North to Alaska - Day 2: Vancouver (Embarkation Day)

If I have thought that a nice bed would translate to a good sleep, boy am I wrong! Mother's mobile rang at 2am, from there broken sleep all the way till 1 & 1/2 hours before my alarm actually ring, all of us were awake. By the time the alarm rings, we were all ready to head out for a walk before breakfast!!!

We walked, took some photos, to say we are here (with the name of the hotel in the background - usual touristy thing to do), then at the agreed time, met up with Shirley and Peter to go for breakfast. It was Mother's and Aunt's 1st time/taste at IHOP (International House of Pancakes). 1 breakfast platter and 2 additional pancakes were more than enough for 3 persons!!! It has been awhile since having such a huge breakfast, but on hind sight, it was good that we had ordered this instead of something smaller!

We then checked out, and waited for the shuttle to bring us back to the airport where we were to board the courtesy shuttle provided for the cruisers by the cruise company for the ride to Canada Place. It wasn't that difficult but we had to stumble upon how we should go about it. Apparently, we were to leave our luggage at the cruise company counter, which was inside the building. Mother/Aunt stumbled upon it when the door opens and the cruise people saw them with the luggage, and told them to push it in (I was way ahead nearer to the bus queue, and had to push my luggage back a little and into the building).

Anyway, after leaving our bags at the counter, managed to hop into the 1st bus, and we were on the way. We saw the Gastown as the bus took the route along the Gastown to get to Canada Place - the steam clock was there, but unfortunately we did not time it right, so we did not get to see it blowing steam and making noises for the hour.

The ship we are cruising on for this trip is the Diamond Princess. According to wikipedia "Diamond Princess is a large cruise ship owned and operated by Princess Cruises. She began operation in March 2004 and primarily cruises in Alaska during the summer and the Asia in the winter. Her only sister ship is the Sapphire Princess as both were built in Japan by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries although these vessels share many features with Ruby Princess, Emerald Princess and Crown Princess and together all five vessels are referred to as Gem Class." It hold 13 passenger decks, with 1,337 cabins, 2 specialty restaurants (Sabatini's and Sterling Steakhouse), 5 dining rooms (International Dining Room, Pacific Moon Dining Room, Santa Fe Dining Room, Savoy Dining Room, and Vivaldi Dining Room), buffet (Horizon Court), ice cream parlor (Sundaes ice cream bar), pizzeria (Prego Pizzeria), Trident Grill (burgers & hot dogs), 5 pools, gym, hair salon, and spa. It has 11 bars, casino, 2 dance clubs, library, 2 showrooms, and a video game room. In recently dry dock renovations done, they had added in Movies Under the Stars and The Sanctuary, a serene retreat exclusively for adults. Diamond Princess has 1,100 Crew Members, and can have a maximum of 2,670 passengers. It's width is 123 feet, and length of 952 feet, and gross ton of 116,000.

Now, in one of the threads in the forum mentioned about the chaos that happened on the 1st day the cruise season started. Read about it and was hoping that it would have been ironed out by the time we were there. Well, I don't think it was ironed out, but I guess they had implemented a slightly better system, although it still takes hours to get on!

The queue was split into 2 queues - Those with US passport, and those without. I believe the US queue is more shorter, and faster. While in the other queue, I felt like I was a cattle, herded through security (which all have to go through), then brought to an area which we were asked to sit in line, then after awhile, we were then herded into the queue, where we slowed inched toward the immigration.

We started queuing at around 11.40 am, and by the time we got onto the ship, which was a breeze after the immigration, it was already past 2 pm. That's like over 3 hours of queuing. I heard that it was worse for those that arrived after 12 pm. Now, mind you, there is only 2 ships doing their embarkation, and that would mean a maximum of around 4000 cruisers. Imagine what happens if there were 4 ships here?

Anyway, we went to look for our cabin, met the cabin steward, drop our hand carry luggage, and went for lunch at their buffet/breakfast restuarant - Horizon Court. The food there was ok, nothing special, very much like the usual buffet we find at the hotels. Whatever it was, we were pretty happy to find food to fill our starving stomach! Perhaps because the ship currently berthed, so we could feel the vibration of the engine at the location we were seated.

