Episode 4: Wake Up to a New View Every Day, Aboard a Cruise Ship

International Living’s Bigger Better World podcast delves into the stories behind the story. This week, the podcast features International Living contributor Kathleen Evans, an experienced world traveler who fled the corporate rat race of her native Texas and now spends most of her year Tamarindo, Costa Rica.

The rest of her time, Kathleen travels. Right now, she’s in the Mediterranean island nation of Malta, soaking up sun, history, and southern European cuisine. Other times, she’s on a cruise ship, exploring the world from the comfort of an “unpack once” luxury cabin.

In fact, Kathleen loves the pace and variety of cruising so much that she’s recently become obsessed by the idea of living full-time at sea. It’s a growing phenomenon, so much so that it’s now possible to purchase a fully equipped condo on an ocean-going cruise ship, integrate with the onboard community, and…if you’re willing to rent out your onboard home for a couple of months while you catch up with life on land…it’s an investment that can pay for itself.

Reporting for International Living magazine, Kathleen talked to the developers of one such permanent-home cruise ship. You’ll find her in-depth report on page 26 of your April 2022 issue.

Talking to Jim Santos on this week’s episode of the Bigger Better World podcast, Kathleen explains the forever-cruising world, as well as insights, stories, and details about her life as an expat in Costa Rica and—right now—in Malta.

Settle in, press play, and find out as we welcome you to the latest episode of International Living’s Bigger Better World podcast.

If you haven’t become a member yet—you can do it today with a special discount offer for podcast listeners. You’ll receive our monthly magazine plus a bundle of special extras. Subscribe here: https://intliving.com/podcast.

Music: Royalty Free Music From timtaj.com.

Transcript

Jim Santos

Greetings. I'm Jim Santos, and this is Bigger, Better World from International Living. In this podcast series, we introduce you to a bigger world full of communities that are safe, welcoming, beautiful, and largely undiscovered. A better world. A friendly, warm, great value world where you can live richer, travel more, invest for profit, and enjoy a better life. We talk with our writers, but also other people just like you who took a chance and followed our guidance to create for themselves bigger, better lives all around the world. So let's get started. 

Our guest this week is Kathleen Evans. Kathleen hails from the US. and has lived in several countries. When her nearly three-decade career as a media executive in Austin became overwhelming, she and her husband decided to leave the corporate rat race and find a slice of paradise in Costa Rica in 2013. An avid traveler, cruiser, and adventurer, she has been to six continents and 96 countries. Kathleen has been a correspondent and contributor for International Living since 2017 and currently splits her time between Costa Rica, Malta, and the U.S. So, Kathleen Evans, welcome to the show.

Kathleen Evans

Well, thank you so much for having me, Jim.

Jim Santos

In our introduction here, we mentioned that you've been to six continents and 96 countries. That's an awful lot of travel. When did you start doing that? Travel?

Kathleen Evans

Yeah. Right. That's pretty crazy. Well, my mom was a nurse, and she retired and became a travel agent.

Jim Santos

Oh, well, that helps.

Kathleen Evans

It kind of rolled into this, she had this passion for travel, and fortunately, they took me on every trip that we ever did. So yeah, it's funny because a lot of people have asked, “How many countries have you been to?” And I was like, “I don't know, 50, 60.” And then I filled out one of those little maps where you, oh, what country have you been to in Asia? Click, click, click, click, click. What about Africa? Click, click, click. And all of a sudden, I looked at it like, “Whoa, 96 countries. Okay.” But that is including Caribbean islands. So each island is a country.

Jim Santos

Right. I suppose there's a public service we should point out, to the people born after 1985, that a travel agent is someone who used to help you arrange travel before the Internet.

Kathleen Evans

Right. And there's actually, from what I'm hearing, kind of a trend in the post-COVID armageddon. There's kind of a trend of people going back to travel agents.

Jim Santos

Interesting.

Kathleen Evans

So they don't have to deal with these hour-and-a-half waits just to talk to an airline when you've been bumped and that sort of thing. So, you know, it's making a comeback.

Jim Santos

So when did you start traveling? What year?

