites had the following directive as you entered the site:

“Ladies who are menstruating are not allowed to enter the holy area.”

Not kidding.  Although this exact sentence was duplicated in both locations, there was also the following cryptic warning in the first holy stop (the one that was not the temple)

“Please do not enter for ladies during getting on period.”

This was the first sign of this nature we saw and surmised the meaning was hey, if you have your period, don’t go in.  It was confirmed later by the more decisive, former warning.

The temple we went to was Uluwatu, ulu meaning “head” and watu meaning “limestone” and was built in the 11^th century.  The whole island of Bali is limestone.  Blaise and I both had to wear a sarong at the temple.  As tourists, we were not allowed to enter the temple itself.  We were concerned about this because we thought we wouldn’t be able to see much of it, but that wasn’t the case at all – the temple is all open air so although we couldn’t enter it, we were still able to see the whole of it and take pictures.  The temple is still used today for important Hindu ceremonies.

Lots of monkeys around the temple; menacing, taking shiny objects and sunglasses from visitors.  My two main concerns were their taking Blaise’s prescription glasses and pulling my cheapo sunglasses off my nose and hurting my broken nose, causing me pain since my nose, cheek, and forehead cut hurt to the touch still.  So I removed my sunglasses and just dealt with the brightness.

We returned to the ship wringing wet.  We were an hour late leaving the port that evening.  Not sure why but we did get to watch the tender boats hoisted back on the ship, something we had never witnessed before.

We have two more days at sea before we arrive in Singapore where we hear the Celebrity Solstice, the ship we are on, will be in dry dock for 14 days before reversing our itinerary back to Sydney, Australia.  We are not spending any extra days in Singapore as neither Blaise nor I felt we could miss much more work.  We are taking an excursion that hits the highlights of Singapore and then drops us off at the airport.  I suspect we will have to return to Singapore someday. We will have a great deal of time at the airport.  I think the excursion drops us off at 2 or 3 PM but our flight to Tokyo doesn’t leave until 9:50 PM.  We then have about 5 hours to transfer airports in Tokyo.

We probably won’t post anything else until we get to the airport Saturday since we will spend the next two days relaxing and reading on the high seas.

Sunday, October 16 - Darwin, Australia

Ami Says . . .

Yesterday, we landed in Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia.

We canceled our excursion for this port since it was to be a hike in Litchfield National Park, a rain forest.  Blaise was concerned about my sweating into my wounds, particularly the stitches – he didn’t think that would be a good idea.  I was concerned about falling and further injuring myself or causing more pain to my nose.  My nose still hurts to the touch and often after washing my face, my nose and cheek hurt – the cheek where I have the fracture in the sinus cavity.

So we set out on our own.  Our preference is always to walk in the cities/towns we visit whenever possible.  It was possible in Darwin, so that is what we did. Dang! It was hot! It was supposed to be 90 but it felt way hotter than that. I am a sweater so that was big fun.  But after a while, you just own it and go with it.

Before we got off the boat, we consulted our book on Australia and decided to walk to the Botanic Garden.  We took it slow. All in all we walked about 5-6 miles which was probably a good thing given our sedentary lifestyle of the prior 2 days. Usually I go to the gym on sea days but fearing more injury, I have not. Since today is another sea day, I should give it a go.  I can’t live in fear of tripping and falling the rest of my life.  Time to get back to it.

The walk to the Botanic Gardens was nice, if not hot and sweaty. Near the Gardens were some teenage girls playing rugby, I think.  Blaise wasn’t sure if it was rugby or Australian rules football.  Upon reflection, I don’t either.  I didn’t see any scrumming but maybe they don’t do that in girls rugby.  It was nice to see that even though it may have been a different sport, some things are the same around the world – kids playing organized sports on the weekend.

The Botanic Garden was lovely.  No fee to get in – you just walked right in and wandered around.  We saw a group of people exploring the gardens in segways.  Blaise said he saw a sign that said they were $65 a day to rent.  Seems a bit high to me.  Segways seem like a novelty to me but a bit lazy.  The place was not so big you couldn’t just walk it.  Come on folks!

On the way out, someone pointed out a ginormous snake in a tree.  If you are on FaceBook, I uploaded a picture of it.  The only other place I’ve seen actual snakes that big is a zoo.  Several zoos, but always a zoo.  Never one “in the wild.”  Kinda freaked me out.  So on the walk back, not only was I watching everywhere I walked so I didn’t trip, now I was looking for snakes.  If there is one thing I’ve learned visiting Australia is they have TONS of snakes and most of the most poisonous snakes in the world.

As we approached the wharf, we stopped at a coffee house. Blaise got some sort of coffee frape’ and I had a smoothie.  Sitting there we utilized their free Wi-Fi and I uploaded a bunch of pictures to Facebook.  If we had unlimited internet on the boat, I would spend the time uploading the pictures to the blog.  It really would enhance the reader experience.  But I refuse to spend money on the spotty, ridiculously slow internet they have on the boat. We each get 90 minutes of free internet and that is all I plan on using.

As we are sitting at the coffee house and I am uploading pictures, Blaise is watching the people walk by.  Out of the blue he says “If you manufactured or sold bras here, you would go broke.” It took me a second, but I busted out laughing.  Leave it to Blaise.

We made it back to the boat, hot, sweaty, and ready for a shower and a nap. After a quick nap and shower, I made my way to the medical center on the boat to get my stitches removed.  The medical center has odd hours, I think: 8-11 and 4-7.  I made it there about 4:30 and there were already people waiting to see the doctor: one lady with a nasty wound on her foot who apparently arrived first and another, but older, Asian couple – not sure what their deal was as it wasn’t obvious to the naked eye.  So I was sitting there for about 10 minutes reading my book waiting to be called when the woman of the couple asked the other lady if they could go before her.  She said theirs wouldn’t take that long so they should go first.  What is wrong with people?  Earlier in the day, I went to one of the public restrooms on the boat and some lady pushed her way in front of me and took the only open stall in the restroom. She said nothing, no “excuse me” or “can I go first, I have a problem.” Nothing.  It’s as if many of these people have lost all manners they were ever taught.

Blaise told me when I was wheeled into the doctor’s office the day of my accident, someone was there waiting to get seen for a paper cut. A paper cut. That must have been some bad paper cut!  In the history of paper cuts, has anyone ever actually seen a doctor for one? The only thing I remember about that guy is when they wheeled me in, all bloody and such, the guy said, “She needs to see the doctor before me.” Blaise told me later his issue was a paper cut.

Back to the doctor, I got in and the Romanian nurse removed my stitches while the doctor watched. No pain.  It was just a weird feeling as the thread was pulled out.  I’ve never had stitches so it was a new sensation for me.  Frankly, this is the first time I have ever broken a bone as well.

As we pushed away from the dock at Darwin, I was a bit sad as we were leaving Australia.  In spite of everything, I loved Australia.  I don’t think we came across a single rude or unhappy Aussie.  The people are wonderful and the terrain is beautiful.  You really should take the trip to Australia if you ever get a chance!