Once the food was settled, it was time to get to know the ship, with a small game the ship played - you were to move around the ship, looking for locations stated in the given paper and obtain a chop on the paper so that once it's filled, we could dropped it into the box, where there will be a welcome draw (can't remember what was the prizes).

There was supposed to be a Muster drill happening at 4 pm, half hour before the sailing time. However, due to the delay at the immigration, the Muster drill was pushed back to 7.15pm. Instead, we were back in our cabin, wondering where would the 3rd person be sleeping as there were only 2 (single) beds in the room.

The cruise provide 2 types of dinning. Traditional timing of 6 pm and 8 pm; or Anytime dinning. The difference between them is that Traditional dinning, you get a fixed table and server for the entire trip. For anytime dinning, when you are ready for dinner, you would head to 2-3 different locations that were designated for anytime dinning and would only get a table when you arrive at the location. There were cases where it may take awhile for you to get your table, or you may just go and get a table anytime, depending on the situation then. The menu for these 2 dinning are the same, there is no change in variation between the different locations. Of course, you could head to the buffet location if you want to. You could also try to book the specialty restuarant if you want to, but for this you need to pay addtional USD20 per person.

In our case, we were booked on the 1st sitting of the traditional dinning, so we make our way to the restuarant at 5.45pm. We had Ramil as our server, and Renaldo was the assistant. Both were Phillipinos, and pretty joval personality, and Ramil loves to talk. Don't remember what we ate, but since not everyone is on board, the dinning room was not really filled.

Immediately after dinner, we went back to the cabin to grab the life vest, and head to the designated location for the Muster drill. What is Muster drill you ask - according to Wikipedia - "A muster drill (also sometimes referred to as a lifeboat drill or a boat drill) is an exercise conducted by the crew of a ship prior to embarking on a voyage. The purpose of a muster drill is to prepare passengers for safe evacuation in the event of an emergency while on board the ship and to familiarize crew and passengers with escape routes. In a muster drill, passengers are educated on the use of life vests and escape routes from the ship. It is typically conducted approximately 30 minutes prior to the ship's scheduled departure time and all guests must remain silent during the drill so that everyone will be able to hear the safety announcements from the Captain. During the drill, the ship's general emergency signal (seven short blasts, followed by one long blast) is sounded to notify passengers."

Soon after the muster drill, it was sailing time. Grab the camera, and walked to the promenade deck, walked around the ship, took some photos of Canada Place and Stanley Park.

Canada Place, the location where we board Diamond Princess.

Sunset over Lion Gate Bridge.

North to Alaska - Day 1: Singapore to Vancouver

Time flies and the day of departure draws near. Shirley and Peter had, a few days before, departed for Vancouver and the Rockies. Followed their trail by means of Peter's photos and details that he placed in his Facebook page. I now know when I head to Canada, I want to make sure I make a trip to Kelowna for their vineyards. :P

As we were in the cab, heading for the airport when mother asked: "Jackets, where are the jackets?" Oops. It seems we have left our jackets back at home!!! Argh! The cab turned around and headed back to pick up the jackets. We seems to be starting a habit of leaving jackets behind - a few months back, I was just about to board the cab, when I remembered the jacket was missing.

Because of the u-turn we had to do, we were a bit late in getting into the airport than we planned, but good thing was that we were left the house pretty early - due to mother's insistence of going early, so we were still very much on time and with plenty of time to do our check-in and all. Good thing about China Airlines is that they allow online check-in, so we were able to select our seats.

Today's flight path was Singapore - Taipei (2 hr stop over) - Vancouver. Flight was ok, had a chance to catch up with movies - Green Hornet as well as No Strings Attached. I am sure I had some others, maybe it was some concerts or tv shows. If not, it was just plain music all the way... The selection is pretty good, better than some, and with VOD selection, while it does not match in terms of variety to SQ flights, it's still better than most. The aircon on the other hand, seems to be on the warm side. It seems like the aircon did not work during the entire flight, I did not really use the blanket that the airline provided - in fact after a while it felt warm!

