In Transit On The High Seas: Day Five
3/12: Changes in Latitudes, No Corresponding Changes in Attitudes
I actually signed up for one of the ship's excursions; a two-hour tour of Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. I, along with about 25 other passengers, climbed aboard a bus that took us through downtown Nassau to Fort Fincastle. We spent a good 20 minutes there, long enough for me to take some pictures. It's not a large fort--quite the contrary--but it was located on a tall enough hill to provide a good view of the harbor. I suppose that was the point.
Next stop was the immediately adjacent Queen's Staircase. This is a slave-carved stairway leading down into a small natural canyon, originally designed to provide quick access from the fort to the beach. It's called the Queen's Staircase after Queen Victoria, whom the Bahamians give a great deal of credit for ending the British slave trade; she's a popular figure, unsurprisingly, with a statue right in front of the main government building despite the fact that the Bahamas have not been a British territory since the mid-Seventies.
After that, the bus took us to Fort Charlotte, a rather larger fort directly overlooking the harbor. Impressive, but I think I didn't miss much by not paying more to get the internal tour.
The last stop on the tour was the Pirate Museum. If you know nothing about pirates, you will learn things here. If you're as much a pirate geek as most of my friends, you will not. I suppose it qualifies as a museum in a broad sense, though there are few actual artifacts on display. It's basically a series of dioramas about Pirate Life and Important Pirate Events. And there's a gift shop attached, with the usual suspects on display: pirate hats, pirate flags, shot glasses with clever sayings (which I later found in one of the ship's gift shops as well!), and some interesting piratical toys.
As tours go, it was kind of a bust. Imagine the most generic touristy tour you can, and it was about like that. That said, it's not like I know enough about Nassau to strike out on my own, so at least it gave me something to do for the morning. I had a leisurely lunch at a little restaurant nearby, tried the local beer (Kalik. Not bad!), and took my time walking back to the ship. Other than that, I have generally stayed out of the sun; my sunburn is easing as expected, and hopefully I can spend a little more time outside tomorrow. I haven't decided if I want to spend the $100+ for the Jeep Safari Tour; honestly, as I write this, it's probably too late. Oh well.
If I ever had any doubt that nothing beats tourism on your own terms, this would have dispelled it. The main industry in the Bahamas, by far, is tourism. And I wonder if that's ruining what tourists come to see. That may seem like a bit of a cliche, but there's a reason for that. The stalls selling Genuine Hand-Bahamian-Made Crafts are all selling the same things; the woven bags they make and sell have Dora the Explorer embroidered onto them, or a Disney Princess of some kind or another. You see the same shops and fast-food joints here that you see in downtown areas in America, because they know that tourists will seek out the familiar. There's truth to that; I do it, too, especially when I'm tired. You stop feeling like taking a chance, and you go straight for that McDonald's just because you know what you'll find there, you can get what you want without really having to make a decision, and then you can go back to your hotel and go to bed.
End of rant, for now. I've been trying to catch up on my Asian action movies. As I mentioned before, I finally got to finish watching The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. This one is a classic, featuring Gordon Liu (in what I think was his first Shaw Brothers feature), and it consists of a paper-thin plot wrapped around a movie-length training montage. Everyone likes a montage, right? This movie is for you, and it lives up to all of the cheesy acting, fight scenes, and dialogue you expect from a Shaw Bros. flick.
This very evening, I also watched The Protector, starring Tony Jaa. If you've seen Ong Bak, then this one will seem awfully familiar. Instead of "Oh, no, Innocent Country Boy Who Is Also A Terrifying Muay Thai Badass! Evil big-city-dwellers have stolen the head of our Buddha statue! You must go save it!", simply replace Buddha-head with Elephants, and you're pretty much set. Tony Jaa is still eminently watchable, though if you're prone to cringing at a bit of kung fu ultraviolence, you may get a little twitchy at points. This is the first Dragon Dynasty release I've seen where I wasn't too keen on how they did it; specifically, the movie has been re-edited and had new music added by The RZA, of the Wu-Tang Clan. The introduction of rap and rock music seems intrusive. But the special features restore a lot of my good will toward the edition. And the movie itself features some spectacular fight scenes, including a roughly five-minute-long scene that was shot all in one take using a Steadicam. That speaks well for Tony Jaa's stamina as, choreographed or not, a fight scene that long is just grueling (you can tell that he starts to wear down toward the end).
A couple of nights ago, I visited the sushi bar here on the ship. I hate to say it, but it was disappointing. We're on the ocean; why didn't the fish seem fresh? Tuna, especially, should not have a "fishy" taste to it. The variety isn't bad (and the octopus was actually quite good), and the selection of sake available was also impressive, but overall, the sushi bar here gets a C+. The pickled ginger was mushy. Bleh.
