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The purser has me fill out a few forms and then hands me the key to my new cabin. She tells me it's the
only empty cabin on board. It became available this afternoon—in a miraculous, if slightly macabre, stroke
of luck for me—when its elderly inhabitant took gravely ill and was forced to disembark and check in to a
Singapore hospital. It turns out this ship is filled almost entirely with British retirees. In the corridor on the
way to my room I pass a steady stream of wheelchair-bound passengers.
The cabin itself is a windowless, interior cubby—dim even after I've flipped on the fluorescent ceiling
light. I'm still jittery and wired from from my battle to get on board the ship and from the lingering anxiety
that I'd be forced to fly. The velocity of those last few crazed minutes has now abruptly downshifted, leav-
ing me feeling caged. The ship chugs along at its own pace, oblivious to my zappy neurons and fluttering
heartbeat.
THE next three days are a bleak interlude. After getting used to having Rebecca at my elbow every day for
four months, I suddenly find myself very alone. Traveling solo can be romantic and energizing—the lone
traveler moseying down the dusty road—but there's nothing romantic or energizing about a budget cruise
ship for old people. I feel untethered without Rebecca here to help me put my thoughts into context, and to
assist me in ridiculing these fogeys.
The cruise itself doesn't offer enough distraction to pull me out of my own head. It's a small ship, without
many amenities, so there's little to do but lounge in a deck chair all day long. I order a sucession of cold
beers from the outside bar and try to drink myself into a nap.
When I'm not sleeping, I watch for green Indonesian islands on the horizon or scan the ocean's shim-
mering purple surface for schools of flying fish. A dozen of them at once will all suddenly spring from
the sea together. They glide through the tropical air for several seconds—their pectoral fins acting as
wings—before they knife back into the side of a swell. It tickles me to think of them briefly escaping the
watery confines of their universe. I imagine the exhilaration of the unfamiliar air, and the disappointing
splashdown into normalcy. (Yes, it occurs to me I may be anticipating my own reentry into real life.)
As I won't be reunited with my luggage until Bali, I've had to buy a toothbrush and other sundries from
the ship's small convenience store. Tragically, this store does not sell underwear. I wash out my one pair
each night and pull them back on, cold and a bit damp, each morning when I wake up.
With nowhere to buy new clothes, meals are a sartorial fiasco. The dinner dress code calls for jacket and
tie, but I am of course still wearing the outfit that I boarded in: flip-flops, battered khaki trousers, and a
T-shirt with the word “Cambodia” printed in large letters on the front. (This last was bought in Phnom Penh
during a particularly acute laundry shortage.) The first time I arrive at the entrance to the restaurant, the
tuxedoed maitre d' recoils at the sight of me. He ponders for a moment and then reluctantly leads me to a
table at the extreme rear corner of the room.
The other passengers aboard this U.K.-based budget cruise line are mostly working-class British pen-
sioners. Lots of outdated fashions, lots of chain-smoking. A whole lot of terrifying dental situations. Across
from me at the dinner table the maitre d' has chosen for me is a man with a distinctly alcoholic pallor and a
tattoo of his wife's name—Brenda—etched onto his forearm. As I sit down, he's bragging about the price
he got on a bottle of whiskey at a Singapore liquor store. “He'll drink the other half of it tonight,” says
Brenda with affection, patting his shoulder. “Oh, he'll be off his head, he will.”
I introduce myself to the table and end up again recounting my madcap gangway sprint. When I explain
that my ultimate goal is to circle the earth, my tablemates are intrigued—but not overly impressed. This is
an around-the-world cruise, starting and ending in England. By the end of the three-month journey, every
geezer here will have circumnavigated. Which slightly deflates my sense of accomplishment.
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