Tim Roxborogh's travel bugs: Fear of food poisoning

Photo / Getty Images

A weekly ode to the joys of moaning about your holidays.

There are surely few worse things conceivable to mankind than being in digestive dire straits while being in literal dire straits. As in, food poisoning on a cruise ship in choppy seas. No escape! Not even when the waves subside, because you're still stuck on board.

And even if you make it to port, you're possibly quarantined.

Discussions about cruise ships and food poisoning seem to go hand in hand, but is that really fair? We all hear the horror stories of things like norovirus ripping through poor, besieged holidaymakers who've booked their dream cruise only to have it be more about trips to the loo than trips to the Louvre. Naturally, tales of entire cruise ships taken down by food poisoning make the news, but that doesn't necessarily mean these kinds of incidents happen anywhere near as often as we may think.

Turns out cruise liners are required to report to authorities any voyage where more than 3 per cent of the passengers have come down with food poisoning. I found an article by a personal injury law firm essentially telling their clients that fears of getting sick on cruise ships were unnecessarily high. The stats, while from a few years ago, were reassuring:

"Of the 20 million people to travel on one of Cruise Line International Association's cruise ships in 2013, 1409 passengers were affected by food poisoning; meaning 0.007% of all cruisers or one in 14,000." — source Slater & Gordon Lawyers, 2015.

If the name "Cruise Line International Association" doesn't ring any bells, don't worry because the cruise liners they represent will: Princess, P&O, Celebrity, Carnival, Disney, Royal Caribbean, etc.

The conclusion is fairly obvious in that as cruising is becoming more popular and passenger numbers increase, so will the numbers of people who get crook. But so will the numbers doing karaoke every night on board, the numbers seeing the shows, the numbers sliding down those fancy new topdeck hydroslides and the numbers having one of the best, most hassle-free holidays of their lives. So long as that food poisoning ratio stays low there's little point in worrying.

My lack of cruise experience

Confession time: I'm a travel writer who's never done a proper cruise on a big liner.

The closest I've come have been overnight affairs on much smaller vessels in places like Halong Bay in Vietnam, the backwaters of Kerala in India, the Irrawaddy River to Mandalay in Myanmar and the Mekong River in Laos. All rip-roaring adventures, every one, but entirely different experiences to two weeks on a whopping great ship with a theatre, a waterpark, multiple restaurants and yes indeed, karaoke.

As yet the timing just hasn't been right, but I'm sure it will happen one day. And when it does, there had better be a karaoke bar on board. Unless I've got this wrong, because — just as some people unfairly associate cruise ships with retirees and gastro outbreaks — I seem to have a strong picture in my head of days spent exploring on land and nights spent opening the lungs to Cracklin' Rosie and You Should Be Dancing.

There will be considerable upset on my part if this is not the case.

Tim Roxborogh hosts Newstalk ZB's Weekend Collective and blogs at RoxboroghReport.com