A surprise Birthday. OOOPS we meant a wedding

[perthjay85]

So we had been on the boat for a few days before we arrived at our first port of call Bali.
Seeing as we are both from Perth, Bali is like a holiday home for us so we didn't do a lot of exploring or take many photos. We went straight to our favourite pub on the first day Bagus Pub on Poppies lane 2 for anyone that might know of it:

On the second day of our Bali stop we decided to head to the Waterbom park. Of course we did the usual few slides and then relaxed at the swim up bar, and then some more bintang at the cafe.

We didn't get a lot of photos at the park as we kept our phones in the lockers.

After we had finished our swimming/drinking we headed to the discovery shopping centre over the road for a bit of lunch and a little shop.
While walking around we noticed that the escalators going from the top floor to the bottom floor where chockas full. We both thought it was unusual but didn't give it another thought.

We then went outside where loads of people were hanging around for what we discovered was absolutely no reason so we decided to head back inside the shopping centre only to be stopped by a guard. After about 2 minutes we were allowed back inside and found somewhere to have lunch. We thought something was weird but didn't give it much thought.

When we got back on to the ship everyone had asked if we had felt the earthquake, Plenty of people said they could but we didn't. But now we discovered why we were not allowed back inside the shopping centre. It turned out this was the large 6earthquakeake that hit Lombok.

I didn't get any good photos but we did see 5 fighter jets and a "military transport" plane leave Denpasar airport I believe.

After all of this we left Bali on Sunday evening which was the 19th of August. I am sure we had plenty more to drink that evening but I will be detailing that bit more in future posts.

At around midnight I experienced one of the weirdest things ever. The entire ship started vibrating and shaking quite severly. It managed to wake up Michelle and lasted for about 20 seconds. Now this was by no means dangerous but it was very interesting to say the least. As we found out the next day we were 12km from another earthquake which from memory was a 6.3 earthquake.
That is certainly something I/we will never forget.

I will leave it there for now as I am actually a bit crook, that is why I haven't posted as much lately.
But our next port of call the following day is a good one. We stopped at Komodo Island.

Stay tuned.

Jay & Michelle

 

[perthjay85]

So the day after leaving Bali we arrived at Komodo island, Michelle was very happy at this as she has always wanted to visit Komodo island.

Komodo island is a tender port so there is no wharf to greet you and we were lucky that the ocean was nice and calm so reaching the island was quite a pleasant journey.
Here we are leaving the freshly painted ship: (through some salty windows)

On Komodo island, whether you book a shore tour through the cruise company or do it yourself through a third party it is the same thing.
You are taken on a walking track which is from memory about 1km long and takes a total of about one hour, and it is pretty much flat, so it is a nice easy walk.

The local island rangers have set up their own watering hole which is the centre point for the walking tour. When we reached this watering hole there was a total of 5 Komodo Dragons, either out in the open or stalking around the bushes.

Here are two sunning proudly in the middle of the area:

Someone next to use accidentally let a sneeze go that caught the attention of the dangerous duo:

After the walk and as a part of our shore tour we then headed off to "Pink" beach (it's really not that pink but you could just make out a slight shade of pink)

You are transported from Komodo island via an old boat that for some reason I cannot find a good picture of, and then you are taken via dinghy from the boat to the beach, all in all its a long slow process only to enjoy 25 minutes on the beach if you are polite and let everyone push in front of you. (I personally call it manners)

here we are on Pink beach:

A not so great picture of the boats from Pink beach:

After a really good day out we were pretty exhausted (no alcohol to keep us going on the shore tours) we decided to relax on the back deck of the boat with a few coughtails and were left with this amazing sunset:

Now we didn't get off on the next stop at Dili, This was the stop we decided to enjoy the cruise ship with a few people getting off, so my next post will be of the following stop. We got off at Cairns and we did the Karunda railway.

Stay tuned.

