Saga Ruby arrived in Southampton for the final time on the evening of 9 January, two days late after sheltering in Lisbon from the violent storms that lashed coastal areas of Western Europe. Her passengers disembarked on the following morning and that afternoon the ship sailed for Gibraltar, where she arrived on 13 January.
She then underwent a period of refurbishment and overhaul before being handed over to her new owners, an offshoot of a Singaporean equity fund, at the end of January. She will be operated as a hotel ship, based at Yangon, Myanmar, perhaps better known as Rangoon in Burma.
During her stay in Gibraltar she was renamed as Oasia and reflagged from Malta to the Bahamas. However, on 7February she was still in Gibraltar, but was expected to sail within a few days. The sale price of Saga Ruby has been reported as US$14 million.
After many years in the wilderness, in large part due to the military junta that ruled the country and the long running civil war, Myanmar is starting to reopen for tourism, although numbers still remain low.
