Port Kelang, Malaysia – 25th March

The Cruise Centre is the only developed building in the area

This stop was designed for people to take a trip into Kuala Lumpur, but as we have visited several times and will be there again in June, we decided not to take the 90 minute drive into town.  We had planned to visit the town of Kelang (also known as Klang) which is nearby, but the  tourist information guy at the cruise terminal said there was nothing to see so it didn’t seem worth the taxi fare and we opted for a free shuttle into a local shopping mall – pleasant enough but nothing really to report (apart from the fact that Macdonalds had run out of Cadbury’s chocolate for the dipped ice creams – boo!).  I expect I will have more to say about Penang tomorrow.

Sheree painting the Captain

As an aside, we  had a celebrity artist on board up to Singapore.  She is called Sheree Valentine Daines and is known as an English impressionist.  We had never heard of her but she got known for painting sporting scenes like the Ashes, England World Cup rugby, Ascot and Henley and also celebrity portraits – she was on the Rolf Harris show painting Michael Parkinson and has also done Johnny Wilkinson and others I can’t remember – she is scheduled to do Elton John and Vivien Westwood.  Anyway she was great fun and did some demonstrations,  one of them painting the Captain in 1.5 hours  - though she did some more work on it afterwards, it was really impressive and he was recognisable in the first five minutes or so.  We are great fans of French impressionist painting and it was great to see someone painting in that style, so we ended up buying one of her smallest works – remains to be seen whether it will increase in value but we will enjoy having it on the wall.