July 1, 2024
No Cruise for the Miller's
Sadly, Tuesday's delay news meant plan B had to be enacted for my buddies The Miller's ! I was so disappointed having to call them and relay the latest delays; they were supposed to meet me and the ship in Stockholm, Sweden based on our original itinerary for two weeks. We had even come up with an alternate plan, last week, to get them to Belfast to join the ship there, if we were going to sail on July first, as we were hoping. Again, DANG RUTTERS! The Miller's are resilient, they went to visit Lady Liberty and Ellis Island on Friday, in lieu of flying from Newark to Stockholm. Hopefully, we can rendezvous in a future port soon.
We only had about 8 hours of port time in KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia today, due to Port operations. I went out with Delia to see one of the most notable buildings in town, the floating mosque or Masjid Bandaraya. Our GRAB driver actually took our picture when we asked him to wait for us, and then take us to the mall afterwards.
MALAYSIA , on BORNEO ISLAND made palm seed oil their biggest export back in 1966 and was the top global exporter until 2008, when Indonesia surpassed them. Sadly, the resulting tropical deforestation has created major habitat losses and population declines for the Borneon Orangutans, Pygmy Elephants and Proboscis Monkeys . Many of us on the ship took tours to see these amazing creatures and I wanted to share some of their amazing photos too.
BORNEO ISLAND is a fascinating place, that I had honestly only heard of from the reality tv show Survivor. I'm still learning so much, but I had no idea it is the largest island in Asia and 3rd largest island in the World! It is a mini continent, with 3 different Countries sharing the island's land mass ( Indonesia 73%, Malaysia 26% and Brunei 1% ). We are only going to 2 ports in Malaysia now, one in each of the states of Sarawak and Sabah . Below is a video that highlights and explains thing well.