Bangkok to Singapore - Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World - page 84

fortune in fuel along the way. I briefly consider stealing a boat—and then remember that I am in Singapore,
where spitting your gum out on the ground will basically get you executed.
And so, having exhausted every idea I can generate, I give up. It's over. The quest has failed.
As we take the cable car back from Sentosa, Rebecca looks down and notices a cruise ship moored dir-
ectly below us in the harbor. There's a Web address printed on its smokestack. She asks me for a pen and
writes the URL on her hand.
“We already looked up all the cruise ships on the web,” I say, dejected. “None of them work.”
“I don't remember seeing this one,” she says. “And you never know.”
REBECCA goes to look up the cruise ship online while I wallow in our hotel room. I've resigned myself
to buying us a pair of plane tickets. I figure we'll fly to Brisbane, finish out the rest of the trip as planned,
and then come back at a later date to redo the missing Singapore-to-Australia leg by sea. I tell myself I can
save it for later in life, as a project to look forward to. But I know it won't be the same. It will eat at me
forever.
Just as I'm about to make a sad shuffle down to the travel agency to ask about flights, Rebecca bursts
into the room. “It goes to Australia!” she shouts. “It goes to Australia!”
The ship, called the MV Van Gogh , is operated by a small British cruise company. Rebecca's written
down the phone number for the booking office in London. The woman there who answers my call tells me
she isn't allowed to sell me tickets because Singapore's a way station for the cruise, not an official embark-
ation point. (This also explains why the ship never popped up in our earlier online searches.) She says we'll
need to speak to someone on board the ship and see what they say.
“When does the ship leave harbor?” I ask her.
“Not until tomorrow,” she says.
I decide we might as well pop down to the pier right now to get this sorted out, since it's our last chance.
Rebecca tosses our passports in her purse, in case we might need them to buy tickets. “Come on!” I bark,
hustling her out the door. “I like your sense of urgency,” she says with a grin, as we begin our swift walk to
the metro and catch a subway train back to the harbor.
When we get to the cruise ship terminal, we get in line with the final few passengers reboarding the ship
after having spent the day ashore. A security guard stops us at the metal detectors because we don't have
tickets. “I need to talk to someone on the ship,” I say.
He takes out his cell phone. “I'm calling Phil, the operations officer.” After punching in some numbers,
he hands me the phone.
When Phil answers, I immediately launch into my spiel—for the umpteenth time today—noting how far
we've come, and what a tragedy it would be for everything to fall apart now. “So,” I conclude, “I just really
hope we can get on the ship tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” says a confused Phil, in a crisp English accent. “We leave right now. In fact, we were
meant to leave fifteen minutes ago. Anyway, we don't have any empty cabins. I'm sorry, but I'm going to
have to hang up now, because we're honestly just about to depart.”
“Wait!” I scream. “We have to get on this ship! There has to be some way to let us on this ship! We're
right here!” I can see the ship through the terminal's glass window. I squint in an effort to pick out Phil
somewhere on deck.
“Well, you can try the London operations office,” Phil says doubtfully. I take down the number and then
use our cell phone with its local SIM card to call England. I note that the phone's battery is running low. I
want to punch myself in the spleen: Not bothering to charge up the phone this morning could be the differ-
ence between circumnavigating the earth successfully or not.