We had a lovely dinner. The chef special for the evening was kangaroo.  The waiter brought out a bit for us to try with our regular entrées. Blaise did not really want to try it – said it would be like eating koala, they are so cute.  My thought was, we may never be in a place offering kangaroo again so we had to give it a try.  We each had a couple bites.  It didn’t taste like any other meat I have had.  It didn’t taste like chicken or beef or real gamey like elk.  It was a different taste.  Blaise didn’t like it at all, probably couldn’t get past the fact he was eating a kangaroo.  I was indifferent – didn’t love it but didn’t spit it out either. I probably wouldn’t order it again.

Again, no people at either table next to us.  It was nice.  I can’t figure out the sommelier.  He has the personality of dry toast.  And I don’t think he is really a sommelier.  I can’t read his name tag because it is too dark in there but he is not helpful at all and I am not sure he is very knowledgeable about wine.  Not that I am because I am clearly not.  I just order what I like without regard to pairing it with my meal.  But you think the dude would have a better personality in this business and would come forward with recommendations.  Twice now he has been unable to locate the bottle of wine I ordered.  Why is it even on the menu then?

After dinner, we played a few slot machines. We are not big gamblers, spending on $20 at a time. After being down to around $5 of the $20, we ended up winning a bit and left with $24.  It is just a fun diversion for us.

Today, Monday is a sea day.  Since I finished my Brett Battles book after returning to our room last night, I’ll start a new one today. Nice smooth seas today.  We reach Bali on Wednesday.

Blaise Says . . .

Darwin, our last Australian who rah!!

We were to be in Darwin from 8a to 8p, one of the longest in port times I’ve seen short of an overnight like Venice.  Darwin is a lovely metropolitan oasis in the Northern Territory with a fair number of multi-story high rises, the biggest are the Supreme Court and Government Buildings for the Northern Territory; I think AJ uploaded those pics so you can take a look there until we have the opportunity to upload them to the blog for posterity’s sake.
 
We were supposed to take a tour of Litchfield Park (we were going to see 12’ termite mounds and some beautiful water falls) but we decided that the heat and humidity as well as the open walk wouldn’t be great for AJ’s wounds so we decided to cancel our excursion and do Darwin on our own.  We opted to take a stroll over to the other side of town to the Botanical Gardens and then walk back down the Esplanade to our boat.  It all looked quite viable in the beginning, we would find out that 37 degrees in Darwin in the Spring is about 105F in DFW (think Jul).  The minute we walked off the boat AJ was wringing wet and it stayed that way most all day.

We had a plan that said walk straight out of the immigration station up the road, first deviation, we get to a sign 15’ out of immigration that says wharf to the right, so we opted in and headed that way; I was thinking we’ll be back shortly I knew we would have to double back, I was wrong!  Turns out they have a very nicely done wharf area but more importantly they have an elevator that takes you up 5 stories to a walking bridge that brings you right into the East side of the city, perfect I thought!!  We were mere blocks from “The Mall” and 3.1kms from the Botanical Garden, just as a fyi if you ever happen across one of those 0.0, similar to the 26.2 and the 13.1, for the back window plz let me know where, I so want one of those. 

We walked down to “The Mall”, the quotes are required because that was there name, not ours, it looked like an open air market with a number of vendors around a central area, who just happened to have a guitarist in it attempting to play a couple of riffs from Smoke on the Water or something and hoping for a tip; I thought about it since we wouldn’t have a need for Australian dollars after today but I still had the entire day to go so I held fast.  But we did manage to find a pharmacy for a bottle of decongestant, all was definitely looking up now.
The rest of the journey to the Botanical Gardens came off without a hitch and we were able to follow the directions on the back of the fan that immigration provided as we came through; it was worth every penny of what she paid for it…but the map was very cute when you visualize it, it only has 3 streets running parallel to the bay and maybe 6 side streets that run perpendicular to the bay but as a fan, sheer genius.

The Botanical Gardens were quite nice and we enjoyed the walk, I saw that you could rent a Segway for $65 for an hour to see the place.  I thought, aren’t you missing the point of a botanical garden if you hop on a Segway and speed past all the beauty in such a place?  I assumed the Segway was the adventure and not the Gardens at that point, that was fine more for us to see and enjoy.  We saw some massive trees, that AJ MADE ME take a picture under and we “necked” a bit under it while we cooled down for our return down the esplanade.  On the way out we stopped to watch a bunch of young ladies (probably 14-16) year olds play Australian rules football, it was very exciting and I loved it, still don’t understand the rules but I enjoy the way the referee signals a score, absolutely exhilarating to watch the exuberance.

One note, on the way out of the Gardens some man stops us and says did you see the snake?  No, I said, what snake, he points up to a very large limb running perpendicular to the ground with a massive snake, AJ uploaded it so you know I’m not exaggerating, a 12 foot snake, clearly a constrictor of some type, NOBODY seemed a bit bothered!!  I grabbed AJ’s hand and said lets go!!!

The esplanade is quite nice, and they have a park that basically runs between the street and the bay all the way around so we walked through it and stopped for a cool down a few times before finally reaching the Supreme Court and Govt Building back on the East end of town.  We found the walkway, just beyond the WWII tunnels they used to hide/store petrol for the war.  We were told that Darwin was bombed no less than 70 times during the war and basically it had to be rebuilt from scratch after the war.  It had to be rebuilt again when cyclone Tracy hit it on Christmas Eve 1974 and wiped out virtually everything, that didn’t stop them though and now it’s a thriving metropolis.  Sorry for the diversion but I thought someone might appreciate all the reading we did during the course of our excursion. 

We stopped at the Coffee House so AJ could wish a few folks good luck with the bar certification exam, and upload some pics from the past few days.  We wrapped up there in an hour, after AJ quit sweating, and we headed back to the boat to watch the stragglers run to the boat at 7:45p, there’s always a few and it’s either that or wait for the casino to open for excitement.  I really enjoyed Darwin and wouldn’t mind spending a bit more time down under, it’s a great place and I’m glad I had the opportunity to enjoy it with AJ, on to Bali!!!  More soon.

Saturday, October 15 - Another Day at Sea

Blaise Says . . .

As you know we write our respective blog entries in arrears so I’m writing our final sea day in Australia while we’re physically docked in Darwin. 

