It’s time to start heading North. At least to Tahiti. That was the original destination penciled in last year. The date was going to be March 1st. It’s almost April now.
“It’s March 28th.”
Here’s our ride. We had a choice of three different ships to take. This is the least of them.
But it has a cast of characters we know we like! This is the sequel we signed up for. And look at our destinations! Bora Bora, Moorea, Papeete, Pago Pago, Fiji, Hawaii, and more!
“Ling Ling”
“Where is she?”
I’m back on the NCL Spirit for the voyage home, back to the USA anyhow, and away from tourism in Australia. I’m through with that part of the trip. I don’t recognize anyone on the ship yet, but I just boarded. I don’t see Starbucks Ling. I do see Kahani smiling and hug a couple people. Turns out to be her last minutes onboard. She’s going home to the Philippines today. I probably wouldn’t have recognized her if not for the massive eyelashes. I only see her because I’m standing in line at customer service hoping for an upgrade to a balcony. Inside rooms are dark and on this ship my clothes never dry inside the room. The balcony also provides a place for me to escape, to stare into the ocean. I won’t have that this time, I’ll be in public places a lot. I don’t care, I’m invisible doing my zen poses. I’m to be informed what I am doing is called ‘Transcendental Meditation’.
“When you stare into the ocean with music on repeat. They named that?”
When I get to the front of the line they are fairly honest and say there is no upgrade opportunity. Why does the corporate communication tell me there may be and I should visit customer service desk?
“They lie.”
But why lie? I will discuss it later with a nice Japanese woman who has worked for the company for many years. She will tell me the ‘spin’ but in the end, she will admit the lie. I like her for that reason. She is real, but only after I break down the façade. She can’t help but smile at the end.
“Maybe you are charming, Prince Wessir.”
I go to the Spice H2O pool but don’t see Ling Ling. She’s the reason I chose this voyage over the other choices.
“Now what? Charmed, I’m sure.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Mantlebahn? Ricardo… Uh there’s been a change in the role. Kahani has left the ship. She’s gone on holiday and then will be re-assigned to another vessel in the fleet. The role of Kahn has been shelved.”
‘An accomplished actor such as myself can fill any role!’
“That’s great, that’s great Ricardo. We’ve got the perfect part for you, Mr. Rourke of Fantasy Island.”
It shall be my greatest performance.
“Great, great, lets get this show floating. Oh by the way your sidekick is French.”
I hear a cracking voice over the loudspeaker. “This is Alvin, your Cruise Director…” No Kahani? I just saw her, I thought I did, she’s pretty unique looking. I didn’t see the tattoo where her heart would be, so I’m not positive, but Alvin is calling the usual greetings and talking about the required safety drill. His voice is breaking up like a teen going through puberty, and he’s stumbling over the words. It sounds like it’s his first day as a Cruise Director. He was the sidekick last time.
Kahani was at the end of a tour so she was polished. Dan the funny man Cruise Director just got on the Royal Princess but it wasn’t his first time at it, that was obvious became he was comfortable and ready to go from the start. Even the Royal Caribbean Cruise Director was running the show easily, it wasn’t her first voyage. There’s a variety of everything and everybody on these voyages, the Carnival ship made that very clear, if I hadn’t noticed that before, going from the NCL Bliss to the MSC Magnifica, it’s obvious now.
“Remember we were making fun of the Carnival ship back then?”
Oh, now you remember! Where were you 3 weeks ago when we booked a trip with the Carnies?
“I was getting sick on a plane and listening to you saying we need to avoid planes because they are the worst.”
I guess there’s competition for ‘the worst’.
“Look there’s Starbucks Ling! She’s here, let’s go talk to her.”
Hello! I’m so glad to see you again! She remembers me with a huge smile and tries as hard as she can to remember my name. ‘W starts with W… oh! Wesley!’ I’m special again. It’s nice to be home. She’s seen thousands of people since she last saw me so that’s pretty great to be remembered. Starbucks Joe remembers me too with a huge handshake and great smile. Yes, it’s great to be back.
“His name is Jeronimo”.
Sounds like Joe.
