Wednesday, March 23, 2011

St. Patrick's Day and Koh Samui


Thursday, March 17, 2011

My computer still believes it is the 16th.  Maybe it is, somewhere, but here it is St. Patrick’s Day.  Green beer will be served upon request only (It seems the Irish don’t like it; although, they do like the NYC St. Patrick’s Day parade), and the Irish are gathering for a special dinner tonight.
Coffee cups honoring the marriage of Andrew and Kate have appeared in the gift shop. 

The terrible news from Japan continues, and while that is not my subject, it seems wrong not to note it.  It is devastation so complete as to be nearly incomprehensible.

We are on the island Koh Samui, basically a beach area, and John will go beaching.  Not my thing, and besides, I am debating staying on the ship and breathing the filtered air.  I was told at breakfast that this is not a polluted area—at least in the air.

However, at noon the island disappears, rain streaks the windows, the ship rocks a little, and the captain announces he will reposition the ship and meanwhile tender operations will be closed down temporarily.  I think of my husband and his soggy beach day, stuck there on the island.  Perhaps there is a good bar hide in.  Suitable entertainment on St. Patrick’s Day.

The ship is repositioned, and I see sunlight someplace.  If I go up and exercise, I can look for a rainbow.  That, alas, is as good as exercise gets.  But the rain returns; there is no rainbow, and no one will be allowed off the ship.  All the tenders will retrieve passengers as fast as possible.  I can imagine the lines.  Think fifteen hundred wet people ashore, hundreds of them in the lines.

I go to get a massage.  John returns reporting the waves were too high for swimming, but he sunned while he could, wandered the town and endured the lines for bus and tender.  There will no doubt be sunning and swimming tomorrow on the ship.  In this great big world, this is all very trivial, but that is the essence of a cruise.  Nothing but the trivial.

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