Travelling Bead 2: November 2011

I’m sitting in the Marquee room of the cruise ship that’s hauling Dawn and I to the Pacific, waiting for ... a bingo game. Yep, folks, you read that right. Last week I staggered, stunned by beauty, around the 17th C Venetian villas, my ears overloaded with Vivaldi, my eyes with Tintoretto, my feet massaged by ancient cobbles and lovingly cradled by soft red leather shoes. Today, my hair is salt whipped, my face wind burned, I’m wearing croc thongs, a tee and cargo pants, and I've just done fifteen walking laps around a swimming pool on a ship's deck. Like the vast majority of those on board, my stomach is distended, (but I have a long way to go to catch up with them), I’m counting minutes to the next meal and my afternoon nap, and plotting fancy dress - island harlot or coconut skirt - for this evening's shindig.

Isle of Pines, Vanuatu

$4 lunch - Port Vila

After two days trying to hold onto my Venetian sophistication, I’ve given up. My sticky hair and slip slop slap of feet on the carpets of the casino, and my cheery greetings of the line dancers from Adelaide, tell me loud and clear that I am finally fitting in. We've had too many blank stares when we’re asked where we live and the number of cruises we’ve done - and told the chilling truth - that now we’re saying, yeah, mate, it’s a beaut cruise - this is my fifth - check out my singlet suntan! - and I live in Sydney and she lives in Perth. The real story is far too alienating to make friends on this cruise.

Towel creature 2

Day 1, leaving Sydney Harbour

As the only passengers who refused to pay $9 for a logo lanyard for our tags, we’ve been renegades from Day One. We’ve cringed at Abba rockin’ the boat, and been jostled by gargantuans gorging at the food troughs. We don’t have red back spider tattoos on our heels or pierced belly buttons. We are 74% lighter than the lowest common denomenator aboard. Alcohol hasn’t touched our lips, nor playing cards our hands. It’s going to be a long ten days. Three days of churning seas and feelings as if we are on a bicycle over sanddunes, I've just told Dawn that we'll have to jump ship rather than survive the rest of the trip, or we'll fly home from Vanuatu. Whatever the cost.

In this room, where everyone is anticipating winning big on bingo, when we don’t even know the rules, I’m deep in culture shock. Everyone else has coloured magic markers, and I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do. Next to me, the woman who wore the red cowboy hat, the fish scale tee shirt and the tight pants in various breeds of animal print at last night’s karaoke sing off, scoffs her third diet coke with a packet of crisps. Her travelling companion, a cross dresser who emerges at night in a black wig, fishnet stockings, lycra leopard skin mini skirt and killer stilettos, is - we think - nowhere to be seen as we don't know what He looks like without his wig and falsies. We’ve just watched a “fashion” show: the crew wearing singlets and board shorts. We’ve avoided the Great Handbag Sale, the Watch Sale, the Diamond Sale; and run the gamut of the photographers keen on making their quota. Rather than buy, I spray myself with duty free perfume.

At breakfast on the back deck, the All You Can Eat Hippo hoards swarmed from their horizontal positions in the cabins, to the food troughs. Wheezing with anticipation, they hoovered pyramids of bacon, hash browns, sausages, fries, scrambled, poached, fried and omeletted eggs, loaves of toast, bowls of sugary cereals, pots of jams, honey, pancakes, muffins, mushrooms, and beans, until even their enormous legs were trembling under the weight of their trays. Passing the coffee machines, they loaded up with extra sugar; at the dessert counter, they piled on the buns, cakes, cookies, croissants, jam tarts, custard cakes, jellies floating with preserved fruits and ice creams. Briefly the automatic doors jammed half open: Dawn and I and a few skinny others had the deck to ourselves: but those trapped inside by their girths were happy they didn't have to go too far for a refill.

Cruising was, I think, devised to transport people in need of hospitalisation for obesity from one meal to another. Sitting as far from this frightening sight as possible, I sipped on my green tea, ate my prunes, nuts and yoghurt. Then I waddled into the lounge for the first of the many health talks, as the eaters rolled into morning tea.

Pre cruise

These focused on obesity, detox, stress relief, heart care, fat busters, the eternal quest for flat stomachs, natural solutions to arthritis and immunity rebuilding. Dawn and I and about twenty others out of 1800 guests were the only people present at these fascinating physiological insights.

Watching it, intrigued by the analogies to crusty carburettors, I had the sense that the meaning of the cruise had already become clear. Every month I dump about $150 of pharmaceutical drugs in my body to build my immune system and steady my pancreas. Post talk, imagining our bodies riddled with the toxins ingested, inhaled, absorbed and imbibed that have caused everything from seasickness to thinning eyelashes, Dawn and I ran up the five flights of stairs to the Aqua centre, where we submitted ourselves to water retention and digestive analysis, Ph and Acid balance measurement, calorific consumption and fat processing statistics. I'm down to 62 kilos, the slimmest I've been for a very long time; I'm the strongest I've been for about four years, but I don't want to take any more pills. So I signed up for a four month detox program; just in time for my year to finish as I leave Venice. Raw vegetables, no red meat, heaps of fish and oils, cut out cheese, wheat, sugars, salts, junk food, carbonated drinks, alcohol, coffee, cakes, and processed food. I'll have a blood test next week, and then one when I return. I am very intrigued to see the results.

