Traveler

First vacation breakfast And WIFI roaming partner actually works during flight.

Well here we start ? The flight back home was OK although I almost did not slept , not sure why , but it was quite short flight so I survived. Quick taxi ride home and I went to sleep for a while . Last arrangements , some more packing and even had time to go and visit my father before my long trip , had to help him configure the Youtube from the IPAD to be shared with the TV screen and upgrade his souse Fitbit. As we had early flight decide to try and go to sleep. We both set our alarm clock and I said to myself I will decide later if to add to the suitcase another bottle of wine or not . I order a taxi for 3:40 am and went to rest my eyes. I open my eyes and looked on the clock - 3:33 am , uffffffffffffff , for some reason the alarm did not worked , go trust google assistant. 7 minutes to get ready , in that 7 minutes , I took a shower (must for me at the morning) , shaved, dressed up and answered the taxi driver call, And what you know we both were ready (I guess there are some things your learn while in the army you never forget). Currently , the only thing I found that I forgot are the headphone but I bought new one in the airport. So we are in the lounge waiting for out first flight ,

Well I love the dragon fruit (mainly the red one) , but I think the white one here is other member in the Pitaya family the Kobo , I prefer the Dragon fruit and when I am in Singapore at the first day when I just land I go to the market buy myself few of them and when coming back from another long meetings day I will eat a cold one. I also buy them from time to time back at home , this is the session were you can find them in the supermarkets but the price is 5 times what I pay for them in the far east. By the way the red dragon fruit (there is also a yellow one) is consider very healthy and contains allot of antioxidants

This is short for Ketogenic diet . This diet cut most of the carbs and focusing on eating meet , fat and vegetables. usually people loose wight quite fast with this diet and there are some people who claim that its helping many issues. Its even being used treating some health issues . On the other end there are some doctors which will say its not very healthy , I never tried it but know some people that did it and were very happy , the problem is to maintain it.

Nice that the option exist. Maybe they will add also optional keto menu. I saw many people looking for it.

Counting the minutes until I will take the train to the airport so I will be able to initiate the vacation time . Quick flight home (hopefully) , last minute packing (and maybe some laundry) few hours sleep and of we will go to the airport to start our China travel. I have just learn that not only its the golden week in China but also they are going to celebrate 70 years to the Communist state on our sell date , wonder if RCL will organize some fireworks on Spectrum ? . Meanwhile Enjoying the local food and practice semi exotic fruits before the real one next week

Yap , not the best subject. again its more something you will see with old timers as I understood less the young generation. Again culture difference as on the other side for some people it look very strange the fact we use handkerchief and keep it ? . I know that there are lots of effort from the authorities to change this habit, also I undertood that some time RCL will say something.

Well you can cruise on the Mississippi up to Saint Luis , from there you can use the cruise control on I57 all the way to Chicago ?

Do not worry , when this year will come they will announce on a new wonderful full of bugs application.

Thanks for the inputs. As I hate non organized queues I think this will be the most challenging thing for me but we will survive. Regarding people sounds mad I am quite use to it as working allot with people from China , also being told by many of my colleagues and customer than when they hear us talking in our native language (not English) it's also sounds we are arguing and fighting ?. I also spend few years in relocation in an South East Asian country and enjoyed that, I learned allot during this period (also on myself).

Hotels : As currently I am using mainly IHG and Marriott (which is now also Sheraton) I was looking to stay in one of them (using points or gaining points). For some reason all the IHG hotels (Intercontinental, CrownPlaza , Holiday in/express) are not located near the touristic/business center so I choose the Marriott near the people square. One of the reason was that most of the one/half day Shanghai tour meeting place are near or in the people square. As part of the peroration I also translate the address of the hotel and the port to Chinese (Or shell I say Mandarin ? ) so we will be Ok with the Taxi drivers, just to be on the safe side. By the way its a good idea to do in any country which not using the regular Latin alphabet. Now I am counting the days before the vacation , find it hard to constraint in all the meeting but doing my best. Yesterday went for a short trip near the hotel and encounter the local substitutes for casts ? , just hope they are from the nice kind and not relatives of the one from Monty python Holly grail. Anyway it reminded me some places near Seattle. At least most of the packing done , now just need to wait for my flight back.

Yes , I am asking myself that every time , it seems that some people would go to such places only with Hazmat suite , but as you said its missing the point. regarding food the key every were is very simple. If you see allot of people eating somewhere most likely its Ok due to the fact that food is not exposed too long for the elements.

Finished to pack my suitcase and now already on my next flight . No not China yet but to a quick business trip before the vacation to close as much item as I can so less times I will get calls or request if I can "just jump on a bridge for 5 minutes , really quick and we will let you go" and hour later and few "let's take it offline" and I can go back to the vacation. So I will land again a day before the big flight , lucky for me this one is a quick flight I successfully run a way from a "few days" Toronto flight :-). Just to be on the safe side I finished Ironing my T shirts (praying they will arrive wrinkle less to the ship) and pack the major things.