Taipei was an ok airport, nothing to shout about, especially on the food part. Heck, I think it's seriously lack in that, but then again it might still edge out US airport transit area. We also had problems in finding food at the airport, perhaps we did not ask around. What I don't get is, why are the food there so salty!?!? Everything I eat is basically salty, so much so that I really had no appetite to finish the food. Thank goodness the meals on the flight was not that bad.

Finally at almost 8 pm, we landed in Vancouver airport, and managed to get our stuff from the belt, got pass the immigration without much issues, and then look for the location to get our free shuttle to the hotel - Accent Inn. By then we were all very hungry, had a quick checked in (thank goodness there were not a lot of guests waiting to check in at the front desk), dropped our luggage in the room, and head out, with our stomach growling, looking for food.

Of all things we were to eat in Vancouver, our first meal was McDonalds!!!! The only difference is that they have Angus beef for their beef patties, which we ordered. While the quality or taste should be the same in all locations, the fries seems to taste a little different from Singapore. Should have gone to the steak house just a short walk away from McDonalds, but we thought we would have a "lighter" meal, so chose Macs instead. The meals was nothing to shout about, but well, we ate and headed back to hotel to sleep.

North to Alaska - Trip (forming) history

Ever since watching numerous documentaries and travel shows on TV, Alaska has always been on the "to-go places" list. What moves it up to a "do-able" trip, I guess, was due to the lower prices that was advertised where you could go with a balcony cabin for only 5K (for both Rockies and Alaska cruise) in 2009. It became a "research" topic, in early 2010, to find out more about the trips available in the market, and what people would recommend. During this period, I had noted that a lot of people have pointed out that to go on such trips, I have to make early decision, and then be quick in our booking - as early as possible for a cheaper pricing and secure the trip itinerary that I would want to go on.

As I have targeted 2010 trip to be for a 1st trip to Japan (7 days trip to Hokkaido), it was left on the side burner, and simmer it for a while. Started to read online on what I could find, and if you check online on Alaska, there were a lot on cruises but I have no firmed plan on how I was to go about this. When Mother and aunt found out that I was thinking on going, they immediately say that they were interested, and tasked me to "find out more". They were interested, in fact excited of the prospect, but not enough to do research themselves (of course, their usual excuses is that they are not IT savvy enough to do research online!)

While I had plenty of resources online on this topic, there were also no advertisement in the local papers on Alaska. So, it was all just researching, trying to find out as much as possible and trying to figure out why people are saying to book early, but no companies in SG had any details!!! Anyway, Hokkaido came and gone, I had more time to work on the Alaska trip. There were also lack of details on the websites on what is available by the cruise lines themselves, but somehow people (then again, they are all in US/Canada) still managed to book their cruise and actual holidays.

The whole thing actually took flight after the week of NATAS fair in August. Yes, for the 1st time, I actually went for the fair, to squeeze with the whole lot of people there, who were planning for their Dec 2010 holidays! Here I was, planning for my May 2011 holidays! :P

Ironically, at that time, most of the companies don't have much details on Alaska, except for 2 companies - both were offering a combination of Rockies and Alaskan cruise (Princess). New Shan was offering Rockies + Inside Passage cruise, while the other, which I cannot remember which company it was, maybe it was Super Travel or 5 Stars, they were offering Rockies + Voyage of the Glaciers cruise. The rest were saying that the pricing is not out, so they don't have any firm confirmation on their decision on what to do, and all that. There were also RCCI, Princess, HAL and a few others booths but they don't offer direct booking!

However, I came across Stamford Travel in NATAS, and as they say... the rest is history. They were not promoting their tour packages, but rather the cruise packages - they were handing out all sorts of pamphlets. First pamphlet for Alaska was the Oceania pamphlet which was a 9 day cruise of Alaska, if I recall correctly. It was not something that I was looking, but they took my contact details down, and ask if they could contact me and work out something for me.

