Carnival Magic Cruise

Houston

After the disappointment of how small things were in Nevada, we are now in Houston. There is nothing small in Texas. When the plane landed in Houston the first thing we noticed was that the men all looked like the racist sheriff from a small town film (or his Mexican offsider) and the women all sounded like Penelope Pitstop. The cars are big, the traffic is big and the people are big. We had a great dinner with Lincoln, Kristie, their kids and David Poston at Ruggles Green. It’s a great restaurant next to an astroturf square with a live band playing at the weekend. The square was full of kids running around but it got cleared off so they could have a lightsaber competition. Yup, go home kids, the adults need to have a lightsaber tournament now. When we went down to breakfast in the motel the next day I thought we had walked into a Weight Watchers convention. At least until I noticed two people strapped to an intravenous bacon drip. TexArse is a big country. Also pyjamas. 3 people in a restaurant, in pyjamas. Showerthoughts: We have moved countries and lowered the average weight of both of them. Tub, Kristie and Nina got their nails done by a Orville the Duck. Tub asked him to keep his hands to himself. Meanwhile Lincoln, Talia and I went to the world’s oddest barber. In most barbers you face a mirror but in this one you face a bunch of furniture that is for sale. We ended the day by proving our class. We lost the bottle opener (for some reason all of the corks in the world have fled to America to hide inside bottles). Unpeturbed we dug our way through using what we had. Nail scissors. Tweezers. Push with a razor. Why did we bring a paintbrush? Finally through. Now filter out the cork bits with a Kleenex. Ay wash mayself wit’ a rag on a stick. Come on Tub, let’s get out of here before we rent a trailer. Tomorrow – the boat!

Walmart of the Sea

Well the good news is that there aren’t any bogans in Texas. And the reason for that is that they are all on this boat. There are some really close knit families on here. Close, as in your Uncle Terry is also your grandad and your mother is your half sister.

We’ve never been on a cruise before and I always thought there were 3 types of people who do cruises: young people who are here for the sex, parents with children who want a break from them, and old people. In America there is a different reason. Most people are here to eat. Between eating, shitting and then more eating, at least there aren’t many of them in the bars. Seeing the size of them when they get on and seeing them attack an all-you-can-eat buffet like a pack of piranhas, I think they’ll need to open the bulk head doors to get these fuckers off the boat in a weeks time.

Ok, I’ll admit it, apart from the bogan conference this is pretty sweet. Even the bogans aren’t too bad. I keep a couple of fish fingers in my pocket and if I need to get passed them I throw one down a corridor and watch them run. At least the stairs are always free and for entertainment you can hang around the lifts watching them try to squeeze a guy in an XXXXXL tee shirt with a logo about gun controlling commies into an empty lift designed for 10 people.

This boat is Texas big. It’s also a transformer. Here it is pretending to be a hotel.

They only open the food court bit when you first get on and none of the other restaurants. Tub had a fit about not being able to find a table that didn’t have some German towels over it. She sat down on the floor in the middle of the food court and started to eat her lunch. Quite quickly they found us a table. Its not as bad as the time she watched ”˜In The Name of The Father’ and held a ”˜dirty protest’ in a hotel room because they were serving sweetened orange juice.

Apart from Bogans there are GILFs and Eastern European staff. What is it about being brought up in war torn Bosnia that means you end up without a sense of humour? Once we got out into the middle of the ocean we went for dinner. Our waiter brought us the check and asked for our room number. I said “Can we pay cash, we aren’t staying here.” No reaction.

At the table next to us was the best bloke in the world. He had turned up for dinner with his mate and his mate had inadvertently left his hat on at the dinner table. How embarrassing for him! Our hero recognised the problem and didn’t want to embarrass his mate by pointing out that he was wearing a baseball cap and was in fact inside, and an adult. Instead he took all of the pressure off his pal by going back to his room and putting on a cowboy hat. What a hero! He’s the sort of bloke who covers you when you fart.

Italy or a floating boat of lardies?

This piss-filled jacuzzi is a popular pick up spot for bogans trying to find a relative for the night.

The room is massive and the boat is pretty impressive.

Tomorrow – exactly the same thing, and the day after.

King of the Hill – Episode 3

You know at the start of a movie when you meet the perfect couple and everything is wonderful for them and they are in love forever… etc?

