Golden Princess Beijing-Sydney 17Oct-11Nov 2016

[thistledoo]

I normally do up a bit of a private blog after our holiday trips, and when working on it today I though some of you may be interested to hear how the trip is going.

 

We booked this cruise as a replacement for a cancelled RCCL one, changed our mind, but rebooked when there was a price drop and we were able to snare a prime mini-suite for about the same price as the originally booked balcony cabin. E729, a fabulous cabin, only one neighbour and huge covered balcony. We had some noise issues the first few nights, but the staff were extremely helpful sorting it out.

 

We flew Cathay Pacific to Beijing, with a three hour layover in Hong Kong, arriving at our hotel around 4am. We stayed at the Beijing Prime Hotel which was within walking distance of the things we wanted to see. The rooms were large, and the internet was excellent. We were surprised we were able to have access to our gmail accounts.

 

We took two organised tours, the first was a walking tour around the hutongs, included was a visit to the home of an elderly gentleman who is a champion cricket breeder. He also had an assortment of interesting birds and animals in his courtyard and home, all kept in very clean conditions. The second tour was to two sections of the Great Wall. The first was to an outer and unrestored section far away from the tourist hordes. It involved a strenuous hike along a path that was not much more than a goat track, but we managed it without doing ourselves any injury.

 

A word about the Beijing smog - it was shocking. Within two days of sailing many people came down with coughs and colds possibly as a result of the conditions. Having now visited Beijing and if we took this same cruise again, we would embark two days later in Japan, as a few other passengers did.

[thistledoo]

Embarkation day was quite chaotic. There were horrendous traffic jams out of Beijing heading to Tianjin Port and it was taking most buses four hours for the trip. We thought the bus trip passed quickly though as there was lots of different things to look at on the way. A lot of the buses arrived at the same time so things were a bit chaotic for a while. However immigration and check-in went smoothly.

 

Our first port of call was Osaka, where we have been several times before. We had decided to do something completely different and caught three trains to Kobe where we wandered around the back streets looking for the Hakutsuru Sake Museum, which we eventually found with much pointing and gesticulating from the locals. The Museum had an excellent display with English videos and a tasting room. We managed to get our Sake back on board without question. From there we spent some time in Umeda and Namba before returning to the ship. I discovered red bean soup at lunch, what a delight. Think I'll be ordering it every day when we are next in Japan.

 

The berth at Osaka is in an excellent position at Tempozan Pier, with a shopping centre literally at the door and at night the lights from the huge ferris wheel with it's changing light display right next to the ship were a delight to watch. The subway station was only about a 500m easy walk. Sailaway was not scheduled until 23:00 which was great.

 

The next stop was at Keelung, Taiwan, where we were again docked right in town. With some CC friends we took a local bus ride high up in the hills to a little town called Jiufen with it's maze of steep alley ways and little shops. The views from there out to the coast were incredible, and we had an amazing morning there for the princely sum of 60 Taiwanese dollars each ($AUD2.50) for the bus fare (the ship walking tour there was $AUD105). Bus 788 if anyone is interested. There were money exchange facilities available at the information desk inside the terminal building.

[thistledoo]

On to Hong Kong, another return visit for us. We caught an early shuttle to Diamond Hill where we spent several hours at the delightful Nan Lian gardens and adjacent Chi Lin Nunnery, all free. We had lunch at the busy vegetarian restaurant in the gardens behind the waterfall - the menu had all sorts of exotic dishes we had never heard of. We ended up with steamed rice, braised eggplant and wheat gluten with sweet and sour Yan Nim sauce, steamed vegetable buns, braised ginger, soy gluten, sweet potato and peanuts in sweet dark rice vinegar soup (the whole dish looked like black tar and didn't really pass the taste test!). It was fun to experiment but it was decided I was sacked as the chief menu orderer, especially as the people next to us ended up with familiar dishes including spring rolls and noodles, which weren't on the menu we were offered. There was also a traditional tea house in the gardens which would have been good to try out.

 

Most of the shops in the shopping centre did not open until 11am, so in the meantime everyone was busy on the free wifi.

We returned to the ship mid-afternoon having just enough time to change and catch a local HK show in the theatre, which was delightful. We were lucky with the timing of the return shuttle, as soon after there was an accident on the freeway with reports of 300 passengers queued up at the mall in the heat waiting for shuttles to arrive.

 

Our early arrival into HK caught everyone by surprise, and it was still dark when we berthed. We were a bit late leaving, I think there were a couple of people adrift as they kept paging names. The sail out from HK was just spectacular in the dark.

 

There were a few glitches in the first week with the ship not been fully staffed, there was no port lecturer on board until after Hong Kong, the entertainment has been pretty ordinary and the food in the main dining room has not been terribly inspiring, with seafood dishes being overly abundant. The cakes and snacks in the International Cafe are excellent, the Horizon offerings seem to be as normal, except the plates seem smaller. I was surprised to find Vegemite, but the Chinese yoghurt was a bit hard to take - it was as runny as milk.

 

There were extremely long and slow lines at an understaffed passenger services desk, the laundry token machines always seem to be out of order. However, there was a big changeover of staff in HK and things seem to be running

better.