One confirmation and one observation during our trips to Darwin, first we were down in Guest Relations, on Deck 3, doing some inane something or another and we finished up; we headed over to the elevator, more on AJ’s cruise ship “rules” in a moment but it suffices to say that we’ve put a moratorium on them since the accident, and noted that there are five, not one, two or three or four, no five people standing in front of the elevator.  I look at the status of the elevator, you know is everyone going my way and its been pushed or not, no lights at all!!!!  Five people all standing there and nobody pushed any button, I pushed the up button and a lady says “Oh that’s why the elevator hasn’t come”, I just can’t believe it, where have these people been, is an elevator a recent development, I thought I remember Mr. Otis created it back in the 1880’s, don’t quote me on the year, I have no internet to fact check that information!!  It does make me wonder how they get through life when they’re not on a ship, and are they just this way onboard because they know that they can be?  I hope we never get there…

As for the other point that I missed during our whirlwind adventure, I was told while renting the car at Hertz that you can’t drive at night, I said huh?  She said that there are too many large animals in Australia that make it extremely dangerous to drive at night and that if you have a night accident you have no insurance so don’t do it.  After driving from Arlie Beach to Cairns I knew what she meant, we passed two or three kangaroos on the side of the road that would surely have made a mess of a car’s front end so I totally understood after the fact but just in case you’re ever on holiday down under you may want to factor that into your plans.  On to the sea day…

I awoke at 5:15am, after changing the time once again by 30 minutes, I had never heard of moving your clock by 30 minutes but we’ve done it twice now so I consider it commonplace now; not really but I’ll go with it.  I had discovered yet another first on this cruise, I was sick.  Nothing significant I thought, scratchy throat, and a runny nose.  I immediately thought I am going to sequester myself in this room until I feel better, I am not going to get us thrown off this boat a second time!!  Fortunately by the end of the day I was feeling quite a bit better, still have a dry cough but nothing beyond that with the help of some Mucinex, who comes up with these horrible medication names anyway, a panel of underemployed Mensa folk?  I can’t think of a single one I think is even remotely cool, and the one I take for my blood pressure was so ridiculous that I wrote it down and stuffed yet another piece of paper into my George Kastanza wallet, just because that question comes up that often. 

The book continues but I didn’t get a lot of reading in due to the illness, I feel bad saying that after what poor AJ has gone through so I’ve kept my whining to a minimum; she’s been a trooper through her trials and she’s looking much better, the Virginia Slim’s black eyes are almost gone, after having gone through a couple of yellow eye days, and most of the dried blood has all been washed away.  She’s still very self conscious but I do my best to own it with her and stare down anyone I see that spends more than the requisite amount of time looking.  Tomorrow she gets her stiches out and she’ll feel much better I’m sure, she’s apprehensive that it will hurt, and of course I’ve played that up, she’ll find out that there’s nothing to it soon enough.  J

More on Darwin tomorrow, looking forward to spending some time on shore after two and a half days on the high seas.

Ami Says . . .

Today was a sea day.  Not a great deal to say about today.  I started a new book.  It is a fast read – a new one from Brett Battles.

I watched the talk by the guy about sailing through the Great Barrier Reef.  He had lots of pictures of ships/boats run aground on sand bars, reef, and islands.  The Great Barrier Reef is peppered with islands – over 900 actually.  One boat had run aground because the pilot or captain, I can’t remember which, was on his cell phone. Oops!

I also learned the captain of the ship is always the captain and always the one in charge.  The pilot is the one who comes aboard to help navigate specific waters – like the Great Barrier Reef or getting in or out of a specific port or waterway.

Still no sign of our dinner neighbors, the Curmudgeons or the other couple.  It’s nice but I wonder if the waiter is concerned it is something he has done.

Blaise has not been feeling well – a cough and runny nose. Nothing serious but I did find some Musinex that seemed to help.

Tomorrow is Darwin.  Although I know it will be a bit warm, I am ready to see a new place.

Friday, October 14 - A Day at Sea

How we write these:  We write our musings, yes, musings, independently and we do NOT read the other one before we write ours.  Then I, Ami, proof mine and Blaise’s (I just correct spelling – his punctuation is his own thing) combine them, then log on and post.  I read Blaise’s before I post them, obviously, since I proofread it, but the only one of mine he has read is yesterday’s accounting of this week.  I tell you this because in today’s blog we use the same terminology in one instance.  Perhaps this is our 24 years together coming out in how we say things.

FYI, blogspot is doing things with the fonts I can't fix, so we will have to live with that for now.  Sorry.

Ami Says . . .

Yesterday was our first full day back on the boat. Yesterday and today (Friday and Saturday) are both sea days.

The ship’s doctor called twice Thursday telling me she needed to see me on Friday and that she needed the documentation from the emergency room.

We also received a call from the excursions desk telling us they were refunding the excursion we paid for months ago to take the Skyrail and train ride while we were in Cairns since we were not on the boat to take part in the excursion.  That was wonderful news because we thought we were going to have to argue with them to get the money back on that one.

All in all, I think Celebrity Cruises has been quite fair about everything and has treated us quite well during this ordeal.

So yesterday after breakfast, I headed down to deck 2 to see the doctor. Everyone there knew me and wanted to know where my husband was. Either they thought I was an invalid or they were charmed by my husband.  The only person I remember from Monday is the doctor. But they all knew who I was.  All commented on how much better I look than they thought I would.  Scary because I am quite a fright still. Apparently they thought there would be more bruising than what I have. I am really more cut up than bruised at this point. Still a big bruise under my right eye, a lighter one under my left, and my right eyelid is quite bruised too. I have several cuts across my nose, one very close to the inside of my right eye. I still have the stitches on my forehead.  The swelling has gone down somewhat.

But I digress. Back to the ship’s doctor. While I was waiting to see her, a young Asian couple (looked like they were in their 20’s) came in to see the doctor and were in the waiting room. The woman would not sit and kept bouncing around and taking steps backward and forward.  I kept thinking does she need to pee or what?! One of the nurses came out and asked what the problem was.  Apparently while in Cairns the day before, they were severely sunburned; she on the back of her legs and he on his back. The woman told the man to show the nurse his back.  He said, no I’m not going to and she insisted. Oh my, was his back red!  The back of her legs were red, but nothing like his back.  Now why this was all happening in the waiting room, I’ll never know.  The nurse suggested aloe vera gel which they knew nothing about.  The nurse had to explain to them what it was.  I found it a bit odd they didn’t know about it but they clearly lived in Australia so maybe folks in Australia don’t know about the healing properties of the aloe vera plant.  Many Australians are a bit weathered in appearance, so maybe not.

So I finally got in to see the doctor who proceeded to tell me all the things that could have been worse about my injuries – things like leaking cranial fluid through my broken nose, pushing the entirety of my nose into my face, and many more. All quite lovely thoughts but in many respects, I WAS lucky it wasn’t worse.  I didn’t break any teeth and my eyes were not injured.

As I was leaving the doctor, I headed to deck 3 to turn in our excursion tickets we were cancelling for Darwin.  We were going to hike through a rain forest but given my injuries, not wanting to sweat into my cuts, and my clear inability to walk without falling, we decided to go a different route in Darwin.  I am disappointed, but not much I can do about it. I walked up the stairs from deck 2 to 3 and was walking toward the excursion desk, when a man in uniform stops me and says “Mrs. Decker?” Oh great, I am recognized by my injuries! It was Dwight from the excursion desk who had talked to Blaise the day before.  I told him I was coming to see him and he said he would take the tickets right there and take care of things for me.  He was very kind.

