February 11th - Port Kelang, Malaysia

We arrived this morning to bring on fuel and supplies but no one will be allowed on and the only people allowed off are those who chose to disembark…meaning they can’t get back on.  I saw about 3 dozen people lined up to go off but that might not be everyone as groups were leaving at different times.  We’ll have to see if we can figure out how many actually left in the next couple of days.

We’ve been to this port before and one notable attribute is the very long walk to the cruise terminal.  There’s actually quite a walk to even get to the terminal’s walkway.  As I recall they had nice shops in the building and good facilities.  The Seaborn Ovation was in port with us, their passengers got off for tours.  We don’t know what their story is, perhaps they’ve already been to affected countries so one more stop didn’t matter.  Who knows?

For us, not stopping here in Malaysia or any of the other Asian ports gets us into Australia, I guess.  We got the revised itinerary from the ship today, we’ll be in:

Fremantle – February 18-19 (two days)

Darwin – February 24-25 (two days)

Yorkey’s Knob – February 29

Arlie Beach – March 1^st and this is the day we were supposed to be there so the rest of the schedule remains the same.  In subsequent days we will visit, Brisbane, Sidney (overnight), Melbourne, Adelaide, Bussleton and back to Fremantle.  I’ll repost the cruise map.

Yorkey’s Knob is right above Arlie Beach and both offer access to the Great Barrier Reef, most ships only stop at one location.  The tours to the reef are very expensive and really if you don’t dive then it’s not worth it.  Fred and I didn’t even bring our swimsuits.

No one we’ve talked to on the ship disagrees with the cruise line’s decision to skip the Asian ports, people are disappointed of course, as are we, but we all understand it. 

Fred and I thought there was a little too much Australia on the itinerary already and now we’re spending more time there.  We like Australia and have been there before and I know, it’s not exactly a hardship but that’s a lot of Australia!  The cities along the coast that we’ll be visiting don’t have a lot of variety.  It would be great to do an overland trip to the interior of the country but that would take some planning and doing it on short notice is almost impossible.

I know these are definitely first world problems~👀

After Australia we carry onto Mauritius and Reunion, two beautiful islands off the coast of Africa and then onto South Africa where we have an overland safari tour planned, Namibia and then we start to head back to England stopping in the Canary Islands and Madeira. Be prepared to hear a lot about Australia in the next few weeks!