Hi,
I was on the 1st of October cruise Beijing to Bangkok with the Sphhire. We had a fantastic time. The ship exceeded my expectations. We loved it. The route is also fascinating.
I have posted some photos on the following link: Asia, Sapphire Princess, Oct. 2007 pictures from world travel photos on webshots
Iīm new to web shots so the photos are not in the order I would have liked, but maybe in time I can correct that, but it should give you an idea.
Here is some text I sent to someone else, answering their specific questions, so some of it might be relevant to you or not. It mainly refers to the excursions which we did:
Here goes: The excursions were in general great. We had organised independent transfer from Beijing to the ship and ran into a lot of traffic. I suggest there to either do the transfer with Princess or leave with plenty of time for the transfer as driving is pretty chaotic!!
In Nagasaki there is really no need to do the excursion with Princess as the ship is based within walking distance of everything and we didnīt want to see any war memorial etc., so we mainly saw Glover Gardens, from where you can get quite nice photos of the ship, and the Oura Church. These you could walk to yourselves with no need of a guide. The only other place where it would also be very easy to do yourself would be Singapore.
Every other stop we were glad to do the excursion with Princess. Our favorite was Hong Kong where we did the Harbour Cruise covering Victoria Peak, Aberdeen fishing area, Stanley Market etc.
Taiwan was another stop that I liked, especially if you like temples, and what was beautiful was the YU Gardens at Shanghai. My definate favourite after Hong Kong was Bangkok. I could have spent a week in the Grand Palace....beautiful buildings and temples. We also did there a river cruise which was very interesting to see the local people who lived by the river in wooden houses etc.
The one trip that we would definately have cancelled would have been Nagasaki. It is a great spot to get nice photos of the ship without obstacles like cranes or container ships etc.
In Okinawa, we did the Princess excursion Shurijo Castle and Kokusai Street. Kokusai Street is supposedly the main commercial street and it has a famous market....we arrived a little early to the market about 9:30am where it really gets going at about 10am. The market had everything, clothes, bags, presents, food (pigs heads!!!) etc. In Okinawa was the only place where we really needed the local money....in the market we wanted to buy a CD of local music and the tour guide ended up lending us her own personal money as they would not accept dollars. It was also one of the places that they spoke absolutely NO English at all. You should check this with the taxis before you decide to take any. The market was interesting (but really like most markets and not as cheap as other places). The shopping street had nothing special.....a commercial centre....even had a "Harrodīs" area!!! and small souvenir shops....it reminded us of a young peoples town with strange shops for "surfers", "tatoos" and mainly for a "hippie" type of public....itīs not easy to explain....but Iīm sure youīll understand me if you see it. We did like the Shurijo Castle. We remember there being a lot of taxis at the port....the local town of Nha Ha is 7 miles from the port and where we went was about 15 minutes drive from the port. The ships information says literally "Taxis are available at the pier and throughout Naha City. Taxi drivers may have limited English-speaking availabilities and usually will only accept local currency for fares" (we found in Okinawa that they spoke literally NO English....in tourist hotels, souvenir shops etc.!!!).
We enjoyed the Taipei City Highlights .....I love the temples and in Taipei I loved the Pao-An Temple and the Martyrīs Shrine with the change of the guards etc. Its a nice excursion. At Nha Trang we also did Nha Trang and Ponagar....I think this trip is the best of the ones available and here I was glad to be with the group. Be ready for loads of locals trying to sell post cards and souvenirs and they "pester you" a little, but it was very interesting and I wouldnīt have liked to miss it. There is a huge white Buddha al Long Son. You have to climb a lot of steps up to see it and get out of breath....but it is lovely and worth seeing.....but be careful: ask your tour guide whether you will all go up together or not to see it.....we saw it by chance as they didnīt go up with the group as some had walking difficulties....we took advantage of 10 minutes free time to go up.....but nearly missed the chance as we didnīt know the group wasnīt seeing this.We didnīt do any shopping at this port...as we wanted to get the tender boat back without facing a long queue. As not great shoppers (my husband less than me!!!) we found the best place for presents and buying things, souvenirs etc. was at the Stanley Market at Hong Kong where we had approx. 40 minutes.
