This morning David, our location guide, discussed several upcoming ports before we had a lecture on the spice trade by Barry Dryer. Barry discussed how valuable spices were in this region and how the Dutch, English and Portuguese competed for the spice trade over two centuries before the Dutch conquered the trade.

The afternoon brought a lecture by Dr. Valerie Mock on rubber and rice, two Indonesian commodities. She discussed how important rice is to the Indonesian people who eat rice for three meals a day. Rubber plants were brought to Indonesia from Brazil and helped make them the largest economy in Southeast Asia.

We met Charlie, one of the singers from the Rotterdam cast, for drinks along with some of our other friends onboard. Charlie is from London but has dreams of performing at the Hollywood Bowl one day. Kent enjoyed asking Charlie and the others in the drink group his “25 Questions” to facilitate “getting to know you better.” Dinner was shared with our Dutch and German friends, Martin and Thomas, as well as some others from our “group.” The nightly show was a new show by Master Magician Peter Mehtab who had performed for us a few nights ago.