Back at the H2O pool I settle into my favorite outdoor couch and notice the other passengers looking around for the first time. It’s all new to them. They are all new to me, yet somehow a familiar crowd. These aren’t the Carnies. These aren’t even the Australians. I’m back with the Americans and the Internationals.
“The Continentals.”
“That’s the continent of Australia.”
I use all I can of the Australian SIM card as we sail out of the harbor, putting ever more distance between us and any cell tower the lobsters rely on to keep their wheels spinning. My room is on deck 10 this time. A quick walk straight through from the adults only pool which is just below the buffet.
“That’s so convenient.”
Now that we are underway, unpacked, and disconnected we start to wander the ship searching for familiar faces. The buffet is our first stop. We find a couple familiar faces and chat a bit, admiring the quality of the food choices. We stop to chat with Alfie as he sings the washy washy tune we didn’t realize we missed so much.
A trip around the observation deck and through the atrium is all it takes to re-familiarize with the ship. In the upstairs piano bar we see who we wanted to see most of all.
“Ling Ling! She’s here!”
We make a direct line towards her and she turns to us. There is instant recognition and an immediate hug. 🤗 Ling Ling confirms we are traveling together to Hawaii. I can’t help but tell her my plans for us. She says I’m going to make her fall in love with me.
“She’s not already? I thought you were charming.”
It’s just Prince.
“While she’s working, we can play with the chipmunks!”
Alvin and the Chipmunks 🐿️
“I thought it was Prince?”
Sea Day. Welcome back to the South Pacific. Welcome back to the fantasy.
“How do you know what’s real?”
Things have changed a little bit. But, I know what’s real.
“That’s what you think. Once again, you believe you are special even though you are the hot dog.”
This is all very familiar to me.
“Prince.”
There’s a packet in my room this time. It looks like some military packet. It’s an invite to a get together and appreciation ceremony. I didn’t encounter this on the other cruises. It must be a new thing. I have time so I’ll go see.
“Where are you?”
Back row, left side.
“Is this Photoshopped? This looks like a VFW group. These aren’t your people. This isn’t your tribe.”
It’s just marketing.
The ‘honor’ ceremony isn’t really an honor. It’s a marketing program. It’s acquisition, it’s retention, it’s re-capture. They give away some trinkets like a patch for each ship. You can put it on you backpack and collect them. It is an incentive to cruise more to collect more patches. A memorabilia pin and coin. Most important is the acquisition of information. Id.me – upload your military ID or DD214. Reveal your service dates, your rank, your operational specialty. Everything about your military service is there. Red flags wave in my mind. At best it’s a retention program at worst it is data collection of the USA military by an international company with ties to China.
“You are so dramatic! Maybe Ling Ling is a Chinese Spy!”
That’s crazy.
“Literally wearing a red flag. How are you missing that?”
Ten percent off any future cruise for giving up confidential information! It’s a pretty big incentive and all the ships officers made a show of ‘their appreciation’.
“They aren’t US citizens so do they really appreciate the US Military? Do they? Another red flag.”
It’s just marketing!
“There’s a lot of flags. Everyone has one. Hey the Captain on this ship was the assistant captain on the Bliss. Weird. And the General Manager isn’t Hannah Han anymore, it’s some Croatian guy. You think he appreciates the US Military? Do you think Hannah did? That would be an awkward question for her.”
Like your dating questions? There’s only one American on the list here and she’s in sales. If you see other Americans they are entertainers. They don’t even count them as employees, they are technically ‘guests’ of the cruise line. The ones at the top aren’t honoring my service.
“They might be.”
I want the truth.
“You can’t handle the truth!”
Do you mean about the Space Force?
I knew it!
“Makes you wonder what else they lie about!”
“You can see they know all the tricks. It’s just marketing!”
Which is it?
“You’ll never know.”
I overheard a conversation where a man said ‘I keep my expectations low’ as an answer to some question I didn’t hear. It reminds me of a wave. I draw it to explain the idea. We get so excited for the possibilities that when they don’t turn out the dissapointment is even greater. The up and down of the wave is that expression. His answer to the low points is to not get so high in the first place there could be such a fall. It is another answer I don’t care to hear, but I understand it, and draw it like this. If only I could maintain the adjusted baseline…the falls might not be so dramatic.
