Beginning Location: Gulf of Tonkin
Final Location: South China Sea
This is a scheduled day at sea. With that and no planned events, an opportunity to sleep-in or so I thought. Seems that sometime during the night we had crossed a time zone and I was awoken at 0630 by body time though it was 0730 local "alarm" time. Ugh!
After spending 20-30 minutes to reconcile time zones we have determined that we are now 13 hours ahead of the U.S. east coast, for example, 1000 Thursday here is 2100 Wednesday there, I think.
After our fruit and pastry breakfast we headed off for another enrichment lecture, this morning's topic was "Ill Gotten Gains - The East India Company, The Opium Wars & Hong Kong". Once again the presenter did an excellent job of compressing several hundred years of history into an hour.
Following the presentation we attended a cruise update provided by our onboard travel agent. She provided some thoughts as to touring the Hong Kong area during our upcoming three-day stay.
We had lunch with a West Point couple that we had met before. Conversation drifted from accordion playing to Lawrence Welk and onto trivia. BEAT ARMY!
Today the seas are a touch higher than we've experienced to date. Around 1400 we exited the Hainan Strait and entered the open water of the South China Sea. Seas are running 15-20 feet so the ship is noticeably shuddering as it bounces from crest to crest.
For the afternoon it was another enrichment lecture, this time "China Today". The presenter emphasized the unparalleled growth that China is experiencing and how that might change the power balance throughout the world over the next decade. Interesting to think that the U.S. may not be the #1 economy in the relatively near future.
We then moved on to a Trivia event, this time a 20 question (29 point) opportunity to excel. Sheila and I could muster about 22 points, but that would not have been a winner against the more seasoned teams. Examples of questions:
- What are the colors of croquet balls for a four player match?
- Of 257 recognized countries which one is alphabetically first?
- True or False: Is the planet Uranus visible to the naked eye?
- Which U.S. city consumes the most per capita prune juice?
- How many countries border the Red Sea?
- True or False: France is geographically smaller that Texas.
- In the Sound of Music, what was the number of Von Trapp children?
- What material invented in 1935 took its name from two cities across the ocean from each other?
- How many letters are recognized as Roman Numerals?
After Margaritas in the piano lounge and a light dinner we returned to our room, watched TV, read and did crosswords, sudokus and other puzzles, blogs, etc. Can't stand the excitement.
I didn't have many pictures today but here's one of the ship's anti-piracy security force at their post.
I didn't have many pictures today but here's one of the ship's anti-piracy security force at their post.
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