Jay & Michelle

 

[perthjay85]

And away we go again, Our next port of call was Cairns. Here we decided to do the Karunda Scenic Railway Gold Class.
The weather was sunny and quite hot so I was glad we booked the Gold class as there is far fewer people on the cabins. Here you also get
served tea, coffee, soft drinks, beer and wine & you get nibbles to eat.

I didn't take a lot of photos but I will add a few of the nice ones:

A little bit of advice for anyone visiting Cairns on a cruise ship or even visiting just the wharf itself there is a brewery there.
Hemingway Brewery. I meant to take some photos but my phone battery died. It was a really nice setup and the food was great, And the drink selection was very impressive also.

This was pretty much it for our cruise port of calls and expeditions, In the next post I will add a bit of detail of some of the onboard alcohol activities and then finish up the trip report with our final destination of Fortitude Valley Brisbane.

Stay tuned.

 

[Flying_man]

Kimono dragon is very FRIGHTENING creature. Imagine you wake up and one is climb into your bed. I would not enjoy.

 

[perthjay85]

Kimono dragon is very FRIGHTENING creature. Imagine you wake up and one is climb into your bed. I would not enjoy.

They certainly aren't something I would like to get too close to.

 

[drron]

There were a couple of Kimono dragons checking into the CP,Kanazawa yesterday.Didn't seem to frightening to me.

 

[Deleted member 29185]

That one may be lost in the translation drron!

 

[perthjay85]

I know it has been a little while since my last post, Damn work getting in the way of what I think is a good story.

So I mentioned before about the alcoholic activities before Brisbane but I think I will talk about our stop in Brisbane before the alcoholic activities are mentioned.

On our cruise last year I found a place in Fortitude Valley, Tryp hotel on Constance street, now we fell in love with this place. We loved the room which is why we booked the same room again but there is a cafe/restaurant built on to it called Chur burgers. These were some of the best burgers I have ever had. Unfortunately this trip they had changed from Chur burger but we still had a great time.

I will mention that this is one of those weird hotels that have a glass sliding door separating the bathroom from the bedroom where you can see straight into the bathroom while laying on the bed. Thankfully the bottom half is frosted, but it is still a bit weird.

The reason I love this hotel so much though is on the balcony there is a 4 person spa, Personally I love having a good relaxing spa, and this has amazing views from the spa. I took some panorama shots and I will try and find a way to upload them.

here is the room at Tryp hotel:

The views from the spa:

Now last time we stayed here we found the Wickham where we had a great time and plenty of drinks. The Wickham was about a 4-5 minute walk away at max. This time we found a great place even closer that has just opened up. Osbourne Hotel. The food was ok here but the drink choice was incredibly impressive:

We also attended Holey Moley mini golf:

I should have taken more pictures from Holey Moley but in all honesty, I was having way too much fun. Maybe next time we visit Brisbane I will take some more photos.

Plus we also did the xx_X brewery tour, Unfortunately when we were there not much was happening, We kept missing the packaging lines running and filling lines operating so I took a photo of the huge xx_X sign anyway:

The tour was really quite fun and I would encourage others that have thought about doing it to give it a shot.

Well, that is all for now folks, I will be back again as soon to finish off this trip report.

So stay tuned everyone.

Jay & Michelle.

 

[Deleted member 29185]

I think I will talk about our stop in Brisbane before the alcoholic activities are mentioned.

Normally wise on a travel forum, but this is AFF, so you possibly got the order wrong!

 

[perthjay85]

Normally wise on a travel forum, but this is AFF, so you possibly got the order wrong!

haha I will keep that in mind for future trip reports.

 

[perthjay85]

Welcome back everyone.

So now we move on to the alcohol festivities of our honeymoon.
After being on a few cruises with drinks packages my new wife and myself trained hard leading up to our surprise wedding & honeymoon. We trained hard most weekends at our local pub. Unfortunately for two days before we left Perth our local pub was shut (turns out a new owner was taking over) so we had to make up the missing alcohol on the flights, in Singapore and on the cruise ship which we certainly did.

