World Cruise - Day 83 - Apr 4 - At Sea (and Chennai, Part 2)

Sunrises are happening again, although very early (this morning it was even earlier than yesterday by a couple minutes, so we must have regressed slightly to the west as we make our way south around the Indian subcontinent).  Here is my best photo from this morning:

Continuing on with my photos of Chennai, picking up right after lunch.

There are a lot of vendors selling stuff on the streets.  I remember a guy selling drums like this when I was in India the first time in 1996 and I bought a drum for Brandon (who was 6 years old at the time):

This auto rickshaw graveyard is along a main street as we walked to the silk store:

I bought several shirts at the store, including the one he has out and is folding, which has interesting hand stitching around the collar and down the front of the shirt:

Krissie bought a few dresses at the store as well:

Back in our minibus, got this view of the traffic on a “flyover” (what we would call an overpass) near downtown:

This is the view as we come out of the flyover and merge back in with the surface traffic.  Note the modern building on the left.  India is very much a land of contrasts between the haves and the have nots:

Hindu temple detail:

You see a lot of people carrying their parcels on their heads in India:

Local girl standing on the sidewalk as we drove by:

Note the three Indian women in the foreground and Krissie, Sara and Ken coming up behind them:

This woman was selling garlands of flowers.  I later bought some of the flower bracelets for several of the women on our tour.  I also liked getting the little boy in the background of the pic:

This guy is pressing sugar cane to make a sweet cane juice, which you can see dripping out this side of the machine:

I liked this guy’s turban.  You don’t see many turbans in this part of India, usually more in the north of India:

Note the sign for the pricing on the sugar can juice.  10 rupees is about 20 cents.  Note that it’s more expensive without ice (since you get more cane juice).  And no, we did not get any:

I liked the outfits on these guys and their beards:

Bicycle rickshaw, just known as a rickshaw:

This boy’s load was so large that he was pushing the bike rather than riding it.  Those are all filled water jugs:

The guy on the bicycle had just wacked me with his box as he went by me.  Not much room to move around here or navigate a bike (or scooter or rickshaw or car) through the mass of humanity:

This guy was moving sacks of something (not sure what, maybe flour) that you will see in the next photo as some guys put them on their head to carry them the last part of the journey:

So then the sacks were offloaded to the heads of several guys to carry the last part of the journey:

This guy had a pretty tall load, not sure how heavy it was, but I wouldn’t want to be wacked by it like happened with the other guy:

I liked the reflective (or is it despairing?) look she has on her face up against the harshness of the rusting metal of the bicycle:

Rickshaw driver:

Several women carrying their loads on their heads:

Another rickshaw driver:

Barb and Sara showing their flower bracelets from the local market:

So then we were back on the bubble, essentially eating dinner at 5-star hotel standards and sleeping in a 5-star hotel (although a very small room, the service and amenities are definitely 5-star), hanging out in a 5-star spa, etc.  It’s a rather surreal experience to go from the poverty of a city like Chennai back to the comfort of the ship.  Ken calls it “the bubble” and it’s an appropriate term, since we are basically living in a bubble while we are onboard.  Every few days, we step out to experience the local reality, then it’s back to the bubble.  It’s an interesting way to travel and we’ve really enjoyed it, even though it does blur the lines of what is real and what is not.  It’s definitely an adventure.

Krissie has a bracelet of the flowers above as well.  She put them beneath the TV in the room last night.  When we woke up this morning, we were trying to figure out the smell outside.  We thought it smelled like lavender.  Later, we decided that the smell was not really outside the room, that it was inside the room.  Krissie thought maybe they were putting some sort of air freshener into the air conditioning system onboard.  It was only at around noon that we realized that the lavender smell is coming from the bracelet of flowers.  Very aromatic.

Patti, the Thelasso Spa is basically the front of the ship on deck 9 with a whirlpool that also has very intense bubbles at one end.  So it basically gives you access to two amenities: 1) the special “Thelasso” spa whirlpool; and 2) a private area to lay out in the sun.  Not a big deal to me, but Krissie likes it.  The normal cost is $269 per couple per segment (about 30 days), so effectively $10 or so per day per couple.  They usually discount it to $199/couple at the beginning of the segment, so about $6-7/day/couple.  Not really worth it to me, but a friend won it in a drawing and sold it to us for $50, so we’re doing it just for this segment.  We thought it would be nice to be out on the front of the ship for the Suez Canal later in this segment.  Although other passengers who have been through the Suez Canal said it’s not very interesting—just a lot of sand and dessert on both sides of the canal.  But we thought it would be a nice treat and a nice change for the last segment.

I looked at the segment map and figured out why we are heading slightly west as we are heading south—we are going around the east and south of Sri Lanka rather than cutting the passage between Sri Lanka and India.  Not sure why, since it makes it a longer trip.  But perhaps there is not sufficient depth in the passage?

We got 10 out of 15 in trivia this morning, 13 won it.  Questions we missed:  T/F Joseph Kellogg invented the breakfast cereal.  False (it was William Kellogg).  What was the first hormone identified?  Adrenaline (we said testosterone).  What are the colors of the rings in the Olympic flag?  Red, yellow, blue, black, green (we said white instead of blue).  What was the first planet to be discovered with a telescope?  Uranus (we said Mars).  What is the traditional fare on Shrove Tuesday?  Pancakes (we said hot cross buns).  Other interesting questions:  What two singers had a hit with I Will Always Love You?  Dolly Parton and Whitney Houston.  What dance craze was originally devised for Achy Breaky Heart?  Line dancing.  What ballerina was the Dying Swan Ballet written for?  Anny Pavlova.  What actor played the lead role in The Wild One?  Marlon Brando.  What is the most commonly used word in written English?  The.

Nice sunset this evening:

Today is the 31^st wedding anniversary for Ken and Sara, our tablemates:

Carlos, the Maître d’ Hotel, gave Sara a congratulatory kiss:

We celebrated at the table with a nice bottle of champagne:

The entertainment tonight was Diane Cousins, whom we saw a few nights back:

Tomorrow is sea day #2 of 3 on our way to Mumbai, India.