Troubles with email

It seems the email gremlin has bitten my iPad.  I don't seem to be able to send or receive emails the usual way, soif you want to send me an email, try using my gmail account.  I think it works.

In Israel

We are safely setting up in our flat in the hospital in Nazareth.  We had good flights all the way.  The flight from Dulles was crowded and they had changed aircraft type so we did not have the seats we thought we would have, but aside from that everything went very smoothly.

We were surprised to see that the flight from Paris to Tel Aviv was not full, except in the cheap seats. We were also surprised at the ease with which we went through passport control, got our luggage and through customs.  It was not crowded at all.  It seems that tourism is down a little.

Our regular taxi driver met us at the airport and drove us to the hospital via a MacDonalds on the way because we didn't want to be bothered with preparing food after we got to our apartment.

Tomorrow we will do some grocery shopping and try to get things better arranged but our hosts here had the flat alreadt set up and cleaned, and even had heaters in the bedrooms so we won't freeze to death when we go to bed.  She even had microwavable bed warmers in the beds for us.  That's service.

More news as things occur.

Last day before departure

We are awed by the number of people who are interested in our upcoming travels.  We leave tomorrow and will probably post arrival notice and first report on Saturday evening.  We will miss all of you.  For those of you who know him, remember to pray for our brother Bruce Romoser and his lovely wife Auburn.  Bill Beydler and I saw him this morning.  He was in the ER at Holy Cross hospital.  I do not know what his disposition is at the present.  Remember to pray for God's comfort to both Bruce and his family.  He has been and is a faithful servant of the Lord and has been an inspiration to all of us with his faithfulness.

Someone sent me an easier way to sign in.  Use http://www.MelandMoragsjournal.blogspot.com and it will take you directly to my blog. 

Israel Trip

Since group addresses are so difficult using iPad, we will be sending out updates on our blog.  I will soon be sending out email notices as to where they are located.  Hope you enjoy reading them.

Singapore and Malaysia

We spent a marvelous day yesterday with our nephew Larry and his sweet wife Doreen in Singapore. They picked us up where the shuttle dropped us off in town at the harbor front and we went to the Botanical Gardens and walked through the Orchid Garden. We saw orchids of every shape, color, size, just hundreds of them. It was very beautiful and interesting: it was also extremely hot and humid; Singapore is only 90 miles north of the equator. Unfortunately Mel stubbed his toe in the garden and by the time he took his shoe off (thankfully he was wearing his Crocs) his toe was covered with blood. Fortunately Doreen had some Kleenex and we stuffed them around his toe. Larry drove us to a pharmacy and the assistant there was very helpful and showed us what we needed to buy and told us to go to a public bathroom to clean it up. As we were leaving the pharmacy she came running after us and said she would dress it. She did a great job and the toe is one messy piece of flesh. We are not sure it will heal properly but fortunately I am not in pain. Then Larry drove us around the city and showed us where they go to church, where the kids went to school, where the two of them work and pointed out some of the old colonial buildings. Afterwards they took us for lunch to a lovely country club, surprisingly large and beautifully kept with a championship golf course. We ate local (Singapore) food, which was delicious and not too spicy. After lunch we took a drive to where they live, saw their nice condominium and the grounds with several swimming pools. We had such a delightful time, especially since we had not seen Larry in over 40 years and had never met Doreen at all.

What a charming lady Doreen is. She made us feel so welcome and we had a kindred spirit with her. It was a nice time for catching up with events in Larry's life. We learned where their two boys are going to university in the U. S. and hopefully when they come to the U.S. to see their boys they will include us in their visit. On the way back to the ship we stopped in Chinatown, which seems strange for Singapore, says Larry, since the population is about 80 percent Chinese.

Well, what did we think of Singapore! It is a beautiful, clean city. Bushes and trees and flowers are everywhere and it is immaculate. Another Asian town with large skyscrapers and good roads. It's a heavily regulated place but it seems to work. Nothing looked to be in disrepair. There were electronic bulletins posted on many roads advising where parking was available, even down to the number of spaces. Larry said each parking space has a sensor that tells whether it is empty or occupied so the board changes instantly. Most (probably all) cars have transponders in them for collecting parking fees and road tolls. It seems like all the expressways are toll roads. We found out that before you can even buy a car you have to get a Certificate of Eligibility costing about 17,000 dollars and when you add the cost of a car it gets very expensive and the certificate is only good for ten years.

