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Cruise Ships – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin. Welcome back to the commentary for Cruise Ships. If you remember in the conversation, Club Med was mentioned. So I’ve actually…I’ve been on several cruises, as I think I mentioned in the conversation. And I’ve actually stayed at a Club Med one time and I thought I would talk a little bit about that experience.

I happened to be living in Thailand when I stayed at a Club Med. Before I moved to Thailand, I had two friends, it was a married couple, they had told me that they were going to come visit me. And I didn’t…I

thought that would be great if they came but I didn’t know that they would really, that they actually would come. I was uncertain.

So sure enough, they came to visit. Well, while I was living in Thailand, I actually met a Thai man that I started dating. He was my boyfriend. So I was with him when my two friends came over to visit. I think they came for two weeks, or maybe a little bit less than two weeks. So it was very interesting. They came, I was living in Bangkok. They came there.

This was their first time coming to Thailand, so they were very excited. It was something very different for them, coming from America. They’d never really traveled to any other countries as far as I know of, at least not halfway around the world to Thailand. So it was a very exciting trip for them. And when they got there, I was asking them what their plans were while they were going to be there. Y’know, I didn’t know if they were going to stay in Bangkok the whole time or what they were planning.

So they actually let me know that they wanted to go down to Phuket and stay at a Club Med. So Phuket is a province in the southern part of Thailand. Some countries have provinces, we have states. It’s very similar, I think, provinces and states. So Phuket is a province and it’s one really big island and then there’s many smaller islands around it. I think I read there’s about 32 islands, small islands, around the big one.

The big island, Phuket, is so big you don’t even really feel like you’re on an island. And I think that’s where most people go when they travel there and that’s where most people live. So my two friends wanted to go to Phuket. They were really, how should I say, they really liked fishing, especially deep sea fishing. What deep sea fishing means, going way out into the ocean to fish. So they wanted to do that in Phuket.

They had read that deep sea fishing’s really good there so they wanted to go stay at a Club Med and they wanted my boyfriend and I to go with them. Now, I had never stayed at a Club Med before and my boyfriend had not either. And I told them, y’know, it’s…my boyfriend and I were not making a lot of money at that time so I told them it’s a little out of our price range…it’s a little too expensive of a trip for us to fly there.

They wanted to fly. They didn’t want to take the train or take a bus, they wanted to fly to Phuket from Bangkok to make it shorter. I said it’s a little expensive for us to fly there and then to stay at Club Med because Club Med is an expensive resort, can be expensive. And my friends said don’t worry. We’re going to pay for everything, for both of you. And I thought, wow, well this is really nice, and okay, thank you.

So we both agreed to go with them. And I’m trying to remember, it might actually have been the first time that my boyfriend had ever been on an airplane before. I can’t remember if it was that time or not. I know that I was definitely with him his first time flying on an airplane. So that was a big deal. I think it was that trip. That was really exciting.

We get down to Phuket and my boyfriend had been there before but I’d never been to Phuket. We go immediately from the airport, I think we took a taxi and we went immediately to Club Med. So for my boyfriend, this was really exciting because it’s the fanciest, most expensive place he had ever stayed at that time. And I can remember, we got to our room, we went into our room and he wanted me to take pictures of him all over, different places around the bedroom, because it was so nice and he was just so excited to be there. It was a new experience for him.

The stay was…our stay there was very interesting. The grounds, the area around Club Med was very nice and there were all sorts of activities you could participate in like volleyball games, for example. I think maybe they had equipment for playing baseball, all kinds of games. They had stuff there available that you could use to play different games.

They had a really nice swimming pool. I think only one swimming pool. There was a spa, a really nice spa. There was…they had their own section of the beach, now this was interesting, you had to be staying at Club Med, and I know resorts, other resorts can be this way also, you had to be staying at Club Med to actually come and be on this part of the beach that was right there at their resort. So they had many chairs and umbrellas, if you didn’t want to be in the sun, they had all of these that were a part of the resort. And they actually had people out there to make sure that you were from the resort.

And I think they had jet skis you could use. A jet ski is just like…it’s a small boat that you can either sit on or stand on and it’s…it can go really fast, really small. It’s only for like one or two people. And I can remember…and I think that there were shops there, y’know, everything, like I said in the conversation, everything you would need or want was right there at the resort, at Club Med.

And then the food. This was the most fun and exciting for me to see how my boyfriend reacted, to see his experience. Because the food was buffet style, like on a cruise ship, like we talked about on a cruise ship. So it was…we came into the dining room, y’know, the area where we all would eat our meals, breakfast, lunch or dinner.

And the food would already be there, prepared. A lot of food. So much food, just an unbelievable amount of food. And it was Thai food but it was also Western food and maybe even food from other countries. Just so much food. And I have seen buffets before from cruise ships, for example, where there’s just a lot of food, more than is probably needed. I’ve seen this before.

My boyfriend had never seen it. And so his…the first time we went in, just looking at his face was actually funny because his eyes just got really big and his mouth dropped open. And so we went…we took our place and we went up and we got our food, whatever food we wanted to eat, and we went and sat down and he had only gotten a little bit of food.

And so when he finished eating everything on his plate, I asked him, do you want to go get more? And he had no idea that you could just eat as much as you wanted to. And so he went back up and put so much more on his plate, I think it’s probably the most he’d eaten in a long time anyway. He just kept eating. And it was so much food that he had never even had before, also. Because many of it was Western food. So it was…that was quite an interesting and fun experience for him.

At one point in time, he and I actually left the resort and we wanted to walk in to the closest town just to leave the resort. It was starting to feel like we weren’t even in Thailand. It was actually kind of strange. It felt very Western. I felt like I could have been in…in a Western country and it didn’t feel at all like I was in Thailand.

And so we were kind of missing that and we decided one day to walk into the closest town just to go see some local Thai culture. So we did. I think we went to a bar and we went to some shops and then we went back to the resort. It was…yeah, it was a very interesting, fun experience, especially since neither me nor my boyfriend had ever traveled like that before. It was…it was fun to get to experience that.

So that’s my commentary for this month’s conversation Cruise Ships. I hope you have a great month and I’ll see you next time.