The Journey(s) of Ian

Eleven days at sea: Fremantle to Singapore, via Penang, Phuket, and Langkawi. As regular readers of my blog will know I travelled from Fremantle to Singapore on a freighter way back in 2006. This was an experience, rough and ready, but fun. Now, three years later I have traveled a similar route, but this time on the opposite end of the comfort scale, this time I travelled on a ship from one of the world’s premier cruise lines: the Princess line, and the ship -- the Sun Princess. The specs: The Sun Princess was manufactured in 1995, it displaces 77,000 tonnes (making it twice the size of my freighter) is 260m long, 30m wide, and has 13 decks. (Interestingly enough, there is no number 13 on the ship, this means that there is a deck 12 with a deck 14 immediately above, but no deck numbered 13, nor do cabin numbers contain the ill-omened 13. The baleful 13 is totally skipped. This seems a little archaic to me, hopefully it is a nautical tradition and n