Kathleen Evans

Oh, yeah, so really, as a child, I started traveling in the United States initially, but then trips to Mexico, cruises to the Caribbean in grade school, I was in grade school, so I kind of got a head start. Before I was out of school, I had probably been to a couple dozen countries.

Jim Santos

And when you were working in Austin, was there a particular event or realization that made you decide that there were better ways to spend your life than in a corporate office?

Kathleen Evans

Oh, absolutely. Well, it happened daily. I was in media sales as an account executive for publishing, radio and television in the entirety of my career. And each year became more challenging. There's the good old days of Mad Men and the martini lunches, but those kind of went by the wayside by the time I entered the industry. And you're in sales. You're only as good as your last sale, and what do you have for me today? And it's funny, I had a co-worker when I was at one of the CBS affiliates I worked for, and she would call me on Sunday night, and it was 60 Minutes had just started, you know, the little clock they had. And she'd be like, “Okay, sales beating starts in 12 hours.” It was one of those kinds of things. And we didn't call it a sales meeting. We called it a sales beating. And corporate America just kind of took over and merged, and it was all about answering to your stockholders. And as media became more fractionalized, it was tougher to hold an audience. And that's still true today. So you're not seeing the kind of sales you saw in the even the ’80s.

Jim Santos

Yeah, there's so many streaming services now.

Kathleen Evans

Right. Streaming. And even back then, it was cable started fractionalizing everything.

Jim Santos

My wife and I, since we lived in Ecuador for six years, we got used to streaming before most of America did. We would come back to the U.S. and our kids would have the TV on. We see commercials, and it's like, “What the heck is that?”

Kathleen Evans

Right!

Jim Santos

What is this advertisement in the middle of my show?

Kathleen Evans

Right? Well, I come up from this weird background of hating them, but loving them, because they did keep me afloat for many years.

Jim Santos

Right.

Kathleen Evans

I don't know that there's actually a defining moment. But it's interesting because I was actually a subscriber to International Living, the paper-only version. Starting in the mid- or early-’90s. I had been at a friend's house, and I saw an International Living sitting on her parents’ coffee table. And I picked it up, and I started thumbing through it and went, “Wow, you could actually live abroad. Live. That's it. Pick up and move. Look at all these people who have done it. God, I want to do it too.” So I pulled out the little postcard inside the magazine. Back in the day, we may have some listeners here who don't even know that existed, but there was a little postcard, and you filled it out, and you put a check in an envelope and you mailed it, and boom, each month you got a magazine. So I actually subscribed long before I ever contributed to the magazine. So it kind of came full circle. But that was always in the back of my mind. And shortly thereafter, I married my husband, who was also an adventurer. And everywhere we went, we said, “Could we live here?” And if the answer was yes, we would actually find a real estate agent and look around and stop in the store and look at the cost of living. And so we did that all over the Caribbean, in Mexico, in Panama, in Belize, in Greece. So the foundation for actually moving started decades before we actually did it.

Jim Santos

That's interesting. That's almost exactly how my wife and I got started.

Kathleen Evans

Is that right?

Jim Santos

We saw International Living Postcards. Ours was online because it was a decade ago later. But we saw that and we had both independently subscribed. And it was the same thing. Like you said, we would travel. I remember sitting in Italy and still trying to work. We were in a bar because they had Internet, and I'm trying to work, and there's a football game on, and people are screaming while I'm trying to talk about rebooting the computer. But it's the same thing. You’re always asking, “Could I live here?”

Kathleen Evans

Right.

Jim Santos

And it's surprising how often the answer is, “Yeah, I think I could live here.”

Kathleen Evans

Right? Yeah. And we specifically looked at places because of International Living. Right. And we kept returning to Costa Rica, and that kind of, after a while became the goal. But I was still working at Corporate America. But I wouldn't say there's a defining moment. But I've really become overwhelmed with the situation, and I was starting to have some stress related health issues, and that was kind of like we had a meeting, and my husband said, “Are we just going to talk about this for the rest of our lives or we going to do it?” And I said, “You know what? I think we should do it.” And that's kind of how it became the thing. We're really going to do this. But we wanted to sell our house before we left, and the housing crash happened perfectly timed with when we were ready to leave. It took quite a few years, actually, to sell our home before we were ready.

