Monday, October 4th

I forgot to mention that Sunday night was the first formal night. We took pics, and I think we looked rather snazzy! =)

My parents looked pretty sharp too! With the cheesy Titantic grand staircase as the backdrop...

Monday was Labadee, which is promoted as Royal Caribbean's "private island". Reality is that Labadee is a peninusla at the northwest end of war-torn Haiti. Somewhere deep in the forest, out of sight of all the cruise passengers, there is likely a 20 foot chain-linked fence, complete with barb wires and electrocution devices, ensuring the area remains private, and that any locals in the area are authorized.

Why would I think so? Because when we were leaving the beach to walk back to the boat, a truck drove towards the beach, full of people. Imagine a normal cube van, except that the "cube" part is made of all metal, and it has holes all over it, so that you can see into it, and so that the people all crammed inside can breathe. And on the back of the cube, where the door is, there is a gigantic lock to keep the people in. These locals (we presume) were trucked onto the "private island" to clean up after us. I didn't have the guts to take a picture of the truck, nor the people.

As much as this was a wonderful vacation in the sun, Labadee woudln't be the last time that we witnessed poverty and developing world standards during the cruise.

Now that I've painted a frightful sight, let me show you the beauty of the land. I actually got up for the sunrise, and wandered out to the helicopter landing pad at the front of the boat. From there, I watch as Labadee appeared closer and closer, like a gian mountain looming in front of my eyes. Was a pretty cool sight, esp with all the fog/mist (shots are on film, forgot to use digital until later).

I turned around and got a nice shot of the navigation bridge. For the rest of the cruise I tried to figure out how to get up there, but to no avail. Oh well...


The sunrise was beautiful, this is one of the few shots I have in digital... I burnt about 2 rolls that morning alone!! The powerful Caribbean sun peering over the gentle slops of Labadee.

Because Labadee is owned and operated by Royal Caribbean, all the food and beverages served on the island are brought by the cruise ship. The people serving us on the beach are the same as the servers on the boat. I walked around to the side of the boat to watch them unloading everything to bring ashore:

I counted 81 huge bags of ice being passed down the line and stacked on the pallet at the end

The amusing thing about this shot is realising that the thing they are standing infront of is a conveyor belt, and then noticing the two guys in the middle who stand there and watch as the boxes are pushed from one end to the other. I stayed until they were done, those guys spent at least 10 mins watching the boxes move, shaking their head from side to side as the followed the path of the boxes with their eyes. Very amusing! [notice the mound of bags of ice now stockpiled at the end of of the conveyor belt]

We wandered to the beach that was furthest from the tender, but still on the side that faced the boat. [FYI: "tender" means that you have to take a little boat from the cruise boat to the dock, cause the water is too shallow for the cruise boat to drive up and park next to the dock]

The beautiful view from the beach:



We spent the day playing in the water (will need to see the pics from the waterproof camera), on the rocks, and in the sun on the beach chairs. Quite the enjoyable vegging kind of day.


No, we're not in Japan. GKY and her kimono appears together with the shriek of "I don't want to tan!!!!"

Mid-afternoon, we were all tired, and ready to go back to the boat. We started to pack, but wanted to take a group pic first. Nearby to where we were lounging was the bar hut, so we asked one of the guests waiting for drink to take a pic for us.

To backtrack, on Sunday night, we had gone to the boat's club, called The Dungeon. Like always, I am the purse/drink/everything watcher, and prefer enjoying the club scene from a comfy couch with a good view. Everyone else dances up a storm, ILC in particular.

The patrons of the club vary in age demographics, normally in sync with the type of music being played. But, there are always those who love to dance, and will stay regardless. ILC's "friend" was one of those. You would have thought that at his age, he would have left the club already, or at least gotten off the dance floor. But no. He proceeded to invite her to dance with him, which she politely, though promtly and forcefully, declined. We left pretty soon after that, and found it quite amusing.

So back to the guy at the bar hut taking a group pic for us. He takes one look at ILC and says, Hey you're the girl who punked off the old man at the club last night! HAHAHAHAHAH!!! Granted, we're kinda hard to miss. There weren't that many groups of young asians on the boat, most were in the generation of my parents (hence the Chinese Bus Tour incident from Sat), and we were definately the only asians in the club at night.

[group pic taken by the bar hut guy, to be posted upon approval - we're in beachwear]

On the way back to the boat, we stopped at the artisan's market, set up by authorized locals. Quite colourful.

The best part of being chinese is that you can walk past all the very aggressive vendors without once making eye contact, and they will just assume that you don't speak English, and not that you're rude.

Back on the boat, we (except for IW and AC) went to the salsa dancing lesson. It was pretty fun, when we weren't tripping over each other! =)

My parents took this pic, cause my mom liked the fishies =)


At dinner, we had our first night of challenges. Our waiter Adrian from Romania gave us (or rather SW) two forks and a toothpick, and told us to balance the forks on the toothpick. Impossible? Look:


Adrian balanced the two forks on a toothpick that is resting on another toothpick in a saltshaker ontop of an overturned wine glass. And we thought he was just going to serve us food!

Went to the evening show, which was a musical. More on the singers and dancers later. We zonked out pretty early that night, cause the next day was Ocho Rios, and we had to get up and off the boat EARLY!!!