CRUISE CONTROL
THE SILVER WHISPER, OUR SHIP, IS BRILLIANT WHITE, sleek of hull. We finally go aboard on a late afternoon, after spending three action-packed pre-cruise days in Hong Kong. Tonight, we’ll sleep in port. Tomorrow, at sunset, we set sail for two weeks—from Hong Kong to Vietnam, then to Bangkok, then on to Singapore.
Our sixth-deck Veranda Suite may be compact, but the closet is bigger than mine in New York. And from our teak balcony we behold Hong Kong’s Symphony of Lights, a nightly hullabaloo of lasers and LEDs erupting over the feng shui–jumbled skyscrapers across Victoria Harbour.
Our butler, Ram, appears—extravagantly—in black tails and white gloves. He is young, Indian, slim, and handsome, and addresses me as “Miss Anya” and my partner as “Mr. Barry.”
“A butler!” I whisper to Barry. The word stirs the inner Bolshevik in me. After all, I grew up in the Soviet Union, a classless society where butlers were pompous stooges in anticapitalist film farces. But, realizing Ram isn’t going to be happy unless he’s making us happy, we resolve to explore the seemingly limitless room service options at our disposal. Which is how we end up with a pre-sail silver tray of petite blini with caviar. Now my inner oligarch wakes up and hollers a heavily accented khello!
Stretching out on our balcony with the last of the blini, I take in the scene, still somewhat in disbelief. Until this particular opportunity came along, I could hardly imagine myself on a luxury cruise. My usual mode of travel features renting a flat and exploring a place for a while—on my own terms. How could I relinquish control? The only cruise I’ve done in my life, from Soviet Odessa, was as a six-year-old with my mom. It was a very classless-society cruise; by that I mean 12 vodka-reeking comrades per cabin a good story.