Jim Santos

Yeah.

Kathleen Evans

Yeah. So we were ready, and we had some ideas and had been to Costa Rica many times and had narrowed it down to a few places, but we did have to wait, and that's okay. That's the way it worked out. And I was able to work a few more years and stash away some cash, too.

Jim Santos

Well, you're very fortunate that both you and your spouse were totally into the idea.

Kathleen Evans

Yes, and that's a key factor, too. I've been in Costa Rica almost 10 years, and I've seen a lot of expats come and go, and many times there's various reasons why they leave, but many times it's one spouse is on board and the other one really isn't.

Jim Santos

Yeah, my book, Living Abroad, I wrote about that because we also saw that happen. And sometimes it could just be as simple as one must live on the water or in a big city and the other one wants a small country place. One starts to learn the language better than the other, and there start to be conflict in that. So it's really important, I feel like if you're in a relationship and you go try to do something like this overseas, if your relationship is strong, it's going to get stronger. And if it has problems, you might find your problems get a little bit bigger, too, right?

Kathleen Evans

Completely.

Jim Santos

So you moved to Costa Rica. Did you buy when you first moved there, or were you renting?

Kathleen Evans

Well, we had been there probably eight times and spent several weeks when we were down there. So we had a very good idea of the community we wanted to move to, and that was Tamarindo, which is a very popular tourist town on the beach. And we had narrowed it down to we wanted a condo, we wanted something turn-key, because we do travel still quite a bit, and now we're splitting some time also, so we wanted turn-key. We narrowed it down to three condo buildings that we liked, and then once everything sold, we got stuff put in storage. We rented for three months just to make sure. And that was actually in our second choice, not our first choice. And turned out the second choice became our first choice. So we were there three months and we said, “Yes, this is it.” Bought a condo in the building, bought a car before we left to come back and really pack up and ship the container.

Jim Santos

So you did ship a container as well?

Kathleen Evans

We did. Most of the condos down there are furnished already, or at least partially furnished. So most people, certainly in that area, do not send a shipping container unless they're bringing a car. But we talked to some of the furniture package people and it was pretty costly. So, you know, if you wanted rental grade, pretty crappy stuff at that time, and this is ten years ago, prices have gone up significantly, but it was about $20,000 to furnish a two-bedroom condo. And that was everything. Dishwares and art and furniture and linens and that sort of thing. Then they had another package that was about 50 grand, which was a little nicer, and you could go upwards from there. And they had a $70,000 and a $90,000 package. And I said, “Well, that's insane. We're selling this big giant house. We can split the furniture and still have nearly enough. And I looked into shipping from Austin, Texas, to Tamarindo. So that goes to the Port of Houston, down to Puerto Limon on the Atlantic side, the Caribbean side, and they take it over to San José. It goes through customs. They load it on a truck and take it up to your condo and drop it off for $10,000.

Jim Santos

Right. Yeah. We ship a container ourselves. And when you're doing your due diligence, you really need to spend some time, like you did, going there first. And I'm pretty sure you also went to all the malls and checked out the prices and the quality of things.

Kathleen Evans

Absolutely.

Jim Santos

There's even things like linens and towels. They may be cheaper, but they may be a pretty poor quality. Pots and pans, things like that. I remember in a restaurant in Ecuador trying to cut a steak, and the knife kept bending.

Kathleen Evans

That sounds about right. I see some similarities here in Latin America, and the other consideration, I think, is homesickness is a real thing, and culture shock is a real thing. And if you have some of your stuff, you know yeah. Some stuff that's familiar to you or some of your favorite things, it could be chairs or, in my case, musical instruments or, you know, anything like that that reminds you of home, so it doesn't feel quite as foreign...that can really help lessen that shock that experts go through for the first, like, six months or so.

