I timed the Hong Kong visit pretty well, it was right when the protests happened. I stayed away during the gassing, and checked it out when things had calmed down a little. It was mostly a ton of students just hanging out in the middle of the road playing on their phones:




and was very organized, with water stations all over the place, as well as lots of saran wrap and things to protect against gases:




There were a ton of students out all over most of downtown:




and this was the approximate attitude of most of them:





the interactions between the protesters and the police were cordial for the most part, nothing being thrown, no beatings being administered. Each group was respectful of the other:




and you could tell the police didn't want to hurt the protesters and were just there to do their job and make sure things didn't get out of hand. The protesters were also respectful of the police and understood that they were just there doing their jobs. It was a fairly chill scene, overall.

There was some violence and a bunch of tear gas was used at various times, but overall I'd say the bloodthirsty media really kicked things way out of proportion, which is pretty standard.

Of course, no trip to Hong Kong is complete for a 2p2er without a side trip to Macau. I touched base with a 2p2er who runs one of the poker rooms and headed over on a morning ferry to check things out.

The first thing I noticed was the Portuguese food influence everywhere:




those are pastel de natas, which are little custard pastries that are very popular in Portugal. Having had them in Portugal, I can say they were pretty much the same thing. Super tasty.

Macau was just as if not more crowded than Hong Kong:




probably because I inadvertently arrived during Golden Week, when half of the Chinese population heads south to gamble and celebrate National Day in Macau. Most gambling is banned in mainland China, so it becomes a zoo during this time.

I checked out the local places, as well as the ones from USA#1:




and it is indeed basically a condensed version of Vegas. Didn't play any poker because the lowest game offered was the equivalent of about 10-20NL, and that's too rich for my blood. I did find one of the very few craps tables and manage to win enough to cover my ferry ride and dinner at the Wynn. Min bet on craps was about $40USD due to the crazy Golden Week action.

Headed back the same evening (rathole hotel rooms were running $400USD+) and checked out one of the best Hong Kong landmarks devoted to its most famous citizen:




and made a visit to a local noodle place with another 2p2er currently living in Hong Kong:




as well as a later run to one of the night food stands:




which serve various deep fried seafood and meats on long skewers. Also hit up that kabab place in the background another night. Always nice to find kebab as a backup wherever you go.

Hong Kong was a great place to spend a few weeks, but eventually it was time to move on and find my new home on the container ship. The container ships all pull into Hong Kong a little north of Kowloon, but still very close to the city center, so it was only a brief train ride away that I found the port area and after passing through security (after being verified by the ship agent and the security teams), I made my way to this behemoth:




my home for the next few weeks.

I wasn't really sure what to expect. The first thing that happens is a long climb up a very steep set of grated steps attached to the side of the ship. Some of the crew pointed me toward the officer's admin area, and I met up with one of the officers who had me sit tight until the captain arrived. The captain was a very jolly German fellow with a great sense of humor. In fact, all of the officers except one were German, which I had read is pretty common. The one that was not was Polish. All of the crew members were Filipino. There are about a half dozen officers and maybe 15-16 crew members.

The captain talked with me for a few minutes, then had the chief steward show me to my room, which was a lot nicer than I was expecting:




I took that photo standing next to the door of the en suite bathroom, complete with shower. Around the corner to the right is a pretty standard euro bed which you can partially see. That's the room. This one happened to be used by the previous captain on the prior passage, so I was in the top of the line quarters considering what was available. No internet access, but that little TV did have a DVD player attached. The windows faced out to the rear of the ship, and I was on the second to top floor, G deck.

I found this paper sitting on my desk:




which went over the basics of what to expect.

Walking around the superstructure (the big white thing that sticks up and isn't containers) is repetitive. All the halls look like this:




We had a set schedule for meals, here's what one week looked like:




That schedule is for the meals that the officers ate. As a passenger, we were allowed to eat with the officers. I was speaking with one of the crew about a week in and he asked what I thought so far. I mentioned that while the food was filling, it was extremely German. Think endless sausages and boiled veggies. The crew guy laughed and told me to come eat with the crew instead. I did that and it was a world of difference. They ate mostly Filipino favorites which was a welcome change from endless sausages.