A lady at the elevators was gawking at the whole exchange so when Dwight walked off she asked what happened so I had to go through the whole story. Again.

We floated through the Great Barrier Reef yesterday.  Over 900 islands, 600 named. Lots of sand bars. You could see the darkened areas where the reefs were.  I found out today, that every ship and boat that goes through the channel must have a reef pilot aboard to help the captain navigate since it is a protected area. The reef pilot gave a talk today about it because for some reason he is still on the boat.

I finished my book The Secret Keeper yesterday.  Big twist at the end.  Well worth the time to read it!  I am glad I stuck with it because early on, I almost gave up and tossed it. Figuratively not literally since it is on my Kindle.

The rest of the day was uneventful, thankfully.  Dinner was lovely.  No curmudgeons or the other couple.  Just Blaise and me.  The maitre’de (Ok, I know that’s not spelled correctly but Word doesn’t have a correction for me – it’s the dude at the front of the restaurant in charge of seating everyone) kept walking by and staring at me.  He finally came by and welcomed us back on board.

More reading today.  Tomorrow is Darwin, Australia on the Northern side.  It is warmer now.  While it was in the 70’s in Sydney and all the other locations, every place has gotten increasingly warmer. Now we are in the high 80’s.  So I suspect Darwin will be quite warm tomorrow.  Lots of crocodiles in the Darwin area.  Apparently Darwin was bombed many times by the Japanese in WWII.  Or plan is to roam around on our own. Let’s hope things are not closed because it is Sunday.

Blaise says . . .

So yesterday was Friday the 15^th, basically a week and a wakeup before we make the trek back home from around the world.  We were at sea again so the happening/goings on around here are fairly mundane but I’ll do my best to bring you up to speed from my perspective.

I finished up my management book early in the am and began reading a book I first attempted, yes attempted, to read about 3 years ago on a bet from a coworker, it’s called The Lords of Finance and it’s about the 4 most powerful in each of the country’s of Germany, France, England and America during the run-up to WWI and moving through all of WWII.  They cover how/why we went to the gold standard and subsequently dropped it as well as how each of them handled the financing of their portions of the wars as well as how they addressed the additional gold reserves needed, and how they hid it (in France’s case) when they were invaded.  It’s a slow read but the data points are interesting especially when you consider the ongoing debate about whether or not we should return to the gold standard now.  This author thinks not but I’ll reserve judgement until I have an opportunity to pull some additional information pro and con before I make my final decision.  But I digress back to the boat.

We are on the port side of the boat which is to say that when they circumnavigate Australia counterclockwise all the landscapes, less a few scattered islands are all on our side, what a stroke of luck!!  So we have hundreds of miles of beautiful pristine beaches that we are so close to that you can see that no one has ever stepped foot on and most unbelievably is there isn’t a house, shack or yurt for those same hundreds of miles; it reminded me of Chile, except for the mountains and glaciers, but you know what I mean.  I thought about swimming for it but I figured AJ wouldn’t follow so a calmer head prevailed.  But what I would have given to have our very own picnic lunch on a beach that I’m fairly certain hasn’t had a sole on it in years would have been priceless, when I see Mr. Rourke and Tatu that’s the fantasy I’m going to request!!

The rest of the day was spent reading and shuttling AJ off to see the Medical Staff, who REALLY wanted to see her, they called twice in the 24 hours since our return to badger her into going.  I didn’t go with her, I thought there wasn’t anything they could do to hurt her but tomorrow will be a different story, she gets her stiches out.  Hopefully she’ll be less self conscious about her owies once they’re removed. 

The rest of the day was uneventful except to bring you up to speed on the Curmudgeons, they made no appearance for dinner at all, we had our two topper and theirs and the 4 topper next to us all to ourselves, btw who sits down at a 4 topper closest to a 2 topper if you have an aisle way on the other side?  AJ and I can’t figure it out, it’s like a guy coming in to use the restroom and there are 5 urinals, you’re at the far right and pull in to the 2^nd from the right, what are you doing, a clear violation of etiquette on both fronts, AJ discussed this breach of etiquette for 10 minutes I think, that’s what you do on sea days! 

I should say dinner is always quite good, I always have the French Onion soup with the Gruyere cheese melted over it, fantastic; and then whatever entrée looks appetizing that evening, ribeye did it for me but tonight I think I will go with the Salmon.  Frank and Barbara, sorry, no Barramundi on the menu yet, I was hoping they would pick some up in Cairns and offer it as a local delicacy but no way.

I think that’s all, one more sea day before we hit Darwin, looks interesting, can’t wait to see it… more later!!

October 9-13 - The Adventure

OK, this is really long.  It was a bizarre week.  At the end of each day Blaise and I were both too exhausted to write.  We will be better the rest of the trip, writing more frequently.

I wish I could figure an efficient way to add pictures from our phones without eating much time on the internet.  We may add pictures later.

Lots to catch up on.  I think Blaise and I are going to tackle the past few days a bit differently.  I suggested we break things up into Sunday/Monday and then Tuesday-Thursday but Blaise said the last few days run together so he’s going to put things down in one big blob. I have to parse it one day at a time.

Blaise Says . . .

So before I get to the adventure within the vacation I must let you know what happened on Sunday, our first “at sea” day, sea days are always down time that lets you catch up on all the reading that you should be doing throughout the year but don’t always have time for, I typically bring some technical books and catch up on the New Features of the current releases of Oracle, or this year I brought some OpenStack reading that I wanted to catch up on due to the conversion/focus efforts my company has on-going as a directional disruptor.  But this year I’ve brought along some management reading to make sure that I’m up on those aspects of my job as well; I want to make certain that I do some introspective work as well so I can ensure that my folks are the best they can be by making sure I’m the best I can be for them.  I’m very fortunate to have a great team that is extremely well trained and very professional, they pursue the very best from our platform (Call Session Control Function, or just the CSCF as it’s known in the industry) each and every day. 

  All in all the ONLY excitement for the day was with Mr and Mrs Curmudgeon, he walked in to dinner that night and said, “Wow, you clean up real nice.”, I said thank you and looked at AJ with a “we don’t know them”, borderline bold/rude I thought.  She shrugged and laughed it off, I accepted it as a cultural norm and moved on as well.  That said, that was the only thing he said for the duration of the evening!!  He said more to a total stranger than he did to his wife of many, many years, I felt sad for them.  I hope we never run out of things to say, dumb or not, to each other, what a sad existence…

So when we started this he said/she said blog, I asked AJ for a couple of things, first no reading each others blogs until you were complete with your entry and then only to help edit before being uploaded, and no content editing for language, it’s what you wrote, own it!!!  So with that said on I know AJ is writing a dissertation on what happened so I’ll try and save you eyes and bring it down to something manageable, so here we go…

