Featured Image Credit: bryanjamescruises/YouTube
Ever been on a cruise and wondered what life looks like for the cheery staff members onboard?
Musician Bryan James has given a glimpse behind the curtain on a cruise ship - and people are shocked by what he's revealed.
James works as a solo guitarist on a cruise ship, and he's posted a video on YouTube about how much his day-to-day life actually costs him.
It's an interesting watch - he begins by explaining that there are two massive areas where he doesn't have to spend any money: accommodation and food.
As James says, his room is "completely free and comes with the job". He explains that your job description defines what room you get so, at the moment, he's in a decently-sized cabin thanks to being a solo musician.
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He shows a clip of a much smaller room he got when he was part of a band, but reiterates that "both are free - just different sizes".
Moving on to food, he says he eats "down at the crew mess every single day" to keep his costs down. He could use the restaurants on the ship if he wanted a bit more choice, but he would have to pay at them.
When it comes to the question: "What do I actually spend my money on?" James has two main answers. The first is soda - he buys two cans of Coca-Cola every day as part of his routine, at a total cost of $1.72.
And the second thing he spends his money on every day is internet access. Being on a cruise ship, you might think that staff don't have to pay for their internet, but that seems not to be the case - at least on this vessel.
James says he has to pay "$12 a day, and that gets me three hours at around 1MB/s or so". He adds that if the network is busy, that can slow speeds right down - which would be pretty frustrating.
People in the comments under the video can't believe this part. One popular comment said: "They charge crew for Wi-Fi? That's absurd" and has attracted over 1,000 likes. Another person agreed: "$12 a day for internet? Crazy."
Another popular comment pointed out: "What I am hearing is that, if you are working on a cruise ship, you should download a ton of videos to a hard drive for entertainment."
Tallying up all these costs, James says he spends $411 a month - and while we don't know his salary, that's an impressively low number for his total outgoings.
