I’ve been back in Oxford for about four months now and have loved seeing friends and family and being mothered by Mrs C, but those who know me will realise that I’ve been getting itchy feet again. So before I set off on my next trip, to Mexico and Cuba to start with and who knows what after that, I thought I’d get back to my blog after a lengthy break.

One of my favourite things about travelling the world is the opportunity to meet so many amazing people that come with different cultures, customs and beliefs. Without any intentions to offend, I thought I’d share some of the observations that I’ve made over the years.

What better place is there to start than the way we all sound! Being from Oxford I have the unshakable presumption that I am ‘posh’. I actually begin to believe it myself when working on ships with those that come from further north in the UK, be it as far north as Scotland like my colleague Gemma who has to work extremely hard to tone down her accent when addressing confused looking parents from all over the world, or Jack from Biiirminghaaam who feels the need to elongate words all the time.

Being British means that I am useless at learning any other language. If I, or a lot of other Brits, attempt to address somebody in their language they are likely to laugh, before launching into a better English than we speak. So I have untold respect for anybody that can speak a second language. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have hours of fun with pronunciation mistakes. Here are some of my favourites:

I had a South African friend who would talk about ‘deck six’ on the ship. If you weren’t listening closely it would sound suspiciously like a conversation about ‘dick sex’.

I heard a story, rather than witnessed, about a Ukrainian youth staff who was on the microphone during a sport session. She repeatedly shouted ‘focus guys! focus!’. Those within ear shot would turn to look for who kept shouting ‘fuck us guys! Fuck us!’.

I had Chinese colleagues that had difficulty distinguishing the sound difference between ‘shit’ and ‘sheet’. This was especially fun when parents arrived and were asked to fill in the ‘sign in sheet’.

As I said before I have huge respect for those that speak a second language, especially when they can understand me better than a lot of Americans for some reason. In the American’s defence I speak very quietly and they come from a country where everybody seems to shout everything they say.

Australia and the UK have a shared history which probably goes a way to explain some of our similarities. We drink to excess, love sport and have very sarcastic sense of humour. The only difference is that the Aussies can be annoyingly happy and upbeat all the time where us Brits love to moan. I wonder if having the sun all year round compared to wind rain and clouds has anything to do with it?

You’ll have to search long and hard if you want to find a more friendly and sharing people than the Filipino. There is no party like a Philippines party, it will have more food and drink than you can imagine, everyone is welcomed and it’s likely to end in karaoke.

Other extremely friendly races that I’ve encountered would be the Indian’s, full of life and love to dance and the Japanese an extremely humble culture that embraces the spirit of hospitality. It is an amazing country that is unbelievably clean and tranquil. I’ve had multiple experiences of Japanese people helping me with directions despite not speaking a word of English.

My favourite destination still remains Costa Rica with it’s people so friendly and welcoming. It would be wrong of me also not to mention the laid back culture of the Caribbean where people openly great strangers in the street just for the sake of saying hello. A very strange concept if you grew up in the south of England.

Finally a word on one of my favourite cultures. Passionate about everything to the point of argumentative. Some of the best food in the world. They know how to dance like no other race. The Latin American culture is one of a real love for life. They go out on nights out to just dance. They don’t even need a drink to give them the courage to get up and dance in the first place!

So that’s where I’m going now. Sat on a bus toward Manchester before flying from Manchester to Cancun to sample some more of the Latino culture. I’ll try to keep you posted of my progress.

Two years ago today I made the decision to leave the the clouds, wind and rain of the UK and go in search of warmer climates. I traded my double bed for a tiny cabin with a bunk bed, traded the football pitch for sandy beaches and the four wheels of Mazey my Mazda for the floating city I’d call home for the next five months. When I was looking at places to travel I hadn’t much considered Asia so when my first contract was offered: Mariner of the Seas, sailing out of Singapore, I wasn’t sure how to react.

I was sat writing the first draft of this post, at a Caribbean beach bar in St Cruix and reflected on how lucky I was to get that first ship. I flew out of Heathrow airport on November 10th 2015, an easy date for me to remember as it was the day before my 25th birthday. Having gone through the recruitment process for Royal Caribbean, I’d never considered not going to the Caribbean. Now I have met so many colleagues who are ‘bored’ of this beautiful paradise as their contracts always seem to be on the tropical islands where the majority of our fleet is based.

I had to pay for my initial flight as a new hire (flight home and every other one since being paid for by the company) and 16 hours worth of travelling, via Doha,  was spent unaware of the two years ahead.

I would soon learn that there is no comparison to life working on a ship. It is close to university life in the fact that you are in a bubble of your own, life outside is still turning but unless you actively go out of your way to check on it, you don’t notice. But you work a lot harder than at uni (which in my uni experience isn’t saying much). A ‘day off’ means working mornings and evenings but getting the chance to see amazing ports during the day and I would visit some really amazing ports on the Mariner mainly in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand but also touching Base in Vietnam, China, South Korea and Japan.