Here's one of the standard dishes in the officer's mess hall:




I don't have a photo of any of the Filipino foods, but imagine fish head stew, spicy beef soups, stuff like that. Once I found out I could eat with the crew, I was there about 70% of the time.

There were two other passengers, a young Swiss-German couple on an around-the-world honeymoon. I told them about the eating with the crew option and they tried it a few times, but I think it was a bit adventurous for them, they mostly ate with the officers.

We mostly had free run of the ship, but had to have permission to enter the bridge or any of the engine areas. Here's what the bridge looked like:




That's taken from the port (left) side looking starboard (right)

Here's a closeup of those sweet chairs they use:




Most of my time was spent either hanging out in my cabin watching DVDs from the ship's DVD library (sadly most of which was German), or hanging out with the two other passengers or some off duty crew. The officers had a rec room but no one was ever in it except for one officer who worked, slept, and played Call of Duty. The crew were super friendly and told us to swing by their rec room whenever we wanted. Here's a look at that, how it usually looked:




Karaoke was the default activity. These guys spend about 9 of every 12 months on a ship like this, so they get to be good singers pretty quickly. Listening to them sing Journey songs sounded like listening to studio recordings. They loved Journey because the lead singer has been replaced with a Filipino guy and they were all very proud of that and loved to sing Journey as a result. The system had one of those little auto-scorers built in, and I don't think I ever saw a crew get anything below a 95/100. I think my best was an 83.

Because they are on the ship all the time, they really miss their families, so songs about being homesick are super popular. One of the songs I did was John Denver's Country Roads which is all about missing your home. They hadn't heard it before and were instant fans, singing along passionately.

The entire crew/officer brigade didn't really get together very often, but we did have one ship barbeque about halfway through the trip. The food selections were hilarious. There was a huge container of about a dozen different kinds of sausages for the Germans, then the Filipinos had this:




Those are fish heads in the lower left. Yes, of course I had one. The square tray in the rear is octopus arms. Had more than one of those. It was grill your own, so you just threw stuff on the grill and served yourself. We did this outside, of course. Had a great sunset view while grilling in the literal middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The only stop we made between Hong Kong and Los Angeles was in Taiwan. I'm glad we did, because my built in trackpad on my laptop had stopped working, so I went in search of a cheap laptop or mouse in Kaoshing where we stopped. I figured I'd just pick up a used laptop for cheap and be done with it, but those were nowhere to be found. Anything old was $300+, anything new was $1000+. I was amazed to find someone selling eMachines (google those!) for about $200 each, including a layer of dust on the case.

This was computer alley:






where you could find pretty much any electronics you could imagine. I ended up picking up a mouse, some bluetooth speakers, some earbuds, and a few other things.

I also stopped into a small grocery store to pick up some snacks for the trip across the Pacific:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/pp1****.jpg[/img]


Not pictured is some beef jerky that had nuts in it. What? Who puts nuts in jerky?!

Not sure why it's disallowing that last photo, the 4 blanked characters are: h t C f

is that some kind of acronym for a bad word or phrase or something?

awesome! finally got to see life on the container ship. Did you ever get to walk around the actual containers? My company imports containers from India, Brazil, and Italy and I'm fascinated with the process that brings them here.

that's amazing

They allowed us to walk around the containers but there's not much to see. You are just walking around huge stacks of containers.

I'll try to get another update in this weekend, should have decent internet access for a bit.

In other news, the sailboat I'm on just decided to not do the Atlantic crossing. So I'm kind of stuck in Mallorca at the moment. There are worse places to be stuck.

I'll either find another sailboat to do the crossing on or I may just head to SE Asia and explore there for a couple of months instead. I looked into getting there via train but it would involve crossing either Russia (visas are a pain) or Iran (visas are lol difficult for US citizens, including land transit visas). It's also possible to go thru Armenia / Azerbaijan and then take a ferry across the Caspian into Kazakhstan, but that still means crossing thru Afghanistan unless I want to try for another China visa (another pain). Bummer that most of the transit visas seem restricted to flights and airports.

