Do You Know the Way to Macao?
or, Is Left Still Right?

Something there is that does not like a zephyr; that loves a wall far too much.(Apologies to Robert Frost)

This truism was struck home to me on my trip to Hong Kong, because almost every last ferry vessel in the region is designed around a fully-enclosed, hermetically sealed, air-conditioned passenger compartment.

And the feather in the cap is that the passenger has no choice: most vessels do not have any open-air area that the air-and-spray-seeking travellers can retreat into in order to escape from the suffocating, artificial atmosphere.

This experience put the ol' manmade-versus-nature tape in a new light for me. I had always received this kind of argument with a certain kind of resignation: like, how can you avoid trampling over the wilderness with a rising population?

But Hong Kong put all this in a new light for me. For the first time I realized that there is something in "human nature" - or at least, in the nature of some humans - which actually prefers a completely artificial environment - even when there is no compelling reason for it; that actually believes that such is a good thing; that is actually indifferent to (if not hostile to) nature and all that; that does not feel deprived when it is deprived of air, of water, of wind, mist and sky.

I had seen something like it before, but it did not sink in, when I was required to go on a "Caribbean Cruise".

The Caribbean is literally filled with lumbering cruise ships which are sometimes described, with ironic accuracy, as "floating hotels".

Like the smaller ferries of Hong Kong, they are completely sealed-in, but on a much larger scale. The entire interior is much like a shopping mall. There's enough room in the main atrium to store a dirgible. There is virtually no open space - only a small gallery on one deck, and the topmost deck is open to the sky, but shielded from the wind. Don't want to muss our 'do, now do we?

These cruise liners are actually ships designed for people who do not like ships, the sea or the salt air. All of which makes one wonder exactly why the passengers flock to their boarding ramps, tickets in hand. It would make more sense, and not be any more costly, to fly to the different islands and stay in local hotels. You would have more time ashore at each stop, and have the option of staying over a day or two if some place really tickled you.

Ah, but then, you couldn't tell the folks back home that you'd "gone on a cruise", could you?

Strangely, there is a kinship between the follies of vacationing "cruisers" and the insensitivities of maritime commuters - I think the word "vanities" approaches it fairly well.

If you're being wrapped in a manmade cocoon, it must mean that somewhere, somehow, someone is "serving" you; that in some inexplicable, mystical way, that someone had just you and you alone in mind when they penned Seat 28-F onto the deck plan. They had you and the naturally more demanding needs of a successful person firmly in sight when that air duct was angled to blow cold, dry air right onto your already-stiff neck.

So there you sit, in a make-believe airliner, being ignored by make-believe stews, knowing that all this artifice was made for you, just you, and that even though the ferry hasn't left the dock, somehow you have arrived.