You have already seen a few of my pics that weren't blurry from the flights over so here we start with Singapore. Now I managed to find a tiny restaurant/burger bar about 10 minutes from the Marina Bay Sands hotel that had Stone & Wood on tap, this might not be that special to most but there is very very few places anywhere near me that has this on tap so it was great for me:

In Singapore we found a burger joint that I loved called Brewerkz and I strongly advise burger and beer lovers to head in for a bite to eat and pint to drink:

They brew their own beers and do tasting paddles, The second time we went my phone went flat but they had more beers to choose from compared to the Brewerks on the bridge that Joins Sentosa island.

While on the cruise ship we partook in two wine tasting classes (I don't know how people drink the stuff really but the atmosphere was fun)

 

[perthjay85]

Before I go any further I will make note of the fact I am a beer drinker, So I didn't really pay much attention to they wine, whiskey, scotch, rum tasting. Or the coughtails or the martini's. I attended these for the atmosphere and the fact it was alcohol.

While on the ship we also joined in on the Scotch tasting:

We went to the rum tasting:

We enjoyed I think 4 of the mixology classes:

We also made it to all 4 of the martini classes on board the ship:

 

[perthjay85]

Now on our previous cruise last year on this same ship we had a bit of bad patch. Our toilet leaked twice, our fridge leaked and our roof leaked. We also had a few other problems so as I am sure you can imagine it wasn't the dream holiday we were hoping for. So Michelle suggested a little challenge for the remaining I think 7 days on the ship.

This challenge was to finish all coughtails on the 3 menu's throughout the ship one by one. You couldn't skip ahead and you had to drink even the coughtails that were not included in the beverage package. (we could drink other stuff inbetween but we had to finish the lists)

We decided to do this again for our honeymoon, only stretching it out over a longer period. We started with the pool deck menu:

Then we moved on to the bar menu:

And finally we finished with the coughtail bar mneu:

 

[perthjay85]

So that pretty much wraps up the report as a whole.

I will add to this trip report anything else I remember or think of. And I will have a look through Michelle's photos and see if there is anything else.

but for now I would like to thank everyone for taking the time to read through my first trip report. I have had more fun than I thought writing it getting to think about all the fantastic times we had and the memories we made. So from Michelle and I thank you.

Jay & Michelle

 

[Deleted member 29185]

Great wrap up! Loved the trip report. Good luck for the future!

 

[perthjay85]

Great wrap up! Loved the trip report. Good luck for the future!

Thanks for that, I am looking forward to doing another one with our cruise next year already.

 

[kermatu]

Wonderful report!

 

[drron]

Great report,great start and a nice way to end.
Wish you all the happiness for the future but just remember-Happy wife,happy life.

 

[perthjay85]

Great report,great start and a nice way to end.
Wish you all the happiness for the future but just remember-Happy wife,happy life.

Haha thanks for the tip.
Its my new mantra that I repeat several times a day.

 

[VPS]

Now on our previous cruise last year on this same ship we had a bit of bad patch. Our toilet leaked twice, our fridge leaked and our roof leaked. We also had a few other problems so as I am sure you can imagine it wasn't the dream holiday we were hoping for. So Michelle suggested a little challenge for the remaining I think 7 days on the ship.

This challenge was to finish all coughtails on the 3 menu's throughout the ship one by one. You couldn't skip ahead and you had to drink even the coughtails that were not included in the beverage package. (we could drink other stuff inbetween but we had to finish the lists)

We decided to do this again for our honeymoon, only stretching it out over a longer period. We started with the pool deck menu:

Then we moved on to the bar menu:

And finally we finished with the coughtail bar mneu:

What a challenge and well done for doing it. They are the sort of challenges I enjoy.

Great TR - well done.