You know one of them is about to be run over by a drunk driver or shot by an evil assassin and the rest of the film will be about revenge. Well that is how we are at the moment. Life couldn’t be better.

I hope its Tub. I’m enjoying myself.

Tub fixed my GoPro camera today. Apparently throwing it around the room and calling it a piece of worthless shit doesn’t make it work, but stroking it gently seems to do the trick. Less Catholic church and more Buddhism.

Last night we went for dinner so Tub ironed me a shirt.

We had to judge the best dressed waiter competition. And then eat cold food.

And then we went to the same piano bar to listen to the same jokes as the night before. I still don’t get them.

Life Skills for the 21st Century

This morning we found ourselves in a quiz called The Genius Test. This is maybe not the place that NASA should focus all its efforts. Everyone was given a sheet of 32 questions. They were all in the form of “7 D of T W” with the answer being “7 Days of The Week”. Most of them were American like “13 Stripes on the American Flag”. Tub got a very respectable 16 but was eclipsed by a table of old ladies at the end.

“Did anyone get more that 5?” Asked the compere.

“YEAH!” said lots of people.

“More than 10?”

“YEAH!” said less people.

“More than 20?”

“YEAH!” said the table of old ladies.

“More that 25?”

“YEAH!” shouted the old ladies.

“Ok. How many did you get?” he asked.

“32.” they answered proudly.

“32? Wow. Have you done this quiz before?” he asked.

“Oh yes. We did it twice yesterday.”

Without missing a beat we headed to the theatre to develop some important life skills.

I see your napkin chicken and raise you a towel chicken.

Or an elephant.

Or a dog with sunglasses.

Yes we spent the morning making towel animals.

Any time you hate your job, remember this guy. He wanted to be a pilot but now he teaches retards how to make dogs out of towels, 7 days a week.

Comedy Club

We went to the adult comedy last night. We had been warned about the foul language and when the comedian came on he warned us again and gave people a chance to leave. They don’t mind graphic violence in America but swearing is a big no-no. Once the prudes had gone he got it started by asking for everyone to shout out a swear word. I was the wrong side of a day of drinking so I couldn’t wait for some audience participation. The most common words were “Heck” and “Shit” and people were a bit embarrassed about saying them so they whispered. I shouted my word at the top of my lungs and I don’t think it was one of the words on the approved list judging by the sharp intake of breath from the room and all of the tutting and people saying “shame on you.” You would have thought I’d just raped a baby or eaten the last of the chicken wings at the buffet.

Now the whole boat thinks I’ve got Tourettes.

Land Ahoy!

This morning we arrived in the Caribbean (another word the Americans can’t pronounce), or more specifically the fenced off part of Isla Roatan, Honduras that is owned by Carnival Cruiselines Ltd. One of the give aways is that they sell all of the same stuff that they have on the boat.

Here we are at Carnival Cruise Beach Incorporated.

And here you can see how far we came to get here (one woman warned us about the long walk we had ahead). At the back you can see our ship the SS Walmart, the one in front is her sister ship, The Obesity.

This dude was walking the length of the pier in flippers. No seriously, he was.

This afternoon we went to “The Bridge Players Meeting” at 4pm, which Tub had been looking forward to all day. Remember when your odd friend at school who had no social skills arranged a party and was expecting everyone to show up? Same thing. Like a slow motion car wreck I watched Tub get more and more excited all day just to find out we are the only two bridge players on the boat.

“Fuckers” was all she had to say.

Sorry for the delay updating the blog. They disabled the internet and the phones on the boat when the TV stations started covering the Ebola outbreak. I’ll get to that in a bit. But first, lets cover Thursday…

Today we are in Belize. How do I know this? Because T-Mobile told me at 5am. 

These guys are as bad as Citibank!

We spent the whole day being led from place to place like sheep, for some of the people on the tour though this was a serious challenge to their abilities. I assume most of the people on this boat won the trip in a raffle because I don’t think they could have booked it themselves.

We did the Mayan Rubble Tour today.

We started in the towel folding room from the other day at 7:30am and had the concept of a tour explained to us. Then we left at 8:00am holding the tail of the elephant in front as we walked down a flight of stairs and onto a little boat that took us to land. Despite this, and the fact we had to wear a label that said “I’m a fucking stupid tourist in Group 28” 4 people still managed to get on the wrong boat.

So the morning started like this: Big Boat – Little Boat – Bus – Ferry – Van – Toilet break (ask someone in a red shirt if you need any help). Not surprisingly when we hit land we found all the same shops that they have on the boat and in Honduras. What a coincidence.

The usual default characters from central casting were on the trip – Snorty, Heart Attack and Annoying American. Except today there was a job lot on Annoying American and we got 75 of them.

Snorty was sitting right in front of us.

Belize was quite nice, at least the bits we saw of it. They speak some sort of Creole based upon English which means they use English words but pronounce them differently and swap a few. I don’t know if that really counts as a language, it sounds more like a Jamaican talking Cockney Rhyming Slang which is pretty much what all of the white people at my school in London  in the 80’s tried to do. I’m looking at you Ian Callaghan.

Belize is pretty small. There are only 350,000 people there and 7 sets of traffic lights in the whole country. The tour guide told us proudly that one of them wasn’t even working, but we drove past 2 that were broken. Since they don’t have much of a population they seem to like to keep all of the dead people around for a bit.

The roads are pretty bad but there is a truck going around filling in the potholes with sand so it won’t be long until it is all fixed. Now I’m not a civil engineer but that doesn’t even work on golf courses.

After being told how to get on and off a bus a few times and shown how to use a handrail to climb stairs, we finally got to the rubble. Its hard to know what was going on with this place as it seems to have been mainly built by American students 10 years ago from other bits of rubble. However the tour did suddenly turn a bit weird and I regretted signing the disclaimer on the bus. The first steps were really small and they really did demonstrate how to use a handrail and used a bus to drive the less able people to the top of the 15 stairs, but then before I knew it we were at the top of the scariest bloody thing I’ve ever been on. Not a handrail in sight, a metre ledge if that and a drop far deeper than the Hoover Dam. Tub is a mountain goat and bounces up and down rocks with no fear but I’m not quite so good at it.

Here is Tub coming down.

Here is me clinging to the wall at the top and wishing I hadn’t got out of bed.

I crawled down and lived to fight another day.

Heart Attack struggled all the way to half way and then rolled down. He was in a bad way. To celebrate the first exercise he had taken in 25 years he drank a litre of coke and ate a family bag of Pringles.

At lunch we had rice and beans with local beer and Caribbean hot sauce and reminisced about the government yard in Trenchtown.

Unfortunately we only got the American level hot sauce which was about as hot as your grannie in a neglige, but they still complained about how hot it was when we got back on the bus.

The speedometer in our bus was disconnected which made it very hard for our driver to judge the speed he was going. I tried to remember what that disclaimer I signed had actually covered. He opted for “fucking fast, foot to the floor” which seemed to be a good choice. Belize was formerly known as British Honduras so it makes sense that they would drive on the left. Our bus did for most of the time, although the cars that we passed seemed to be driving on the right and this isn’t a divided road. Oh and it’s raining and the potholes are filled with sand.

This guy beat us back to the buffet, so nothing to eat tonight.

Movie by the pool.

Mexico

This morning we arrived in Mexico. Thanks T-Mobile!

Now the only thing that makes you worry more than someone telling you not to worry is the captain of the ship coming over the tannoy at 7:30am telling you that you really, really shouldn’t worry and that the guy on board who has Ebola will probably be alright. English isn’t his first language so to make sure that everyone had got the message they had the Entertainment Director (think slightly camp English bloke from Butlin’s) follow up to reassure you. Frankly, it didn’t work. They both blamed the Belize government for not letting them fly the bloke home yesterday which delayed the ship and now we are late. That would have been an interesting conversation to listen to especially if one half was in Mexican and the other half in Creole.

“Him got wot mon? Take him disease budy soom udda place, bloodclot.”

If I was the captain I’d have sent a couple of Eastern European waiters to his room in the night. Fish don’t get Ebola. And I bet he wishes he had because we are currently 5kms from Mexico and thanks to that dobber from Belize they won’t let us in.

Now the internet is down but we are on the US national news on the TV.

And… Nope, the Mexicans won’t let us in. As Tub pointed out if we were on a Mexican boat with Ebola trying to dock in America they would nuke us.

So, T-Mobile, you were wrong. This is as close as we got to Mexico.

