Days in the Red Sea

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The Southern part of the Red Sea passes alongside Eritrea, Somalia and Yemen. This is a well known pirate area and therefore we have all had our training in case of such a disaster as being boarded by pirates. However as soon as we had reached international waters when we left Egypt, 4 SAS men came aboard with guns and they patrol the upper deck which is now closed off at night. At the times they are off duty one will go in the Gym and out cycle /exercise anyone in there. We actually haven't discovered the Gym yet, nor for that matter have we been in the Boutiques or the Casino. Our activities tend to be attending the lectures which have been on the history of politics/religion of the Middle East and have been terrific. We also attend Scattagories where we are given a letter and then a category. eg. the letter M category- type of sandwich. Easy you say but your answer has not got to be the same as anyone else otherwise it doesn't count. It is a hilarious game. For items only used once and the letter R we came up with Rubber- the American kind for which we got a point. Areas of the body - one team got a point for Rectum. You can see how this goes. Our other activity is Team Trivia. We haven't done that well but we have a lovely team of 1 South African, 2 Scots, 1 Bermudan and 2 Australians, one of whom is a Bishop. One of the most exciting things I have done at Sea is to kiss a Bishop! On Formal nights he outdoes me with his lovely gear. The rest of the time of course is spent eating, drinking and socialising with other guests. We have met lots of lovely people. Tomorrow we reach Oman after 4 days at sea so everyone will be pleased to get off and see something.

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