Singapore we did the same excursion as your plan to do: China Town/Pewter Demo and Raffles. We were unfortunate on this tour as we had a lot of rain...so we did the Pewter Demo which was the least interesting part, China town pored rain so we didnīt see much. Two temples were elimated by our tour guide because of the rain....which I was annoyed about as the whole crowd had umbrellas with us but we were given no option. They could have gone by the temples....and those who wanted to get down and take a photo could have the option and those who didnīt could stay on the bus. We had a very bad guide anyway. So we really saw nothing of Singapore except for Raffles.....which I did enjoy. We had the Singapore Sling of course....but apart from it being the typical tourist "must" it also tasted vey nice. Singapore looked really lovely....very clean and modern...and Iīm sure Iīll make it back another time to see what I missed, even if just as a stop-over on the way elsewhere. Other people who we spoke to went earlier than us, before the rain, and said the temples which we missed were nothing special.....as we saw saw many other beautiful temples in a lot of the other places. Singapore I think would be very easy to do yourself, the ship was very close by to the town centre (maximum maybe 15 minute drive maybe less) also no language problem as English is spoken. Princess offers a complimentary shuttle bus from the pier (duty free store) to Orchard Road (main hotel and shopping district, including Raffles hotel). Shuttles start at approx. 9am with the last to return to the ship at approx. 3.30pm (in our case.....this information will be in your Patter the night before arrival at Sinapore). Transit time each way is approx. 40 minutes depending on traffic. The shuttle bus seems the best option if you decide to go independantly as Princess warn that "passengers are not allowed to walk in the dock area and taxis will not be available on the dock". I wouldnīt have liked to have missed Raffles....whether you do the excursion or go privately, although also calculate that the Singapore Sling I think costs approx. 20 $US dollars if you go privately.....so maybe better to go with the organised trip but that is expensive for 89$ considering that 2 temple stops were elimated from our trip.!!! We were unlucky with the weather and with our guide that day.
My opinion is that you could very easly do Nagasaki and Singapore privately and I would do all others with Princess.
We did the Historical Shanghai which we very much enjoyed with Princess. We loved the YU gardens...it was crowded when we went there put it was a big holiday with Chinas National Day. We saw a lot on this trip: the modern skyline called the Bund which is the main financial area and the Shanghai Museum, China town and the Yu Gardens and the Jade Buddha temple. I enjoyed this excursion as I think it covered a great variety of modern and old but we probably saw the most important things in Shanghai. I would certainly recommend the excursion which we saw.
Regarding the shows and entertainment, out of the 16 nights I found 6 of the shows to be excellent, in particular "Piano Man", "Do you Wanna Dance", the Acrobatic show in Shanghai, and the show the very last night, but the other ten shows I found to be just ok. The Italian singer Victor Talarico I think his name was, was popular with the audience so they repeated his show a 2nd time. I couldnīt actually fault them but they lacked sparkle and I had seen better shows on ships of a lot less category. For example the hipnotist show was 50 minutes out of whcih it took more than 30 minutes to put his volunteers to sleep and at that stage some of the audience we also asleep!!! Then once they were asleep I felt he could have done more interesting things with them.
I hope some of this helps you. Feel welcome to ask me any questions. Also on my photosite, you should see the options "albums" and "messages", well if you want leave me either your email address or postal address in "messages" and I can send you copies of the "Patters" (the daily newsletters telling you about the next days events), etc.
As more people begin cruising to this area of the world, interest in these ports is starting to grow. Your post gave a lot of very good and useful information for those considering such a voyage.
I have been to Hong Kong and Stanley market. I thought it to be a bit "touristy", but guess it's better than not seeing it at all. I'm jealous of your cruise. I would love to do Asia at some point in time. I loved your pictures.
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Iīm just back, was on the 1st of Oct.2007 cruise
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