Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

Day 10, Grand Asia 2018

Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2018, At Sea:

I went to bed Monday night and woke up on Wednesday. No, I wasn’t exhausted from being pampered by the wonderful Holland America staff. We crossed the International Date Line during the night. (I may have written about this same observation last year, but I am not going to look it up so I don’t have to rewrite my lede if my suspicion is true.)

As I learned last year, the time changes on a Grand Asia cruise can be a bit jarring. When they come night after night, it’s almost like experiencing jet lag.

Dutch Harbor, far west in the Aleutian Island chain, remains on the same time as the rest of Alaska, far to the east. In fact, the International Date Line jogs west in the North Pacific just to keep all of Alaska on the same day as the rest of the United States. So we are a bit “behind” in changing time zones. It is dark well into the morning.

We also are relatively far north, where the time zones are close together. So we are gaining an hour every night this week. If we were at the equator, these time changes would be about three days apart.

All of Japan is in one time zone, so during our week there I should adjust and stop waking up an hour earlier every morning. Despite its size, China maintains one time zone for the entire country. Russia has 11.

In Australia, there are five time zones, but only three daylight savings time zones, as some states and territories do not use DST. So on our trip, Cairns, in Queensland, is one time and Sydney in New South Wales, directly south of Queensland, is an hour off. The Northern Territory is 30 minutes behind the states to their east. There actually are a few other areas around the world that are 30 minutes ahead or behind instead of the more typical hour.

As we travel through Southeast Asia, we may be setting our clocks ahead one night and back the next we change countries.

Last year I tried to keep track of the time difference from each location and my family in Dallas. It was made even harder by the end of Daylight Savings Time at home and its end or beginning along our journey, depending on whether we were in the North or South Hemisphere. Now I am hoping my Apple watch will do the calculations for me.

By crossing the International Date Line, we now are ahead – time wise – of the United States. I’ll try to let you know if anything interesting happens in the future! All I can say so far is that our Internet service is getting slower.