A number of cruise ship operators are increasing their Taiwan-based services from next month to April following a novel coronavirus outbreak in China.
Hong Kong-based Genting Cruise Lines yesterday announced that from Feb. 11 to April 14, its World Dream (世界夢號) cruise ship, a 150,000-tonne vessel that is part of its Dream Cruise series, would be departing from the Port of Keelung.
The SuperStar Aquarius, a member of the Star Cruise series, would move its home port from the Port of Keelung to the Port of Kaohsiung, and offer a series of cruise ship tours to other East Asian countries, the company said.
The company made the announcement after Royal Caribbean International announced that it was moving its home port for its 168,000-tonne Spectrum of the Seas from Shanghai to Taiwan next month following the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China.
Industry observers said that Genting’s announcement was a strategic move in the face of competition from the Royal Caribbean.
Genting estimated that its Keelung-based and Kaohsiung-based cruise ship service could jointly service 300,000 passengers this year.
Following forecasts that Japan’s cherry blossom peak season this year would be from March 23 to April 4, the company said that it has arranged a five-day tour to Japan with stops in Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture, and Kagoshima on Kyushu Island.
Visitors also have a choice of a six-day tour with stops in Seto Inland Sea, it said.
The company is offering special tour prices for visitors joining other cruise ship tours leaving before Feb. 28.
Royal Caribbean, on the other hand, has yet to announce tour plans for the Spectrum of the Seas.
The vessel offers several innovative entertainment facilities, such as Sky Pad, which combines virtual reality and bungee trampoline.
Statistics from Taiwan International Ports showed that the nation’s cruise ship passengers reached 1,050,758 last year, making it the second-largest source of cruise ship travelers in Asia.
Carnival Corp’s Majestic Princess is also using Keelung as its home port this year.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching