In early fall of 2021, I got the idea I should go on a cruise. Earlier that summer, Hong Kong had loosened and then suddenly re-tightened its travel regulations around COVID, and the city, for all its spectacular beaches and charismatic jungles, both concrete and natural, was beginning to feel like the safest, most beautiful ward in a prison hospital.
And so, to answer the question I got no fewer than four times between my arrival at the ferry terminal and dropping my bag in room 9232: I came on the cruise, because none of my friends could take off work, and because my wife and I did not want to risk both of us being stuck in weeks of quarantine without our three children — or worse, with.
Things were not much better upstairs. Bar City — “the destination to celebrate the good life” per promotional material — was less a city and more a kind of food court, but for bars, where no one was ever at any of the bars, and all the bars served the exact same things. The cocktail menu at Mixt, the cocktail bar, was the same as the one at Bubbles, the Champagne bar, and, I eventually learned, the same as the one at every other bar and restaurant I went to on the ship.
The next morning, my hopes for a nap-forcingly indulgent staycation hotel breakfast were dashed against rubber-bound shu mai that would have been more at home in a children’s plastic dim sum play set, and scrambled eggs swimming in so much excess liquid I wasn’t sure it could be chalked up only to the classic egg cooking issue known as “weeping.”
I had entire sections of the boat to myself often enough that I began to worry no one would notice if I slipped off to join the submarines patrolling the South China Sea beneath the ship.
I searched #GentingDream on Instagram, and reached out to two influencer types who appeared to be on the boat that day too. They kept posting pictures, but never replied.
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