Slow Boat to Alaska & Asia

Never had we been on a ship for 27 straight days. Never had we sailed with Celebrity. Never had we taken a slow boat, or any other transport, to China, Japan or Korea. And never had we taken a cruise in which 10 of the first 11 days were spent at sea.

Would we find out how much we loved cruising?

Celebrity Millennium, a medium/large ship, would take my wife Lian, myself and 2,100 others, north from Vancouver to Dutch Harbor, Alaska and then cross the north Pacific to two Japanese ports before reaching Tokyo.

Plan A was to then see Japan by rail and fly home. Plan B kicked in after the sticker shock of tiny Japanese hotel rooms that cost as much as a suite at the Hilton, a place we’ve never been. Add meals and travel and we were thrown as if by an angry sumo wrestler. For the economically challenged, it proved less costly and more convenient to stick with the ship. We’d visit several more Japanese ports then continue on to two Korean and end up in Shanghai. New rules allowed us five days in the world’s biggest city without having to pay $200 each for Chinese visas.

The first 15 days of our sailing were in a cabin with a balcony and the remainder in a windowless cubbyhole some might describe as claustrophobic. The route to Japan would provide time to sit outside and enjoy fresh ocean breezes, but between Tokyo and Shanghai we’d be exploring cities every day and would have little time to enjoy a balcony, so why pay the premium?

Rain followed us up the BC coast, but the Millennium had such a wonderful array of lecturers, we didn’t think about our wet, windblown balcony. We learned about the night sky, mammals of the world, weather patterns, art history, great composers and even the life of Marilyn Monroe. The lecturers were enthusiastic, funny and knowledgeable. Evening performances in the main theatre, as is the norm on a cruise ship, were borderline entertaining with such offerings as a harmonica player and Beatles imitators who sang tolerably while pretending to play guitars. In nightclubs, we found a folk singer, a classical duo, a dance band and a loud quartet.

Ping pong, reading and swimming in the solarium pool kept us away from the buffet, but deck walking was minimized by the weather and a deck that didn’t complete a route around the ship. Every morning, we’d pick up the Canadian and US editions of a four-page newspaper, plus the crossword and Sudoku.

The only day of clear weather between Vancouver and Japan occurred in tiny Dutch Harbor, Alaska. The friendly locals ferried passengers, in school buses, from harbour to town where sleepy folk who stepped outside to enjoy the sun couldn’t figure out where all the people came from. The town, home to the reality TV series Deadliest Catch, sees only a few cruise ships a year. It offered gorgeous, rolling scenery that made us think of Newfoundland’s 360° eyescapes.

Towards Japan, the ship’s lecturers went into hibernation and passengers on the rough seas (waves of three to five metres) were left to art auctions, casino betting, wine tasting, bingo, watch sales and other activities designed to encourage spending.

Millennium’s pricey WiFi was fast and we constantly heard from home about pending cyclones, which the captain kindly steered around. The ship provided amazing stability. Modern weighty, vessels use stabilizers – big fins deployed out the side – to keep things on an even keel. Every night, the dining room was packed and no one looked green around the gills.

The days at sea gave us a chance to examine our floating resort and conclude it wasn’t the prettiest boat afloat. Sharp angles, black paint and a square stern gave it an industrial look, and rust made its mark 16 years after launch. Inside, light colours and a spacious mid-ship atrium made it feel bigger than it was. At 300 metres, our nightly walk from dining at the stern to theatre in the stem felt like several city blocks. Depending on route, we’d pass casino, shopping district, nightclub area, atrium, art gallery, glass elevators, extra-cost eatery and winery. Sometimes we’d step outside and enjoy a windblown walk along one side of the ship.

As with all cruise ships we’ve been on, the food was delicious and plentiful. One could gluttonize oneself into obesity on a cruise of this length as two lines of thought prevail. One: you’ve paid for the food, so why not eat all of it? Two: the buffet array won’t be there forever, so sample everything?

