Dubai

Sailing from Dubai to Mumbai 10;30am

After a particularly busy day yesterday we were happy to look forward to three days at sea so off to a slow start with a relaxed breakfast at 10:00am. On this segment, we are headed from Dubai to Mumbai, a distance of 1200 km across the Arabian Sea travelling at 18 knots. Outdoor temperature 27°, ocean depth, 10,000 feet. This is the second time that we have been on this ship, The Regent Seven Seas Navigator. The first time was our trip to the Amazon, once again, with Peter and Heather. The ship was refurbished in October 2023 and many of the areas are brighter than they used to be, which is lovely. She holds 496 passengers in 248 suites, and has a crew of 365 which gives a guest to staff ratio of 1.27.
Our full trip from Dubai to Singapore is 4076 km. To put this in perspective, the distance from Vancouver to Halifax is 4400 km. We end up in Singapore on December 22 and head back to Toronto from there and arrive just in time for Christmas on December 23.

We had a fairly relaxing day. We started out attending a 10:00am lecture on the history of Mumbai.
-the city was originally called Mumbai, then changed to Bombay and then in 1995 changed back to Mumbai again.
-Four Hundred years ago the East India Co. the largest company in the world at that time, was formed to trade spices to the rest of the world.
- 1639 East India set up a trading centre in Madras- the tip of India.
-They employed Indian troops called Sepoy to help gain more territory and control of land.
During the afternoon, we each went our separate ways. I had a bit of a snooze before which I dictated for an hour or so for this blog, Lee worked on her blog for last year’s trip to the Baltic.
This evening, the captain introduced the crew to us in the Navigator Lounge at 6 o’clock, after which we went to the Compas Rose Dining room and had another lovely dinner.
The show this evening featured a British artist, Suzanne Godfrey, who played upbeat songs from Henri Mancini and others on flutes, piccolos and penny whistles. This was a real treat for us as we saw Suzanne twice on our Baltic cruise last year in the Viking Jupiter. You can’t imagine the upbeat music she can play on her flutes and higher pitched piccolos. Following that Peter and Heather retired and Lee and I went off in search of finding a bar that offered dancing. At the first one there were only a few people, and it didn’t seem to be an option. After that we went to the Galileo Lounge where there was more of a rock band but unfortunately, we missed their last performance by about five minutes. One of the servers was a pretty, young, and perky lady, Wiranya, who poured the wine at our table for dinner. We had a long discussion with her and found out that she was from Bangkok. Since Lee and I have been there before I said, just for fun, “Oh, Patpong Street” which is one one of the world's most notorious red-light districts, to which she replied, “naughty boy”. We got a big kick out of that and I’m still giggling.
Off to bed at 12:05 with calm seas.Read more