Seabourn Sojourn 2014 World Cruise Los Angeles to Venice January 4 to May 1, 2014
Segment 2 Sydney to Hong Kong (Page 2)
March 2nd We were a bit late docking in Benoa, Bali and as a result our 8 hour tour departed late and we were unable to attend the 2nd of the special events for those of us on the full World Cruise which was a special Balinese dinner and dance performance. The Queen Mary 2 was also in Port for the day, but because of its size she was anchored. We were fortunate to have dock space which made our Bali visit possible without the use of tenders. The lines of passengers waiting to board the QM2 tenders were incredibly long.
This was our third time in Bali, the last being in 2005. I have included a link to my 2005 photos which are much more extensive than the ones taken during this visit. Our tour took us up into the mountains, and while it was a repeat of similar sites and experiences from our previous visits, it was still an interesting tour.
Other than an increase in the number of cars and motorcycles there was not much noticeably changed in the country. The landscape is beautiful and the people are friendly. A dance troop came on board to entertain us in the evening.
March 3rd After an overnight stay we departed Bali for Komodo Island.
March 4th We anchored for the day and were tendered to shore for our visit to Komodo Island and its famous dragons which are actually incredibly large monitor lizards. The temperature was in the high 80's, but the humidity was approaching 80% so it was pretty uncomfortable. Viewing the "dragons" was high on our list of things we were looking forward to.
We were taken into the Komodo National Park which is only accessible with a Park Ranger. As we proceeded ashore from our tender we saw our first dragon walking across the path closely followed by a park guide armed with a long forked stick to dissuade if from approaching us. The ranger led us into the park and we heard lots of birds and even a Timor Deer, but no further dragons. The deer are an introduced species not native to the island and are the dragons' main source of food. We departed from our group with one of the park guides when they decided to climb to an overlook. We went directly to a dried up water hole with our guide and had time to watch a group of 5 of these lizards hanging around waiting in hopes of a deer or other prey approaching the area. I was able to get a number of decent photos of them. I would estimate the largest was well over 6 feet long.
The experience was well worth the uncomfortable weather but we agree that our next siting of a Komodo Dragon will be in a zoo.
March 5thLarantuka is located on the island of East Flores in Indonesia and was our next port. It turned out that the water depth was less than what the captain had been originally told and we ended up anchoring and using tenders to reach the shore. Apparently we were the only cruise ship to visit the port this year and there is not much infrastructure.
Once again the weather was extremely uncomfortable and unfortunately the buses we used for our excursion were not air conditioned. One of the advantages of being rare visitors, we were as much of a curiosity to the locals as they were to us. The children were given the day off from school and a group of students studying to be tourism guides accompanied us on the tour. The tour included a visit to a local market, a visit to a small village where the locals put on a cultural show for us, and to one of the Catholic Churches in the area which is uniquely Catholic rather than Moslem like most of Indonesia.
March 7th It turned out we were the first cruise ship to visit Ambon since 1999. Ambon was the center of Sectarian Violence in the Maluku Islands of Indonesia which finally ended in February 2001. The welcome we received by the local officials and residents was pretty amazing. We decided against a tour and limited ourselves to walking around the terminal. Seabourn had arranged a shuttle bus to the center of the city, but we decided that there would not be much to see that would justify enduring the heat and humidity.
March 10th We were on an extended trip in Borneo in 2005 and therefore just rode the shuttle bus to the city and back, and then stayed on the ship for the remainder of the day in Sandakan. During that previous visit we toured the Orangutan sanctuary and then departed Sandakan on a river boat for a stay at the Sukau Rainforest Lodge. We subsequently traveled to Langkawi and stayed there for 9 days. Photos of these trips in March 2005 are included below in addition to a few photos I took on this visit from the shuttle bus and the ship. It did not appear much had changed during the past nine years.