Kathleen Evans

Right. I agree with that. There's two schools of thought. Some people want to start fresh with a whole new look, but we were happy to have our familiar things and our favorite mattress. Sleep becomes important, especially as you age. So yeah, absolutely. We were happy we did the shipping container. It showed up only a week late, and we only lost two fairly unimportant items.

Jim Santos

You can also ship pallets now, too, so you don't have to go all the way and ship an entire household. You can just ship a comfortable amount of stuff.

Kathleen Evans

Right. In fact, our shipper did shared containers as well.

Jim Santos

So you moved to Costa Rica. You're living there. How did Malta enter the picture?

Kathleen Evans

Yeah, well, it's interesting. We are permanent residents of Costa Rica, so we have all of our rights there except for voting. But when COVID hit, we were pretty much Costa Rica-bound. There were no flights in and out for months. Both airports, all seaports, everything was closed, and this went on for quite a long time. And so some of the folks that needed to get back to the States, whether it was an aging parent or some reason they needed to get back, they could fly home. There were repatriation flights. United had several of them to Houston one way, extremely expensive.

Jim Santos

I was going to say.

Kathleen Evans

Yeah. And it was one-way because you could not come back to your home unless you were a Costa Rica citizen. So even with permanent residency, they would not let you back in. We were there for about a year and a half, and we realized, especially being in Tamarindo. It's a small beach town, and we love that, but there's no arts and there's no history, and we're travelers, and we're big fans of all of those things. We love the beach and we love food, but we also love museums and history, and Europe kept calling. International Living covers Europe very well, and we're seeing this trend of people who are very much considering places like Portugal and Spain. And we said, “Hey, we've been wanting to get to Malta.” We stopped there once on a cruise right before COVID and so we went there last year and spent extended time. And we love the island. It's not for everybody, but it's a pretty cool place, and it's a great launching pad for all of Europe. You know, you've got all these discount airlines like Ryanair and Wiz Air, and you can get anywhere within two hours.

Jim Santos

If I remember my geography, Malta is kind of just south of the toe of Italy?

Kathleen Evans

Yes. South of Sicily. Right in the Mediterranean. I mean, it's less than an hour’s flight to North Africa, so it's got this unique position where, you know, you can easily get to the Middle East. You can get to all of Europe, you can get to North Africa. It's got a great history, beautiful architecture, and one of the official languages is English for expats who have lived overseas and sometimes struggle learning a foreign language, especially older adults. It does become challenging for a lot of people. Not everybody, but my husband prefers to be able to pick up a phone and call someone and ask a question and they understand; there's nothing lost in translation.

Jim Santos

Yes. I was trying to learn Spanish in Ecuador. That was probably the most frustrating thing: trying to navigate voicemails and then phone conversations. You lose so much when you can't see the person and you're trying desperately to figure out what they're saying.

Kathleen Evans

Very true. It's funny how hand motions and reading lips and pointing, it's so much easier in person than on the phone. Like, I would be practicing my phone call to make an appointment to do something, have it written out right.

Jim Santos

Have a little script.

Kathleen Evans

Yeah, exactly. And [in Malta] all the forms are in English, so it's easier that way.

Jim Santos

How do you handle accommodations now? Do you have a place in Malta and a place in Costa Rica and a place in the U.S.?

Kathleen Evans

That is the plan. We call it the Trifecta Plan. We did look at quite a bit of real estate in Malta and stayed in two different parts of the country to see if we wanted to be close to the city in the inner harbor area, which is pretty overpopulated. But there are so many choices for shopping and dining and all at your fingertips. You don't need a car. You can walk everywhere.

Jim Santos

Would that be Valetta?

Kathleen Evans

Outside of Valetta there's a suburb called Sliema right across the harbor. On the other side, on the north side. So it's a 15-minute ferry, super easy. But we also stayed in the north part, in a place called Melliha, which is a beautiful beach community. The island has some rocky beaches, but then it also has some very pretty sand beaches, mostly in the north and in the islands of Comino and Gozo, which are part of Malta but just north of the main island. I was ready to start the residency process and plunk down the cash to buy a place. And it's like, “OK, how long did it take us to decide on a place in Costa Rica? Like a decade, once we got serious about it.” So let's see where the dust settles next year. There's a war at their door. We really at that time—we were there in the spring and summer—didn't know what was going to happen. With the war in Ukraine, inflation was raging and the interest rates haven't gone high enough for housing prices to start tumbling. So we figure there's probably going to be better opportunities next year.

