May 25, 2015
The cruise begins (eventually): But why are they all so fat?
’I’m going on a cruise! I’m going on a cruise! I’m going on a cruise!’
I woke up on the floor of Andy’s apartment very excited! It was CRUISE DAY at last! Hurray!
Now, I agree that it may seem a little confusing that I should get so happy that such a luxurious and decadent means of transportation was going to carry me the final step to Australia. It was perhaps out of keeping with my desperate vagabond existence of the preceding two years, but, hell, that was the point. I was going to live the high life for a change. I was going to have a rest. And, most importantly, I was going to eat. A LOT!
I gathered my possessions and cycled to the Tree In Lodge Hostel where I was delighted to find that S.K. had worked his magic on dear Tom. As Andy had told me, S.K. was known to practically scrub cyclists clean and even Tom hadn’t been beyond his capabilities. As my cruise companion stood before me again I barely recognised him – he had clean clothes on and appeared very much to have taken a shower, and even his bike and bags had been washed to a level that might satisfy Australian customs. Best of all was that he had a new shirt, admittedly fished out from the hostel’s second hand drawer, that had narrow red and white horizontal stripes across it that made him look, most appropriately, like a pirate.
But there was also bad news. S.K. had saved us two big boxes for us to pack our bikes into for the cruise, but after a month of sitting outside of the hostel untouched, they had mysteriously disappeared that very morning. It was terrible bad luck, but the wonderfully helpful S.K. came to the rescue again, calling a bike shop and arranging for us to be able to collect a couple of boxes from them. So Tom and I cycled to the shop, strapped the folded up boxes onto the back of the bikes, and then cycled to the cruise terminal, final goodbyes to Andy and S.K. completed on the way.
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After boxing the bikes and entrusting them and the rest of our luggage to the porters we made our way through the airport-style terminal building. This involved a considerable amount of queuing, particularly at passport control, but the time waiting in the queue gave us both a chance to try and adjust to the hefty blow of extreme culture-shock that had begun in earnest. For the first time in a year and a half we were surrounded by pale white people. And not just pale white people, but relatively wealthy pale white people. And what was more they were all speaking in English, or something a bit like it, except that everything that they said sounded a bit like a question? Tom was particularly taken aback by the extraordinary variety of peculiar body shapes around us.
“Why is everyone so fat?!” He said, rather loudly, perhaps not realising that, also for the first time in a long time, we ourselves could be understood.
“Tom, they can speak English,” I reminded him.
“I know. And why are they all so fat?”
But finally we made it through passport control and were able to board the Dawn Princess. It was more like walking into a fancy hotel than a boat. There were bright lights, lush carpets, spiral staircases, old people bobbing along, and there we were, two scallywags that, despite both our best efforts to get clean, surely still looked rather out of place here.
But we’d wasted enough time. “Where’s the food?” I asked the nearest member of staff. “Deck 14” he replied, and we were off running up the stairs. A few moments later and we were by the complimentary buffet, a smorgasbord of delicious looking western food before us, and we were heaping food onto our plates as fast as we could. And the plates, by the way, were the biggest I had ever seen. Pasta and chips and pizza and vegetables and cheese and salad and beans were piled on, and there was not a scrap of fried rice in sight. And this buffet was going to be running non-stop for the next twelve days. It was almost too good to be true.
It was a struggle to find somewhere to sit – with everyone else seemingly having had the same idea to head straight for the buffet I was genuinely concerned that the front of the boat might sink – but we did eventually manage to get somewhere. After both eating non-stop for about ten minutes we then managed to pause long enough to look around and see a whole room full of Australians shovelling food into their mouths. Tom gazed at them all shaking his head and, as if the answer wasn’t self-evident enough by now, repeated what was fast becoming his new catchphrase: “Why is everyone so fat?!”
