The cruise industry has been hit hard by the pandemic, and I don’t really know when it will recover from it. And I have been vocal about my love for cruising so it makes me very interested in seeing ‘The Last Cruise,’ a documentary on HBO Max about The Diamond Princess and how it was affected during the early days of the pandemic. It is fascinating, and in some ways similar to the voyage of the Titanic.

The documentary is mostly done through personal video recollections fo some passengers, and even in its scant forty minutes, is pretty powerful. It shows the difference from the points of view of passengers and of the crew, showing the disparity of how they were both treated by the cruise line.

The voyage starts nice enough withs tops in Asian cities in Hong Kong and Vietnam. But somewhere along the way, the ship gets the virus, and when they finally are to disembark in Yokohama, they are told they couldn’t – they have to quarantine for at least fourteen days. That’s when the horror starts, as passengers (as well as infected crew members) are trapped in their cabins. You see the harrowing experiences, the fear as they look out and see people going into the ship in hazmat suits. Meanwhile, the crew has to continue working and serving the passengers, albeit on an abbreviated level. You can also see how the crew was treated. a group of Indonesian dish washers hand together and send a SOS video.

It will make you think twice of the inequality. I know at some point I will cruise again, and these images will haunt me forever.