Jim Santos

Right. It's much like the U.S. right now. It's probably not the best.

Kathleen Evans

Right. So ultimately, we're looking at the trifecta of a triangle of Malta, Costa Rica and the United States.

Jim Santos

We have similar plans. We've set up a home in East Tennessee.

Kathleen Evans

Beautiful.

Jim Santos

We think of it as equally inconvenient to all of our kids. We're a day's drive away, but it eliminates the drop-in, actually. That's perfect. Close enough, but not too close. And it's in an area that has mild winters and mild summer. So if we lock up the house for a while and go traveling for.

Kathleen Evans

Two, three months, right. It's a beautiful country.

Jim Santos

And COVID interrupted our plans also. So now we're just to the point, now that we're starting to look at what will be our target country to start with. And then I keep hearing about all these wonderful places like Costa Rica and Malta and Portugal. Is really Portugal one of the 96 countries you've been to?

Kathleen Evans

According to the little chart that I filled out, yes. Well, I studied in Cambridge, in college in England, so pretty much all of Western Europe was covered before I was even out of school because it's such a fabulous launching point to backpack through Europe, which I did quite a bit of.

Jim Santos

Right. So easy.

Kathleen Evans

And then I had a midlife crisis early and actually left all my responsibilities for a year and traveled around the world for a year. And part of that time I lived in South Africa and did some work with the Red Cross, so I was able to travel through all of the southern part of the African continent.

Jim Santos

I understand you've also spent some time on cruise ships.

Kathleen Evans

Yes, actually I've probably been on about 35, 40 cruises. My family, my mother was a big cruiser, actually. Both parents loved it. They love the fact that you could just get on a ship, unpack once, have everything included in whatever you do, and wake up in a new place, a new country. “Okay, great. What are we going to do today?” So, you know, it started with the Caribbean and Mexico, and then we did an Alaska cruise. And since then I've done quite a few cruises. Did a big 45-day one from Singapore to London, and this was in 2019, right before COVID. And I wondered, I said, “I'm not sure about 45 days. That's kind of a long time on a ship, especially since you're crossing big swathes of water.” And so a couple of crossings were four days on the ship. Yeah. So it turned out to be one of the best vacations of my life. And when you're on a ship that long, it becomes a community and you really do make friends and make plans and “Hey, what do you want to do when we get to go India, we're going to go to this beach, you want to go with us?” That sort of thing. And it turned out to be pretty fantastic. I looked at my husband and said, “Yeah, I think I could live on a ship. This is pretty cool.”

Jim Santos

Well, that actually brings me to the article we wanted to discuss with you today in International Living's, April 2022 edition. You had an article there called “Wake up to a New View Every Day Aboard a Cruise Ship.”

Kathleen Evans

Right.

Jim Santos

You want to tell us a little bit about the concept there?

Kathleen Evans

Yeah. So I had the pleasure of interviewing one of the CEOs, Alistair Clinton, and he and his partner Shannon Lee are developers, but they've never actually developed a cruise ship before. But they had this concept that you could actually live on a ship, but it's not really a traditional cruise ship where you're in a port for eight hours, you're on to the next place, you've got to be on the ship, that sort of thing. This is condominiums, right?

Jim Santos

You're not just in a small cabin, right?

Kathleen Evans

These are condos. Some of them are small, the lower end ones, but they've got the whole idea. Initially they were going to take an older ship and refurbish it, but then they couldn't create what they wanted to do in the way of a modern cruise ship where you've got a back end that rolls out and you can zip in on your jet ski and that sort of thing. So they really wanted something from scratch. And so they started working with some companies to come up with a plan to create a cruise ship, a residential ship, really, not a cruise ship, with 547 fully furnished condos. And you actually buy into this cruise ship. You own the condo, you can come and go as you please, and as an owner, you get to vote on the itinerary. So they create these itineraries around the world. And as I mentioned, it's not traditional, where you're just in a port, in the next port, in the next port. They spend time there. So you go in, you may be there three nights, five nights. You can really get to know that area. You can stay on land if you want.