 

It has been hard to find somewhere quiet to sit and have coffee on the lower decks (the art people have had the whole Explorers Lounge roped off for extended periods of time). I went to two art lectures which were quite interesting, but could have easily been held in a smaller venue.

 

I don't mean to sound negative about the Golden, just saying it how we see it. That said, these are only minor things and the good far outweighs the bad. The staff are terrific, as always. What do they say about a bad day at sea being better than a good day at home?

 

Happy Hour is between 3-4 in the Wheelhouse Bar, but it is very small and is an odd layout. Most seem to be getting their happy hour drinks "to go" as there is not much seating. Apart from the bar, they set up a table with tubs of beer on ice to manage it better, but there are still queues down the corridor. Still, the happy hours are one of the things we enjoy about Princess. There is another happy hour at 11pm for those staying out late.

 

Some people at Happy Hour never cease to amaze. Imagine a big crowd at the bar waiting to be served. A women orders 4 glasses of red wine then asked for them to be be decanted back into an empty bottle. It took forever for the ever polite barman to find a funnel so he could pour it in. When he spilt a couple of drops she had the nerve (or maybe she was joking) to ask for extra (which she didn't get).

 

Other regular events like trivia and bingo in the Vista Lounge are rolling along as usual, and the pop choir sign-up started after Hong Kong There has been line dancing and Zumba, although not every day. The ship does not have interactive TV and the movie offering in the cabins is poor. We did start to watch Captain America at MUTS one evening until the sound system went on the blink. It's a major transition from the China to Australian-NZ seasons, and I'm sure things will be sorted out by the time we get back to Australia for the season.

 

We missed the second formal night as DH was laid up with the head cold that has spread throughout the ship. He was still crook the next day so he missed our roll call private tour in Nha Trang. We did a Cai River boat ride past fishing boats and fascinating rickety houses on the water's edge, a visit to a UNESCO heritage listed home where we were served tea and tropical fruit, we went into rural villages and saw conical hats and bamboo matting being woven, and an extremely interesting visit to a home where rice paper was being made. We visited the Long Son Pagoda with the big white Buddah, and to the Ponagar Cham Towers complex, the oldest tower built around 1,200 years ago. We managed to fit in a quick visit to a market, and had a lovely (mainly seafood) lunch with beer or soft drink at a riverside restaurant, all in the $US60 tour price, great value for money. We just got back to the ship when the heavens opened to a torrential tropical downpour. A perfect end to the day.

 

We were able to change our bits of unused foreign currency back into Aussie dollars at the front desk, which we had credited back onto our stateroom account. The exchange rate would not have been as good as what we would receive back home, but it wasn't a lot a money involved and the convenience factor was worth it.

 

We are now in Phu My after an overnight run from Nha Trang. We elected not to do a shore excursion, instead we are enjoying the relative peace and quiet of a near empty ship and visited the market stalls on the pier to spend the last little bit of our Dhong on trinkets. The river here is very busy with all sorts of craft passing by and DH has set himself up on the balcony with a beer and binoculars and is a very happy chappy with lots to see. The refuelling "tanker", if you can call it that, has been alongside all day. When it was coming around this morning there was a crew member on the front deck smoking away near the big no smoking sign. No OH&S here! We are wondering now if there is a problem as it's crew is all huddled around the dismembered corpse of what looks like a pump. Whether it has anything to do with our refuelling or not remains to be seen.

 

Update: The refuelling has finished,and the boys lit up again while still tied up to our ship :-( The captain spoke a lot of facts and figures about the fuel load, I did catch that we took on 2.5 million litres, enough to get the ship to Aust and NZ. Fuel must be cheap here. We have a massive container ship berthed immediately behind us, it came in just after us and left tonight first. It was great to see it turn around right in front of us. We are on our way to Bali, with three sea days ahead.

[NSWP]

I normally do up a bit of a private blog after our holiday trips, and when working on it today I though some of you may be interested to hear how the trip is going.

 

We booked this cruise as a replacement for a cancelled RCCL one, changed our mind, but rebooked when there was a price drop and we were able to snare a prime mini-suite for about the same price as the originally booked balcony cabin. E729, a fabulous cabin, only one neighbour and huge covered balcony. We had some noise issues the first few nights, but the staff were extremely helpful sorting it out.

 

We flew Cathay Pacific to Beijing, with a three hour layover in Hong Kong, arriving at our hotel around 4am. We stayed at the Beijing Prime Hotel which was within walking distance of the things we wanted to see. The rooms were large, and the internet was excellent. We were surprised we were able to have access to our gmail accounts.

 

We took two organised tours, the first was a walking tour around the hutongs, included was a visit to the home of an elderly gentleman who is a champion cricket breeder. He also had an assortment of interesting birds and animals in his courtyard and home, all kept in very clean conditions. The second tour was to two sections of the Great Wall. The first was to an outer and unrestored section far away from the tourist hordes. It involved a strenuous hike along a path that was not much more than a goat track, but we managed it without doing ourselves any injury.

 

A word about the Beijing smog - it was shocking. Within two days of sailing many people came down with coughs and colds possibly as a result of the conditions. Having now visited Beijing and if we took this same cruise again, we would embark two days later in Japan, as a few other passengers did.

Thanks for the blogging, great. Now have you bumped into Mrs&Mrs, regulars on this board, yet?