Thatâs why most people donât travel this way.
They do offer tours of the cargo hold area, but otherwise itâs off limits in other times. Thatâs about the most interesting thing youâll see.
Thatâs why most people donât travel this way.
They do offer tours of the cargo hold area, but otherwise itâs off limits in other times. Thatâs about the most interesting thing youâll see.
Well, I suspect that the people who do decide to donât do it so they can work on their Netflix, thatâs more what I was saying.
Curious where youâre getting the info youâre posting from? Have you done it?
Iâm a professionally licensed boat pilot. Iâve piloted boats in Kaohsiung harbor but havenât worked on a container ship, but many of my friends are in the shipping industry and do it regularly.
What do you think goes on in these cargo ships? What kind of interesting stories are you expecting? The crew is usually 90% male, and when theyâre not resting in their cabins watching movies, theyâre drinking in the galley. Most of my friends do it because they enjoy the solitude, and not because of interesting stories to tell.
Shore leaves are the most interesting part, but thatâs the part where you donât need to travel on a container ship to experience.
I would imagine itâs largely boring and slow and isolating, which I suspect is much of the point for the people who choose to do it as a passenger.
What Iâm saying is that I doubt those that do are using the experience to âliterally spend the whole day sitting in your cabin watching Netflix, or wander around the corridorsâ and have ânot much to tellâ, because it wouldnât make sense when a flight ticket would be several times cheaper.
Workers maybe, when theyâre not working, but I think passengers would want to get more out of it.
I looked into it a few years ago, but for me it didnât seem justified, even when I had a longer attention span and greater ability to keep myself occupied without electronics.
Itâs actually a budget way to travel around the world. If you pay for a flight to every single destination where the ship would stop for shore leave and pay for a hotel at each destination, taking the boat ends up being cheaper.
Probably wouldnât make sense if youâre just going straight from Kaohsiung or Keelung to Los Angeles though.
Eh. It doesnât look like that to me, judging from the typical prices I saw online (US$100â150 per day, for example â not sure how accurate they are).
Itâs an odd comparison too. Of course nobody is going to take a vacation/travel around the world by flying from one container ship port to the next, but spending 40â50 or whatever days paying to travel just to have the odd few hours/couple of nights in each place doesnât seem likely to be cheaper at all. The only way I think itâd make sense is if theyâre getting something else from the process/solitude.
Hmmm this seems a bit high. Even my 7-day cruise with Royal Caribbean was only $120/day. Everyone I know who works on cargo ships tell me they sometimes have random passengers onboard because itâs a budget way to travel around the world.
Itâs possible the agencies who advertise widely online are ripping people off, and that most people actually just make arrangements themselves through other channels.