Artsy and Crafty…

Day 81/138 2022/2023 Viking Neptune World Cruise. A sea day before Singapore.

We lost an hour of sleep last night! Since we boarded the Neptune in Ft. Lauderdale, we have been gaining hours, so it was a bit strange last night to put our clocks forward. Of course my phone was all messed up anyway. For some reason my phone which I am manually changing the time on already thought it was March 14th, so no wonder the menu in the World Cafe was wrong the day before. Yeesh. It is a bit of a fantasy land anyway onboard, since the day, date or month doesn’t matter. What matters is: Is it time to eat? Where’s the next port? and what are we doing in port? We seem to count like this: Sea Day, Singapore, Singapore, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, George Town, Langkawi, Phuket, Sea Day, Sea Day, Sea Day….etc. Anyway, once we do get back to reality, and we get home we will have to get back to the usual way of looking at our world which is: Day, Month and is it a weekday or weekend? Or in my case do I have a golf game today or tomorrow? LOL!!

If you read yesterday’s blog, you will have read that we visited the Samui Elephant Sanctuary yesterday. Well what a fitting day to visit the elephant sanctuary as yesterday was Thai National Elephant Day. The purpose of the Thai National Elephant Day or Chang Thai Day has three purposes: to show how significant elephants are to Thailand; second to demonstrate how the Thai culture depends on the elephants; and lastly to promote awareness about protecting and conserving the Thai elephant population and its habitats. Thank you Ron for letting me know about Thai elephant day! How fitting that we visited the elephants on this very special day in Thailand. I wonder why the sanctuary never told us that it was Thai National Elephant Day though?

After our fairly late breakfast at the World Cafe, we were walking past the Wintergarden this morning and the felting people were having a display of their felt work, I could not take the felting classes with Gail Lee (Lecturer Russell Lee’s wife), since the felting class times were always opposite Art Class, so it was really neat to see what the felt working people had been up to since boarding in Los Angeles.

The felters started off with pieces of wool which they then rolled into a ball, or another shape, and using the sharp, barbed felting needle, created these crafty pieces! The little guards in plastic are the finger protectors, since the felting needle is very sharp and can hurt the hand.

The variety of felting projects created by this talented group of people were amazing!

I asked how the felting was done and one very nice lady showed me up close the kiwi she had made and demonstrated the felting tool for me.

Felted Kiwi bird.

I was so impressed with the display of felting from the people on the Neptune! Wow! Congratulations on a great show!

After visiting the felting show, it was time to tackle obtaining our SG Arrival Cards for Singapore. Viking had left a piece of paper in our stateroom on Sunday March 12th about how to complete the online declaration to receive our SG Arrival Card, but we were not supposed to complete the declaration until yesterday. We were not able to submit the SG Arrival card until 3 days before our arrival. Yesterday when we arrived back from Koh Samui, we had another piece of paper that gave us more detailed information for the completion of the SG Arrival Card, on our prior port of call and next port of call, which also needed to be submitted in our declaration. Our passports had been collected and were with the ship’s purser’s office, so luckily we have photos of our passports on our phones, so we always have our Passport Numbers, and expiry dates with us, in cases like this when we have to fill out forms without out passports.

My office! And another crazy shirt from Vietnam!

The submissions for the SG Arrival Card had to be done on our phones so we would have the email with us to show to the Singapore authorities every time we disembark from the ship and re-embark. I also had Richard print out our SG Arrival cards downstairs at the printers near Guest Services, and put them in our passports, as I think it will be easier than trying to find the saved email on our mobile phones, every time we try to get off or on the ship in Singapore.

While I was completing the SG Arrival Card, Linda called me on our stateroom phone to tell me there would be NO ART CLASS this afternoon as the Art Show was going to be happening in the Restaurant on Deck 2 at 2pm. The Viking Daily had said we would be having Art Class today. That’s a drag! Anyway, Linda had gone to art class this morning and completed a project and she had an extra board for me if I wanted to complete an art project so she met me at the Restaurant and I picked up some scrap paper, and a glue stick (I have my own scissors) and I looked at the art on display which was already ready for the 2pm show. Thank goodness for a friend looking out for me! I was so glad Linda called, so at least I can still have my own art class today!

When I got to The Restaurant, our art teacher said that if someone had attended 4 classes or more, that one piece of their work would be matted. The teacher and her assistant had everyone’s work all together and they reviewed each piece to see which piece they thought was the best, and then they matted that piece.

My burning monk memorial was matted, so the teacher felt it was the best piece I had done. She did say the flowers to the top left of my burning monk memorial was a close 2nd place and they were torn between which piece to matte.

A vast array of different art pieces!

Lyle’s elephant. I really liked this monochromatic piece. Not bad for an engineer who says he is not artistic!

Linda’s Buddhist offering. I like the simplicity of this piece.

And Lyle’s offering. With a rat on it. I asked him “Why a rat?” He replied “With all of those offerings all over the place in Bali, with food on them, there has to be rats!” Obviously the teacher’s thought his rat piece was his best work of art too!

When I was coming back from lunch, I decided to check out the onboard Shop which I had not been into in awhile. There are some very nice clothes in the shop including beautiful Dale of Norway sweaters. While they are nice, I am not usually anywhere where I need big warm sweaters anymore! Anyway, while browsing the shelves, I found a quite a few different felting kits! I did not know the ship even sold felting kits!

For $24USD, I was able to buy this beginners needle felting kit. I know there are lots of people who learned how to do it already on the ship, so if I’m having difficulty learning, I’ve got resources onboard! I also watched a YouTube video today on felting, and it seems like I can figure this craft out. I’m learning so many new artistic/crafty things, onboard! It is amazing what there is to do, to while the days away when we are at sea!

After lunch today, I thought I would work on my last cut and paste art project while we watched a couple of lectures from the Viking enrichment series on Singapore. Singapore is not a country I have ever had much exposure to, so it was interesting to hear of the very recent history of this country. The list of what we cannot bring into Singapore is quite extensive and of course we cannot chew gum in Singapore, or eat on the Metro.

The Saigon Flower Market!

My inspiration for the above cut and paste piece!

And now its time for dinner with a group of 8 friends who have invited us to The Restaurant for dinner at 6pm. I feel like today has been a bit of whirlwind, but I really did get a lot done today. It was nice to see all of the artsy and crafty works that people have been making on the ship. Having the time, which is always the big reason why people do not get things done, is one thing we have on the ship. With no where else to go, but the ship, the ability to do some fun stuff, instead of watching Netflix, doing gardening, golfing, etc.etc, is a nice change and has definitely expanded my horizons on what is possible! I’m dying to start this felting project, but it will have to wait until my next sea day….which will be awhile based on our schedule!

Tomorrow we arrive in Singapore around noon and we have a private excursion booked so I do not think I will be able to write a blog tomorrow, given the timing of the excursion. So watch for a blog post in the coming days on our time in Singapore. Its going to be busy, so buckle up and stay tuned!