Pre cruise purchases : Another differences between regular cruise and cruises that start in China is the lack of cruise planner discounts. As you can see in @Matt updates about cruise planner sells most of them dose not include China cruises. that dose not mean a bargain can not be found as long as you check almost daily the cruise planner. So that is what I done almost from the time I booked the cruise and in two occasions I found the shore excursions to be on sell. I booked one excursion for Osaka and one for Tokyo. Osaka since its the first port and all need to go through Japanese immigration , Tokyo since its quite far from the port. The other things you can order in the cruise planner are all the activities which cost money only on Asia cruises , here are the prices : Laser tag - 10 $ PP North Start - 20 $ PP North star extended time - 40 $ PP. IFLY - 29$ PP SKY PAD - 10 $ Sky Pad VR - 15 $ We booked everything (regular North star) beside the laser tag as we done it already few times on Symphony for free. As you can see Skating and bumping cars are still free (maybe) I sure hope the fees will not expand to the rest of the fleet , I understand the need for crowd control but that can easy achieve by telling people that if they miss there booking they will be charged. Beside the excursions and activities we also booked Wonderland , its a whole different menu and all about Asian food , should be interesting.

I start to think that is the way to go unless I want to invest in the key and store my bag. We usually come early but I hate to go around with my bag (which has the two bottles of wine) and after we eat in WJ we just want the rooms to be open already . Enjoy the cruise , the room looks amazing

Ok , lets talk about the elephant in the room. When we just thought on taking a cruise from China we started to read around, well lets say , you can find better reviews for Nassau ? I think many people expects such cruise will be just exactly the same as any other RCL cruise without taking into consideration that different places has different culture and different customs. Some of the things I have read : 1. Food , not enough western food - Well I Think its a good time to try other things , western food I have everywhere 2. The Chinese food is not that good - I think when most of us think about Chinese food we think about restaurants as PF Changs or fast food like Panda express (which I admit I like) but that is western Chinese food not really Chinese food ... I also like authentic Chinese food which I experience mainly in Singapore Chinese street food. 3. The messages are always first in Chinese - Well what do you expect when at least 90% are people from China , I do not mind as long as the important announcement will also be in English . 4. People are pushing in queues and into elevators - Oh you mean like most of the cruises I have been in the Caribbean during rush time ? 5. People do not respect people personal space - For this one I do not have any answer . 6, Not enough Trivia - Not a showstopper for us. 7. Shows story lines is not clear - The Gift anyone ? 8. Shows are boring - mm , Cats anyone ? Let me tell you story , 17 years ago (when I was young and handsome) I worked on a prove of concept that we had to present to a Japanese company , we worked like crazy to meet the time line , 20 + hours per day. Few days before we had to go to Tokyo someone arranged us culture differences lecture to prepare for the travel . We have been told we must come with a suite to the meetings, we must bow when presenting ourselves , never to show our shoe sole , never cross our legs when seating and many other things. AS I did not had a normal suit with me I had to find time to go and buy one at the last minute and find someone that will do the require alters on the spot. The flight day arrived (the good thing no WIFI during the flight so I could sleep few hours), we landed checked that everything still working (it was not , we had to spend another sleepless night to fix it) and run to the hotel to get prepare. We all came to the meeting location with our best suits, ties and shoes just to see our customer coming without suits , some with sandals and jeans. Yes we all bow and exchange business cards holding it with our two hands but later I notice people were seating almost the opposite from what we have been told. After few days when we already had some off the record small talks I asked one of the people for the difference ,first he told me that what we have been told is true mainly for older generation and second , that they also got a lecture on the culture difference before our meeting .... So I hope for the good , we will come with opened mind , I am going to participate in many activities as I can and to have fun.

Thanks , I also trying the Royal up for grand suite or golden JS

Sure , I will try to catch him

Thanks for this very valuable information . For the silver dining , do you know if it's for all dining or just lunch or dinner ? Do you need to reserve a seat or you just enter ?

Sure , I try to take cabin pictures before we start to unpack and the big mess starts (although what I like in JS is that you can hide all the mess in the walk in closet)