You can go to see friends, you can go inland into the country and then meet up with the ship in the next port if you want. There's no, “You've got to get on board. The whistle blows at 5 p.m.” And so I was kind of fascinated with that idea, especially since I've been such a cruiser for much of my life. But this is a little unique in that a ship the size would normally have about 2,500 or more passengers, but Alastair assured me the maximum they'd ever have is 1,400, and typically only 1,000 residents on board at any given time.

[00:29:58.680] - Jim Santos

And these condos have kitchens? 

Kathleen Evans

They actually do not. And I found that interesting. So this concept is not new. There is a ship that's been around for decades called The World, and initially you could buy in at a fairly affordable rate. Now, I don't think you can touch a condo in there for under $5 million. I mean, Madonna has a condo on it. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

Jim Santos

It's not a “live on your Social Security,” right, actually.

Kathleen Evans

And it's kind of this very wealthy, closed circle of people, and it's hard to penetrate into even finding someone that owns on that ship. I was fortunate to track down a gentleman, and he and his wife had a two-bedroom condo on it several years ago. They've since sold it and bought a place on Storylines, this new conceptual cruise ship that they're building. And he said, circling back to the kitchen thing, he said they had a kitchen on their on The World. Everyone has a kitchen. But he said, “You know, we hardly ever used it.” And he said, it's kind of silly. It's a space waster. You can have a microwave and a mini fridge. But the concept on this new ship is that they have 20 dining and bar venues on the ship. So your monthly HOA fee, your homeowners association, pays for the food. Unless there's an upcharge for lobster or something like that, your food is inclusive.

Jim Santos

I was going to ask about that. I assume there'd be a monthly fee for this in addition to purchasing.

Kathleen Evans

Yeah. So these dining rooms have rotating menus. They do seasonal items where they're located, and they have 24/7 room service. So if you wake up and you want your morning bagel and a coffee out on your deck, you just call room service and they deliver it. So you don't have to have a kitchen, but each deck will have a community kitchen. So if you love cooking, you can certainly do that. You can go out on land, all the ingredients, and cook up a meal for the family or a group of friends or something like that.

Jim Santos

Right.

Kathleen Evans

So I found that kind of interesting and a great way to make use of more space for living and sleeping.

Jim Santos

I assume there has to be some kind of medical facilities on board.

Kathleen Evans

Oh, yeah, absolutely. The way I understand it, they will have a medical clinic with a doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist, a nutritionist and a physiotherapist. So it'll be set up for emergency medicine as far as they'll have a helicopter landing pad, if there's any medical evacuations, but they would be able to take care of any minor emergencies. But one of the things that Alistair really stressed to me was that part of living on board is that they give you a specialized health plan. So they work with exercise, diet, your mental state, because they're trying to create this happier, healthier, longer lifestyle on board. So you would need to have some sort of international healthcare, at least with medical evacuation. So if there was something major, you're covered.

Jim Santos

I'm thinking we need some sort of pretty well equipped pharmacy on board too, for people who are on regular medication.

Kathleen Evans

Yes, absolutely. And they would specialize towards that. If an owner has diabetes, they would make sure they have that medicine on board.

Jim Santos

This really sounds very nice, but I have a feeling it also sounds a little expensive. It doesn't seem like it's more of a kind of a budget operation either.

Kathleen Evans

Right. It isn't. It isn't. Now, again, getting in on the ground floor, there were some, you know, some of the smaller, like the 377-square-footers that you could get for under $400,000, but all of those have sold. So we're looking at prices. If you want to buy for a lifetime, $875,000 on up to $8 million. And those are the $8 million ones; you're getting four-bedroom, spiral staircase, two levels, sweeping balconies over the sea and that sort of thing. But I just received, actually, a press release from their PR company, and for the unsold units, there has been a lot of interest in fractional ownership, which really brings it down to a much affordable level. So that 377-square-footer I was talking about, they've got a 25% share at $598,000, and that's for the life of the vessel. So you own that, you can pass it on to your children and you have a full quarter to be on the ship.

