Last wakes

Time: 2:45pm

Location: Okinawa

Weather: 28C sunny

Happy very belated Canada Day to all my friends back home! I am ashamed to say that I did absolutely nothing patriotic to celebrate onboard, mainly due to having to work until very very late on that particular day (think 2:30am). With my third and final extremely busy long cruise behind, somehow there remains less than a week until the end of my contract and me going home. 

These days, faces of the ship are changing rapidly as many of my friends also finish up their own contracts, and as cheesy as it sounds, feelings of bittersweetness arise when I think about leaving the ship. My 4.5 month contract is very short in comparison to many other crew members, and I wouldn't mind staying even 1-2 months more especially now that I've become a lot more comfortable with life at sea. As I've said before, you bond really quickly and closely with a lot of your coworkers on the ship and saying goodbye to the people you have spent every day of the last few months with is never easy. The whole nature of working on ships is a metaphor for real life; we are all on our own tangents going in different directions with different contract starting and ending dates but somewhere along the way paths cross which can leave lasting impressions and change everything. It has been a fantastic experience in all aspects and I am very thankful that I listened to some wise people and my gut feeling to have taken this leap of faith. I am also super happy to say that a few weeks ago I finally received my next rotation to join on September 13 in nowhere else other than Vancouver for an Alaska, Panama Canal and South America itinerary on the Island Princess, where I will fully take on the role of Captain's Circle Hostess with a lot more event planning and hosting duties.

At the same time I also cannot wait for my two months vacation in Beautiful British Columbia during the best time of the year where I can hike, bike, swim, kayak, camp... to my heart's galore. This is what I miss the most from being on a ship, although especially lately I've been trying to fit as much in at the ports as I can, as you will see below. People also ask me what I don't like the most about working on the ship and frankly I was a little bit surprised that I could come up with very little things. The biggest thing for me is how easy it is to get sick in this confined environment; I think I can count at least 6 times that I've had the sniffles (sometimes much more than that) in the last 4 months. 

Starting from where I left off at the previous 7 day cruise at the end of May, I finally got to explore more of Kochi and Beppu. In Kochi my friend Yan and I did our own sea to sky tour on bikes to Katsurahama Beach and Mount Godaisan. 

And in the second and last port of Beppu even though I had merely 2.5 hours between work I managed to check off 3 more "hotspring hells", the second picture being a geyser like the one in Yellowstone National Park, albeit much smaller. 

The month of June flew by even faster with only one sea day on the month-end cruise, and I got to know Okinawa, Ishigaki and Miyakojima very well, from caves at Okinawa World to stunning beaches on the two small tropical islands, many times thanks a few more opportunities I got to be a tour escort.

My last time to the Japanese mainland, I finally had a chance to visit Miyajima, the beautiful small island with a multitude of temples and wild roaming deers in Hiroshima, made even better because we got hike to its highest peak Mount Misen at 535m.

In Kagoshima I revisited Sakurajima once more, this time huffing it up on wheels to the 373m Yunohira Observatory which apparently is the highest publicly accessible spot on the island.

Lastly I cannot forget Keelung! Honestly every time we dock back there it feels a little bit like coming home. As a reminder of why I love Taiwan so much, I'm still making new discoveries of hidden gems every time, thanks in part to everyone who's come to meet me so far!