“Well, that’s living!”
No man suffers so much as in his own mind.
This represents the different possibilities that might happen when you interact with reality. Nothing is real unless there is a measurement. That’s the quantum reality and its also a way to exress things that haven’t happened yet. Until you interact, like pressing your thumb down, you don’t know reality.
“Dead polar bears?”
And this one is pretty clear. That wave is mostly undesireable outcomes.
“You have to live on the edge if you want something special!”
That might not be the land of hot dogs.
We were going to fly to Papeete but this cruise became available at the last moment. We were only going to be on the second part but we are excited for this addition to our trip. Those destinations look amazing.
“Definitely not your everyday destinations. This is definitely the fringes of what normal life is. You know Mr. Rourke’s Island would be in a country like Vanuatu. We’ll be there in a couple days.”
This is Noumea, New Caledonia. Well, an edge of it. Most of the rest of it has some development on it. The pier is a working pier meaning there are containers being loaded and unloaded and generally moved about. We have to take a shuttle bus to a visitor center where you can go from there. This is our third time in Noumea and we aren’t looking for another boat ride. Sometimes it’s just nice to be on solid ground for a few hours.
Ling Ling was to meet me at the Noumea Tourist Center. Her IPM code is blue, which means she can’t leave the ship today. This is the first I’m realizing she’s not so free to do what she wants when not ‘on-duty’ which will be 13 hours or more a day every day.
We manage only an hour or two talking on the ship, but it’s enough to tell me of her childhood and hot dog life in China.
“Code blue? What’s that code? Did she mention the Pandas?”
No, why?
“That’s how you know. If she doesn’t know, she might be a spy.”
That’s crazy. And it doesn’t even make sense!
“It’s code! You should know this.”
This is Mystery Island. It is Fantasy Island to me. This is Mr. Rourke’s island. He can make fantasies come true.
‘I have only provided a true hot dog for you. That is what you asked for and that is what I have arranged.’
The odds are like lottery ticket odds. The chance to meet Ling Ling on this island is unimanginable. I couldn’t have pictured any situation where I would be meeting with her on this tropical island. How can this be? How many things had to happen in my life to find myself here with her.
“Seems a little dramatic. Might just be a coincidence.”
April 1 – Fantasy Island
“April Fools Day!”
Today we arrived at Mystery Island. Ling Ling and I are going to meet but she tells me we can’t have ‘arranged’ to meet. We are going to ‘bump into’ each other on the island.
“That’s what spies do. Look, she’s with her handler now. This is right out of the manual.”
That’s Vivian. We met her at the Starbucks in the Atrium. I remember she was wearing glitter eyeshadow. I said “your eyes sparkle!” I don’t think she realized she was wearing glitter. We swam in the ocean while Ling Ling sat on the beach in the shade.
When we walked back to the tender Vivian dissappeared. Ling Ling says she is going to take more pictures before going back to the ship. When we returned to the ship there seemed to be a lot of people taking notice.
“Cover is blown. Eject! Eject!”
Is this art?
“It’s something!”
And I’m a Prince?
“Close enough.”
That right. Everything isn’t exactly as I imagined but it is pretty good. And it’s a lot better than anything I was expecting when I left Los Angeles 4 months earlier.
I don’t have a sim card in Fiji so I’m at the mercy of the ship’s WiFI / Internet to make any plans. All I know is what the shore excursion team has offered and that’s not so good. This beach is nowhere near the port. It’s a two hour bus ride away. That’s 4 hours on a bus.
“Pass. That’s ridiculous. We aren’t going to spend half the day on a bus!”
The little town outside the sea port has shopping and we are going to meet Ling Ling. We can enjoy some time together even if there is no tropical beach to sit on.
Tappoo city is a mall in Lautoka, Fiji. It’s got great shopping and a food court upstairs. This street is lined with small shops as well.There’s a big local market for produce and handcrafts as well. Like Suva, Fiji, there isn’t much opportunity to snorkel or dive in this area. Most diving in Fiji is by boat tour.
Ling Ling meets me at the mall for a short time but then returns to the ship. She’s worried she’s been seen. I’m starting to sense a ‘my neighbor is going to turn me in’ vibe.