Jim Santos

Is that a consecutive quarter? Three consecutive months? And it kind of rotates through the year, too, so that you have different seasons?

Kathleen Evans

They didn't specify that, but I'm assuming that would make sense.

Jim Santos

I'm thinking of condos. There's quarter-share condos that have similar range so that everybody gets kind of the prime weeks sooner or later.

Kathleen Evans

Right now you can also get a bigger one at 721. These have balconies. The 25% share on that is $1,000,275. That one's a little more costly, but it's twice the size.

Jim Santos

Any idea what the monthly fees are for?

Kathleen Evans

Yeah, the monthly fees. So the smaller one would be $4,450 per person per month, and then the larger one would be $6,167 per person. So you've got some monthly fees that, you know, initially you kind of turn your head and go, “That's quite a bit.” But for people who are, for example, even on these 25% shareholders, if you have a home on land, which you probably will, if you're only going to be on a ship for a quarter, you can rent your home. Right? And if it's a nice home, you could cover those expenses. Plus, you wouldn't be paying for other things that you normally would, right.

Jim Santos

Utility bills or grocery bills.

Kathleen Evans

Yeah, grocery bills. I mean, those are insane too. And this includes alcohol, unless it's specialty fine Champagne or wine or something like that. But otherwise that's all included too.

Jim Santos

I would assume these days there's on board WiFi and access to social media, that kind of stuff.

Kathleen Evans

Absolutely, because I talked to Alistair about that and I said, “This is great, you're living on a ship, but you don't think about this day-to-day living.” Sure, we can do a lot of things online as far as banking and stuff like that, but he assured me there's actually going to be a bank and money exchange on board. So if you were transferring money and you needed cash or something like that, you can get it right on the ship. They are going to have the best of WiFi available. That's been a drawback on The World. That's what Tony, the previous owner, had told me. He was trying to run a business, and 10, 15, 20 years ago, WiFi was quite unreliable on a ship, especially. That was part of the reason he sold. Now it's a little different. So Alistair also said that if you have a phone, 80% of the time they're actually on land, so you could have a regular phone package, and it's going to work most of the time. So he said they'll always be looking at improvements on that as well. And you can bring your dog. They allow pets. They actually have a whole pet relief area, and there will be a vet on board. So that's kind of cool for homeowners because, let's face it, at least 50% of us have pets.

Jim Santos

Right? So Fido gets to come along.

Kathleen Evans

Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of cool things. If you want to sit in a hammock and do nothing, you can. But they have all kinds of water sport activities. You can bring your golf clubs and store them and go golfing. They're going to have a movie theater, an art studio, a bowling alley, a 10,000-book library, and rotating entertainers as well.

Jim Santos

Now, you said this was under development. How far are they from an actual launch date?

Kathleen Evans

Yeah, that's a great question. And I would put up a small red flag on anything conceptual. Know what you're getting into, do your due diligence. The ship has had some delays, first with COVID of course, where everything kind of shut down for quite a while, and then evidently there were some steel shortages. And obviously a ship like this is going to need a lot of steel. So they do have a contract with BrodoSplit Shipyard, which is in Split, Croatia. They have a design group out of Sweden that is working with them. So their PR folks told me it is now booked to set sail in 2025. However, it is my understanding that they have not actually started production on it yet.

Jim Santos

That's a projection at this point, right?

Kathleen Evans

That is a projection. It all appears as if they've got a green light. I see Travel and Leisure and Forbes covering the ship as well. So I would always say I'd rather see the bones first. And I think some of the early adopters might see some price increases, too, because, you know, this whole concept was pre-COVID.

Jim Santos

Right.

Kathleen Evans

So I would assume that prices may be creeping up, if not in the ownership, at least in the monthly fees.

Jim Santos

Is there a website where interested parties might be able to go to take a look at this?

Kathleen Evans

Yeah, absolutely. I believe it's Storylines.com.