Our time was indeed too short and we were wishing we had more time with them. Thank you Doreen and Larry for showing us such a great day.

Today was Kuala Lampur in Malaysia. We picked up a taxi on the pier and drove into the city, which was about 40 miles away. Our driver took us there drove us around for a while and brought us back. The interesting thing about the taxi was it was powered by natural gas and we had to stop fill up on the way back to the ship. He had to go under the hood to hook up and you could hear the gas running through the lines to the tank in the back of the car.

The driver was a very interesting man and extremely well read and up on current affairs. He spoke about the bank failures in Britain and the U.S. and politics and sports. He loves English soccer and his favorite team is Liverpool. He knew all the standings and how teams were doing. He was just a very kind and unusual man. We liked Kuala Lampur. It is smaller than other cities we have been in but it looks like wealth is coming to this country because there were nice suburbs being built and there were several large shopping malls. Again, the people were very friendly and nice. We drove around the town and tried to get up the twin towers so we could walk the air bridge that connects the two of them. Admission was free but we could not get a ticket until 4:15 in the afternoon. Since our ship left at 4:30 we didn't think we ought to wait. We went around some of the sights and wound up in a market in China Town. We spent about an hour looking around there and saw the police come into the market in vans and on foot. It looked like there was going to be a raid. Folks in the market started taking down merchandise that was hanging for some reason or other, we didn't understand why and we saw the police haul off one cart filled with goods. This was about the time we were leaving so we didn't ever get an idea why. So we returned and now we are en route to Phuket, Thailand, our third stop in as many days. In five days we actually had four ports. It's hard work going ashore every day in a different place. We are looking forward to three days at sea in a row on our way to India. Trust you are all well. More after the next stop. Love and God Bless all. Mel and Morag

Bangkok and Koh Samui

Because we have not had a sea day in between you are going to have to suffer through two stops in one blog. Sunday, we docked at Laem Chabang, which is the big-ship port for Bangkok. We traveled two hours by bus through the countryside. It was extremely hot, over 100 degrees F with high humidity: in fact it was pretty exhausting doing sightseeing. We traveled through the old town and the new town of Bangkok and ended up at the royal palace. We weren't allowed inside but we could walk around the buildings and there was a large number of them to see with amazing architecture. There was tons of gold on the Buddhist shrines. Actually we walked by a gold building and Morag touched it and the surface was barely warm. On the other side the building it was cool to the touch. It amazed us that gold must not be a conductor of heat. After the palace they took us to an air-conditioned mall where we could have lunch and look around. Believe me the air conditioning felt good to us. We spent the next couple of hours inside the mall. We even ate lunch at MacDonalds or Macs Donald as our guide said it and it really tasted good. Speaking of businesses, 7-Eleven and KFC can be found all over Thailand. We didn't much like Bangkok. It was too hot, too busy, too humid, not too clean, and too many Buddhist shrines and temples. Having said that, all the people were kind and very polite to us. In fact, we have never encountered a rude person on the street or shop assistant in the places we have visited.

When we returned to the ship and went for dinner we had new table-mates. Since we have left Hong Kong we've only had one couple at the table with us. They are from New Jersey, near Philadelphia. Shall we say, to put it as nice as we can, we don't communicate on their level so it has been a little different. Last week we picked up a couple from England and he is one of the lecturers on the tour. He is extremely entertaining. In Bangkok we picked up a couple from New York who are business people so the conversation now at the table is very interesting and enthusiastic. In fact last night it was very noisy, with sometimes four conversations going on at once. So that was Bangkok.

Yesterday was spent at Koh Samui, one of the southern islands and a complete contrast from Bangkok. We loved it. It was a laid back, relaxing little island. We hired a car and driver for the day and he took us round the island. It really is a jungle island with nice beaches. Trees have had to be cleared to build the various towns around the shoreline. We saw spectacular coastlines, drove through some wee country towns (Morag's words). We saw some elephants and had an opportunity to ride one but chose not to. We saw water buffalo and some monkeys that were trained to climb palm trees and knock down the coconuts;. Our driver was named Joy and his name suited his personality. He took us entirely around the island and we ended up at Tesco, which we found extremely interesting. So we went into Tesco and bought some sodas and it was extremely nice.

On the way home Morag asked Joy how old he was. He replied, "26. How old are you?" To which Morag said, "71." And he said, "You are good to look." We took that as a compliment.

So, today is a rest day where we have to do some catching up and on to Singapore tomorrow. We will have another blog in a couple of days. So we sail on.