DAY 68---CRUISING IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

   

Our noon position is cruising in the South China Sea.  It is cloudy/hazy and 71 degrees today.

Hong Kong about abeam us.

LAST EVENING

I went up to deck 12 to get these night photos of the city's lights on my up to Sette Mari.  Beautiful!!

                          Nice Italian red wine to go with my Italian dinner in Sette Mari.

                           We both had the minestrone soup to start with as usual.  Yummy!

               We shared this huge veal parmesan with a side of spaghetti with marina sauce.

        We finish dinner at 8:00 and the show was not to start until 9:30 so we decided to skip the show and head back to the suite.  Rebecca watched "Fox & Friends" which is a morning show in the States but night time where we are now.  We are now 12 hours ahead of Dallas time.  I crashed!

KAOHSIUNG TOUR PHOTOS

I HOPE YOU WILL TAKE THE TIME TO CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO ENLARGE THEM.  TO GET THE FULL ENJOYMENT OF THE COLORS AND INTRINCITY OF THE TEMPLES YOU NEED TO DO IT.  THERE WON'T BE MANY PHOTOS ON TOMORROW'S POST SO TAKE YOUR TIME.

This our 4 1/2 hour tour today.  Rebecca went on the tour also since it is our first visit to Taiwan and this port.

                                                         Our tour bus today was very nice.

This is Anne, our guide.  We did not care for her as she was non-stop talk on the bus.  She went to the US to get her Masters and PhD degrees.

This is the new cruise terminal that has just opened.  Not sure why we did not use it instead of the old one.  The shape is suppose to represent the funnel of a ship.

                                                            Accident car and motor bike.

                                                         This is the Exhibition Center

You are going to see several photos of temples.  We drove by temples all afternoon.  There are MANY.

Our first stop was on Cijin Island.  The island lies just a half mile off the Kaohsiung coast and is 5 miles long and 1300 feet wide.  The first settlers came here in 1673 and it became a small fishing island.  There is a ferry to take you here or you can go via a tunnel under the bay.  Of course our bus took the half mile tunnel.  It was a 45 minute drive from the pier to this stop. 

The following photos show what was in the building pictured in the building with Rebecca walking in front.

                                     Fish that you could smell as you approached the building.

                                                    This is very small dried fish.  YUK!

                                                         Common mode of transportation.

                                                          Food stands across the street.

                                                Not sure what this represents.  Art I guess.

This is Chijing Old Street and what we came to see.

       Not sure why this church was on our itinerary to see (above 3 photos) as we could not go in.

This is a fish restaurant.  The waitress came out and you selected the fish you wanted and they took it to kitchen and cooked it.  Here she is taking an order.

This is the Goddess of the Sea temple.  The first temple here.  The fishermen would come here to pray for a good/safe catch.

                                                                       Tour boats.

                                                                Our ship across the bay.

                                                                      Our bus driver.

                                                         This is an elementary school.

                          We passed this, another, temple on our way to our second stop.

Lotus flower 

The tour description called this "Spring & Autumn Pavilion" but our guide called it "The Goddess of Mercy".

It was a giant dragon.  We went in and it was like a tunnel with steps going up then down then up and down several times.  Probably 100 feet long.

                                                                     Inside the dragon

                                            Yes, we came out the ass end of the dragon.

                                                          Another temple in the distance.

                                        The above two photos shows what we walked through.

You really should be clicking on the photos to get a good view of the colors and detail of the temples.  Our guide said you always enter the dragon side and exit the tiger side.

                                     Side view of the Chi-Ming Tang temple to show the size.

Across the street from the dragon we walked through is this huge Chiming Tang Temple.

Back for a minute across the street are turtles living in the lilly pads around the Goddess of Mercy dragon temple.

Back to the Chiming Tang temple.  The following were outside the front of the temple.  Not sure but guess they guard it.

                                                     These three photos show the inside.

Now on to our last stop The Kaohsiung Confucius Temple.  I was about toured out so did not stay with the guide for her explanation of it.  I just took photos.

                                                                            Entrance

                                   This is inside and where students come to study Confucius.

                  Driving back to the pier we passed some street shows.  Never seen this before.

TODAY

        We got our treadmill time in this morning and I have been working on this blog post also this morning and early afternoon.  Getting the photos (that I thankfully uploaded in the cruise terminal yesterday) put on the post.  It was a very slow process until I put our trash can to block the door partially open.  That greatly increased the speed of adding the photos.  There is a hotspot down the hallway and opening the door helps getting internet.  This is a trick I learned several cruises ago.  People passing by probably wonder why our door is blocked open.

        Rebecca is watching her soaps this afternoon.  March Madness (college basketball) tournament will preempt the Thursday and Friday soaps.  GO PERDUE !!

        At 2:30 I had an appointment with Bea, the cruise consultant.  We had booked the Grand Arctic for next summer a week or so with her.  We were growing leery of being on the right side suites as we had a strange noise issue on last year's WC.  So I changed our suite to one on the left side.  It cost us more money but I don't want to take a chance with noise issues.

        This evening is the Captain's Welcome (for the new segment) but instead of cocktails in the theater they are having a "Block Party" instead.  It is also a formal optional dress night.  No way I am going out in the hallway to have drinks with my tux on.  It is to start at 5:45 so we will leave the suite and head down to Mariner Lounge at 5:40.  Dinner planned in Compass Rose later.

        The show is featuring "Duo Yalba".  Two multi-instrumentalists we have never heard of.  If still awake we will be sitting up in balcony for a quick escape if need be.

        Tomorrow is another day at sea.  The Captain said we will be sailing through the Hainan Strait around 2pm tomorrow.  It is a 19 mile wide and 50 mile long strait of water between mainland China and its island of Hainan just off the coast.  He said it requires special permission by the Chinese to transit the strait with speed restrictions and no photos are allowed during the transit.  Sure!!  The Strait connects the South China Sea (where we are coming from) to the Gulf of Tonkin (where we are headed).