The Week That Was #4

~ Welcome to my weekly collection of The Odd, The Useful, and The Downright Bizarre.

The Odd: (but interesting) Bird Nest Bonanza. Ultrasonic humidifier? Check. Swiftlet Bazooka Tweeter? Check. Feces powder? Er, check. All you need now is a multistory house with no doors or windows but plenty of holes, and you're almost ready to join one of Southeast Asia's fastest-growing cottage industries: harvesting edible birds' nests. You'll also need birds, of course — lots of them. That's the tricky part. Read more…

The Useful: Healthy Cruise Ships. Anita Dunham-Potter writing for Tripso has some timely advice for staying healthy on your next cruise ship vacation – or on any vacation for that matter. Anita reports how poor sanitation turned a ten-day cruise of a life-time into a one-day nightmare, when the 400-plus passengers and crew were stricken by a suspected norovirus outbreak on a German cruise liner. Her advice: Wash your hands (just like your mother always told you to). Noroviruses can cause severe diarrhea, nausea and vomiting over a 48- to 60-hour period. The American Center for Disease Control estimates that 23 million people, or 8 percent of the U.S. population, develop symptoms of norovirus each year. Less than 1 percent of cruise passengers are affected by norovirus, but you don’t want to be one of them, do you? Read more here…

The Downright Bizarre: 20 stupid questions asked by tourists. Yes, as a follow up to last weeks The Week That Was, where we highlighted some of the most bizarre complaints uttered by tourists, this week comes 20 of the most stupid questions asked by tourist, including, "Are there any lakes in the Lakes District?", "Why on earth did they build Windsor Castle on the flight path of Heathrow?", and this doozy from a tourist at Whitby Abbey, North Yorkshire, "Why did they build so many ruined castles and abbeys in England?" Read more…

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing – enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Image courtesy of the Telegraph Online.

Cruise Ship Vacations: Do Your Research First

~ Anita Dunham-Potter, the travel columnist for Tripso, posted a story recently called, Noisy Carnival Ship Ruins Family Cruise which recounts a cruise ship voyage that did not live up to the expectations of the family taking it.

The Moscoes boarded the Carnival Valor for a cruise to the Caribbean. Having saved for years, the family chose Carnival because of its reputation for family-friendly cruising.

Now if you’ve read my previous post about taking a slow boat to China (or elsewhere) you can imagine that cruising on the Carnival Valor is about as far removed from the experience of freighter travel as you could possibly get. After all, the Valor has 1,487 staterooms for the high paying clientele on board. In fact the Carnival Valor has a passenger capacity of 2,974, so it’s probably no surprise the Moscoes had problems with the noise level on the ship.

The basis of their complaint is that at approximately 9 p.m. each night, the ship’s entertainers would perform their musical acts in the atrium. Unfortunately for the Moscoes, their stateroom happened to be in close proximity to the ship’s 12-story open atrium.

After numerous complaints both onboard the ship, and after they had returned home, the Moscoes were compensated a total of $900 in onboard credit (while still aboard), and an additional $500 was given to them to be redeemed on a future cruise.

The lesson here is to do thorough research before you book your cruise. A visit to the Carnival website provides pretty much everything you need to know about their ships before you book with the cruise line.

For example, you can see the Carnival Valor’s deck plans here. While you may not be expert enough to know exactly how these plans translate into the real thing, that is, into a massive steel plated ship of 110,000 tons, with 13 decks and a crew of 1,180, you should be able to get an sense of the layout of the ship, and an idea of just where the potentially noisiest rooms are located.

As Anita writes in her article, “…there is no such thing as a quiet cruise ship. They vibrate, drop anchor, have crew noise, thumping music, but more often than not the worst noise offenders are fellow passengers oblivious to keeping quiet in the vicinity of staterooms.”

If in doubt – ask. Ask your booking agent exactly were the high traffic areas are. Especially areas like atriums, onboard music venues and nightclubs, pool decks, games rooms, service centres and more.

Read Anita’s full article here...

Read more about the Carnival Valor here…

IMAGE: Courtesy of Carnival website…