Wednesday, 1/29 – Normal cruise ship morning, up and to the gym, which is packed – but as it is pouring outside, no other options.  We do manage to get treadmills, which is a surprise – especially as 2 are out of order and one needs a reboot.  Then a quick breakfast, cappuccino in Café Al Bacio and onto the theater for Beyond the Podium with Tara on Kuala Lumpur.  Total waste of time.  She combined KL and Penang, but not in any logical way, jumping between the two.  Nothing on where we would dock, or where the “shuttle” into KL will go – no real information at all really.  The only good nugget she gave was to help us to avoid one restaurant in Penang she recommended. LOL. Because we are spoiled with Holland America port talks which provide excellent information on the ports we visit, and Azamara with all the maps and information provided, this is just poorly executed. Particularly as there are obviously a lot of first time cruisers and many others that are not frequent or savvy travelers.  It’s a travesty and a shame that these people aren’t getting information.  Plus, we weren’t thinking and didn’t have masks and there is a whole lot of coughing and sniffling going on.  A total fail.

A quick stop in the cabin for abovementioned masks – always on our persons now – then onto the Chinese New Year celebration buffet. Beautiful cake display, lots of good and different Chinese food (beef spring rolls?  Never ever have seen those, but they worked quite well) and tons of Asian fruit.  Very exciting, but the line for the fruit was so long, it wasn’t worth standing there for dragon fruit and Rambutan (that red round spiky fruit all over SE Asia).  There was a monstrous jackfruit used as decoration, but no actual jackfruit on the buffet.  Hoping tomorrow we’ll see that!

Later, we actually went to the afternoon matinee with Johnny Balance – might as well – there isn’t much else to do.  He was surprisingly funny and interesting.  Still not regretting not going last night – but nice to spend 45 minutes laughing and watching him grab people from the audience.  The rest of the afternoon was downtime, which I spent blogging and Ed spent reading and watching SVU.

Evening gym (packed when we arrive, a ghost town at 5pm – it is Chic Night tonight and we guess everyone is going to get all dolled up?), cabin drinks (it has been rainy all day, so it isn’t overly hot on the balcony, thankfully), then dinner at one of our normal tables with Ketan and Ajit.  Ketan is great and we love his section – although tonight we get chatty Brits next to us who just love Celebrity, yada, yada.  We chat for a bit, talking about travels, etc., and when we mention we took the longest flight in the world to get here, the husband challenges us on the longest flight saying there is one longer.  Oh no. Please.  The wife even searches on the internet and finds our flight as the longest, but no, he has to find the one that is 4 hours longer (but with a stop, which doesn’t qualify).  And you wonder why we try to be anti-social?

Anyhow, extracting ourselves from the conversation, we head out directly to the theater, because everyone is on an earlier schedule tonight (see above gym comment about Chic Night). Eek.  The doors aren’t even open yet – at least on deck 4, but I head up to deck 5 and walk right in, scoring our seats easily – obviously, it is only me and the cleaners in the theater at this point!  The show tonight is the MidAtlantic Men, a trio of singers, 2 American, 1 British who are incredibly good.  All 3 Broadway singers who met in shows on and off-Broadway and became friends and roommates.  Hoping they have a 2^nd show, we’ll definitely go to that!

Then it is back to the cabin for the balcony – again – happily bearable, a few chapters in our books and then to bed for an early morning backstage tour.

Thursday, 1/30 –  Lovely sleep with a little wobble on the seas, just gently rocking us to sleep.  So much nicer than our previous two cruise sea states!  We are up extremely early for a sea day as we have a 9am backstage tour. To the gym before 7 – this is the time to come! There isn’t hardly anyone there.  Yay.  Then a quick fruit breakfast and down to shower.  Café Bacio for cappuccino then onto the theater for our tour.  It isn’t as packed as we expected – but we were all told to wear closed toe shoes, and half the room has on flip flops or sandals.  Huh?  We’ve seen people turned away for open toes – obviously we’re a little more relaxed now.  Whatever, we have our closed toes on – we know we’re safe. 

We have 3 dancers and the lead singer as our tour guides, all sweet and adorable.  The singer is 30, American and has been performing since she was 16, this is her 5^th contract.  Two of the dancers are British, one American, all straight out of college to the ship, all on their first contract.  They are excited and fun and the tour is actually very nice and informative with not any really stupid questions.  Nice.

Then it is down time until lunch (because we sure as hell aren’t wasting our time going to Tara’s talk on Phuket – yeah – not spending that time in the theater where we have noticed more people coughing and sniffling away) and then the 1pm equator crossing ceremony which is, well, lame.  The traditional parade of Neptune and his court (all the dancers and singers dressed in toga-type attire), 2 dancers in mermaid costumes literally picked up and placed in the pool and the only saving grace being that Johnny Balance does the emceeing.  He’s funny – even reading a script – but otherwise?  No Kiss the fish. No explanation of Pollywogs and Shellbacks, no ceremony converting Pollywogs to Shellbacks – just a whole lotta nothing for 15 minutes.  Oh well – did give us something to do for a little while at least.

After that, we have more down time, then the gym, drinks and dinner.  Fortunately we are seated at table 301, in the back, up against the wall, next to a 6 top and a window 2 top – and absolutely no conversation.  Lovely!

The show tonight is Elysium – the story of good vs evil – and we have chosen to see it on the next leg, so drinks on the balcony, reading (the weather has been very cooperative, and the balcony is delightful) and then tv for the rest of the evening.