My birthday on the 11th was spent in a hotel in Singapore with John the drummer from the UK. The guy at the reception desk sent a birthday cake to the room as he had noticed the d.o.b. On my passport as I checked in. It was a very weird experience to share a birthday cake with a complete stranger in a foreign country but it fitted in with my spontaneous outlook on life and I took it in my stride!

The following morning, at silly a.m. I boarded the shuttle bus, along with another 50+ crew members, most of whome had been through this same process countless times before and knew what they were doing. Amongst the group I was found by two other youth staff, June and HuiFang, who had already been in contact with our manager Pierre and were under instructions to be on the look out for a new hire.

There is no mental preparation for the first time you see a cruise ship up close. Until you see it with your own eyes, your head can’t quite comprehend the size of it. How it can possibly float is still beyond me to this day! Considering the Mariner of the seas is now one of the medium sized ships in the fleet, it was still a spectacular sight.

The outside of the ship is a beautiful sight. The inside is a maze. My sense of direction is very good but I spent a week not having a clue where I was going as every corridor and staircase looks almost identical in crew areas! The first directions I learnt as a new hire was to get from my cabin, which I shared with a Brazilian light and sound technician, to the training room.  Anybody who has worked on a ship before will tell you that this is where you spend the majority of your first two weeks.

If I was to create a list of things that I don’t want to do whilst suffering from: jet lag and being tired from just finishing a previous job less than a week before, not to mention leaving-parties and early birthday parties which naturally included a lot of drinking,  I’d put training sessions (usually two a day lasting 3 hours each) right up at the top. Fire fighting training, drugs and alcohol awareness, save the waves environmental training were just a few of the things I had to sit through in the first 2 weeks and not being able to get off of the ship because of it. The first time I was able to get off was because Pierre called in a favour to chief officer safety, asking that I did my life raft training at a later date so that I could join the rest of my team on a day out to Universal Studios Singapore!

I met some amazing people on that first contract. My manager Pierre, who was delighted that I was joining him on a team full of women, Annie a fellow new hire from London, who followed me to the independence on our second contract (and we often meet up on our time off as our holidays usually match). Erin from Canada and Laura from Scotland  were only there for a few weeks but I learnt a lot from them both in that short time. And my Chinese family, too many to name who were all awesome. Every turnaround day I would try (and succeed more often than not)  to scare Tiny Tony, usually with my partner in crime Ada who I shared many an adventure with.

When working on ships, friends come and go in a short space of time. Contracts are always overlapping and that can be difficult, but, at the same time everybody has a similar attitude to life and friendships are forged very quickly and can be lasting. My brother Mykahl, a dancer from  New York was a constant companion at the crew bar. Annie Mykahl and myself would often be found hanging out until the early hours of the morning at the back deck (the crew bar on deck 5 at the back of the ship which is open and affords some spectacular views of the Asian sea particularly in the evening).

Singapore was an amazing home port and Langkawi, a small island off Malaysia, remains one of my favourite ports to date. There was always plenty to do in Phuket, Thailand, and my last two weeks on board were sailing around Japan during cherry blossom season.

Other top memories from the Mariner, which seems like a lifetime ago now include having to cut my afro, as the hotel director didn’t think it was suitable for the work (I was half expecting it and in a way kind of glad to have an excuse to finally cut it. But seeing some of the questionable hair cuts around the ship I didn’t fully see his point). I went to the cabin of Fabian from Trinidad and watched in the mirror as he turned me into a skin head.

I spent Christmas day dressed as an elf, a very ill elf wearing pink sunglasses to hide the fact that he only had 3 hours sleep. We had a 3 day charter cruise called ‘it’s the ship’ where DJs from all over the world came on board to perform for guests who had all come to party. I did a zipline tour, a bungee jump we had overnight stops in Phuket, Pattaya (near Bangkok) and in Hong Kong and so much more all crammed into just under 5 months.

The first 2 months of that contract I, along with the rest of the team worked my butt off. As a new hire I didn’t know exactly what to expect so I considered it to be normal to work between 10-12 hours every day. It turns out that we were working that hard because we were first two and then one member of staff down during high kid count in Singapore (and finally at the end of the holidays, during low kid count, we typically got a full team). In a way working that hard made me learn my job well and now I can appreciate any schedule I’m given as it doesn’t come close to that first two months on the Mariner.

So many unforgettable experiences were had in that first contract and more have followed on contracts since. I will always have a fond memory of the Mariner of the Seas, not the biggest or the best in the fleet but it will always be my first.