“Sounds Chinese to me!”
She doesn’t trust the people around us and it’s just a weird situation trying to hide in plain sight. I want to sit and talk with her and enjoy some of the local food, surrounded by a thousand other people doing the same thing. Why is this such a problem? What insanity has Mr. Rourke wired me up for? We’ve got a secret communications channel now, it’s encrypted and nobody knows about it.
“Things spies do!”
I spend the day shopping and ran into Vivian along the way. Suddenly the ports we stop and seem very small and crowded with corporate eyes looking from every direction.
“Things are weird all right! How is there a 7 dollar bill?”
Seven men on a rugby team. Fiji won the gold medal in rugby so they got put onto money to commemorate it.
Someone explained rugby to me but they stopped short of attempting to explain the sport called ‘cricket’. That’s too advanced for an American.
When we come up to Dravuni Island I’m all set for a great day. We bought snorkel equipment on Lautoka, Fiji, the day before since Dravuni is a remote paradise island. Bring your own everything here.
Dravuni Island looks amazing. Nothing to buy here, just a fantastic tropical island to relax on and a huge coral reef to swim in. No doubt it has many exotic fish and sea creatures. To me, this is the best stop a ship like this can make. It’s supposed to be another amazing snorkel location. I’m hoping it will be another day like Mystery Island.
It won’t be. There aren’t going to be any more days like that one. That was it. That’s all you get. The captain comes over the loudspeaker and announces we aren’t going to be visiting Dravuni Island. The waves are too much for tender operations. It’s going to be another sea day. And the next day we are going to repeat today. It’s going to be April 4th again as we cross the International Date Line. Instead of spending the day on Dravuni’s coral reef we will spend two consecutive days at sea.
“That’s twice the dissapointment. Goodbye Fantasy Island.”
“There is only one Fantasy Island.”
And 1 ling only.
Dravuni Island is now a symbol of missed opportunities. It is so close, you can see it, you know it is there. The moment passes and you know you missed it.
It may seem as if it was possible to return, but you cannot. The combination of events were so rare, you will never find yourself in them again, even if you tried. We are even going to repeat this day, but it won’t matter. That was it. That’s all you get.
Each loop ends with a reset. It will be very clear in a few days that the opportunity is passing and there will be no second chance.
It isn’t like many other second try or third try or ‘someday’ things that are easy to understand and wave a hand and still be happy. “Don’t be unhappy because the ice cream machine is broken. Happiness is a choice.”
Those words are said to comfort but there is a real. To wave a hand and say it does not matter is to cheat the experience. To pretend it wasn’t important is to deny ever wanting it.
“I wanted gellato.”
I’m not sleeping well. Ling Ling says the same. I wonder if her reason is my reason too. I’m not happy with my fantasy. It is supposed to be a wonderful time. Aren’t we in paradise? Isn’t there an expectation of what life could be like if it starts here?
“She works 13 hours a day every day and has the spy side gig and now the corporation is causing trouble for her. What’s your excuse?”
I try to find something else to do. I look for some other passengers to spend time with. I met a Japanese group translator and tour guide on the first day. She’s not a guest exactly, she is here as a private guide for a group of Japanese tourists who don’t speak any english at all.
“She’s working. She’s at work right now.”
Her name is Suki and I’d like to chat with her, but she is too busy to talk with me much and has no time to do anything with me. Every shore excursion she is working. She does paperwork when not actively guiding her tour group. I only see her working or grabbing a quick bite at the buffet! It’s much harder than you might realize to find new company on this ship. Most people brought a plus one, even if it was just the girls club. There were even large groups like a wedding party.
Searching for them isn’t working. I’ll try a different method; a parade. I stand and chat with the washy washy guy for almost an hour and greet every guest that comes into the buffet. I have seen 1,000 guests by now. Many of the other guests I’ve noticed several days in a row but only a few recognize me from a previous day. There are lots of people on this ship in some kind of daze. Most people have a companion with them and that’s probably a good idea.
“Sea days can be confining. You could go crazy.”
It’s not going according to plan.
One day leads to the next and I’m not sure exactly which way the earth is spinning.
“Or leaning.”