All good things must come to an end: The final days of the cruise

June 3, 2015

Because Lombok and Fremantle are not particularly close to one another there were another three long days to be spent at sea before I could finally celebrate actually making it ‘Down Under’. By this stage the cruise had begun to lose its appeal slightly and although Tom and I entered a few more competitions I have to say our hearts were not really in it, which maybe explains how Tom’s crazy golf shot somehow ended up in the toilet. Table tennis was even less successful.

Tom impressing an old man by doing pull ups on a lifeboat

Disheartened with our continued failure in the sporting arena we instead began to spend more time with Rob, Briony and Monika. Each evening we winded up in Jammers, the Dawn Princess’s prime nightspot venue where Tom, evidently feeling somewhat bored of cruising, had by now decided that $5.50 was in fact quite a reasonable price for a can of beer under such circumstances and, safe in the knowledge that they were being billed to my credit card, he began putting them away each night with gusto. He seemed to have given up on Briony by this stage, and was focusing more of his attention on a risky little flirtation with a married woman. Rob was still trying his hardest with Briony, although his finest hour certainly wasn’t the night when he got blind drunk and kept trying to make out with her right in front of her mum and dad.

On the penultimate day of our cruising I had just been to the gym with Briony in the morning when we stepped outside and I saw Australia for the first time. There it was. A thin sliver of land, some unknown point on the west coast as we headed still further south. But it was Australia. This was a moment I had held in my mind for such a long time. This moment when I would sight Australia for the first time from a boat had been another thought that had carried me through the tough times in Asia. But I didn’t cry this time. Not in front of a girl.

Later we found Rob and Tom, and the four of us, now unable to think of anything better to do, just sat on the stairs on deck seven. Tom brought out his guitar and began playing some songs. As a joke I threw my cap upside down on the carpet in front of him, thinking that I might as well try and make back some of his bar bill. It wasn’t long before some passing old fella actually did throw in a few coins too, although unfortunately the 87 cents he donated didn’t quite cover it.

But which one of them would win Briony's heart?!

The night was another formal night and Rob offered to lend me a suit. It was light grey, and came with white shoes, which meant it didn’t actually conform with the formal night dress code at all, but it was still the smartest I’d looked in years. I wasn’t that worried about them letting me into the restaurant though, especially as Tom’s five dollar trainers had fallen apart, meaning that he was going out with an entire outfit that he’d found at the side of the road. Of course he had the shirt and trousers, but this night he teamed it up with a pair of not-exactly-the-same-colour Chinese army shoes. We got some strange looks from the restaurant staff, but luckily they remembered their training - that on a cruise ship the customer is always right.

So does this guy, although what you can't see is...

Although the three course dinner was good, I didn’t feel particularly comfortable at the restaurant. We sat making small talk with the well-dressed older guests that were seated at our table, in a generally awkward manner. Even Tom was well behaved, but it felt wrong, it didn’t feel natural and I couldn’t relax. The garlic soup was a treat, but for me the highlight of the meal was when Tom accidentally broke from his good behaviour at the end of his main course and exclaimed loudly - “That was the sh!t” – leading to an awkward silence all round.

This photo I feel sums up our relationship

Even though we had already enjoyed a delicious three course meal Tom and I, through nothing other than sheer and utter boredom, later found ourselves back at the buffet on deck 14. The seas had been getting a little rough and we thought it the ideal time to partake in a dessert-eating competition. We particularly needed something to console ourselves, as the rolling of the ship on the high seas had caused the cancellation of the dancing girls’ final show, a fact that we’d only realised after we’d gone into the theatre, and consequently we’d just lost an hour of our lives watching a grey-haired old crooner make bad jokes and sing a bit whilst his partner pretended to be Frank Spencer. I wasn’t much consoled by the competition, however, as Tom ended up winning by seven desserts to six, and I ended up feeling a little sick.

Even the very efficient waiters struggled to keep up with clearing our table of empty dessert dishes

The thing Tom and I needed to do now was go to Jammers and dance away our sea-sick overfed ills. Alas, when we got there we found none of our usual crowd, but we made the best of it and jumped up on the karaoke stage to sing a stunning duet performance of Avril Lavigne’s ‘Skater Boy’ that I doubt any of the ten or so people fortunate enough to witness it would be likely to forget for as long as they lived. Which, admittedly, didn’t seem like it would be very long.

But then Briony and her parents arrived, and Rob and his dad, and Monika, and all of the strange interactions could recommence. I found the whole thing to be a fascinating insight into social dynamics. We were people that would not usually hang out together in the real world, but on this cruise we were spending almost every day and evening together, and for us the real world had temporarily ceased to exist. It felt a bit like being on a floating version of Big Brother, but with about 1500 elderly people milling around amongst us like genteel zombies.

Myself, Briony, Tom and Monika singing an outstanding rendition of Smash Mouth's 'All-star' Shortly afterwards there was a dancing competition. As the only entrants we won and finally got and shared that elusive bottle of real champagne

Unfortunately all of this had to come to an end, and we would have to return to the real world soon enough. It was the last day of the cruise and with Rob, Tom and myself still not having got lucky it was mostly an uneventful one, as by this stage everyone was too fat to move much, and too full to eat more. We settled for sitting on our backsides and watching a very impressive young Canadian named Danny Shamess playing his guitar and singing. He was very good and both Briony and Monika seemed quite taken with him. They also seemed quite taken with Hulio, the Brazilian dancer who led the hip-shaking at the final balloon drop party. Reflecting on how unattracted the girls were to us, but how attracted they appeared to be to these talented men, I sighed, “I wish I had some kind of talent like those guys. I can’t dance, I can’t sing, I can’t play an instrument. All I can do is ride a bicycle really, really far.”

And it was almost time for me to do just that once again.

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