I joined the Cunard Queen Victoria yesterday after a very long series of flights from Sacramento. At the airport, I met the ship's youth coordinator, a nice British guy in his 30s named Paul Trotter, who has worked aboard the Queen Victoria since its first voyage a little less than an year ago. We shared a taxi to the hotel, and the driver turned out to be crazy. He flashed his lights at cars driving too slow, angering one driver who tried to hit us. That turned into a yelling and honking match between the taxi driver and the driver of the other car, and both drivers kept swerving, trying to hit each other.

• Compared to the grand class ships I've served on, this one feels a little smaller -- but not as much as I expected. The Queen Victoria runs in the neighborhood of 90,000 tons displacement against the grand class displacement of around 110,000 tons. Public areas don't seem much smaller, but they do feel closer together. The ones on grand class ships are like suburbs connected by stretches of highway while the Queen Victoria's are shoulder-to-shoulder, as in a city.
• The musician's corridor is close to the middle of the ship and below the waterline. That makes the background noise and the feel of the ship a little different while at sea. And since they're not near the mooring decks, I haven't (yet) been waked up by noise from mooring winches or anchor chains.
• I ended up in one of the larger cabins allocated to musicians, and it's still about 40 percent smaller than the cabins on grand class ships. So far, that hasn't been a problem. I packed a bit less gear for this contract and used collapsable, soft-sided luggage. I think bringing less stuff has helped so that I don't feel crowded. Thankfully, my cabinmate also packed light.
• The main service corridor, called "the M1" on grand class ships, is called "Burma Road" on the Queen Victoria. The musician's corridor is right off of it and directly below the crew mess. The staff mess is only a few additional paces down Burma Road.
• The linen keeper provides all public-area uniforms (except black suits and tuxedos, which are required for musicians). I was given a grey suit, a pair of khaki slacks, a white button-down shirt, a pair of logoed polo shirts, a weave belt and a dark tie.
• The crew office offers mobile sims for crew use, which is a nice touch. It only works at sea, and the rates seem a bit pricey (a fat $0.50 to send an SMS message, which is the only rate I know right now). But signup is free, and I love the idea that family and friends can call me directly while I'm on the ship. I picked up a sim today, and I'll write more after I've had some time to use it (and pay for topups).
• Overall, the ship has a more starched-shirt vibe than the Princess Cruises ships I worked on -- surely a feature of the Cunard brand. But it's not a big deal. Musicians don't get priviledges to hang out in pubic areas and eat in passenger dining areas. But that's not a big problem for me. I never spent a lot of time in public areas on Princess ships, and unfettered access to all-you-can-eat dessert tables is probably better for my diet.

Comment (34)

I've written before about the excellent and inexpensive medical care at private hospitals in Thailand. My experience at Bangkok's Samitivej Hospital reinforced my overwhelming positive impression of medical services in Thailand. Samitivej is one of two hospitals in Bangkok where I could get the exam required by my cruise line employer.

Medical certificates for cruise ships are good for two years, and crew members joining a vessel must present one that will remain valid for the entire duration of their contract before going aboard. The medical certificate I had from my previous two contracts expires in March 2009, seven weeks before the end of my upcoming contract. So I need to get another one. I asked my agent to see if the cruise line would let me get the exam in Thailand, where the price would be a fraction of the cost an equivalent exam in the US, and he reported back to me that I just needed to get the exam with one of two approved physicians.

I chose Samitivej Hospital merely because it was closer to the hotel where Duk and I stay in Bangkok. After a trip on the Sky Train to the Phrom Phon station and a 1.5km walk through a posh residential neighborhood down Sukhumvit Soi 49, we showed up at the appointed hour of 8am on Nov. 3. First, some paperwork, then I was whisked back to the lab where a nurse drew a little blood and handed over a cup for a urine sample. I made a trip to the bathroom, and after a short wait, I was taken to another room for a chest X-ray.

Comment (90) Read More...

Somewhere far above Vietnam, I sit in the tail end of an Airbus A340-400 watching Mamma Mia! on my in-seat entertainment console. I have left behind Thailand, which faces an uncertain future as factions vie for political power in the capital and ripples from the unrest and the global economic crisis wash up on the country's shores as diminishing prospects for a stable and prosperous future. I'm headed toward an American that less than a day ago elected Barack Obama as President, opening a hopeful new era in my home country. As my taxi pulled away from the hotel off of Petchburi Road where I first encountered Bangkok nine and a half months ago, my boyfriend of the past 15 months stayed behind and hailed his own taxi to return to his family's home on the other side of the city. We will be apart for a minimum of six months and quite likely as long as 10 months.

It has been a momentous day on many levels.

I have already chronicled the changes in my life that brought me to Thailand, settling in Phuket to work as editor of a fortnightly English-language newsmagazine. I suppose this post opens a new story, the beginning of another adventure.

Whatever. I'll try not to pontificate as much this time around. Keep it light. Learn to write like a blogger rather than a print journalist filling space. Work on suppressing my Protestant tendency to explain myself.

Comment (4) Read More...

My farewell letter to Phuket Post (as submitted):

With the current issue of Phuket Post, Associate Editor Robert Pratt departs the newsmagazine after leading it for the past eight months during a period of transition. Mr Pratt leaves Phuket for his native California, where he will ship out at the end of November for a position playing jazz saxophone aboard the Cunard cruise liner the Queen Victoria.