Today was supposed to Salsa cooking, Salsa dancing and Margueritas in Mexico. This was the best trip according to TripAdvisor who gave it 10/10. Instead we are stuck on board with a nasty cough and a bunch of lardies who are all spending their $200 hush money wisely.

Just in case you think I am exaggerating about the Ebola – here is a link to CNN.

Given me an E, Give me a B, Give me an Ola!

Today we took the David Attenborough tour around the staff areas of the ship. It was definitely the best part of the holiday so far but you weren’t allowed to take a camera so you’ll have to use your imagination.

The tour involved climbing stairs and didn’t have a food break so most of the fat fuckers didn’t sign up for it (I like how in America I can call everyone else fat, in Manila when I got in the lift they used to poke my gut with a stick and laugh at me as it wobbled). Tub spotted the tour in the small print in the ship  magazine – Ebola Weekly.  They only allow about 30 people to do it each trip and you are split into two groups so it was quite small and intimate. It really is very impressive. This ship has its own water desalination plant, 6 massive diesel turbines and two different types of fuel – the good stuff that they have to use in American waters and the cheap polluting shit that they use in Mexico. The laundrette has a machine that folds bedsheets and a lot of little twitchy people from the 3rd world who haven’t seen daylight for 5 years and hide in the corners when people come through.

They let us into the control room which was amazing. Everything is run around the clock with cameras and monitoring on anything that can change. I’ve seen control rooms for technology systems but this made all of that look like cavemen with counting beads. Have you heard the expression that something is as hard as turning a Boeing 747 into an Airbus 380 while it is still flying? Yeah, I know its a stupid expression but that is actually what these guys are doing. They are replacing the fire control system and rewiring the connections from the generators to the motors while the boat is at sea. They have a team of engineers going from boat to boat to get them all done. Oh, and they take out the the generators every so often and move them to a free space to dismantle them for maintenance. All while fat people eat ice cream 6 levels above them.

The questions from the group were insightful and deep. “Where are you from?” was the most common question that got asked. This was especially probing since everyone wears a badge with their name and country written on it. Really? These dense fuckers have been to the moon?

My favourite question was “Where do you get all the engineers from? The Military?” which was posed by a guy in a US Navy hat. The Italian head of engineering just looked at him blankly and said “No. Universities.”

At the start of the tour we were told not to ask about any disease that starts with an E. However half way around we were introduced to some poor contractor who was supposed to get off in Mexico but obviously couldn’t. The tour guide, who was from HR, said “Maybe he can get off the ship tomorrow, who knows?” so that doesn’t sound too hopeful.

Working on a cruise ship is really for 3 types of people: skilled professionals, people from the 3rd world and backpackers who didn’t read the small print in their contracts and thought it would be nice to travel the world without realising that you don’t get a day off for the first 6 months (really – that is true). But at least Marine law means they can’t be asked to work for more that 74 hours per week. The HR lady explained that they average that over a month so its actually fine to work a lot more than that in a single week. Some people get paid a salary but some of them are on tips. Think about this one, there are people working in the staff kitchen who rely on tips from other people whose main source of income is tips. The caste system is alive and well.

We saw the kitchens which were predictably massive, the jail, the morgue and finally the drivers cabin which is a lot plusher than your average truckies abode. It was the room you’d want to be in if you ever plan to take over the world. The boat pretty much sails itself so these guys just hang about in incredible plushness looking out of the window at all of the Walmartees wandering around. They have a guy called a Quartermaster who just looks out of the window, in case 17 levels of technology and failsafes all go down at the same time. I’m guessing they got him from the Military and not a university. He doesn’t even get a chair. I thought a Quartermaster looked after the stores but we met the guy who does that down at the bottom of the ship and he was as mad as a cut snake. He was a 6’5” Jamaican who said he’d been doing this job for 29 years and only got 2 months off a year. He took us into the meat fridge and said something had come up and he’d be back in 10 minutes but all the Americans could think to say was “Where are you from?”

In other news, today I saw:

• A guy with a belly button the size of my fist.
• A fat guy using the stairs.
• A woman resting her gut on the table while she ate a bowl of pasta.

Ok, one of these isn’t true.

Tomorrow may or may not be the end of the cruise but this morning was definitely the high spot. And not only that, they gave me a hat.