After boarding the huge ship, we arrived at the MSC Palermo’s boardroom for our ‘meeting with the captain’, left our luggage in the corridor and took a seat at the big oak table to await further instructions. We were soon joined by the captain, ship’s agent, the outgoing passenger and a customs official to stamp all of the paperwork. Our passports were added to the pile of crewmembers’ passports and the official set to work on stamping everyone into Singapore (the ship had just arrived from Brisbane). We got chatting to the existing passenger – a mature Canadian gent who’d been living in Cairns in Australia for the last 12 years (though he’d apparently never been inclined to obtain citizenship). He’d been a passenger since Sydney so had been on the boat for 2 weeks solid – impressive work! He’d done a number of container ship voyages in the past so we concluded that he must have been a closet ship-spotter – not a Thermos flask and notepad in sight though! ;)
Last glimpse of Singapore’s skyline
First glimpse of the Pasir Panjang port
Huge cranes work overhead as we work out where we need to go!
Slippery stairs to the deck
Having envisioned hopping on the boat, waiting for an hour or so then setting sail for our next destination, we were soon introduced to the time-consuming operation that is loading and unloading a container ship! We ended up stuck on the boat for some 24 hours before it actually departed for our first port of call, Pasir Gudang in Malaysia, however this gave us time to completely unpack (very satisfying!) and spread out into our cosy and spacious cabin. The cabin was on the third floor of the superstructure, next to the cook and the steward, and had an en-suite, desk, wardrobe, sofa and coffee table – slightly old school but well designed and functional! Being an ocean-going ship, everything was designed to cope with rough seas; most stuff was welded, screwed or clamped in place so it didn’t fly around the cabin when there was a storm! Our cabin was on the starboard side of the vessel so our initial view through the thick glass of the two porthole windows was over the buzzing port below. Watching the lorries carrying huge containers around the port, enormous mobile cranes swooping down, clamping onto the containers and hoisting them into the sky with ease then slotting them into place on ships like pieces of Lego was a fascinating experience. It’s easy to take for granted how our consumer goods make their way across the globe to our shops – the logistical operation behind shipping products from one place to another is huge and impressive to behold first-hand!
Our homely abode for the next 2 weeks
Peering out at the activity below
Singapore’s Pasir Panjang port by night
After a whole day of watching containers get taken on and off our ship, it was finally time to depart and at 9pm we cast off and set sail for Malaysia. We headed East through the Straits of Singapore; the first few islands of Indonesia only a couple of miles to our starboard and the bright lights and skyscrapers of Singapore to our port side. The container terminal itself was a city of twinkling lights, and a few of the islands in the Straits were aglow with the illuminated silos and stacks of oil and gas refineries, flames licking out of their soaring chimneys – pollution never looked so impressive! We passed hundreds of fellow container ships and oil tankers anchored in the deeper water, the density of ships gradually dwindling as we started heading North-Eastwards. As the lights faded, we retired for the evening, eager to test our sea-sleeping skills for the first time (well, apart from the boat in Finland – that sleep was vodka-assisted)!
Sunrise in the port
Some intriguing-looking cargo
Impressive lifting skills
One of our neighbouring MSC vessels fully-laden (check out the relative size of the car!)
It’s dark again but at least we’re off!
Refinery by night – like something from a sci-fi film!
We awoke the following morning anchored in what seemed like the middle of the ocean, in time for our usual breakfast in the Officer’s Galley. Mealtimes on board the MSC Palermo are particularly specific - breakfast is 7:30-8am, lunch 11:30am-12pm and supper 5:30pm-6pm. The cook whips up a surprisingly varied selection of hearty meals for the 23-strong crew; it might not win any Michelin stars but it was pretty much always more than palatable (though I haven’t had Ox Tail/Tongue for a while to be honest)! After breakfast, we retired briefly to what we referred to as ‘our balcony’ – a landing on the external staircase next to our room, accessed by a solid heavy steel door complete with port hole and meaty locking handles to ensure the door is watertight! Whilst gazing into the endless blue abyss, we spotted a few disturbances in the water about 100 metres away. We soon realised that this was a group of about 10 or so dolphins at play – awesome! We did our best to take a few snaps but the little blighters were pretty quick! After about an hour we set sail and headed into the estuary for our trip inland to Pasir Gudang port.
Sea, sea and more sea
Sun rising in the East (as usual!)
A couple of dolphins jumping about
Morning stroll around the ship
Spare anchor – pretty enormous!