Jim Santos

Okay, so anyone interested could go to storylines.com and take a look at some computer mockups, I'm assuming, of what life abord ship could be. I would like to point out that this is not an International Living project or anything that International Living supports or recommends. This is something that we're reporting for your interest and certainly encourage you to do your due diligence and check out everything before you would consider investing in anything these days.

Kathleen Evans

Really, 100%. I wanted to do this story because I'm a cruiser and I've been fascinated with life at sea and it is definitely something if you're a big cruiser or you'd like to travel that way, it's something to consider.

Jim Santos

Yes. And the cruise industry has really taken quite a big hit from COVID, probably more than any other industry.

Kathleen Evans

Yes, they have.

Jim Santos

What is your take on that? Are things getting any better?

Kathleen Evans

Yeah, Jim, it's interesting, since COVID, I have been on two cruises and fortunately I have not gotten it. They are taking better precautions, some of them, especially for anything a week or longer at sea, you do have to test. You have to come with a negative COVID test. They look at your vaccination cards. Some are getting a little more lax on that. I've seen cleaning, way more cleaning than I've ever seen before.

Jim Santos

Right.

Kathleen Evans

But one of the interesting things that I did want to mention, I asked Alistair about that, because when COVID happened, all the ports shut down and nobody could…they didn't even want the ships to pull into ports.

Jim Santos

Right, I remember.

Kathleen Evans

And I asked him about that. I said, “Well, if you're living on a ship, you can't go to port and fly home if you don't have a home.” And he said they are working with a number of countries around the world to give the homeowners on Storylines an actual temporary residency. So when they pull into that port, for example, they pull into Singapore, they have temporary residency so they can follow whatever rules Singapore has for their residence. So if you're allowed to move about the country but wear a mask, or whatever that model looks like, they will allow you to disembark because you will have your temporary residency while they're in port during the medical emergency.

Jim Santos

Do you know what country's flag the ship itself will be sailing under?

Kathleen Evans

Good question. I don't know.

Jim Santos

Yeah, just curious about that. If you need any special, like something similar to a residency to be on the ship.

Kathleen Evans

No, you don't. Just your passport.

Jim Santos

Kathleen, I'd say you've certainly given us a lot to think about here.

Kathleen Evans

Yeah, absolutely. It's so fun to chat with you, Jim.

Jim Santos

Yeah, it's great to talk to you again, to actually have some time to talk to you. I think I've run into you at a conference or two.

Kathleen Evans

Right.

Jim Santos

You're always completely hoarse from talking to all the conference goers for the past three days.

Kathleen Evans

Well, Costa Rica is a very popular country, so that desk is always full with people wanting to chit chat.

Jim Santos

Right.

Kathleen Evans

And I've been doing some reporting on Malta now, too, so that's also one of the countries on the radar.

Jim Santos

Well, I look forward to seeing more about that.

Kathleen Evans

Yeah, absolutely.

Jim Santos

Thank you again, Kathleen, for being part of our podcast here on Bigger, Better World.

Kathleen Evans

Thanks, Jim.

Jim Santos

The Bigger, Better World podcast is the production of International living. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. If you have an idea for an episode or a question you'd like us to answer, email us at mailbag@internationalliving.com. And don't forget to put podcast in the subject line of your email. That's mailbag@internationalliving.com. We created Bigger, Better World to help showcase the ideas we explore at International Living each month and grow our community of travel lovers, experts, and experts who believe, as we do, that the world is full of opportunity to create a more interesting, more international life. You don't have to be rich or famous to do that. You just need to know the secrets. And that's what we bring you at International Living. If you haven't become a member yet, you can do it today with a special discount offer for podcast listeners. You'll receive our monthly magazine, plus a bundle of special extras. You'll find the link in our show notes, or you can go to IntLiving.com/podcast. That's IntLiving.com/podcast. Thanks again for tuning into bigger, Better World.

Jim Santos

I'm Jim Santos for International Living, and I'll see you next week when I'll be talking with our Panama editor, Jessica Ramesh, about her move from the big city to the beach. So, until next time, remember, there's a bigger, better world waiting for you.