Papaya - 50c- Port Vila

Port Vila

All is quiet in the bingo hall, apart from nervous rustlings of paper. We’re warned if we shout out too soon, or too late, we’ll have to do a chicken dance, sans accompaniment. Lucky Legs! (Huh?) Trombones! (What?) 69! (snigger, snigger) Soon we’re right into crossing off numbers as fast as we can identify them. Our blood pressure is up. Our hearts are racing. Will we win the $400 for getting a horizontal line? A horizontal line? Asks a passenger - which way is horozontal? Before we’ve even found the numbers on our papers - people are leaping from their seats, shouting BINGO and claiming hundreds of dollars. Dawn and I are in a sweat. We win nothing, but immediately understand why this game is so popular with Altzheimer's patients - you to have your wits about you. We had to restrain ourselves from going out to buy another batch of tickets.

Port Vila market

And realised we'd just had an hour of great fun. Trivial Pursuit, anyone? It's on after high tea! At dinner in the more formal restaurant, the ship ploughing its way to the Pacific, interesting company on either side, where we were served a limited portion of food, we opened ourselves to the tales of some very intriguing passengers. And began to enjoy ourselves enormously.

Like the forties couple travelling together, but explaining they were brother and sister. The ex husband and the ex wife, doing their 100th trip together, as their own new spouses didn't like cruising. The woman who didn't know what her husband really did, or where he went, when he disappeared for several days - working in the Force. The woman who had recently met up with the love of her life thirty years after their affair, on the cruise, only to find he was "feeble". A giant of a man, using a walking frame, who ate nothing but was battling diabetes. Honeymooners. Couples breaking up. Anniversaries. Sisters wearing identical mu mu's. Single dads with kids. Mums on the prowl. Cross dressers.

From that moment, we decided to enjoy whatever the cruise threw at us.

And there was plenty. Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble (only four people attended), nightly concerts of fantastically high standards that included cabaret dancers, trapeze artists, a pirate review, a circus, comedians, musicians, game shows, two fantastic cooking demonstrations - one by Luke Mangan the celebrity Master Chef - book signings, a kitchen galley tour and of course the non stop food. A living, breathing, steaming buffet. In the galley tour, I had the distinct feeling that we were in a giant alimentary canal - in the belly of a whale. In the health centre, it was more like being a member of The Island, surrounded by little clones dressed in immaculate aqua and white.

Lobster on Isle of Pines

We sailed for four nights and three days before reaching Port Vila, Vanuatu by which time we were ecstatic to touch land. My camera is being repaired, so I continued the series of self portraits on my Iphone Dawn and I have made during our meet ups this year.

Port Vila and land --- and a kayaking and snorkelling trip, under grey skies and over the windy waves in a double glass bottomed kayak, across to a coral reef where the local fish matched the colours of the local school and school uniforms. We got off the bus in town, and Dawn negotiated in her French for tropical fish cooked for us at the local market, followed by an enormous papaya. Women sat on the floor, making their enormous baskets out of banana leaves to carry root vegetables. We weren't able t take bananas back on board, but there were plenty of passengers who brought an armoury of lethal island-made spears and arrows with them.

We were invited to the Captain's VIP party --dressed to the nines; and to the Captain's cocktail party. We made friends from all walks of life. We laughed. We danced. We ate and ate. We rocked when the boat rolled. When I restrained myself from buying a grass skirt and floral garland, I was sorry later on board, during the Tropical night when everyone else was dressed in floral shirts and sarongs.

Our huge, comfortable cabin, with a huge window, was cleaned several times a day. Every night our cabin staff made a different creature out of the towels.

At Lifou, we lay on the white beach and swam in the shallow turquoise water; for a few dollars we ate fresh lobster grilled on the beach. We toured the island in a local taxi.

And then we sailed home. Coming into Sydney was magical: and again, I was really pleased to be home.

Mr M had promised to collect us from the ship. He said I could stay with him for a few days, as I had nowhere else to go, absolutely in Limbo, till I left again for Venice. He was two hours late. He said I couldn't stay with him, where could he drop me? Dawn was flying back to Perth that night. I called Luda. Of course, she said, sleep on my sofa. I spent the next few days waiting for Mr M to call, but he never did.

And everyone asked. What was it like. I started off saying it was like a floating RSL, and I played Bingo. Then I told them that in spite of all the stereotypical hype of a cruise ship, both Dawn and I had a bloody good time. In spite of ourselves.

Besides, what goes on tour, stays on tour!

PS: I've started my detox. I have no appetite. I have lost a half a kilo in 48 hours.

Next post - back to Venice.