Our solution, highly recommended, is to never use the ship’s elevators. Since we find workouts a bore, we spend much of the day marching up and down stairs, picking up the morning newssheet on deck four, having breakfast on deck 10, going down to five for a lecture and then up to 10 for a swim. We get exercise and often save time. Should thoughts of a bedtime snack sneak into our heads, the idea of climbing 60 stairs quickly extinguishes them. By the end of a cruise we can bound up two or three flights without a second thought. This makes the food appear closer but, by that time, we’re getting tired of the cookies, cakes and croissants.

Celebrity ships generally get a half-star better rating than other lines we’ve taken such as our favorite, Holland America, but search as we did, we couldn’t find anything to warrant the esteem. Other than the entertainment, there was nothing negative, nothing at all. In fact, life on a five-star resort ship is like being on a mobile all-inclusive and, from morning to night, there are things to do other than eat. Passengers are encouraged to get together to play ping pong, putt, play basketball, do crafts and buy watches.

Arrival in Japan came with a high level of anticipation and equivalent disappointment. Every day the ship docked in the huge industrial areas of huge industrial cities. Our favourite vacation activity is swimming and snorkeling. We knew from the outset that wouldn’t happen, but we were not prepared for the degree to which Asian cities disregarded their waterfronts. Only in Yokohama did a seaside promenade invite pedestrians to walk near the shore. Elsewhere it was seawalls, breakwalls, docks, cranes, containers and concrete.

To Celebrity’s credit it arranged, in nearly every port, shuttle buses to take passengers to a downtown train or bus station. From there, walking was our favourite means of transport, especially after facing the Tokyo transit system. The route map looked like spider webs thrown against a wall. To get to a destination, you had to know the price and to know the price you had to know Japanese, or get an offer of help from a friendly, but rare, English-speaker. If you chose the wrong price, you couldn’t get out and I ended up crawling under a turnstile: not acceptable behaviour to the orderly Japanese.

Normally shore excursions (the ship arranges a bus to take passengers to local sights) are a part of cruising, but this time the cost ($100 and up) and lack of interesting destinations deterred us. Excursions visited shopping districts, waterfalls, mountains and ancient monuments. In our bipedal explorations, we had no trouble finding shrines, forts and palaces of various vintages. And shops couldn’t be avoided. The free shuttles served as our shore excursions. Natural wonders could wait for our return home to coastal BC.

By the time we got to our eighth Japanese stop, Kagoshima, the unrelenting urbanization and industrialization was getting to us and we dreamt of quiet walks in the woods and strolls along ocean shores. Despite the wonderful humility, honesty and politeness of the Japanese, we needed to be alone. A 15-minute ferry ride from Kagoshima took us to a volcanic island dominated by Mt. Sakurajima. A seldom trod path along the seashore and through the woods restored our souls and readied us for Korea and Shanghai.

The two Korean stops brought industry, interesting history and mobs of people, but nothing prepared us for the masses in Shanghai, the world’s biggest city. We arrived there at the start of the week-long National Day holiday and every person in the city of 20 million decided to shop on famous Nanjing, a packed pedestrian pathway the width of six lanes, and several kilometres long. We were forced to do the Shanghai shuffle as crowds enveloped us and we moved at the rate of an old cow returning to the barn. In five days of exploring this fascinating city, we constantly shuffled in drizzle, smog, heat and humidity that would take down a sponge. And this was early October.

Despite surviving Tokyo’s transit, we shunned Shanghai’s massive underground and walked, walked and walked some more. From clustered alleyways darkened by overhanging laundry, through The Bund (British heritage buildings), through the financial district (with some of the world’s tallest buildings), through carnivals and through parks, we walked. The street food was delicious, the restaurants easy to navigate (point to the picture) and People’s Park never failed to unveil something unique such as the marriage market, where mothers post ads for their daughters on umbrellas that rest in front of them.

Never can you fully appreciate Canada’s spaciousness, tranquility, fresh air and beauty until you’ve walked Shanghai on National Day. Although our trip had no surf, sand or snorkeling, and not much sun, we now know we can enjoy nearly four weeks on a ship and we can appreciate Asian cultures that are as alien to us as Macau casinos. Would we do it again? Once is exactly the right number of times.