Stereotypes are funny things. They are often offensive, sometimes humourous but mostly dangerous in that they fill us with preconceived notions that can be harmful to our interactions with others. But obviously stereotypes come from somewhere. They are not usually invented out of thin air. Most often they are exaggerations of small truths. And sometimes they are completely and utterly bang-on.

Hence my experience in cruising. Everyone who knows me was shocked to learn that I was going on a cruise across the Pacific to Hawaii. I have an aversion to natural bodies of water, boats and warm climates. I’m also extremely prone to motion sickness. So what gives, right? Well, the cruise was pre-planned by my boyfriend’s family and I was invited to go along with them so I thought, hey, what the hell? I had no expectations beyond a few stereotypes that had seeped into my consciousness but approached the adventure with an open mind. Perhaps if I had kept it closed I wouldn’t have been so disappointed with my “vacation” upon the Golden Princess.

Stereoype: Americans are fat.
Truth: Fatty McFatfats. I mean, not all of them obviously, but you can notice the difference as soon as you step off the plane at LAX.

Stereotype: Cruise ships are tacky.
Truth: Yes. Tacky as hell. In pictures the boat looked luxurious and ornate. In reality it was all fakey-fakey. Plaster and plastic and kind of grimy. My cruise companion assures me that the Golden Princess was way less tacky than some Carnival cruise he had previously been on so I guess I should count my blessings.

Stereotype: Cruise ships attract old, fat people.
Truth: I have every reason to believe that there exist in the world young and thin cruisers. After all, I’ve met some. But none of them were on the Golden Princess. 90% of the people on this boat were old and/or fat. And the other 10% were the crew. Seriously, I think there were maybe a dozen other passengers with a normal BMI and maybe a couple dozen under the age of 70. My companion and I stood out like sore thumbs and we definitely got noticed. It was kind of awkward at first but eventually we just went with it and strutted around like supermodels at an obesity convention.

Stereotype: The main events on cruise ships are bingo and unlimited buffets.
Truth: Completely correct. One cannot be surprised that the typical cruiser is overweight because the cruising lifestyle encourages lethargy and gluttony. Besides dancing, all the activities onboard were sedentary and to my admittedly biased view, quite dull. The most exciting activity on offer was definitely eating.
They say that cruise food is excellent but I wouldn’t go that far. It wasn’t stellar but certainly adequate and definitely good enough to keep me going back for more. There’s food all over the place and you can eat however much you want whenever the heck you want. Obviously you’ve paid for the food upfront but everything feels free when it’s all laid out in front of you so you tend to overindulge just because you can, or because you’re tying to get your money’s worth. I don’t think I ate quite as much as the average beached whale but I certainly ate a heck of a lot more than I normally do in my real life. It got to the point where I missed the feeling of hunger. Thank god the elevators were slow and always full of fatties so I was forced to take the stairs everywhere, otherwise I might have gained 20 lbs. As it was, my weight stayed stable but my companion reports that he put on 9 lbs, which isn’t that bad considering he fully took advantage of the all-you-can-eat option. We had assigned seating for dinner each night, as opposed to buffet, but it’s still the same concept ‘cause you could order as many meals as you wanted to. And he did. Sometimes he’d have as many as three main courses a night, followed by four desserts and proceeded by four appetizers. Eventually the waiters would encourage him to have even more if ever he’d order conservatively. We suspect they had a bet going with other waiters as to whose patrons would order the most. Thank goodness the BF is Mr. Crazyfit Muscleman or else I might have noticed the extra poundage.

Stereotype: Hawaii is beautiful.
Truth: I’m eternally grateful that this turned out to be entirely accurate. I didn’t think I’d like Hawaii since I’m not one for sun or summer weather but Hawaii was just gorgeous. I don’t know if the weather was typical for April but it was actually quite chilly on most of the islands we visited. This suited me just fine because it allowed me to remain completely covered without having to resort to dreaded sunblock.

Enjoying myself in Hawaii was the turning point in the trip. In Hilo we visited a volcano, which was basically cool, but it was walking across a lava field on a windy day that was the most fun.

