Worldie Information

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Peter D
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Location: NE Wales

Worldie Information

#1

Post by Peter D »

Now we are into the New Year and many from our Forum will be leaving us to travel far and wide. May I ask to remember to bring back your must and must not do's from your destinations so I can add them to the Ports Of Call document. The World section is a little light.

Thank you in anticipation.
Regards

Peter

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Suekersh
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Location: Lancashire

Re: Worldie Information

#2

Post by Suekersh »

Hi Peter,
We are joining Arcadia in LA. I will post updates when we have free Wi Fi in ports.

Sue

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Peter D
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Location: NE Wales

Re: Worldie Information

#3

Post by Peter D »

Thank you Sue.
Regards

Peter

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Orcades
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Re: Worldie Information

#4

Post by Orcades »

I am sailing on Aurora tomorrow 4th January 2014. Happy to see on she weathered the storms in the channel and is due to dock in Southampton at 3-15am. A very busy turnaround day to get her ready for the Worldie. I have started a blog click here for Aurora 2014 World Cruise blog and post as often as possible with interesting entries.


35jaffa
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Re: Worldie Information

#5

Post by 35jaffa »

Orcades wrote:
I am sailing on Aurora tomorrow 4th January 2014. Happy to see on she weathered the storms in the channel and is due to dock in Southampton at 3-15am. A very busy turnaround day to get her ready for the Worldie. I have started a blog click here for Aurora 2014 World Cruise blog and post as often as possible with interesting entries.
Wish I'd found this earlier than the night before you sailed and maybe you could have given me some help setting up a blog LOL!! I am struggling to set one up for friends and family to follow us when we join Aurora in Sydney after spending 3 weeks with our son and his family!

We cruised home to Southampton from Sydney on Aurora in 2012 and we are really looking forward to doing it again

Safe Travels and hope things aren't too rough and I am sure the Capt will do his best to give you the smoothest trip :wave: Chris

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wolfie
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Re: Worldie Information

#6

Post by wolfie »

I have sent you a PM 35jaffa and a link on how to set up a blog quite easily. I set one up to keep in touch with family and friends when we were on a world cruise some years ago, sorry, a circumnavigation....80 days is not a real world cruise in the eyes of some.

I am not inclined to post the link on here to that site, which allows you to set up a blog, as the link to my blog has been published elsewhere, without my consent or prior knowledge, on another person's blog................copyright and all that........ actually asking to post a link would have been polite. But, there you go, some people just have no manners or qualms about invasion of privacy because it really is just chit chat about our voyage, not interesting in the least to anyone but those that it concerned at the time.

Have a great time on Aurora, we did our worldie on her and came back from another 24 nights on her recently...............we've now done 146 nights on Aurora and 265 nights with P&O but have also tried Cunard and RCI but keep returning to what we like best; shame the itineraries aren't more imaginative as we have exhausted all we want to do with P&O.

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Manoverboard
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Location: Dorset

Re: Worldie Information

#7

Post by Manoverboard »

Bangkok to Dubia March 2012 ... at the time I wrote

The Itinerary ..... this was simply amazing even in spite of the huge disappointment regarding the exchange of Cochin for Muscat and insufficient time being spent in Sri Lanka. Overall impressions ....

The three days spent in Bangkok were to die for and I wish we had booked a couple more but we managed to fit in the main Palaces, Temples, Chinatown, Buddhas various plus an evening dinner Cruise, the floating Market and Jim Thompson's place. Also a couple of rides on the Sky Train and lots of really yummy Thai food.

Ko Samui was a P&O whole Island tour which introduced beaches, monkeys doing their routines in a coconut plantation plus other local people going about their way of life. Spices and more Temples followed on to complete our overall Thai education and enjoyment.