I'll probably just fly into Singapore from Barcelona or something similar instead. Then it would likely be Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. Then fly back to the US for December holidays with family.

We'll see what happens. That's about as close as I get to an actual plan.

Damn, travelling on a container ship seems much nicer than I thought it would be.

yeah really

Thanks for the update Chop. Great read, as always.

Holy crap, it looks nicer than what I imagined a cruise ship would be.

Glad you guys are still enjoying this thread. I'll keep it going as long as there is interest. I am trying to upload the last set of the container ship photos but Imgur is not cooperating.

The digs on the container ship were a surprise to me. I didn't think it would be anywhere near that nice. It was especially nice to have my own en suite shower with hot water after crossing the Atlantic with no hot water and then taking trains across Europe & Asia. It felt like being in a small hotel room. I'm going to go back through the photos and see if I can find any of the Filipino food from their crew mess, that was good stuff. Not sure I took any, but if I did I'll put one or two up.

Next up (once Imgur starts cooperating again) will be arriving in the Los Angeles port, then taking a train across the USA to arrive back in DC where I started. Around the world without a plane, that was pretty sweet. Then another passage from the USA mainland down to the Virgin Islands, I have a story or two to tell from that one.

I'll be skipping the Vegas stuff (was there the first few months of 2015) because I doubt anyone wants to read about Vegas, but then we'll pick back up in late March 2015 on the sailboat that I sailed from Panama to French Polynesia. Got some sweet fish pics there, I think I already posted a couple. Then it's on to Europe & the Med where I am now, and we should be caught up to present day after that.

Just got an interest notification from someone who is going to sail from French Polynesia to New Zealand, that sounds pretty sweet. Also heard back from a catamaran doing the Atlantic crossing that I had my eye on for the last week or so. Also have a monohull that wants to talk with me about doing the Atlantic crossing. Maybe I'll end up sailing the next few months instead of the SE Asia backpacking stuff, who knows? Still researching visa requirements regardless.

ever thought of making a digital book with all your stories/pics?

I'd buy it just to express my thanks for continuing to update, I kinda live vicariously through you.

writing up Vegas would be cool if only to see how your interests/schedule changes when you're at "homebase".

Good stuff Chop.
If you happen to be bored, spent part of a summer vacation at a vacation house in Alaro. Even had a spring fed "swimming pool". The city itself is like walking through a medieval town. Tight alleys and high walls.

Container ship update didn't disappoint!

Love your thread Chopstick. Great stuff. My old man always had a sailboat when I was growing up but we never did anything more than sail around Galveston Bay for leisure. Nonetheless I loved it and would love to get more time on a boat. I'm vacariously living it out through your thread.

But I have questions...

What is the one place or one trek you would absoutely never sail to or through?

What is the one place or one trek that you would love to sail if you haven't already or what is your absolute favorite?

What was the alcohol situation like on the container ship? I guess I always assumed off duty crew spent most of their time drinking - since that seems to be fairly standard for remote jobs with not a lot of options during down time.

Nothing really to add except +1 for more. Great thread.

Read through the thread this week and wanted to add to all the props. Great stuff, Chop. Looking forward to your future updates.

Always wondered what it was like booking a berth on a cargo ship. Not cheap, but it sounds an interesting way to travel and I gather you get a pretty good cabin. Turns out yes, that's how it is.

Wow, just finding this thread. A+

Obv grunch- Chop, what do(did?) you do for a living? Your life seems pretty awesome. Well done.

They say timing is everything...

Glad you guys are still enjoying this. To answer a few questions & comments.

Book - people tell me to write a book, but I see three problems with that. The first is that I doubt more than a few people would want to read it. The second is that if I were to write one, I'd want it to be good, which means I'd put a lot of effort into it with way more details and photos than I put into these updates, which means it would take a lot of time, which is not appealing given the first problem. The third problem is that I'm pretty lazy and would rather spend that time traveling.