Honolulu kind of sucked because our plan was to go to Pearl Harbour but it didn’t work out for reasons that are not appropriate to go into on this blog. We similarly couldn’t get into Diamond Head but it’s cool because I found the entrance to the Stargate and that satiated me. At night we went to a luau and well, not really my cup of tea but our bus guide was twenty shades of hilarious so it was fun.

We went tubing down an old sugar cane plantation irrigation ditch on Kaui, which was exceptionally amusing. It was a great day, sunny but not too hot, in fact quite cold in the water but not unbearably so. After attempting to shop on the rest of Hawaii and finding everything too big I was pleased to discover the gift shop had things in my size. I bought a top and realized later that it was a junior size. No comment.

Maui was awesome because my companion and I finally had the chance to hang out alone. It was a warm day; a little too warm for my taste but others seemed to think it wasn’t warm enough. For instance an Australian couple we ran into complained of the cold. They took a shining to us and seemed intent on hanging out with us all day but we managed to ditch them and wandered along a beach where we came across an awesome Buddhist cemetery half buried in the sand. Then we found a little shelter no doubt built by some homeless people and abandoned beside it was a car, which we claimed and took around for the rest of day. We liked it so much that we even took the car back to the boat and it became the mascot for our trip, which was easier to enjoy now that we’d had a little fun.

The first few days on the boat I was dreadfully sea sick. Everyone was saying how unusually rocky the seas were; just my luck, eh? But after a while I got used to it. I remained a little queasy throughout and had a perpetual headache for the entire two week trip, but the discomfort is something I adapted to enough to ignore. My companion even got to the point where he enjoyed the constant swaying and we started to indulge in the boat’s offerings.

At first the pools were closed because the seas were so rocky that they were literally wave pools splashing onto the surrounding bars but eventually the seas calmed down enough that we could go swimming. It was still pretty wavy so it was surprisingly fun times. We randomly found a ping pong ball and played ping pool pong.

We had the gym mostly to ourselves, unsurprisingly. Tip: treadmill + rocky seas = pukeorama. The elliptical was much easier to deal with.

We watched part of an Elvis movie on deck and came up with a series of inside jokes that would keep us amused throughout the trip. Your mother’s curtains indeed.

Our first impression of the production shows wasn’t good and because of his questionable facial hair we chose to blame one particular dancer henceforth known as Chinstrap, but as time went on the performances improved. We even developed an unreasonable obsession with one of the dancers because of her boundless enthusiasm and warm smile.

We went to a comedy show that would have been lame if not for the fact that the comedian chose to bring my companion on stage, where he proceeded to completely steal the show. He was famous for the rest of the cruise and I was able to vicariously bask in his popularity. Actually, his ability to attract others sort of became a problem when a lonely, desperate man tried to become his best friend and sort of stalked us one night. For the rest of the trip we ducked for cover whenever he appeared and took alternative routes to avoid him. Does this sound mean? Trust me when I say the dude was creepy. He had a mail order bride and a child who was afraid of him. Weird.

Hey ladies, you know how your boyfriend never takes you dancing and you’re totally resentful about it? My boyfriend is better than yours ‘cause he loves to dance. By the second week we were going dancing every night. First we’d dance to the live band, Vitalized and then we’d go up to the nightclub at the top of the ship. Having the dance floor sway under your feet can be disconcerting at first but I might argue that dancing is enhanced by such motion. It’s kind of fun when everyone inevitably moves in the same direction at the same time. And it’s a great excuse to “accidentally” fall into your partner’s arms.

This trip was also a good opportunity to hone our super spy skills as we found a super secret spy hideout and went on super secret spy missions, which mostly involved searching the ship for deck trolls, creatures who lived in the walls and only came out at night. Fortunately the ship was also equipped with ghostbusters who were also presumably out to find these trolls.

Stereotype: Nique would never recommend cruising.
Truth: Pretty much, yeah. I mean in the end I had a good time and I’m definitely glad I went but I don’t think it’s something I’d ever do again. The temptation to overeat is too strong and the effort one must put forth to not be bored out of one’s skull is too large.

Conclusion:  I hate pineapples.