Cabin It was quite hard to decide which cabin to book , our last cruise to this area (Hong Kong to Singapore) was in inside virtual balcony room and we were quite happy with that but this time we wanted something different so we decided on JS. After checking out what is available we booked the J1 Sliver JS with big balcony , its actually an aft balcony , so another firs for us. We took it so we will have some place to relax in the room if needed , the option to enter to the solarium (although I read that also diamonds are allow there) and maybe to eat in the silver dining room that until now I could not understood if its a dining room , lounge and what is going to be serve there, as I said its going to be interesting. There is not much information on RCL site regarding what are the perks that comes with the Silver/Golden cabins comparing to Sea/Sky/Star which has the exact description of what you can expect., I hope it will be a nice surprises. Like all the Q classes that were build to the Asian market also in Spectrum of the seas you can find deck 13 as 13 dose not consider a "bad" number like in Europe and US, Actually Chines lucky numbers are more 6- for smooth live , 8 for wealth and fortune (which can explain why many slots machines in Asia are associate with 8 and 88) and 9 for eternity. On the other side , 4 is the 13 , 4 associate well , with death and 7 = gone although there are some good things about the numbers. So you will not find rooms on deck 4 but for sure you will find deck 13 , I also quite sure cabins like 8588 are gone quite fast ?. I do hope that the JS will allow us to skip some of the lines in embarkation and maybe on disembarkation , well only time will tell. meanwhile so it will not be just words here is one picture from our last weekend trip

Today I went to collect our passports from the Chines visa agents , finally we found few days were we are both at home and can leave the passport for few days (it takes up to four days to get the visa if you are not paying for expedite process) so I guess it’s a good opportunity to start this “I do not know how live it will be” blog. It’s a different cruise for sure , many first times for us , first time going to China , first time on Quantum class , first time cruise to Japan and firs time on a cruise that English is not the first language. I am sure we will have much more first times , but that’s what make us so excited. Why we choose this cruise ? well , apparently it was a childhood dream of my spouse to visit Japan and it will be her first time there , for me it will be the second time but the other time was quite a long time ago and was a business trip, also it’s a new ship , and a new class , do we really need other reasons ? So what is the plan : Two days in Shanghai – Some tour in the city , still did not choose one although I so a nice bicycle day trip which we might take. I already booked a nice hotel near one of the main square , the location is important as we wanted to be at the center to reduce traveling , as we are landing very early in the morning I guess we will store our suitcase in the hotel and start to tour the area. I thought to book the hotel a day earlier so we will get the room once we will arrive but as I know both of us , we will get to the room and go to sleep and miss important hours in the city ?. On 1-October we will do our way to the port . Our itinerary : 01 OCT - SHANGHAI (BAOSHAN), CHINA 02 OCT - Cruising 03 OCT – OSAKA, Japan 04 OCT- OSAKA , Japan 04 OCT – Kobe Japan 05 OCT – Tokyo (Yokohama) , Japan 06 OCT – Cruising 07 OCT – Cruising 08 OCT - SHANGHAI (BAOSHAN), CHINA After we booked the tour I found out that 1-October is also what they call in China the Golden week , this is a mandatory vacation week in all China so we expecting to have many local families and not many foreigners on board. We might experience some traffic as many are traveling this week but I do not think its going to be showstopper. We choose this period as we also have some holidays and many bridge days between. Post the cruise we will go to the airport and fly to Singapore , we considered to stay some extra days in Chania but was not sure if we will have multi entrance visa or a single entry which mean that we will have to use transfer visa on the way back, at the end we got the multi until as long as the passport is not expired. We will be in Singapore for three nights at our favorite hotel in the world (or should I say our favorite swimming pool in the world), it will be good for some rest time although I might need to have a face to face meeting with one of our customers for few hours. From Singapore we will fly to Thailand to chill out , currently only Bangkok but we might fly to one of the islands , depends what the weather will be. So almost three week vacation before going back home. There are many difference is cruise out of China : 1. Activities cost money (north star ,Ifly , skypad, laser tag) I will give the prices later. 2. Food in the MDR is different – the menu is a picture menu with many Chinese flavor. 3. Instead of sea class , sky class and start class there is golden class and silver class. 4. In the golden glass there are not just suites but also balconies cabins with suite services. 5. No coastal kitchen but golden dinning room and maybe silver dining room (not sure yet). 6. The solarium is only for Golden and Silver class. 7. Golden class have access to some other dedicated places (again not sure about silver) , there are also elevators just for suites class. 8. Wonderland with Chinese menu. 9. Dining package is not offer before the cruise. 10. No Diamond lounge – only the 3 free drinks during happy hour. 11. Many first timer. 12. MDR late seating is 7 PM. I am sure I will find more differences , but difference are many time a good thing , it will push us from the comfort zone to experience new things. More to come.

When I done Vietnam cruise with 3 port I got the Visa at the embassy but this was total waste of money . Once we board our passports were collected and we only had our passports photo copy which was signed on the first Vietnam port. The ship organized the Visa for everyone for 6 $ . We also had very hard time to understand if a visa is needed or not. Do not expect clear answer from RC. Please note Vietnam government tend to change the requirements from time to time so I am not sure regarding this year.

Yes , it's 220 V , do not try to plug the hair dryer to it with some adapter, it will not end well ?

Dress shirts o give to the local laundry before the cruise and ask them to iron them and pack them like a new shirt , most of the time it's working . T shirts I iron , fold and back them tied so it will be kept like that . Emergencies I use the steam from the shower.