Around The World Without Flying: Ship news - including a visit by the Royal Navy, and gastro on board

It is just before dawn and we are slowly sailing into Dubai. It is all very misty outside but I can just make out a sandy coastline in the distance.

We have had a couple of little dramas since my last post. After we left the Arabian Sea and were sailing between Iran and Saudi Arabia, neither of which we could actually see from the ship, we were visited by a British Royal Navy gunship, which buzzed around the ship. It came so close I could see the men waving to us from it open door, and of course, I waved madly back. Although the visit did not last long, we were all very excited. I had been sitting on my bed reading at the time, so in my rush to see it I did not have an opportunity to grab my camera take a photo. But one of my good friends had his phone camera on hand, so I am attaching a photo of one of his photos, taken by putting the two phones together. (We had already tried just emailing his photos taken on another occasion but it took too long and the attempt was abandoned, so this was our solution.)

The other drama is that we have some gastro on board, so everything is being very carefully controlled. All food can only be served now - no self-serve in the informal areas. I must admit I am not surprised, having witnessed quite a number of passengers barging into food areas without sanitising their hands, and some women failing to wash their hands after using the toilet - or maybe a token couple of seconds under the tap. The latter are clearly ignorant of the fact that running water alone does not remove anything off our oily skin - it just runs off. Soap must be used to break down its surface tension, and not just for a couple of seconds. I heard one woman say as she entered the dining room she did not need to sanitise her hands because she had a shower that afternoon! She seemed totally unaware of how infections are transmitted by everything you touch that has been touched by others - the hand rails, the control panels on the lifts, etc. So now there are quite a few people with coughs and colds and others with some form of gastro. I am always very careful with my hands so hope to avoid that.

Early this morning we all have to enter the immigration terminal for a face-to-face immigration inspection. There will be long queues . . Late this afternoon I am off to see the famous Burj Khalifa fountains, but one of my ongoing table companions is off to a barbecue in the desert among the dunes. When she told me about it last night, I was immediately transported in my mind to two barbecues I went to in the desert in Australia in 2015, and to a couple of my encounters with camels. (Her trip is not on camels.) One barbecue was at night next to our train, the Indian-Pacific, somewhere in the middle of the Nullarbour Plain. The train had stopped at one of Australia’s largest sheep stations, but we could not see anything except the long tables and the train. (The train is nearly 1 km long!) The other barbecue was held near the base of Uluru. Our deserts are pitch black at night, but it was great to have these experiences anyway. The first camels I saw on that 7-week trip were first at Broome along the beach sands, a well-known camel experience, and then at a camel-breeding property outside Alice Springs, where camel races are held. I would add that in the rush of these tours, we did not have an opportunity to ride the camels ourselves. Anyhow, I am including some photos for your interest.

The Royal Navy gunship.

The Nullarbour Plain at dusk, taken from the train, which is called the Indian Pacific because it travels between the Indian Ocean (along the West Coast of Australia) and the Pacific Ocean (along the East Coast of Australia.)