Baggage

One of our neighbors on board bought a jacket from us for $9 in a ship’s auction. (The ship runs white elephants sales where passengers can sell stuff that they bought and realized they do not need, or stuff that they do not want to ship back. Actually, you could probably make a hundred bucks if you bought lots of popular trinkets early on the trip and auctioned them off at the end.)

Anyway, what I found interesting is that this fellow was lamenting that his wife had bought way too much stuff during the cruise. They shipped a box back to the US from Dubai. It cost them about $300 to ship and insure via Fed Ex. Kathleen thinks they said it was 80 lbs, I think he said 40 lbs. Regardless, this is a lot of cash. Further, they bought extra luggage and now plan to fly back with 7 bags instead of the 4 that is included in the ticket…so they will pay an extra $150 to $200 per bag for 3 of their bags. The man said he tells his wife they could wait and buy all this stuff when they are back in the States and it would cost them a lot less.

Be sure you have digested this…they are spending at least $750 to ship their extra stuff back to the US.

This theme comes through again and again…do not bring as much stuff on a long cruise with you as you think you need. You are going to bring too much stuff. Bring less, bring less, bring less.

If you under pack by 1 or 2 or 4 items, it is okay. You will have chances to buy what you forgot. If you have to pay for laundry a few extra time so that you do not run out of under ware or socks, that’s okay too. These two sources of cost are going to be much less than the $750 shipping fees that our neighbor is spending getting their excess stuff back to the US.

This exception to this is drugs. Bring the simple drugs such as cough drops, antibiotics, cold tablets, sensitive tooth paste, etc. I had to accept some sensitive tooth paste from another passenger because I needed it and did not bring any. We have helped 4 to 6 other passengers with cough drops, antibiotics, and the like that they needed and we had.