{"id":51296,"date":"2026-07-03T07:14:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T12:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=51296"},"modified":"2026-07-04T07:14:40","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T12:14:40","slug":"thoughts-on-singapore-hong-kong-and-cruising-out-of-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=51296","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Singapore, Hong Kong, and cruising out of Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Although Korea was priority 1A on this vacation, 1B was very much the Disney Cruise that mythical wife booked, leaving out of Singapore.\u00a0 Frankly, the way I looked at things, seeing as how both mythical wife and I had a lot of plans, ideas and goals we wanted to do in Seoul, the real vacation wouldn\u2019t be until we were sequestered onto Mickey\u2019s boat, and had no other choice but to relax.<\/span><\/p>\n

Seeing as how I logged the steps probably for about 125 miles while in Seoul, a vacation while on vacation seemed like a good idea and sufficient reason to tear ourselves away from the Motherland.<\/span><\/p>\n

But not to go overlooked, were brief stops in Singapore before the cruise, and a whirlwind night in Hong Kong, both of which added value to the trip, and seeing as how neither of us had been to either before, were good toes dipped into the water to realize that both are worth seeing again in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

So Singapore, we actually spent two nights before cruising out, although the first was pretty much an arrival day at night.\u00a0 But with one full day and a morning, I felt like I got a good taste of the place, from a lot of walking around, as well as eating pretty much nothing but hawker stall food.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the observations I made about Singapore is that food is cheap, but booze not so much.\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty sure all the food I ate for breakfast and lunch on our first day didn\u2019t cost as much as one of the Singapore Sling cocktails we had at the Line Bar.\u00a0 And maybe it\u2019s because it was at a touristy location, but Tiger beers costing the equivalent of $8-9 USD seemed kind of steep for what\u2019s basically the Budweiser of Singapore.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking of food, I wasn\u2019t really a fan of Haianese chicken rice in spite of all the suggestions to try it.\u00a0 However, the satay from Satay Street was fantastic, but if I had to name a favorite food from the entire country, it was the curry puff pastries, that I housed like four of them in my short stay.\u00a0 They\u2019re basically samosas, but still so fucking delicious.<\/span><\/p>\n

I also made a point to go see the Merlion, which I summed up to being kind of like what the Mannekin Pis is to Brussels, some arbitrary statue that somehow has the identity of the city baked into it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Honestly, Singapore felt kind of like the Chicago of Asia to me, since it\u2019s such a diverse mixing bowl of cultures that all seem to converge in one harmonious city and country.\u00a0 Natives co-exist with people from India, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Korea and Japan, and it all seems to work out.<\/span><\/p>\n

9\/10 for Singapore, would visit again, even if it were ball-sticking hot and humid.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Before I get to the cruise, I want to go ahead and blurb about Hong Kong, which mythical wife manipulated the travel to where we\u2019d have an overnight layover on our way back to Seoul before back to \u2018Murica.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our flight was delayed, cutting into the short amount of potential leisure time in HK because we had to be up early the following morning to head back to the airport.\u00a0 But we decided to still go into the city, regardless of how easy it would\u2019ve been to punt, get a good night\u2019s sleep and skip the city, but that would basically be like people who judge all of Atlanta based on a long layover at the airport and never actually get out in to the city.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

If I had to describe HK in a nutshell, it\u2019s a grittier Seoul, and that\u2019s not a bad thing.\u00a0 The infrastructure is just rougher around the edges in public places, but still maintains airs of clean and modern in businesses.\u00a0 The Night Market was a fun little jaunt through merchants and cheap food stalls, and then mythical wife and I walked down Nathan Road until we hit up a high-rise bar a friend recommended, so we could get a nightcap as well as see a fantastic view of the city\u2019s skyline.<\/span><\/p>\n

HK is a beautiful city, full of life, energy and hustle.\u00a0 Not fair to give it a grade on such a brief visit, but would definitely consider visiting again in the future, and hopefully for longer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Okay, onto the cruise; we sailed on the Disney Adventure, which was a four-day, entirely at-sea with no stops.\u00a0 Clearly, even the almighty Disney, doesn\u2019t have anything in place with Malaysia, Indonesia, or Vietnam, which would\u2019ve seemed like logical places to port.<\/span><\/p>\n

From what I understand, the boat was originally constructed and meant to be another company\u2019s, but they supposedly died during COVID, and Disney purchased the remains and outfitted it as the Adventure.\u00a0 And such explains a lot of the wonky navigation on the boat itself, which frustratingly had a lot of weird dead-ends and paths that required going up and over or down and around to get to point B from time to time, and it wasn\u2019t really until the cruise was practically over did mythical wife and I really get our bearings straight with the ship, and even several of the ship\u2019s personnel expressed similar agitation at the maneuverability within the vessel.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Being entirely at-sea meant that everyone on the boat was more or less going to be doing the same things at the same times, all the time.\u00a0 Breakfast at the Pixar Market or the whatever market on 6 were absolute shitshows of humanity, and led to a lot of frustration when seats were impossible to find, because some of the local residents<\/em> were camping and reserving shit in circumstances that made it really dickish to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

Frankly, I felt that for as big of a ship the Adventure was, there was a disproportionate ratio of places for activities, restaurants and quick service eateries.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s because it\u2019s entirely at-sea that these problems were exacerbated, but it\u2019s like at no point was anything not packed, and leading to frustration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And speaking of frustration, obviously it\u2019s not anything that any cruise line can control, but the people aboard were definitely not something neither mythical wife or I had ever dealt with before, since this was our first time cruising out of Asia.<\/span><\/p>\n

But being on the Eastern Hemisphere, it was expected that the boat would be full of a vastly different pool of people than we\u2019ve experienced in the past, with the vast majority of cruisers being from China or India, with smaller contingents from Japan, Korea, Australia and scragglers like us.<\/span><\/p>\n

And all jokes aside, there was a lot of reinforcement of stereotypes happening on a regular basis.\u00a0 Little emperors and their parents not doing anything about them, line cutters and just general behaviors, deemed unsavory by western standards, but honestly what took the cake was this absurdly large group from India that had to have been 40-50 people deep, seemingly celebrating some guy\u2019s 40th birthday.<\/span><\/p>\n

And they would absolutely take over anywhere they went, from the adult\u2019s only lounge, the garden atrium, to the Disney theater.\u00a0 They even had their own photographer running around with them.\u00a0 It was classic behavior of no one of us is as dumb as all of us<\/em>, and groups are only as smart as their dumbest member<\/em>, and considering how much they were always drinking, it was not pleasant when they were around.<\/span><\/p>\n

The best part was chatting up all the crew whenever we could; almost every single cast member we spoke to would, some heavier than others, insinuate how much they wanted to transfer to a different ship, preferably a western one, and how much they looked forward to their next leave.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was pretty obvious why they all felt this way, considering the ship had an auto-gratuity of 18% on all services, something that is definitely not the case in the west, as well as the litany of shitty passenger behavior we saw.\u00a0 Especially for those who had experience on other ships before coming to the Adventure, they had to feel like they were being punished.<\/span><\/p>\n

And one thing I noticed was how many crew were from the US; Almost all of Disney Cruises we\u2019ve done in the past, the vast majority of service crew are from Indonesia, Philippines, England and almost no Americans.\u00a0 I was hypothesizing that the Americans are sent to the Adventure as a means of trying to toughen them up, because if they can handle the aggravations of there, then they would be able to handle anything<\/span><\/p>\n

Other random observations, because I\u2019m getting tired, and composing brog posts in Notes is extra tiring:<\/span><\/p>\n