We've lived on a cruise ship for two years – this is what no one tells you about life at sea
A couple who have lived on a cruise ship for two years have shared their tips and tricks about living life out at sea – including the things people don't typically tell you about.
Lanette Canen and Johan Bodin have been living on a cruise ship for two years and have since adjusted their lives so that living onboard the vessel is their new norm.
Lanette and Johan purchased a cabin on the Villa Vie Odyssey cruise ship, ditching their lives in Hawaii in the process.
Per the Villa Vie Residences website, prices for a cabin onboard the huge vessel star at $99,999 for full ownership (which runs for 15 years), or $59,999 for a five-year lease.
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The most expensive room, a Villa Suite, will set you back a whopping $439,999 for full ownership.
Lanette and Johan are thought to have gone for the full ownership option and still have 13 years left of their lease onboard the ship.
While they've only been on the Villa Vie Odyssey for two years, Lanette and Johan have become quite the travelling experts and document their lives on their YouTube channel, Living Life on a Cruise.
In one of their videos, the couple revealed the things that no one tells you about living on a cruise ship.
The first thing is that your usual clocks and weekdays merge into port days and sea days.
"Pretty much all the other days seem to blend in," said Johan. Lanette added that for the first six months at sea she tried to keep up with US timings, but now she 'doesn't even know what day it is'.
"It's a strange phenomenon really," Johan went on.
The pair also discussed the international date line (IDL). The National Weather Service says about IDL: "The international date line functions as a 'line of demarcation' separating two consecutive calendar dates.
"When you cross the date line, you become a time traveler of sorts! Cross to the west and it’s one day later; cross back and you’ve 'gone back in time'."
Discussing this, Johan said that: "One day we relived the same day. We had, like, Monday, February 15th two days in a row."
As they travel from country to country, the times changes too, so Johan and Lanette have to keep up with that. Apparently a crew member on the ship will go round changing the clocks at 3am.
The couple have also found that they've run out of passport pages – a problem that many people could only dream about. A lot of places will stamp your passport when you enter and leave the country.
"I have five pages left, so I actually had to get off the ship in Sydney and go to the consulate to get a new passport," Lanette shared. Had she run of out blank pages, Lanette wouldn't have been able to travel internationally anymore.
Hopefully this won't be an issue now though, as her new passport has an impressive 50 pages in it.
Johan added that some countries are 'very stamp-happy' when it comes to passports and, on some occasions, if you get a visa it'll take up a whole page.
Another thing on their list was remembering to drive on the right side of the road. Of course, in some European countries like England you drive on the left, which will be new for Americans Lanette and Johan who are used to driving on the right.
"Driving on a different side of the road has just become normal now," Lanette said.
The pair went on the recall a time during a trip to London that they were nearly hit by a bus because they were looking at the wrong side of the road for oncoming traffic. Whoops!
Niamh Shackleton