Monday morning started out fabulously, we got to the Celebrity Theatre at 8:20a to get our excursion started.  The excursion woman was providing stickers so that none of the blue hairs would get lost and left as I like to call it but they do provide the logistical insights so it’s worth listening to.  She starts by telling us that koala’s pee when they get excited so be prepared to have to rinse out your shirt after your photo shoot as it may be a likely outcome, fine I thought, I STILL get to hold a koala though, that’s worth it; then she tells us that they transmit chlamydia, WHAT chlamydia, I’m not up on all the sexually transmitted diseases but I don’t think I want that, then she says but don’t worry that have these tested and they are fine, but then ends with “just don’t have sex with them”!!  Yes, she said that, I thought, no worries mate we’re good!!  We got to the Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin’s Zoo for those of you who don’t remember) around 10:30, we were half way back in the bus and were 3^rd and 4^th in the line for getting our pictures taken, a lady and her son (the gay pilot that I still believe is a flight attendant and not a pilot for AA but I digress) were ahead of us, the blue hairs showed up almost 30 minutes later, not sure where they went for so long.  Picture taking began promptly at 11:30 and we were all done within 5 minutes, AJ said hers smelled but my adorable buddy did not, what an experience, it reminded me of the Big Bang episode where Penny gave Ami a tiara as a gift, my reaction to the experience was exactly like hers, giddy as a school girl being asked out on her very first date!!!  What a fantastic, once in a lifetime experience.  But the day wasn’t to end the same way, we were wrapping up our final pics with the tigers and snakes, they have 8 of the top 10 deadliest snakes in Australia, we decided to take one more picture of a baby koala clinging to its mother from the other side of the enclosure so we could get its face rather than it backside when AJ tripped over an uneven plank of wood and fell face first into a park bench there for folks to have a sit and watch the koalas.  I was in front of her and heard her yell, when I spun she had already hit the bench and the scream was being launched, I didn’t process the scream as I was busy working through the spigot of blood that was now pouring continuously out of her nose and from all over her face.  The medic was there quickly and the blood control took a very long time, it looked horrific, she had a huge gash in her forehead and her nose looked broken, she was bleeding from no less than 15 different locations around her mouth, nose and forehead.  My first thought was should I get my shirt off and try to control the bleeding or just wait, I waited for the medic.  Once the steri strips and wiping occurred I knew that there were going to be stitches and a broken nose and I was unfortunately proven right later on in the evening, but we missed our bus and had to ride back with the crew bus after all the triage work was complete.  The zoo did a fantastic job and were extremely compassionate, I know, I know, all you lawyers are all thinking that they were only worried about the liability issues but that wasn’t the case, this was very genuine and compassionate care, and I stand behind that assessment so keep your paranoia to yourself.  We made it back to the ship and to medical only to find out that they didn’t have an xray/CT scanner with enough resolution to see if there any broken bones so we were told that they were calling ambulance and we needed to go to the emergency room.  I had 20 minutes to pack our stateroom so we could be put off the boat, I and 4 of our closest friends, who I never saw before, packed our entire stateroom in 15 minutes, it was impressive; they even folded and hung the clothes, I just threw them in the suitcases. 

  The ambulance ride was a bit surreal, the bleeding was all controlled so there wasn’t a lot for them to do so they spent their time taking pictures of the boat as we pulled away from the dock, yes that’s correct, taking pictures.  The boat pulled in the gangway when we hit the dock and buttoned up as we were being loaded into the ambulance; who knew what it was going to take to get back on that boat some three days later, but more in a minute.

  We reached the hospital and were third in line to get a bed, yes to get a bed in the emergency room, we were in the hallway waiting to get a spot so we could be seen; recall there are only 25M people in the whole of Australia, and they have a socialized system of healthcare, is this really expected to work on the scale that we have in the US, I’m not optimistic.  Once I paid them for being seen, yes you pay before you are seen if you don’t have a national healthcare number, and they really tried to convince me that I should have one, they relented after they realized that the funny accent really meant I didn’t live in Australia.  But not before going through a litany of questions about who/where was my regular doctor and the like, it was somewhat comical but simultaneously challenging as it really took a bit to sink in that we don’t have an address, don’t have a cell phone that worked and are just here on holiday.  We got there and I paid the $800 for the ER visit.  They immediately CT scanned her head and found out that she had two fractures of the nose, one fracture on the bottom of her sinus cavity on her left side and her forehead would require stitches.  This was all within 30 minutes of being seen.  The staff was phenomenal, the doctor, Chris looked like Sir Richard Branson without the beard and moustache, but extremely down to earth and very helpful throughout.  Just one side note, there was another doctor who stopped by initially to take a look and asked us where were from, we said Texas, his exact comment, a quote, “that’s a red state”, and we didn’t see him again except in passing between patients; they know so much more about us than we do about them that it’s shameful.

Over the night the nursing staff took care of AJ’s lesser wounds and arranged for us to get lodging for the night which closed at 11:30pm so Chris took over to stitch up AJ’s forehead and ramrodded the paperwork through so that we could prove that she could fly to the next destination without issue.  We finally were released with a bunch of pain killers and anti-inflammation meds around 10:40pm.  We called the taxi and hit the hotel at 11:20pm, it was the Ibis Budget as nothing else had availability.  Now in my defense, I had heard of Ibis in Europe and they didn’t look that bad from what I had seen, but this was different, this was the “budget” version of Ibis and boy did they ever mean budget.  It was by far the scariest hotel that we had ever stayed in, the only comparison would be the mini-rooms that you stay in if you are internationally traveling through Heathrow (they close the airport and you must leave unless you stay in this mini-hotel) but it is very safe, just tiny.  This wasn’t even close to that, this was a bed with our towels rolled up on the end of the bed and a window just above one side of the bed, that didn’t have a latch that fully aligned during closure, I gave AJ the “good/safe” side.  We ate dinner out of a vending machine that would have made Padma of Top Chef cry out load, the worst but we had to eat something!!!

We arose very early to the sounds of children and folk scurrying around on the second floor, and preparing to leave.  The entire parking lot was empty by the time we got to the airport and make preparations for flying to our next destination, Airlie Beach.  We contacted the stateside cruisecare folks and were assigned a lady name Miranda to help get us back to the ship.  We were told that yes we were good to meet up with the ship there day after next as Tuesday was a sea day so we had all day to get there.  Now mind you we only have Wi-Fi calling as we didn’t turn on the international dialing before leaving so we have sporadic Wi-Fi calling to the US and no calling internationally as it didn’t work from Wi-Fi, I will check on that with global roaming when I get back to the office as well.  So our best means of communication is email back and forth, we got the email saying all is good so we buy our tickets to Proserpine Australia, and get ready to enjoy the beach before the ship arrives tomorrow.  Just one hitch, 10 minutes before the plane leaves I get a frantic call from Miranda telling us that the Australian government will not allow personnel movement at that location and we can’t get back on the boat there!!  She says go to Cairns (pronounced cans for us foreigners), and not Airlie Beach, too late I tell her the bags are on the plane and we are getting ready to board we will sync back up upon arrival to see what to do from Proserpine.  We arrived at Proserpine (there Pseudo City Code is PPP in Sabre) and is the most quaint place I’ve ever seen, it reminded me of Long Beach’s airport, no jetway, a quansit hut type building with only a runway, no taxi way, you taxi on the runway and turn around to take off.  It was great, I loved it!!  We were using their pathetic Wi-Fi to see if Miranda had told us anything at which time I was interrupted by the cleaning lady that said “You know we close in 20 minutes, are you getting a rental car or a shuttle to go to town?”.  You close the airport, I said, she says “Of course, this is the last flight of the day, we’re done.”, almost as if she’s wondering where doesn’t an airport close, I thought “DFW!!!, and boy do I wish I were there right now!!!”.  I ran to the Hertz counter told them the story and said I would return it tomorrow if I could or I would make arrangements to keep it if needed.  In the meantime Miranda let us know that we could not get back on in Airlie Beach and she was checking with the insurance company to authorize another flight from Airlie Beach to Cairns.  We were off to Airlie Beach and the Best Western, Mango Resort, it was 2000% better than the Ibis Budget and we felt safe and had a great dinner and slept contentedly for the first time in two days. 