They called back and arranged for a meeting a week later. First meeting was a bit interesting as there were 3 of them and me - in Ya Kun near my office. Felt very overwhelmed by the numbers, ha ha... They were nice, and listen to what I had said, showed me a video to give me an idea of how the cruise will be like and the destination. Gave me a few pamphlets on Rockies + cruise. Telling me the difference between Inside Passage and Northbound/Southbound. They also added in about land section, basically the whole HAL booklet on Alaska 2011 was made available to me to have a look, telling me that I can find these details in the web as well.

By this time, the group number had increased - from just 3 persons, it was increased to a possibility of 7, or even maybe 8 people. But due to the length and leave application issues, it finally rested on the number 5. So, it would be a twin sharing and triple sharing. Triple sharing also means that there could be some changes along the way just as it happens.

We started by thinking about just Rockies and the cruise. Then the land portion of Alaska was mentioned, the itinerary grew to Rockies, Cruise and Alaska land. Added into the mix was the number of days of leave available. In the end, it was a mixed decision. Shirley and Peter went ahead with the Rockies section, while all of us will be doing the Cruise Tour, sea and land section of Alaska - making our way up to Prudhoe Bay.

Once the destinations were firmed, we then started by deciding on the HAL cruisetour, which does the 7 days cruise with the 6 days land tour. However, by the time we are firmed on the cruise company, HAL's triple sharing for the land tour part was fully booked. As we could not move the dates, we turned our focus to Princess instead. They still have availability for triple sharing on their land tour section, and they had the exact same itinerary (except they had 1 more day in Fairbanks), we quickly place our booking and paid up our deposit to secure it.

With our general itinerary firmed, I started to look at the excursions that we could go for at the port of calls - Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway and also the Denali section of the land tour. Having read a lot of reviews and also lurking in the forums, and then reading up on areas which was discussed and highlighted as a "must-do" in the forums.

After much deliberation, decided on the following for the port of calls. Ketchikan - floatplane sightseeing of Misty Fjord National Monument; Juneau - Whale watching tour, and maybe followed by a visit to Mendenhall Glacier; Skagway - White Pass and Yukon bus/rail tour. As Princess cruisetour includes only the Natural History Tour (NHT) which is going only 17 miles (approx) into the park (4 hours tour), I had asked the agent to try to get them to change it to Tundra Wilderness Tour TWT) which is going 53 miles, or to somewhere near Stoney Hill, into the park (8 hours tour). There was another tour, Kantishna Experience which goes the entire 92 miles into the park but it was only offer Jun 8 onwards which by then we would have been in Fairbanks according to the schedule. That tour is also about 11 hours which I am not certain if the rest of the group could take it!

Even the arrangements for the additional excursions also took some time to get it arranged. It seems that the operators have some down time during the winter period, so we could only start to make some arrangements after Jan/Feb. For Ketchikan, I had wanted to go with Island Wings which was highly recommended by the forum, but she did not have the slot available, so we went with Family Air. For Juneau, I wanted Harv and Merv, but because the boat size is small (6 persons max), the rest of the group was a little worried about seasickness, so we settled for a larger boat of max of 40 people with Orcas Enterprise. As for Skagway, did not think we would want to drive around ourselves, although a lot of people say we could. It was a toss between Dyea Dave and Chilkoot Charters, and since Dyea Dave was pretty popular, we made arrangements with Chilkoot Charters instead. The only snag we had was the Denali Park section where we somehow was not able to upgrade to the TWT instead.

So by the time the day came, we were pretty much firm on all our plans.

Time Flies

Time Flies, it more than a year has gone and I have yet to finished the blogs for the Alaska trip that I did in 2011, and then new trip in 2012 to Finland where aurora hunting was the main point of the trip. Then it was a work trip to US which resulted in some time for photography.

I guess with all the newer media social network that were coming up, to some. blogging has become a passe, but I have to say it's still a good place to use to write about trips, and having photos in sequences that make more sense than posting a bunch of photos, like those in facebook. People would have a better link between the location and the photos.

So, I guess, I will still have get those blog posting done for both of the trips. Good thing is that most of it is done offline, so I should have all of the Alaska one up pretty quickly. Then it would be to start with the Finland one.

So till then, it's another of those, hey's the blog is still alive... somewhat limping along, but still alive posting. :P