Journey To The Center Of The Earth (Part 2)

Warning: There are quite a number of photos in this post, so if you're using dial-up, let me warn you it may take a while to load them all. Enjoy! =)

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My auntie pulled out from the cruise weeks prior to the cruise date. She had a young piano student who had a exam on the final day of the cruise so my auntie couldn't come with us. I feel really sorry for her because she missed out bad.
The trip would have been many times better if she was there because not only would it have been a lot 'merrier' with more people, but she is the type of person who will light up the whole situation with her bubbly charm. I reckon if she had come, it would have benefited both parties. Sadly, she didn't make it, so it was just the three of us. My mum, grandma and I.

Nevertheless, it was still enjoyable because I consider this one of my best, if not the best trip, of my life. Quite often on the cruise, I was on my own, but I was pretty much used to being alone because in Singapore, I have been wandering off by myself, doing my own thing, so I guess it wasn't too 'lonely' for me. Although, if I had someone that I can share the experiences with, it would have made the whole trip a whole lot better. When I say 'share the experiences with,' I mean sharing the things that I did on the cruise like going to the pool, the gym, the open deck at 6:45am. Having company would be the only way to make the cruise even better for me.


Anyway, after we passed through security, and the immigration counter, we made our way to the ship. I was carrying our bags for most of the 'travelling' to the ship, so as you can see in the picture below, I carried my sling-on bag and my grandma's trolley bag. I had passed off my mum's trolley bag to her cause I was fumbling the camera, my passport, my iPod and my mobile while dragging my mum's trolley bag because we had just passed through the security and immigration section.

We continued walking and there were two sections during the 'walk' that they forced us all into taking photos with a penguin and two 'colourful' ladies. Obviously just a sales tactic to make you tempted into buying their photos on board the ship at $10 a piece.
ahaha, tell you guys something. On the second day of the trip, they had placed all the photos of all the passengers from these photo shoots in the Gallery. Well, I guess I was so caught up in the whole 'taking photos so I can blog them' mind set that I foolishly decided that I would take a picture of the picture they had taken of me with those ladies. This is obviously strictly forbidden but I had forgotten about that. In all honesty, I had. It was terrible.

One of the crew members told me off and I had to delete them. A very embarrassing moment that I will never ever do again. =P My mum doesn't even know that I did that. The only way she's gonna find out is if she reads this or if my dad tells my mum when he reads this. XP
haha, well, that was 1 of the 2 'moments' when the crew staff told me off for taking photos. I will tell you guys what happened with the 2nd one later in one of the next few posts.

Anyway, we approached the ship and I was able to capture the ship's logo and name.

A little bit blurry, but like I said, bear with me for a few of them because I only found out how to make it clear later on in the trip. Shooting from the glass didn't really help either, but I guess that's not an excuse.

SuperStar Virgo is the name of the ship. Virgo is the biggest Star Cruise ship in Asia Pacific, so if you plan to go on a Star Cruise ship, go Virgo! No point going on the smaller ships. Less entertainment, and less freedom to roam on board.

We finally got on board and I started snapping any 'beautiful' sights. I'd estimate that I snapped around 20 photos as we went hunting for our room; half of which were all blurry. The other half's half were all deleted for random reasons. Not sure what reasons though. ^^

It took us around 5 minutes to find our room. When we did, I realised that we were situated right in the corner of the floor. It was good because there was less movement in the corridor.

This was our room door and I thought it would be nice to take a picture of it. Why? I'm not too sure. I thought it would be nice. lol

This is our room...

It's a little bit bigger than it actually looks. It's quite spacious once you get in there. Even for me, I really thought it was quite nice and spacious.

Then of course, I had to get a picture of the toilet.

After putting down our things, we decided whether to drop off at Malacca or not. After contemplating the price of having to pay for transportation around the city, we decided it would be better if we just enjoyed the entertainment on board.
By 10pm, I declared that I was hungry and it was off to the Mediterranean Buffet for supper. There were so many people at the buffet. People were making so much noise, chattering, clanging, smacking, shouting, chewing, lots of things were happening. The staff were really busy trying to keep up with the clearing and cleaning. Eventually the crowd died down by 11:15pm when most of us headed for the Magic Show at the Lido.

This guy became quite desperate for audience participation. When he decided that he needed some help on stage, he had to 'dance' to try to get the people going. If that didn't work, he'd physically try to get the person off their seat. Well, he'd do that with the guys. And he wasn't really small. He's pretty big. I reckon he's nearly 6ft with a slightly large build. So fighting him off was quite a strenuous task for the guys getting yanked out of their seats. Fortunately, he never approached us.

But it wasn't entirely his fault that he was so poor in getting audience participation. During the trip, my mum pointed out that Singaporeans are pretty shy and rather not embarrass themselves on stage doing stuff like this. The poor guy had to try several different girls in order to get the 4 girls on stage pictured above.

Then again, his show was pretty crap. I was really disappointed with his performance. He was trying too hard to impress and in the end, I think he only did one magic trick that could been deemed as 'a magic trick'. All he did was pull a clothesline of razor blades from his mouth. Besides that, it was really disappointing. Maybe more for kids than adults.

After the show, we slowly made our way back to our rooms as we managed to get a few pictures of the beautiful ship. It was 12:10am when the show finished and when we looked out the window, we could see the ship moving in contrast to the lights from the Singapore ports.

This was the lobby reception. The theme for the ship was Chinese New Year, so everything was decorated in colourful gold, red, and lots of other bright colours down at the lobby. I really like how the walls next to the elevators have this 'olden time' look of Singapore back in the 50s or something. The windows were actually backed with mirrors, making the ship look bigger than it actually is.

My mum commented while looking into these windows, "Hmm, I haven't been there before." Behind the windows were probably cabins, so in actual fact, they really made good use of the space. They did a good job using the mirrors.

If you notice carefully, the sign says 'The Gallery'. Since we weren't able to take any pictures at the Gallery, this would have to do. All the pictures of the passengers were placed down in the cupboards further down at the turn. Also, roughly half-way down the corridor on the left is the Picture House where they would feature different movies like Mission Impossible III, Cars, The Breakup, The Da Vinci Code, and a few others. I managed to watch the Da Vinci Code for the first time, and I thought it was 'amusing entertainment'. I didn't think much of the show and just took it as another movie. You would be foolish if you thought any of what they said was real.

(In the library)

To Be Continued...