Vegas - writing about Vegas doesn't seem like it would be interesting. It's easy to go to Vegas and lots of people have and do. I figure people are more interested in the less common stuff like sailing and international travel. If I wrote about Vegas, I think it would look like a lot of the trip reports you see over in LVL, along with a bunch of boring stuff about equities analysis & valuation. I'll give it a shot if more people express interest, but I don't want to bore people.


Went by there, as close as Soller, while doing a full circuit of Mallorca. Went into a bunch of small towns for lunch and stuff but nothing really memorable. They all start to look the same after doing it a few times.


There isn't any place I wouldn't sail if I was properly prepared. The least likely places are in/around the coast of Somalia & Venezuela due to piracy. I previously would stick the Indian Ocean in there but piracy has dropped there significantly over the last few years. Piracy is a very real threat. Most people think of piracy in terms of tankers and container ships being boarded like in the Captain Phillips movie, but it's also a danger for small pleasure craft like sailboats. Here are a bunch of recent piracy reports from cruisers. I have a story about that when I get around to telling you guys about the Pacific crossing I did earlier this year.

No favorites. Different places hold different appeals. It's like trying to choose between filet mignon and lobster. Sailing across the Pacific over huge rolling waves with the spinnaker out is completely different than bobbing along in 45 feet of crystal clear water off an island in the Bahamas which is different than hunting lobsters in Bayahibe with a Hawaiian sling. Looking forward to checking out the Maldives one day, and I'm headed over to SE Asia next week.

They would drink, but not to excess. There was a bunch of Filipino beer on board that was always available in the crew rec room, but everyone was mostly disciplined when it came to drinking. I never saw anyone get more than heavily buzzed. They also spent a lot of time hanging out in each other's cabins playing guitar and just chilling out.


Worked my ass off doing boring IT/internet stuff in my 20s in a few fields, then moved into management, then finance. Currently semi retired but I do some finance stuff now and then for myself and the occasional corporate strategy consulting gig for others (if it's interesting enough) every now and then. The corp strat gigs are fun because you get to be the guy that tells the emperor he is not wearing any clothes, and get paid to do it.

Life is confirmed awesome. I can die at any time with no regrets whatsoever.




In current news, I've decided I'm going to head to SE Asia instead of getting on another sailboat crossing the Atlantic. I land in Singapore on Wednesday. I did get a pretty nice sailing offer the day after I bought my plane ticket, but it's not good enough to change my mind.

Was originally thinking of heading to SE Asia from Europe overland through either Iran or Aremenia & the 'stans, but visas are a royal pain in the ass for both routes. Also looked into going through Saudi and taking a ferry from Oman to Pakistan, but same visa difficulties with Saudi. One thing I've learned in the last few weeks is that transit visas are mostly geared toward people traveling by air in the mid east region. Land transit visas are either non-existent or extremely difficult to come by. Could always go for regular visas, but the processing times are longer than I feel like waiting having been stuck in Mallorca as long as I've been. I've got cabin fever and want some spicy noodles.

So the current plan is to head over to Singapore on Wednesday, then spend the next 3-6 months exploring Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, India, Mynamar, and possibly Japan (already spent a month backpacking there once) and South Korea. May also head over to Micronesia / Palau as well.

Right now all I know is that I'll be in Singapore come Wednesday.

They let us explore the engine room in the container ship one day. It was one of the few areas of the ship that we had to be accompanied by someone, so the Chief Engineer took us around for a few hours and answered all of our questions. The engine room (or rooms, more appropriately) were enormous as you'd expect. This was as we were crossing, so the crew was busy working while we toured:






but they were cool about it.

I also dug up a photo of the officer's rec room:




No one was ever in there except one officer who was playing Call of Duty all the time. I went in there to raid their DVD collection now and again, but I don't think there were ever more than two people in that room. The crew rec room almost always had at least 3-4 people in it outside of prime working hours, and was usually packed in the evening.

My cell obviously didn't work in the middle of the ocean, but the GPS did. Here's a sweet screenshot of being in the middle of the ocean headed for USA#1:



speaking of sweet shots from the middle of the ocean, here's a pod of about 80 dolphins that showed up one day. I took this leaning over the bow. Lots of them are airborne in that photo, but that was just a fraction of the pod. Every single splash you see is a dolphin as well.