This was Holland America's 28-Day Indonesia, Malaysia & Far East Collector cruise onboard the Ms Westerdam from Dec 9, 2023 thru Jan 6, 2024.
I actually started traveling on Dec 5th. It was going to be a 34-hour flight from Jacksonville, FL to Singapore with layovers at JFK (NY) and CDG (Paris). This was my first time going through the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, France. I decided to treat myself and upgraded the entire trip to business class. The seats were definitely nicer than economy. Even with the fancy reclining seat/beds I still did not get much sleep though I was much more comfortable and did get a good bit of napping in. So left Florida on the 5th and arrived in Singapore on the 7th. I had a hotel reservation for the two nights before boarding the ship.
With the exception of Bali, I have not been to any of the countries on this cruise before.
There were two ports that I did not go out on, one by choice and the other by ship decision. The first was Surabaya, Indonesia. There was only one ship sponsored excursion/tour and it just did not sound appealing. And, as the only excursion it was likely to be packed. The other was Nathon, Thailand. This was a tender location and the sea was quite rough. The ship's captain decided it was just too dangerous to try and get passengers on and off the tenders to get to shore.
The cruise ended at Hong Kong, China. The ship excursion with airport transfer was basically the same as the last time I was in Hong Kong so I just took the late transfer directly to the airport. That got me to the airport around 10am and the earliest the Air France counter opened for their one and only flight was 7:30pm. So was stuck in the outer area of the airport toting my luggage around anytime I wanted to get something to drink or find the restroom. The return flight was back to Paris and then to Atlanta before arriving back home via the Jacksonville airport.
