Will we ever learn?

As the Silver Nova pulled away from its berth, the whole of the harbour opened up before us in a massive neon celebration of Chinese New Year: the Year of the Horse. Whole skyscrapers became a canvas for digital artwork and animation that flew across their surfaces, dazzling the senses. The ship moved slowly out into the main channel and then we moved very rapidly to finish unpacking and to get showered and changed for dinner.

It’s a semi-formal affair and although the order of the day is smart casual, well, you know us. So we headed off to the Grill and had a lovely meal accompanied by plentiful rosé wine. There’s a theme here, you can tell. Gabs once again had prawns. She’s heading for prawn overload as that makes three meals on the trot.

After dinner and we still haven’t managed to get a blog post up because we have had no time to work out the arcane rituals needed to get connectivity. We have to ask a young man to get us online! Humiliation! Meanwhile, a glass of wine.

Then we head for a bar. Yes, I know. Big mistake. There, a lovely singer is playing the piano and it is very entrancing as we sip a, guess what, glass of wine. The wine had indeed flowed and we had a great time but there is always the price to pay the next day. And so it was that at nine am Gabrielle woke up and realised that breakfast was about to be served in our room and we were bleary, unkempt and somewhat hung over. We made the effort to tidy ourselves up before there was a ring at the doorbell and a tray full of loveliness - especially coffee - was brought in. We set to with a will and, feeling marginally more human, went for showers before heading off to the upper deck to put in eight laps of the walking circuit. That amounts to about a mile but, as we have remarked in previous trips, the forward motion of the ship fools the mileage tracker into thinking you have walked five. Result! Is it time for a beer yet?

Don’t be fooled. There are hangovers lurking there.

Actually, I’m not sure whether alcohol will pass my lips today, especially as we have a trip off to explore Keelung in Taiwan tomorrow. Meanwhile, the ship progresses in a stately and dignified fashion through the Taiwan Strait - one of the busiest waterways in the world, carrying as it does all the cargo heading to and from South and East Asia. Taiwan itself is of course disputed territory and is not recognised by China who claim it as part of their land. Watch this space to see if the Chinese launch an offensive to claim back their land at the point when Gabrielle and Nick set foot there. And we are informed that as these are Chinese rather than international waters, our Internet may be slower as we cannot use that nice Mr Musk’s Starlink.

There is a huge variety of activity on board: everything from enrichment lectures to bingo, jenga to rumba. We are as usual ignoring pretty much all of it to ensure that you dear gentle readers (where have I heard that before?) are informed and entertained. On board the passengers are many and varied with a large contingent of Americans, as you would expect on a US-owned vessel, a smattering of Brits, Aussies, Germans, French and of course, Chinese. “You know we only had to take a taxi to the Ocean Terminal but of course we shall have to fly back to Hong Kong from Tokyo!” - exactly the same thing we have said on cruises beginning from Southampton. Not in this case however. The scars of our journey still linger.

We had a conversation with the Hotel Director who said that the ship is mostly full with a few cabins left. Some guests have stayed on from the previous voyage and one person has been on board since the New Year. His point was that if you’re coming all this way, why not stay in the area?

The thing for us about this ship - the Silver Nova - is that it’s beautiful. There is artwork everywhere, even outside and its unusual asymmetric design gives a sense of space that is different from other ships we have been on. For example, on our Iceland trip last year, on Silver Wind, that was very much an expedition ship, stripped back yet still very comfortable.

Tonight is so-called Formal Night where we shall don our finery and promenade like something out of Bridgerton, perhaps minus the wigs. First though, a bit of a snooze as we are still catching ourselves up. Gabrielle takes up the baton for the formal stretch and for tomorrow, our first landfall.

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