We got up Wed to find that Miranda had received the approval to fly us to Cairns so we checked flights and found out that the only flight from Proserpine was to Brisbane, where we came from, and it was over $600 per person, we said how far is it?  Turns out it’s 9 hours by car, so that’s what we did, we sent Miranda the email saying we were going to drive it, we left at 7:16am from the illustrious Best Western and hit the local Mickey D’s at 7:37am after getting some tea and iced coffee for the trip.  Now recall that they drive on the wrong side of the road here!!!! And my only experience driving on the left side was in St. Croix where I had to pull off the road at the first roundabout so I could observe the traffic and confirm that I knew which way to go.  All in all it worked out well and my only issue seemed to be turning on the windshield wipers at the corners, you see the blinkers are on the other side, that took some real getting used to but after a few hours AJ and I had it down and we hit Cairns at 5pm after enjoying a lunch in a small town called Townsville right on the coast and truly enjoyed the drive, everything is so lush and vegetation is oh so green.  I didn’t expect that, I was expecting a desert, far from it, it was absolutely stunning and I’m glad we did it that way and saved the insurance company a bunch of money too.

We checked into the Pullman Reef Casino and Resort and headed up to our room.  Now this was a room, back on par with the Shangri La in Sydney, a sight for sore eyes, literally, well AJ’s not mine!!  J  We had dinner on the wharf at a place called Dundee’s, yes, Dundee’s where we had to try the Barramundi, incredible.  It is the least fishy fish I’ve ever eaten, and I like fish, too bad we can’t get it in the States.  The bed was unbelievable and we dropped off the rental car at Cairns Airport where the cruise line had told us they would provide limo service back to the ship, it was far from a limo, it was a van but the driver was great and we chatted about our adventure at length.  He already knew the story, apparently its made it around the ship and back to corporate.  We made it back to the dock and hit the tender to get us back to the ship, bags and all, uneventfully.  By 1:30pm we were with stateroom, keys and all, bags delivered and up stairs eating lunch.  I looked around at the clientele on the ship and leaned over to AJ and said, how many of these people would have been able to overcome the challenges we faced and made it back, I suspected only a small percentage.  But I never doubted that we’d be back home to #1223 and on our way to Darwin.

Last night we got dressed up and headed down to the specialty restaurant that AJ booked about 6 months ago and had a beautiful dinner and enjoyed lamenting about our tale to each other.  It was fantastic, overlooking the back of the ship and watching all the water kick up from the massive assipods doing 20 kts.  It made me grateful for the days and that I have my best friend and wife to share these memories with, I had a great time and I love her more for being on the journey with me, what a story.  More tomorrow, but I doubt it will be anything like this, you know it’s a “sea day”…

Ami Says . . .

Sunday October 9, 2016 – The Vacation Begins

This was our first full day on the boat.  It was a sea day. It was quite relaxing.  Blaise I spent most of the day reading.  He is reading some management book and I am reading a book called The Secret Keeper about a woman whose idyllic childhood was interrupted by seeing her mom stab and kill a man on their front porch with the family’s designated “birthday cake” knife while her mom was holding the youngest member of the family in her arms.  Fast forward 40-50 years and the woman, now a famous actress, seeks answers to her questions surrounding the stabbing while her mom is on her deathbed.  Took me a while to get into it, but now I have to know how her mom came to know the man she killed.

This was also our second night in the main dining room.  The couple next to us at the table for four did not show up, but the couple, Blaise has deemed “The Curmudgeons,” did make an appearance.  The man said “hello” to Blaise as he sat down and the wife nodded to me as we left our table at the end of our meal.  All that was said in between from them is their food and wine orders to the waiter and sommelier. Not a word uttered by either of them otherwise. Not a peep.  Not a “How is your food dear?” Nothing.  I am not convinced they even like each other.  No conversation whatsoever.  So odd.  I sure hope Blaise and I never get that way.  Twenty-four years together and we still find things to talk about. We don’t have to talk all the time, and we don’t, and we are OK with that. But we at least care if the other is enjoying his or her meal.

After dinner, we played some slots at the casino – lost about $15 between the two of us.

Monday October 10, 2016 – Koala Heaven and The Accident

The day the music died.  Ok, not really, but thought I’d be dramatic.

We docked in Brisbane (pronounced briz-ben, not briz-bAne). Today was the day I have been looking forward to for months – the day I get to hold a koala. The excitement in the air was papable, at least for me.

Before we left for the zoo, we sat on our balcony looking out at Brisbane and talking. We could see the airport and Blaise noticed two airplanes sitting tail to tail, facing opposite directions.  This peaked his curiosity so he pulls out the binoculars for a closer look. It appeared both planes had the words “Mine A Lot” painted on their sides.  He had me look to confirm what he read and although that is what it appeared to read, I told him it looked like “Mime A Lot” to me.  Well that was it, we have been cracking stupid mime jokes ever since.  That and the picture of a plane full of mimes and the thought that mimes need a special airplane, makes me laugh. 

The bus drive to Australia Zoo, Steve Irwin’s zoo, took a bit over an hour. We were to drive directly there but halfway, the tour guide announced we were going to stop so someone could get off but the rest of us were not to get off.  So we stopped at a truck stop-looking place and one of the couples on the bus got off and we all just sat there. The woman seemed rather urgent in her strides to the building while it appeared her male companion, presumably her husband, was simply playing a supporting role, guiding her with his hand on her back.  They were gone about 10 minutes, emerged from the building, got back on the bus, and we went about our merry way on to the zoo.  I assume she had some urgent bathroom matter to attend to? Or maybe she needed a coffee break.  If it was a bathroom matter, I do feel bad for her but the whole thing was just odd.