A chain even bigger than one of Elizabeth Duke’s finest
Though still pretty huge, Pasir Gudang port was much smaller and less high-tech than its relative in Singapore. It serves the South of Malaysia, particularly the nearby border city of Johor Bahru whose skyscrapers were visible in the distance. As we pulled into the harbour, three fighter jets streamed past and landed at a nearby air base – always nice to have a welcoming party! Anyway, whilst on the Internet in Singapore we discovered that our ship was capable of carrying ‘Hazard A’ cargo. Though we didn’t know what this meant, ‘Hazard A’ did sound fairly ominous! Visions of containers glowing with radioactive rods (like in The Simpsons) thankfully didn’t materialise – we only saw a few large drums of chemicals be loaded on board amongst the other containers; these were all handled carefully and looked pretty secure! As in Singapore, hundreds of containers were shuffled around all day by the towering cranes and scurrying lorries. Though we remained in our cabin for the majority of the time, we also ventured down to the gym for a workout on the particularly old and squeaky cross-trainer and threw around a few rusty weights – not exactly Holmes Place but definitely better than nothing! We eventually set off as night fell once again – back again to Singapore!
Cloudy day over Pasir Gudang port
Being manoeuvred into position by the tug boat
Malay port workers relaxing before unloading our ship
The port by night
Travelling through the night, we awoke once again anchored in the middle of the sea, ready to proceed into port once our berth was free. Once we were moored up and the container shuffle had commenced, the captain advised us that we had the option of going ashore. Though we’d already thoroughly explored Singapore, we weren’t going to turn down the unexpected luxury of being able to stretch our legs, especially as we had some running training to do! Heading back to the Starbucks we frequented when in Singapore (for the free wireless Internet, not the added bonus of nice coffee obviously?!), we managed to do a bit of Internet admin (like publishing the last blog post!) before heading up to the Botanic Gardens to participate in a spot of light (or not so light) jogging! As it was a Saturday, the gardens were filled with families enjoying the well-manicured lawns and relaxing scenery, as well as a number of other runners attempting to do laps of the maze of paths leading around the park. Despite Fran’s mysterious aversion to hills when running, we both managed a sticky hour’s jog around the hilly gardens – a liberating experience when accustomed to the confines of our ship! We returned to the ship after sundown and crossed paths with some of our crew heading out for a well-deserved night on the tiles!
Fran in the dock!
Rich and our whopping vessel
Lush foliage of the Botanical Gardens
After another night in Singapore port, we set sail in the morning, this time Australia-bound! Our first stop was Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, on the island of Java. This leg saw us first heading North East towards the Philippines, then turning South East to travel down the deep channel between Borneo and Sumatra. After a few hours we crossed the Equator for the first time in our travels and strangely we had to change our watches back as Indonesia is GMT + 7 despite being further west than Singapore. The skyscrapers and busy waters of Singapore soon gave way to open sea, dotted with islands visible in the distance. A few other ships were sailing a similar route to us – we overtook the majority as ours was a relatively zippy vessel at 18 knots! We had our first opportunity to test out the ship’s swimming pool on this leg and spent a good hour splashing around in the small but perfectly formed salt water pool – lengths were quite easy as it was only about 20ft square! Anyway, as another day on the smooth sea passed, we watched a beautifully fiery sunset before retiring to our cabin for the night.
Workers heaving the huge mooring ropes
Making sure nothing snags as the ropes are winched in
More tug action
Farewell Singapore (again!)
Calm seas
Turning a corner (literally)
Passing an anchored ship
We arrived in port at Tanjung Priok (Jakarta’s port) at about lunchtime the following day. The port was pretty similar to the others we’d been to – lots of containers and huge boats, however a fair proportion of the boats surrounding the harbour had quite a ‘shabby chic’ look about them (for ‘shabby chic’, read ‘old and tatty-looking’)! This was the first port we’d seen that was also an active shipyard – a multitude of ferries, ships and tugs were all raised out of the water by floating platforms with welding and hammering going on all over the place. It was also the first port where we’d noticed a navy presence – a sizeable fleet of menacing-looking cruisers were moored upon entrance to the harbour, possibly more for show than anything! Anyway, once docked we had the option of going ashore which was tempting, however as the visa for the day would be $20 each and we were advised that (a) it was Ramadan so pretty much nothing would be open, (b) the city was congested and there was a danger we wouldn’t make it back in time and (c) the immigration officials are pretty dodgy at best and we’d most likely have to bribe ourselves back on board, we opted for the safer option of gazing at Jakarta from afar! Initially the port looked pretty lackadaisical, however soon a torrent of lorries queued up ready for the containers to be unloaded and the cranes sprang into action. This activity lasted until sundown when everything ground to a halt as all the workers headed home for a meal – Ramadan meant they couldn’t eat or drink anything all day! As a result the loading commenced again at about 11pm, with containers seemingly dropped from a great height being loaded until 2am, making sleep somewhat difficult! We set sail at 3am and then at about 5am the sirens sounded for a ‘stowaway search’ – thankfully we didn’t have to participate! Although they apparently conduct a search after leaving every port, we assume that since the next port of call involves the particularly strict Australian immigration department the search was especially thorough!
