We were up at 7am to get some breakfast before heading out with our friends, Carol & John, to get a cab to Fort Canning Park to take a 9:45am tour of the Battlebox bunker which was the command and control facility for the British in WWII. We quickly cleared immigration and found a cab. The driver, however, didn't seem to know where it was located and dropped us on the wrong side of the park. We were early enough that we were able to walk through the Park and were at the Visitor Center where we waited until 9:30am when the Center opened. Promptly at 09:45 Chin Han assembled our group of 23 and we headed underground for an hour and a quarter tour which was well done. No photos could be taken underground on the tour.
At the conclusion of the tour, we headed down through the park to a main road where we hailed a cab and headed back to Vivo City Shopping Mall. At the mall, John wanted to purchase some soda, so we found the store which we used the previous day. Then it was back through immigration and back on the ship where we ate lunch with other friends, Jack and Ashley, who have been on the ship since it left Ft. Lauderdale in September with us.
We had our Passenger Emergency Muster Drill which went well especially since it was so warm out (low 80's f). We watched the sailaway from Deck 13 and departing Singapore is especially challenging due to the large number of ships which were anchored or underway. Up there we enjoyed great conversation with Juergen and Heidi from Germany.
After dinner there was a special 1/2 hour Showroom at Sea show on the 6 themes of EXC In Depth cruises. KK Robbins introduced the presenters and it appears that the lecture style we enjoyed on the inaugural cruise is continuing on. We did learn that all of the Zodiac shore excursions on this voyage except for the one that we are doing in the Maldives were cancelled by the Sri Lankan military after a year spent arranging for them and getting permission. Afterwards Terry Greenberg presented the first lecture on an introduction to SE Asia. He's a good lecturer we've heard before.
Today I also set up a travel router so that my wife and I can share our single internet connection. Essentially the small electronic device receives the ship's WiFi signal, and rebroadcasts it (with password protection) to multiple devices. For this cruise I purchased the ship's SURF package of 300 megabytes of data on a daily basis for $10 per day or $189.95 for 19 days. It was $199.95 for 20 days.
Tomorrow is our first port of call and it's a tender port. It will be interesting to see how tendering will work with a new set of guests. We are 5 star Mariners so we get get off at our leisure, but our plan is to be on the first tender.
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