Before we got off the bus, we were given our voucher for our “Koala Cuddle.”  The excitement mounts. They have various times for this, the first being 11:30.  We are about in the middle of the bus, but assessing our competition, we believe we can be one of the first in line.  We wanted to get their first so the koalas weren’t tired out by the time we got there and so we could enjoy the rest of the zoo.  We were 3 and 4 in line from those of us on the bus.  A mother and her grown son beat us there probably because they were off the bus before us.  The koala cuddle was glorious!  I loved every second of it.  They are as cute up close and personal as they are in pictures.  All they do is put their arms around you like you are a tree trunk.  The koala Blaise and I held was female, so a bit smaller.  She was soft and a bit stinky.  Blaise said he could not smell the stink.  Sitting here today, I would not be able to smell the stink either. More on that later.

After that, we shopped at the gift shop and watched the bird and crocodile show.  Crazy men taunting a crocodile!  But we did learn to stay at least a crocodile’s length away from ANY body of water and NEVER NEVER go into the water because as soon as you hit the water, they can feel the vibrations of your movement and then they are off to pay you a visit.  We also, walked through an open area with kangaroos – you could feed them, touch them, and get pictures taken with them.  We chose to merely observe them so we didn’t get kicked by them.  Clearly, that was not my downfall; merely walking was.

On the way back to the bus, we stopped to look at some more koalas. Blaise and I moved in to get a better picture.  Blaise was ahead of me.  It was a circular habitat with a wooden planked walkway around it with the planks running perpendicular to the flow of traffic.  The front of my sandal got caught on one of the planks and I tripped, I nearly recovered standing up but that was not to be. I could not stop the fall and the six feet of my frame fell face forward, hitting a park bench.  I felt my nose bend in quite an unnatural way.  There was nothing I could do. My right knee hit the ground and my face hit the park bench, cutting me up in various places on my forehead, nose and near my eyes.  All I could see was blood everywhere.  I then hear “Oh my God, Ami!” and instantly Blaise was at my side with his hand on my back.  At this point, I am in a kneeling position with my head right over the seat of the bench and I am cupping my hands under my nose to catch the blood that is poring out.  Yeah, it was awful. I don’t think I have ever heard such worry in Blaise’s voice before.

They radioed the bus to go back to the ship without me.  Blaise and I both refused an ambulance.  All I wanted to do was to go back to the ship, get bandaged up, and go about my merry way.  A medic there cleaned me up as best she could.  They gave me new shorts from their shop since mine were all bloody along with a stuffed koala, which I realized yesterday has a bit of blood on it. We rode the bus back with some of the ship’s crew who were there touring the facilities.

When we got back to the boat and into the medical area, the doctor refused to do anything.  She kept telling us, I needed to go to the emergency room because she was concerned I would start bleeding while we were at sea the next day.  Blaise and I kept telling her no, no, we want to stay here. Next thing you know, they have called an ambulance and hustled Blaise upstairs to pack our things to take with us.  Blaise says he was met at the cabin by 4 people who stuffed everything in the suitcases. I guess they were rushing us out because it was close to 5 PM and the ship was scheduled to leave at 5.

By the time they wheeled me in a wheelchair to the ambulance gurney, Blaise was at the ambulance with our luggage in tow.  He says the paramedics were taking pictures of the cruise ship because they had never had a call out to a cruise ship.  I have no first-hand knowledge of this.

On the ride to the hospital, we learned that the ambulance service is run and operated by the state, in this case, Queensland.  There were three of them, all women, one of which was interning her last semester of “Uni” (university).

Also on that ride to the hospital, we learned of something called “Tim Tams” some sort of snacky chocolate “biscuit” thing that EVERYONE in Australia ALWAYS has in their house.  “You can’t live without them,” we were told.  They even googled a picture and showed them to Blaise.  I was too busy holding gauze under my nose to catch the blood.  The fall happened at around 1:45 and my nose was still bleeding. Not sure what time it was at this point, but apparently we arrived at the hospital at 5:59 PM.

When we got to the hospital, we were the third ambulance in line for service at the emergency room.  We were in a hallway, all 3 gurneys lined up against the wall, with the respective paramedics next to the gurneys.  It appeared, the paramedics, could not leave the patient until the patient had a bed.  I have no idea how long it took, but it seemed like a long time before I was wheeled into to a bed in a large room with lots of beds divided by curtains.  The doctors and nurses station was in the center of the room elevated one step. At one point, before a nurse or a doctor came to see me, I looked up and saw about 5 nurses  just staring at me.  It was a bit unnerving, so I said to them “It must be pretty bad, the way you are looking at me.”  One was kind enough to come over and explain, they were my care team and they were talking about who was going to do what.

I found the staff there to be wonderful.  The doctors and the nurses were kind and helpful.  They even helped Blaise find a hotel for us that night.  After a CT scan, showing 3 fractures – two in the nose and one of the sinus cavity leading to the nose, and getting stitched up and cleaned up, one of the doctors provided us a letter releasing me for all travel including flying.

I was quite skeptical of their medical system especially after being wheeled in and comparing it to the Baylor Plano facilities my sister was in this summer. It looked like an old run-down government-run facility only clean.  But the staff was amazing!

Going through this ordeal, we had several people, paramedics, doctors, and nurses ask about the upcoming presidential election, Trump vs. Hilary, etc. Everyone knew where Texas was.  When one of the doctors who saw me asked where we were from and I told him Texas, his response was “Oh, a red state.”  We were stunned. Until this happened, I didn’t know Brisbane was in the state of Queensland.  Not sure I even knew Queensland was a state in Australia.  Or that Australia even had states. They were so in tune with news in the United States, it was unreal. And a bit embarrassing realizing they knew so much about our country and I knew nothing about theirs.

The longest part of the emergency room visit was waiting for the CT Scan. As we were waiting, I thought back to the morning when Blaise and I were sitting on the balcony looking at those airplanes so I told Blaise they should just go ahead and mime the CT Scan results to me.  It sure hurt to laugh right about then but better to laugh than cry.

So while we were waiting for the emergency room to discharge me, someone googled hotels near the airport and loaned Blaise a phone to call and book a room for the night.  After several calls to hotels with no available rooms, we ended up staying at a place called the “Ibis Budget Hotel.”  Right before Blaise called the Ibis, I asked him if he knew anything about. His response: “I’ve heard of them. I think they are OK.” Famous last words.  I was not really in a position or in the mood to question further, so I trusted him. Our first clue there was a problem with the place was when they told Blaise we needed to check in before 11:30 PM because that is when they close.  They close??? I never heard of such a thing. Beggars can’t be choosers though.  We wanted to be near the airport so we could get on a plane the next day and meet up with the cruise ship in Arlie Beach.

The hotel was far less than stellar.  The room was barely big enough to fit the bed.  There was no phone in the room and it had one of those “wet” bathrooms where the whole thing is tiled with a drain in the middle.  There was a shower curtain separating the toilet from the “shower’ but water still got everywhere.  The walls were paper thin so you could hear everything. The headboardless bed was pushed in the corner of the room so you could not get in the bed from both sides.  Blaise made me sleep on the inside of the bed so if there were any safety issues he could get out fast to “protect” me.

Tuesday October 11, 2016 – The Way Back?

