We stayed on our balcony to eat room service breakfast. Vivian spotted a pod of dolphins heading out to sea. We couldn't catch a photograph, but it was wonderful to see. We took it easy. We let the first wave of passengers get off the ship and watched the sun rise.
From our balcony, we could see several taxis and vans parked right at the pier. I went to guest services to see if those were pre-booked or for hire. They told me they were for hire, but the ship staff did not help with that. We were on our own. Again, I was thankful we lived in Asia, because Royal Caribbean was useless in this. The top things my friends recommended we do on Langkawi were the cable cars and sky bridge, but there was no shore excursion that included that, so I knew we would have to figure it out on our own.
When the crowds had cleared and there were still taxi vans left on the pier, we got off the boat. It was beautiful.
There was an area where the taxis were parked, and then a long road that led to a mystery destination. I took this picture of the pier later in the day, before we left. In the morning, the parking spots were full of vans and taxis.
When we got to the first of the vans, the driver had a brochure for a full day excursion, including more shopping. When I told him we just wanted to go to the cable cars and back, he said no. So did the next one. Finally, a driver who had been towards the back came up, and said, "You only want cable car and back?" He had a smaller van, but still big enough to fit the six of us. He said he had been waiting at the dock since 6:00am (it was ten at that point), and he was hot, so he would take us. Sold!
As we drove from the pier side of the island to the cable car side, it got more and more beautiful. We even spotted monkeys along the road as we got close to the cable cars. There was a little "village" area around the cable car base, similar to what we had seen at the top of the Hong Kong cable cars.
They had the same kind of 4D movie and other "adventures". There was also a nice pond and restaurants.
We figured we could eat on the ship for "free" and none of the other attractions really appealed to us, so we just got the cable car ticket. We did splurge though on a glass bottom. Vivian appreciated it.
Even Elena loves cable cars at this point, and she was super excited to get on.
It was quite a ways to the top, and there was a viewing station stop along the way.
We just sat back and enjoyed the ride.
The view from the first station was already pretty cool.
They claim it's the steepest cable car route in the world, and you can see there's quite a drop. The second part was lusher and more level.
The view was incredible.
We even found a locks of love bridge up there.
There were several viewing platforms, and there was also a really cool bridge.
We couldn't figure out how to get to the bridge. We finally realized you had to pay extra and stand in another line to take a funicular down to it. We figured we had already gotten great 360 degree views from higher up, so we didn't need to spend more money and stand in more lines. Instead, we made our way back down in another glass bottomed cable car. The ride down, especially the steep part, was definitely a little scary, but still fun. We found our van and went back to the ship.
We had the ship almost to ourselves, and enjoyed a laid back lunch buffet with a great view. After lunch, Jeff took the girls to the pool. Then Elena and I chilled in the room for "quiet time" while Jeff took Vivi back to the kids club.
That afternoon they had a Dreamworks "dance party" up on the pool deck. We watched from the bar area above and Elena wiggled along.
It was kind of a meh show, but Elena enjoyed it, so that's all that matters. We finished the day off with dinner in the main dining room, which was quite a place.
The food was pretty good.
The service though, was only so so. They were friendly, and they tried, but they brought the wrong wines and forgot parts of our order. We got it sorted out, but when a person came by offering a special promotion to eat at Chops Grille the next night, we told him to book us a table.
In the middle of the night, Vivian woke up and said she didn't feel so good. She proceeded to not feel so good out of both ends for the remainder of the night. In the morning, I called the medical services, and Jeff took her down to get some hydrating drinks and medicine. They also told her that she had to be quarantined in the room for 24 hours. This was the day we were tendered at Phuket. It wasn't the end of the world though, since we hadn't planned on getting off the ship. Something was wrong with Elena too. She never threw up or had diarrhea, but she had a fever and she slept most of the day.
Even Jeff was not 100% and fell asleep. I left the sickies inside and had a mocha and croissants on the balcony.
I also got a lot of schoolwork done, so that was good. Jeff felt better in the afternoon, and walked around the deck to get some pictures of Phuket.
Jeff was convinced that it was the pool that got them all sick, because while he was walking around, he saw that they had drained one of the pools and were cleaning it, which is very unusual during a cruise.
Elena eventually woke up and perked up too. Even Vivian was feeling better by the afternoon, but she still didn't really want to eat anything and she had to stay in the room. Since we were technically in Thailand, both my phone and Jeff's worked, so we left her with my phone and took Elena to dinner.
We texted with Vivian throughout dinner, which was actually kind of fun. The food was good again, and we watched the sun set on a not so great day.
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