Half boat, half submarine
Slightly shabby boats…
…and some mean-looking ones too!
Industrial!
Troops ready for action
Heading West briefly, we passed between Java and Sumatra before turning South, skirting Java’s southern coast. In the distance we spotted a few islands with towering volcanoes and shimmering white beaches whilst a few more dolphins and shoals of flying fish played in our wake. We were able to visit the bridge once we’d left port which was a privilege – it was interesting being shown all of the bits of technology that helped control the huge hunk of steel in which we were travelling. Whilst looking markedly less high-tech than an aircraft cockpit, there were still lots of big electronic displays with readouts showing where all of the other ships were, sonar depth monitors, satellite communication PCs plus big electronic and paper charts that looked a bit like something out of Hunt For The Red October! One would envision a huge piratey ship’s wheel to control a vessel of this size, so the sight of two tiny F1-style steering wheels was certainly unexpected, however the commanding view you got from the bridge over the ship and the ocean beyond more than compensated. Our friendly Russian captain, Captain Evgeny Kotlyarov, showed us all the gear and let us sit in his captain’s seat which was pretty excellent! He and his 1st, 2nd and 3rd officers are all Russian, the ship’s head engineer is German and the engineers, cook, steward and other seaman are a mixture of Russian, Indian, Filipino and Kiribati – all somehow communicating with each other in vastly differing English!
Captain Fran at the helm (luckily it was on autopilot at this point!)
Rich just about resists the urge to push any big red buttons
Quite an impressive location for a couple of bungalows!
Crazy skies
Nothing but sea, bar the outline of an island on the horizon
The main feature of leaving the Malay peninsula and the archipelago of Indonesia behind was the shelter; now we were on the open Indian Ocean the waves started to increase in size as did the wind! Whilst not being up to the dizzy heights of the waves in A Perfect Storm, the waves were big enough to make our ship steadily sway with stomach-turning regularity! We did spend a good day or so trying to find our sea legs but just about got there eventually – Rich found a flaying in the gym was a good way to ignore his stomach doing backflips whilst Fran discovered dancing around the room to Michael Jackson’s Number 1 album usually worked for her! We did manage to do a few running sessions around the deck which were great fun, however when the bows were ploughing through waves and the boat lurching from side to side, the prospect of being launched into the deep blue at any given moment made running a slightly less appealing option! We resorted instead to a few wobbly games of darts or table tennis, a swim in the pool (which turned into our very own wave machine!), or a stomach-churning session on the squeaky cross-trainer!
Icy dip in the Olympic-sized pool… for ants
Bright sunshine, endless ocean and MJ’s Billie Jean – perfection!
Once we were out in the open ocean, our fellow ship mates were still kept busy performing maintenance on the huge hunk of metal to keep it ship-shape and seaworthy. Fixing things, painting and cleaning are massive operations on such a big vessel – like the Humber Bridge, once you’ve finished painting it, it’s time to start painting it again! That said, the pace of life was noticeably less frantic than when we were hopping between ports, loading and unloading cargo non-stop. As such we got the opportunity to chat to a few people and discovered some interesting things about life on the high seas! The MSC Palermo operates on the ‘Capricorn’ route – usually between Singapore, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. The crew are employed on three or four month contracts, meaning they are at sea for months at a time. The third officer, a chap from New Delhi, told us he’d worked on a number of contracts before including one which took scientists (and a few rich tourists!) to and from Antarctica. Their boat followed an ice breaker boat and had 3 or more captains, doctors and cooks on board just in case they lost a few! He also said that he’d been around the world a number of times, including visiting both Felixstowe and Tilbury Docks in the UK – a very well travelled chap! We did however conclude that you definitely need a resilient personality to last for months at a time out at sea – it must get pretty lonely leaving behind friends and family on a regular basis; we’ve only done it the once and that’s tough enough! We were told of passengers who travelled on container ships for months at a time – one crazy guy was even on a ship for 6 months; he must’ve had a sturdy pair of sea legs to last that long!!!
Heading SSE towards Oz
On our second visit to the bridge one evening the first officer was on duty, keeping watch over the ocean for ships (and icebergs etc.!). Another friendly Russian chap, Vlad from Vladivostok (great name!) told us that at this time of year the waves around Australia and New Zealand can get near the 9 metre mark (40 footers – nicknamed the ‘Roaring Forties’) - we thought the 4 metre ones our stomachs had endured were big! He too had sailed around the world on different ships over his 12 years at sea – he must’ve seen a lot of the world but probably saw more dolphins than people! Anyway, he was a great lad and took some cracking photos for us!
Smiles, sea and sunset
All under control…!