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Unfortunately the eating marathon was interrupted by an emergency drill that had to be completed before we could disembark. Following the instructions that had been given over the loudspeakers, Tom and I hurried to our rooms to collect our life-jackets and then headed to our muster station, which just so happened to be in the theatre. We, being relatively nimble and light of foot, were amongst the first to arrive, and made our way down to the front of the large theatre. We then had to wait for about twenty minutes whilst the remainder of the passengers to whom this muster station was assigned, a great many of whom were rather older and less mobile than ourselves, filed in and filled the rest of the theatre. I couldn’t help noticing that, as they slowly made their way down the narrow stairs, which, interestingly enough, were the narrow stairs we would all have to leave by in order to get to the lifeboats outside, Tom and I were in actual fact trapped in probably the worst possible place to be in an emergency.
Nevertheless eventually the room was filled and we were shown how to put on our life-jackets, a procedure which turned the room orange, and which the two of us paid considerable attention to primarily because it was being demonstrated by several rather attractive young females at the front of the theatre. “I bet they’re the dancers” I whispered to Tom. I’m not sure he heard me though, because he was very busy blowing on his emergency whistle.
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I was a bit surprised that being shown how to put on our life-jackets concluded the drill and we were then told that we could all return to our rooms and buffets. As far as I could tell, in the event of the boat sinking, we were supposed to go to an enclosed room in the middle of the ship, put on our life-jackets, and wait. It seemed to me a flawed escape plan and, seeing as how we had to wait right now for about twenty minutes for everyone else to file out of the theatre before us, I decided to go and make further enquiries of one of the girls that had performed the life-jacket demonstration.
“Hello,” I said, “I’m still a bit confused. What are we supposed to do next, after we come down here and put on our life-jackets?”
“We’ll tell you. You just have to come in here first.” Was her formulaic reply.
“But why? Wouldn’t it make more sense to go straight to the lifeboats?”
“No, you have to come in here first.”
“But why? I went on a cruise before, and the muster station was right next to the lifeboat.”
“No, you have to come in her first.”
“But why?”
“You just have to come in here first.”
“Don’t you think it would make more sense to go straight to the lifeboats?”
“No, you have to come in-“
“-you're one of the dancers aren’t you?”
“Yeah, how’d you guess?”
Our departure from Singapore was delayed and the poolside ‘sail-away party’ was concluded before we’d sailed anywhere. That wasn’t much of a party anyway, and we walked around it. Tom was looking dazed and confused by everything and was still just constantly repeating “Why is everyone so fat?” which I responded to with “I don’t care what they say, I’m going straight for the lifeboats.” But there was plenty to keep us occupied. We found the sports court and played a little bit of football, and basketball, and tennis, before making our way to the gym. There Tom used a treadmill for the first time in his life, and ran on it barefoot. He then went on the exercise bike for a while, which I thought an extraordinary thing to be doing, and I certainly wanted nothing to do with any bikes for a while myself.
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Around six in the evening we finally did set sail, and I watched the skyline of Singapore fade away with the last of the day’s light, before Tom and I reunited for dinner at a pizza restaurant. I use the term ‘dinner’ loosely. I can’t recall if we’d already eaten that evening, and I’m certain we ate again later, but I already knew from experience that the names for meal times tend to lose all meaning on cruises. I remembered phrases like ‘third lunch’ being bandied around on my previous journey.
This particular visit to the pizza restaurant was interesting because Tom and I arrived and slumped upon the comfortable couches in rather an infantile fashion and were laughing about how crazy it was to be on this luxurious tub. As we did so the head waiter appeared before us and rather rudely demanded to see our cruise cards. Who did he think we were? I wondered, had he mistaken us for stowaways? I suppose it would be an easy mistake to make, it wasn’t as if Tom had bothered to change or shower after the gym. So I showed him my cruise card and his face immediately changed and, realising that we were genuine paying customers, he offered profuse grovelling apologies. “I’m sorry sir, we sometimes got contractors who… I’m sorry sir.”
Today's ride: 17 km (11 miles)
Total: 40,881 km (25,387 miles)
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