Singapore was initially a bit of a let down when we docked in a massive container Port instead of the Cruise terminal but our full day City Tour was extremely enjoyable and seemed to include everything that a first time visitor could possibly wish to see or visit. I have read on here that it can be done DIY but in the heat of the day I think we took the right option ..... gin slings by the way are totally over rated and certainly lacked the quantities of gin that I routinely pour into our glasses, they are also very expensive for what they are and note that even a small beer in Raffles will set you back US$24. The Hotel, it's seamless new extension and the Museum are all however an absolute must see.

Kuala Lumpur involves a boring drive to the City and we chose a P&O three hour walking tour of this City plus lunch to savour the flavour of the food and the various communities, it was not to be our overall favourite. Going up KL Tower is ok but hardly life changing. Glad we went but will not be in a hurry to return.

Penang was a total surprise as we knew nothing at all about it but we simply loved it including an excellent lunch at a beachside Hotel, another P&O full day tour.

Sri Lanka was a total let down for us as we had booked to visit Kandy and even after informing us that due to the recent logistical experiences of Arcadia this trip would be escorted and modified it was decided at the eleventh hour to cut the scheduled visit and to sail out at about 13:00 and then to head out at full speed for Mumbai. We switched to a Colombo Highlights (Joke) tour and regretted it, if you book it sit on the right side of the coach or you will see very little, it covers the old and newer parts of the town including the Cricket Ground. Take a tuc-tuc and save your money is my advice.

Cochin should have been next but it was axed on the basis that six ships would be docked in Mumbai on the 17th so we had to be there on the 16th ... odd therefore that those passengers who were on the Taj Mahal 5 day trip reported seeing only one ship on the 17th, a detail confirmed by a tour guide in isolation. Could it be that P&O were saving money or possibly making a farewell gesture to their loyal Indian staff on Aurora ?

Mumbai is frankly unbelievable and the not so simple act of crossing the road was in itself worth every penny of the cost of our full day tour. Ghandi's House and going inside the Train Terminus are absolute must sees, in fact everything apart from the wasted hour allocated to shopping is a must see.

Muscat was a complete waste of time and the main highlights of our City tour were a Mosque and a Palace but we were not permitted to go inside either, there is an excursion to a Fort in the nearby Mountains and my advise is to visit that.

At this stage the sand storm kicked in .... !!!

Abu Davy is actually quite an interesting place to visit but you do have to zoom up and down a carriageway for what seems like ages to see anything at all, and then back again to see something else. Everybody seems to follow everybody else so everywhere is packed even though there were only a couple of Cruise ships in town. The highlight has to be their beautiful Mosque but all the ladies have to don the Arabic black cover ups and this comes complete with a hood so there was a period when I didn't even recognise let alone fancy Mobietta. A blue sky would have helped enormously.

Dubai took us completely by surprise even though we have seen it all on TV many many times. Heading up the main drag you pass one sky scraper after another and each seems to be screaming " My sky scraper is bigger than your sky scraper ", the same value applies to absolutely everything and although we enjoyed our visit we thought it to be very shallow, unsustainable and a demonstration of the worst excesses of capitalism. In a nutshell we didn't like it one little bit and simply regarded it as a photo opportunity and a tick in the box of places visited.

Conclusion ....

This was our first World Cruise segment and we simply cannot wait for the next one to come round in 2013 and then to book another one for 2014. There was so much out there to see that we simply hadn't seen or experienced before even though we consider ourselves to be seasoned travellers. If you can handle the long haul flights then go for it.

FIN ...
Keep smiling, it's good for your well being

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Topic author
Peter D
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Location: NE Wales

Re: Worldie Information

#8

Post by Peter D »

Thank you for the link Orcades. Will keep an eye on your progress.
Regards

Peter


35jaffa
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Re: Worldie Information

#9

Post by 35jaffa »

We were on the Aurora for that trip too Manoverboard!! We were from Sydney to Southampton and thoroughly enjoyed it despite several disappointments regards Port visits - Bali, Great Barrier Reef Plus those you mentioned> However we are all set to do it all over again from February 16th after 3 weeks with my son who lives in Australia!
Chris

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