Rich and Vlad the sailor
On our penultimate night on the ship, we were fortunate enough to get involved in the crew’s monthly barbeque out on the deck. In true Aussie style (as we were now further South than Darwin in Oz) it was shrimps on the barbie and a load of beers (or Jacob’s Creek wine)! We had a good chinwag with the rotund German engineer and the Indian duty officer – didn’t really know what the conversation was about half the time but it was enjoyable nonetheless! It was one of the Kiribati crew members’ birthdays so there was a fair amount of raucous dancing – the German engineer joined in on the percussion with two pan lids! It did however get a bit messy when the normally gentle and uber-friendly steward got completely sozzled and apparently wielded a chair at his boss after losing a game on the PlayStation 2 – he didn’t remember a thing about it in the morning! The German engineer said that this sort of thing did happen from time to time as the Kiribati crew aren’t as accustomed to drinking alcohol as the Russians/Europeans! We ended up having a mini party in our room with a few of the crew – a couple of them cracked out a five-string guitar and a three-string ukulele (not sure if the lack of strings was intentional!) and had a mini jamming session with some traditional songs as we dished out the duty-free rum – quite bizarre but pretty cool! We actually slept surprisingly well that night but did feel slightly ropey in the morning – we blamed that on the waves though!
Tucking into some barbie tucker
A bit like a mini-Glastonbury in the middle of the ocean!
On our last full day on the ship, the weather was decidedly chilly in the morning – August is winter in Australia after all. This was however good news as we’d carried our jeans half way around the world, meaning we had the first opportunity to wear them since Beijing! There was still no sign of land when looking out to sea during our now customary morning stroll around the ship so we still had a sizeable distance remaining, however the water was slightly calmer which was very welcome! During the afternoon we popped back up to the bridge to see if we could spot any land using the Captain’s high-powered binoculars, hopefully shouting ‘Land Ahoy!’ in a pirate-style if successful! Unfortunately our timing was a bit late – an hour previously we’d passed within 15 miles of an island off the coast just above Shark Bay so would have seen land, plus we missed a pack of dolphins swimming alongside the ship in the morning – darn! Still determined to spot something a little larger than a flying fish before arriving in Australia, we braved the piercing wind on the balcony outside the bridge and kept our eyes peeled over the endless ocean below. Spotting a large disturbance in the water about 50 metres from our starboard side, we concentrated our efforts there and, after about 15 minutes of excited anticipation, we spotted a whopping blue whale surging out of the water - ABSOLUTELY AWESOME!!! This was followed a few minutes later by a pack of either dolphins (or possibly sharks) swimming past the boat – managed to catch a few fins on camera but will need David Bellamy to look at the footage for clarification! After that excitement we grabbed some dinner, returning to the bridge afterwards to witness one of the best sunsets we’ve ever seen – pretty good day all round!
A blustery Fran looking out to sea
Rich striking an inadvertently cheesy pose whilst sheltering from the wind (and a hangover)
Spot the bird!
Rich trying out karate in one of our emergency immersion suits
Exhibit 1 – a fin
Exhibit 2 – a couple of fins
A pretty special sunset!
After one last glass of wine on what we thought would be our last night on the boat, we retired to bed, excited about the prospect of seeing Australia! Having foolishly commented that the waves ‘hadn’t been that bad’ on our trip so far, we were treated that night to a non-stop rollercoaster as the boat was tossed from side to side by enormous swell! Sleep was somewhat difficult with the sound of huge containers groaning and clunking away behind our cabin, our wine glasses catapulting across the room and the bed doing its best to hurl us onto the floor - needless to say we were pretty knackered in the morning! The sight of the Australian coastline later that morning was a welcome morale boost and we soon were within a couple of miles of our destination - the golden sands of Cotteslowe Beach clearly in the foreground with Perth’s handful of skyscrapers in the hazy distance. Having frantically packed our rucksacks for our imminent departure, the Captain informed us that our landing slot had been postponed until midnight – noooo! We spent the day moored about a mile from shore twiddling our thumbs – pretty frustrating but at least board and lodging were free plus we got to see more dolphins, a whale and a submarine!!! We finally made it to shore the following morning and after another wobbly night’s sleep we were on Australian soil – at last!
Perth’s skyline on a cloudy winter’s morning
So close but so far!
Random sub!
Dolphin just about makes an appearance
We thoroughly enjoyed our container ship adventure (even in spite of the mild bout of seasickness and sleep deprivation) and were sorry to leave our comfy cabin and friendly crew behind – amazing experience all round!
The next challenge is to cross the huge island we’ve just set foot on; no easy task considering the 2000+ miles between us and Sydney. We’re hoping to cross the vast Nullabor desert by road, negotiating the world’s longest straight bit of road (fascinating fact there!), however as campervan relocation deals from Perth are like gold dust and the train costs a small fortune we may be forced onto a plane the Sydney leg - boo! Either way, we can only describe our London-Australia overland extravaganza with one word… AWESOME!
Weary and in dire need of a hair cut but excited about the next stage!