I actually signed up for one of the ship's excursions; a two-hour tour of Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. I, along with about 25 other passengers, climbed aboard a bus that took us through downtown Nassau to Fort Fincastle. We spent a good 20 minutes there, long enough for me to take some pictures. It's not a large fort--quite the contrary--but it was located on a tall enough hill to provide a good view of the harbor. I suppose that was the point.
Next stop was the immediately adjacent Queen's Staircase. This is a slave-carved stairway leading down into a small natural canyon, originally designed to provide quick access from the fort to the beach. It's called the Queen's Staircase after Queen Victoria, whom the Bahamians give a great deal of credit for ending the British slave trade; she's a popular figure, unsurprisingly, with a statue right in front of the main government building despite the fact that the Bahamas have not been a British territory since the mid-Seventies.
After that, the bus took us to Fort Charlotte, a rather larger fort directly overlooking the harbor. Impressive, but I think I didn't miss much by not paying more to get the internal tour.
The last stop on the tour was the Pirate Museum. If you know nothing about pirates, you will learn things here. If you're as much a pirate geek as most of my friends, you will not. I suppose it qualifies as a museum in a broad sense, though there are few actual artifacts on display. It's basically a series of dioramas about Pirate Life and Important Pirate Events. And there's a gift shop attached, with the usual suspects on display: pirate hats, pirate flags, shot glasses with clever sayings (which I later found in one of the ship's gift shops as well!), and some interesting piratical toys.
As tours go, it was kind of a bust. Imagine the most generic touristy tour you can, and it was about like that. That said, it's not like I know enough about Nassau to strike out on my own, so at least it gave me something to do for the morning. I had a leisurely lunch at a little restaurant nearby, tried the local beer (Kalik. Not bad!), and took my time walking back to the ship. Other than that, I have generally stayed out of the sun; my sunburn is easing as expected, and hopefully I can spend a little more time outside tomorrow. I haven't decided if I want to spend the $100+ for the Jeep Safari Tour; honestly, as I write this, it's probably too late. Oh well.
If I ever had any doubt that nothing beats tourism on your own terms, this would have dispelled it. The main industry in the Bahamas, by far, is tourism. And I wonder if that's ruining what tourists come to see. That may seem like a bit of a cliche, but there's a reason for that. The stalls selling Genuine Hand-Bahamian-Made Crafts are all selling the same things; the woven bags they make and sell have Dora the Explorer embroidered onto them, or a Disney Princess of some kind or another. You see the same shops and fast-food joints here that you see in downtown areas in America, because they know that tourists will seek out the familiar. There's truth to that; I do it, too, especially when I'm tired. You stop feeling like taking a chance, and you go straight for that McDonald's just because you know what you'll find there, you can get what you want without really having to make a decision, and then you can go back to your hotel and go to bed.
End of rant, for now. I've been trying to catch up on my Asian action movies. As I mentioned before, I finally got to finish watching The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. This one is a classic, featuring Gordon Liu (in what I think was his first Shaw Brothers feature), and it consists of a paper-thin plot wrapped around a movie-length training montage. Everyone likes a montage, right? This movie is for you, and it lives up to all of the cheesy acting, fight scenes, and dialogue you expect from a Shaw Bros. flick.
This very evening, I also watched The Protector, starring Tony Jaa. If you've seen Ong Bak, then this one will seem awfully familiar. Instead of "Oh, no, Innocent Country Boy Who Is Also A Terrifying Muay Thai Badass! Evil big-city-dwellers have stolen the head of our Buddha statue! You must go save it!", simply replace Buddha-head with Elephants, and you're pretty much set. Tony Jaa is still eminently watchable, though if you're prone to cringing at a bit of kung fu ultraviolence, you may get a little twitchy at points. This is the first Dragon Dynasty release I've seen where I wasn't too keen on how they did it; specifically, the movie has been re-edited and had new music added by The RZA, of the Wu-Tang Clan. The introduction of rap and rock music seems intrusive. But the special features restore a lot of my good will toward the edition. And the movie itself features some spectacular fight scenes, including a roughly five-minute-long scene that was shot all in one take using a Steadicam. That speaks well for Tony Jaa's stamina as, choreographed or not, a fight scene that long is just grueling (you can tell that he starts to wear down toward the end).
A couple of nights ago, I visited the sushi bar here on the ship. I hate to say it, but it was disappointing. We're on the ocean; why didn't the fish seem fresh? Tuna, especially, should not have a "fishy" taste to it. The variety isn't bad (and the octopus was actually quite good), and the selection of sake available was also impressive, but overall, the sushi bar here gets a C+. The pickled ginger was mushy. Bleh.
posted by Matt at
11:52 PM
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