"I take away vivid memories of the unique people of Phuket," Mr Pratt said. "Many impressions of the warmth, spirit and traditions of the Thai people will stay with me: bringing early morning alms to monks at Wat Kun Chee, honouring Princess Ubol Ratana during the grand opening of Patong's Millennium Resort, paying respect to Chinese gods during the Vegetarian Festival, and many more memories. The friends I have made in Phuket will have a place in my heart wherever I plant my feet."

Comment (3) Read More...

Despite my dissatisfaction with working at Phuket Post, I have loved working with all of the people there. They have made it fun for me, and I’m glad to have had a chance to get to know them. I continue to be amazed by all the good work the native-Thai people do in producing an English-language newspaper. There’s no way I could do even 10 percent of what anyone in the office does if I tried to write, layout or sell ads for a Thai-language newsmagazine.

Even though I still have about two weeks left before my final day, Senior Designer Khun Boo arranged a casual group photo shoot. And she comped up the photo into a nice going-away postcard for me. Made me cry for thinking about leaving everyone. Duk and I plan to return to Phuket, however. So maybe we’ll have a chance to visit with many of our Phuket Post friends next year.

Comment (2)

During the Vegetarian Festival, each of Phuket City's several shrines mounts a parade into downtown, and the prime weekend days are reserved for the two biggest. Duk and I had intended to arrive at the Bang Neow parade much earlier, but we caught some exciting moments at the tail end.

Though the Samkong shrine's parade two days earlier had plenty of firecrackers, the insane din from firecrackers during this parade was a couple orders of magnitude heavier. It was painful to walk up the street to get a look at what was going on. Young men carrying the sedan chairs for the Chinese gods were revelling in firecrackers, setting off huge strings of them in the middle of one street and making a public show of withstanding the noise and many small burns on their bare torsos from flaming shreds of firecracker paper flying around. When we came across them, most were covered in spent gunpowder, looking a bit like they had just come off a battlefield. When they had set off all their fireworks, many of them posed for a group picture in the middle of the street.

As we left, we saw a couple more scenes parade by -- much more sedate. A non-exploding group of young men passed by carrying what must be the last of the sedan chairs. And one more maa song tonguing a huge saw.

Comment (2)

Yes, of course this is quite late and out-of-sequence. But once the Vegetarian Festival got really going, I was out most nights and didn't have much time to write up my observations, much less process my photos. In the next day or so, I'll finish posting my account of this year's festival. And down the road I hope to have more time to dedicate to blogging so I can have more timely content.

Not much happened on the second day of the festival, except that Duk told me I should take care not to wear black. So I donned my Thai-style white clothes for the festival, which we purchased, of course, from the seasonal merchandise racks at the Big C Supercenter where we shop. We heard on the third day of the festival that people would gather for a big invocation at Phuket City's Saphan Hin complex, so that's where we headed after work.

Unfortunately, we  got there just as the ceremony was breaking up. The gathering drew several thousand people, a good number of whom were banging drums and cymbals or lighting off fireworks, and it was meant to invoke the Chinese gods who would be celebrated during the festival. We motored away from Saphan Hin to the nearest shrine, Bang Neow, which was a kilometer away, pretty much in downtown Phuket City.

Comment (8) Read More...

James Fallows rips John McCain for running a stuff-and-nonsense campaign for president. I've followed Fallows for a long time, and I think he's one of America's greatest journalists. I've never seen him give such spanking to a public official before. I definitely agree with him.

Comment (2)

First off: a warning. I'm gonna get medical on your ass. Or my ass, rather. This post details my second experience in a Thai hospital, and the result is overwhelmingly positive. But the back story and the details are a little -- well, not so much gory as unpleasant.

This morning I dropped into Bangkok Hospital Phuket to see about what I thought must be a hemorrhoid on my ass, an external growth that had been getting larger during the past year or so. I first noticed it while I was on the ship after a bout of constipation. My diet is heavy on fiber and roughage, and I almost never get plugged up. But from joining the ship and processing food from the crew mess and passenger buffet, my innards got totally stopped up. After a couple of days, I saw the ship's doctor, who gave me a fiber drink that managed to get things moving again.

A few weeks later, when I first discovered the tiny growth on the outside of my O-ring, I thought I had blown it out. Which was unexpected. About 15 years earlier I had gone through a painful bout of prolapsed internal hemorrhoids. I'll spare you a rundown of the several types of hemorrhoids since Wikipedia has a clear explanation (with a nifty graphic). Suffice it to say that prolapsed internal hemorrhoids are very uncomfortable, and there's almost no relief from the dull, throbbing pain, whether seated, lying prone or floating in a bath of warm water.

Comment (4) Read More...

Duk and I went out to Samkong shrine last night to pay respect to the gods as part of the Phuket Vegetarian Festival. As always, I drew special attention from local Thais manning the various stations where we knelt to pray and offer incense. A farrang following rituals at Buddhist temples or Chinese shrines is very conspicuous.

At the final station, the helper asked me where I was from. When he heard that I was an American, he spoke in halting English. "American banks," he said, making a falling-down gesture with his right arm. "Over."

"Yes," I replied. "American banks all over."

Comment (2)