AIDA Transfer Cruise 2017 · Page 10

Within 5 minutes we felt as if we were in another world. Little India is a world of its own within Singapore. We simply walked through the streets and looked at the shops. Back at the main hub, the special shuttle for AIDA guests was waiting and took us back to the ship in the afternoon. But our wives still had a very important item on their to-do list. Right at the cruise terminal is the "Mapletree" shopping mall, which Petra had already discovered for herself on our first trip to Singapore. So it was shopping for the last few hours until we had to be back on board.

In the evening we continued on to our new destination, Koh Samui.

Unfortunately the island greeted us with rain. In the morning we took the tender boat across to the island.

Arriving at the pier, we walked past all the waiting taxi drivers into the little town and to a cash machine there. First we withdrew money and then went to the next taxi driver. Prices at the pier are around 100 euros for a day trip, while in town it's 50 euros at most – so it's worth walking the 100 metres. We quickly discussed our destination, Chaweng Beach, with the driver and agreed 2,000 baht (about 50 euros) for the return trip (4 people), payment only on our return to the ship. We drove right across the island to Chaweng Beach and 40 minutes later reached the well-known shopping street. Unfortunately the weather didn't improve; it had stopped raining, but it had become very windy. So the red flag was up on the beach, meaning no swimming.

So we went back to the street and headed for a massage parlour, where the four of us had a relaxing massage.

A massage costs around 18 euros per person. As the weather still hadn't improved, we went shopping.

Then we ate, quite classically, in a typical Thai restaurant. Some of us had a little cocktail too.

Strolling through the streets, we marvelled at the wonderful wiring and thought: here you really wouldn't want to be an electrician looking for a fault.

At 3 p.m. our taxi driver was punctually at the meeting point, and we went back to the ship. Paid as agreed and off to the tender boat.

On our penultimate day we could sleep in for once. We had booked an AIDA excursion in Bangkok to the night market with a river cruise. At 1.30 p.m. we left Laem Chabang and took the bus to Bangkok. After a 2-hour bus ride we reached our landing stage for the boat.

Past wonderful colourful houses and temple complexes.