The next morning, Blaise started the calls to the Celebrity “Care Team” who was handling everything to assure I received the proper medical treatment and to assist with any plans to get back on the boat.  Not an easy feat when you don’t have international phones.  If the phones are connected to Wi-Fi we were supposed to be able to make calls to the U.S. as if they were local calls; a feature that was spotty at best.  Good news for us, it worked at the Ibis, a hotel chain we will avoid like the plague in the future.  Blaise talked to Miranda, with the Care Team in Florida.  She said we needed to send the letter we obtained he night before from the emergency room releasing me for travel.  She needed to send that to the doctor on the boat to gain her approval to re-board the ship.  We took a picture of the letter, sent it to Miranda and told her we would head to the airport and contact her once we were there to see if we were good to buy plane tickets to rejoin the boat which lands in Arlie Beach the next day.  After a bit of delay because the ship’s doctor was in a “meeting” we received the OK from Miranda we could head for the boat.

We had already found a flight to Proserpine, the closest airport to Arlie Beach so we headed to the Virgin Australia counter to buy our tickets.  This was the first of many explanations of our plight.  We had to show them the letter from the emergency doctor clearing me for travel so they could send it to their medical department for their approval. Once we got their OK, the tickets were purchased (around $800 for the both of us), bags were check, and we headed for the food area to kill some time and eat a much-needed meal.  As we were waiting, about 30 minutes before we were to board the plane, Miranda called Blaise to tell him the port authority at Arlie Beach refused to let us on because it was not designated as an embarkation/debarkation point.  Blaise said, look, we just bought tickets and are about to board the plane and we just reserved a room at a hotel.  She said she would try again with the port authority and then also check with the travel insurance to see if we had approval to buy another plane ticket from Arlie Beach to Cairns to meet up with the ship on Thursday instead of Wednesday.  We told her we were getting on the plane and would touch base with her once we made it to Arlie Beach. So that’s what we did.

On the plane, we decided if we could not get on the ship at Arlie Beach, we would rent a car and drive to Cairns since it appeared from our research to get to Cairns from Arlie Beach, we would have to fly back to Brisbane and then fly to Cairns.

We arrived at the Proserpine airport around 3:30 PM.  The place was packed, but we noticed no tower and ours was the only plane there.  You went down the stairs off the plane right onto the tarmac and into the “terminal.”  We were on a 737 so it wasn’t a puddle jumper or anything that small. Turns out the people there were waiting to get on the plane we were on.  Not sure where they were going. As we sat there trying to get our phones to work on the Wi-Fi after Blaise grabbed our bags from baggage claim, a woman with a orange reflective vest and asked if our transport was there. We said we were unsure what we were going to do at that point.  She then proceeded to tell us the airport was closing at 4 because ours was the last plane of the day. Since we could not get either of our phones to work with the Wi-Fi to call Miranda, Blaise went over to the Hertz counter and rented a car.  At this point, he was still concerned about my state and didn’t want me to walk very much so I just sat there with the luggage. A point well taken.

We decided we would get to the hotel, the Best Western Mango Resort (we ran out of options because everything was booked already), and try to reach Miranda there. We checked into the hotel.  While it might have been a step up from the Ibis, it was just barely. It won the battle by its size and safety.  It was more like a small run down apartment.  Blaise said the bed was good but he was probably comparing it to the Ibis so I’ll give it to him.

It was there we found out, I think (this part all runs together), that one of the officer’s on the ship tried to fight that fight for us with the port authority and lost. We then made the decision to get up the next day and drive to Cairns which appeared to be an 8 hour trip.

Wednesday October 12, 2016 – Australian Road Trip

We got up and were on the road by 7:30 after stopping at the McDonalds for beverages, knowing we were going to stop in a place called Townsville for lunch.  Blaise took the first leg and we traded at lunch and I drove the last half until we got right outside of Cairns since I didn’t want to drive in the “city.”  I believe I failed to mention they drive on the left side of the road in Australia.  Blaise adapted quite easily to this but it really messed me up. On the straight aways I was fine, but turning and merging really messed me up.  Not to mention the turn signal being on the wrong side of the steering wheel so I was constantly turning on the windshield wipers instead.

Australia uses a bit different, and sometimes more friendly road signs:  Caution is Take Care; Passing Lane is now Overtake Lane.  Every creek regardless of size or water quantity was identified by a sign and at times they are creative with their names for creeks.  We crossed Breakfast Creek in the morning and Dinner Creek around 4. We drove through places like Gumlo, Wununga, and Didgeridoo Lagoon.  Their Burger Kings are called Hungry Jacks.  We know this because the name “Hungry Jacks” on the signs were in between two hamburger buns and they sold the “Whopper.”

This part of the Australia grows lots of mangos and even more sugar cane. Railroad tracks would run along side the sugar cane crops and they would just load up the cars with sugar cane.  It appeared to be harvest season for the sugar cane.

All in all it was a fun little trip. We saw parts of Australia we would have never seen otherwise.  The terrain shifted from scrubby brush mountains to lush rain forested mountains the closer we got to Cairns.

We drove to Cairns having no idea where we were staying but we knew they had a Shangri-La Hotel there and that was our goal after the last two hotels.  We found an Information Center where a lovely lady spent nearly 30 minutes helping us find a decent hotel since the Shangri-La was booked up.  We landed at Pullman Reef Hotel Casino and Resort, right next to the pier area.  While at the Information Center, I checked our e-mail to find an e-mail from Miranda indicating transportation would meet us at noon the next day at the domestic baggage claim at the airport  to take us to the cruise ship.

Cairns is a lovely place; a place to catch boats to the Great Barrier Reef, as is Arlie Beach but Cairns is the larger city. In the evening we had a leisurely walk on the pier and ate a place called Dundee’s overlooking the water and had the most amazing fish ever – barramundi!  If you ever have chance to try it, you must.  Our friends, Frank and Barbara, told us we had to try this fish while we were down here and it did not disappoint. The bed at the Pullman was probably the best bed I’ve ever slept on.  Maybe because our trek back to the boat was almost complete.

Thursday October 13, 2016 – Back on the Boat

At times, it felt as if we would never get on the boat again.  But we did it.  Embarking the ship went off without a hitch.  Seems as though everyone on the ship, at least those that work on it, know our story, even that we drove from Arlie Beach to Cairns.  The doctor called the room and asked me to come see her the next day so she could check on my wounds and see if my stitches were ready to come out. The Shore Excursion manager called and said they were refunding our money for the excursion we missed in Cairns.  Our bags were delivered to our room almost immediately. We ate lunch and unpacked and then we relaxed.  We had an amazing dinner at the specialty restaurant, The Tuscan Grille.

The last few days have been quite an experience. My face is still a mess and I am sure I get some looks from people.  I am a bit self-conscious about it, but what can I do? Blaise has been incredible through the whole thing.  The past few days have reinforced how very fortunate I am that we found each other and we have each through the good times and the bad. We never gave up and had some fun along the way. Shit happens and life goes on. Glad I have Blaise with me!