Liquid Dinner, A Penang Street Party & Towel Monkeys: It's Day Two Of 'It's The Ship'

There are a lot of Do Not Disturb signs poking out of cabin doors on Day Two morning. While munching on some room service brekky we're interrupted by an announcement over the PA: the 1pm performance of Under The Big Top: An Ice Spectacular in Studio B (that's right, there's an ice skating rink on the ship!) has been cancelled due to low attendance, then there's a cheeky dig that we all obviously partied excessively last night. The 3pm performance will go ahead, however, and we add this to our itinerary. 

En route to Studio B we jump in a lift and look down at the carpet to check that the day has been updated. They must've run out of Saturday panels, because this one still reads Friday (although it's been hastily covered up with masking tape). 

Overheard random comment: "I lost a pair of shoes last night."

It's a bit turbulent today and we ponder this added degree of difficulty for ice skaters. There's just the one fall when a sad clown character fails to land a jump, and one skater arrives late to position after a quick costume change, but this fusion of circus arts and skating performed by an international cast is certainly impressive. There's a duet to Meatloaf's I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) and the whole ensemble skate around with unison chores to Prince's Let's Go Crazy. Shipmates applaud and clap along enthusiastically throughout. 

We are scheduled to arrive in Penang around 5.30pm and many are already partying poolside (one gent boogies in a jacuzzi wearing a Fred Flintstone mask). Indeed it's hard to resist these bangin' jams and soon we're jiving along. "What city is this?" some Einstein asks one of the cigarette girls as we pull into Penang, which pretty much sums up It's The Ship, really: what itinerary? A remix of Nothing Compares 2 U (featuring another vocalist, not Sinead O'Connor) marks our Penang arrival. 

The cashless system on board It's A Ship is awesome. Each shipmate supplies a credit card number and then your room key card doubles as a payment card with all purchases tallied to be settled up the night before disembarkation. However, we're so used to not carrying wallets around now that we wind up in Penang with zero cash and no credit card! Thankfully free coaches will transport us to the street party where beers are free, so a liquid dinner is on the menu.

After getting leid, we're welcomed to port by a drum ceremony performed by kids wearing solemn expressions and traditional costuming. Upon discovering our street party is only about a ten-minute walk away we decide to travel on foot to soak up some Penang ambience. Although wearing leis is a great way to identify It's The Shipmates, it also makes us targets for pushy tuk-tuk and taxi drivers who ask where we're going then say, "Too far to walk," before we've even had a chance to respond. 

Our destination is a club called Mois and an entire street has been blocked off for our It's The Ship! Penang street party. Dudes dressed as sailors on stilts offer up the highest of high-fives and there's also some little people (one's dressed as Iron Man) wandering around posing for photos. We look across the street and see a bevy of ladies all dressed in glamorous dresses of similar natural hue and then we notice one brandishes a price list - must be a brothel of some kind. A chair is wheeled around for revellers to sit in and have straight vodka poured down their throat to a count of their choice. This scribe braves three seconds and the liquid tastes suspiciously watered down. 

Inside Mois there's a heaving mass of grinding bodies. Captain Hoff makes an appearance behind the decks to encourage us to party and get loose. It's a good vibe and you can still smoke durries in da club! We walk outside to get some air and find a bleary-eyed punter staggering around solo after having 'lost' his mate to the brothel. Just how It's The Ship is gonna succeed in herding this wayward flock back onto the ship is beyond us. One of the passengers on our coach back to port has somehow gotten hold of an air horn.