DAY 2 - August 15, 2004 - Nassau, Bahamas

When we got off the boat the next morning, I don’t think any of us really had any idea how big the boat was until we were standing next to it on dry land and looking up.

As we walked down the gangway, there were tour operators gathered at the end of the pier, eager for some business as they spent part of the day showing off the island of Nassau.

Aunt Ying is the master of bargaining. Nobody can do it better and when she saw us all beginning to giggle, she said in Hakka, “Don’t smile. Don’t smile.”

She talked down the price from $25 to $20, though at the end of it all, she only gave the guy $18 for each of us.

She pointed at all of us. “Do you know these are all my kids? You have to give me a better price.”

There were two other middle-aged couples from Canada already sitting in the van and they’d apparently paid $25.

One of the women asked Aunt Ying how much she paid and Aunt Ying said, “Oh, the same.” She managed to keep a straight face through it all.

The bus driver took us through the city, pointing out various government buildings and places. Everything seemed to be colour coded. I think most of the government buildings were in bright pink, while all the schools were yellow with white trim.

I know we’re in the Bahamas and it’s supposed to be paradise, but it actually looked pretty run down.

When I turned around to look at the guys, I noticed Darren was fast asleep.

Aunt Ying pursed her lips and shook her head, mumbling something about how her sons really knew how to put her money to good use.

The first place the guy took us was the Water Tower, which was the highest point of the island and where we could take a picture of our ship by the harbour and look down at the rest of the island.

Walking down the Water Tower wasn’t the greatest idea. It had a long spiralling staircase that wound tightly around the elevator. It was stifling inside and if you weren’t careful, you could wind up slipping and breaking your neck.

Outside, there were markets set up with all sorts of junk you could buy.

There were the usual 3 T-shirts for $10 and scary African masks and colourful bobbles.

There was also the remnants of a miniature fort right at the base of the tower, which we walked up to and managed to take a picture of the Water Tower.

There were two main things Aunt Ying said we had to do. The first was to visit Atlantis, a posh resort where a room can cost you upwards of $25,000 a night, and the second was to have conch salad.

“The conch is for making babies,” he said, probably thinking Aunt Ying and Uncle Wei Kuo shouldn’t be thinking about eating any conch since all of us were apparently their kids.

“That’s good,” Uncle Wei Kuo said, nodding, as he sat up front with the guy.

Atlantis is a gorgeous, sprawling resort that stretched out in hues of red brick and loomed impressively from the distance. When we arrived along the palm-tree lined road, we pulled up to find a fountain with golden flying horses.

There were giant wall murals hanging on either side of the grand entrance and ushers waiting by the doors to open them for you. Everything was in perfect symmetry and what you saw on the left, you saw mirrorred on your right.

As we walked across this little balcony towards the front doors, you could see the huge salt water reservoir that was a part of the aquarium that you could view from inside.

Walking into the cool interior, we found an amazing aquarium where we saw all sorts of fish and huge sting rays.

If I’m honest about it, though, I think I would have been terrified if I’d seen a huge sting ray floating ominously by.

Daniel had done something similar last year and said that if you make any sudden movements, a whole bunch of sting rays will swim right towards you and if you’re not careful, you can get stung by the tail.

So maybe it was a good thing we never managed to get in on the sting ray excursion that the cruise was offering at the Nassau stop.

There was a shopping concourse that we walked around and we went through the casino.

Outside of the casino was this huge chair that everyone seemed to want to take a picture in front of. There was a huge camp of people there and instead of waiting around for our chance, like Theresa and Daniel did, the rest of us decided to explore the resort’s grounds and take pictures.

We were all pretty exhausted and tired by the time we finished touring the place. The driver said he wouldn’t be back until 12:30 but we were ready to leave at 11. We wound up sitting in the lobby and we all dozed off.

Flo snapped several pictures of us in various states of sleep, all looking wilted and sad.

While we were sleeping, Aunt Ying was busy lining up in front of the giant Atlantis chair, thinking we were right behind her. When she got to the front of the line, she turned around and discovered she was all by herself. She came marching back to find us all sleeping.

There was this one annoying family that took half a million pictures on that stupid chair. They took one with the daughter and parents and then with all the female cousins and then one with the boy cousin lying on top of their laps.

Just take one for God’s sake! After they finally left, Aunt Ying and Uncle Wei Kuo bolted for the chair and were busily squishing themselves in place when we realized we needed someone to take the picture for us.

The stay in Nassau was relatively short. We had to be back at the ship by two and once the tour ended, Derek’s parents and Theresa decided to tour the little shopping area while the rest of us hoofed it back to the boat to get something to eat.

That evening, we would have the first of our formal nights.

One of my favourite experiences from the trip was having dinner.

Our waitress, Hera, and waiter, Ramon, were both from the Philippines and it turns out Hera is my age.

She was really sweet and had this habit of always addressing us as “nice people.”

“Hello nice people!” she’d greet us whenever we sat down. By the second day, she’d already memorized our names and always addressed us directly when she took down our orders and draped the napkins across our laps.

Uncle Wei Kuo was the one to observe that they had a different table cloth and different way of folding the napkins every night.

It’s those little things that charmed me.

The appetizers and entrees were always presented in the most beautiful manner. Flo took to bringing her digital camera and snapping pictures of our food every night.

We ordered coffee with our desserts and most meals were really enjoyable as we talked about what we did during the day and just laughed over silly little stories. We didn’t always spend time together when we were on the boat and invariably, the boys would have one story or another to tell us about the people they’d met and the girls they’d chased after from the night before.

After dinner, we walked out onto the Royal Promenade where there was a real party atmosphere. There were waiters everywhere, serving wine and I walked around with some champagne, feeling the bubbles go to my head as I watched the other passengers dressed in their Sunday best.

That night was the first of the two Broadway productions. Before the show
started, the Kruise Komics, a wife and husband duo, came out.

The woman pretended to be a guest who climbed over people in the seats with a folding chair in tow as she made her way to the front to sit down. Her husband pretended to be an usher who kept telling her to sit down and go back.

It wasn’t particularly funny. Both Theresa and I took this intense dislike to them right away.

They seemed to be on forever before Becky came bouncing out, kicking up her heels and calling out, “Hello luv!”

She did her usual bit of saying, “The more energy you give to our performers, the more energy they’ll give right back to you.” (Blah, blah, blah.)

The production, “Now and Forever” was homage to several current Broadway productions like “Mama Mia”, “Fosse”, “The Full Monty” and “Cabaret.”

The production was surprisingly good and even Daniel was really impressed.

When we got to our state room, we found our attendant had made a little bunny out of the towels for us.