For your luscious days aboard a $350,000,000 ocean liner such as the Hawaii-bound Zaandam, expect to find attractions and distractions.

Sleep until eight, nine or 10, pull on some khakis and a T-shirt with a collar, then go up to breakfast in either of the Rotterdam's plushy formal dining rooms. The menu offers ten meat and egg selections, linen table clothes, fine china and a platoon of waiters scurrying around with more fresh pineapple and decaf.

You might be ushered to the last two seats at an eight-chair table and placed next to a full-bodied man who introduces himself as Ned. Ready to chat, he tells of many other cruises as he devours a full plate of eggs Benedict. Then he recalls his two years of struggle to give up alcohol. He finally won out, "but I can't give up smoking. I've tried pills, books, you name it."

While the two women at the table express sympathy, he signals the waiter that he has finished. The waiter whisks the empty plate away, replacing it with another stacked with blueberry pancakes covered with maple syrup. As he continues his travails, a changed expression comes to the faces of the other seven: "Maybe smoking is not your real problem, Ned."

Stomachs filled; eyelids closed

About 10 percent of the liner's 1,500 passengers give evidence of a similar problem. Gorgeous from stem to stern, the Zaandam is heavily lined with cushy nooks for reading and resting. Many passengers lie back between meals with their eyelids closed. Meanwhile, dozens of the more vigorous are out on the 767-foot long decks trying to sweat away some of their stuffing.

For big, musical, after-dinner shows the ship offers its huge Mondrian Lounge. On the first evening, as theatergoers arrived, it was soon evident that many had done no deck walking at all, not ever. First came a lady, well over 250 weight, wearing dark trousers below a full over-blouse embroidered with colored birds. Then came several normal-sized men and women, then another couple, she at well over 200, he at 300-plus, plodding to two of the love seats, each occupying a whole one.

More ladies and gentlemen of surprising proportions followed. Seemingly unaware of size, they squashed into the seats and ordered cooling drinks as nine bea.jpgul girls began singing and dancing to the orchestra. Their costumes were sailor suits, cut low at the bosom and the waistline, revealing very bare, skinny midriffs.

Not surprising, the 60,906-ton ship requires 85 gallons of gas to go one mile. It may be that the combined weight of the passengers and the below deck stores add up to the same poundage.

Very little about the voyage is boring. If you don't wish to play bridge, listen to a lecture on Captain Cook's discovery of the Sandwich Islands in 1778 or sit in on a make-up seminar. There is the casino, where bright lights and gleaming brass invite you to take a chance with few quarters or a five-card hand. Not interested? Well, you can eyeball the collections of museum specimens in glass cases in every nook and corner.

King Tut and Bill Clinton

A King Tut mummy case stands in one, one of Bill Clinton's saxophones hangs in another. A 1500 A.D. stained glass window from France is on the wall between two elevators. There's a snow-white, three-story steam pipe organ covered with sprites and angels. It rises upward in a circular atrium from the third deck to the fifth. Its music, "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" and stuff like that chimes forth every morning.

Because of all these, not too much idyll time passes between the noon to two, four-course lunches; the two-hour, five-course dinners and the four o'clock tea of five blends with varieties of cakes cookies and weensy sandwiches. All the passengers, mostly non-fat Westerners and Canadians, wandered happily among these distractions, including ten South Carolinians, among them Julia and Herb, and Jerry and Thomas.

At your assigned seat dinner, you might find uproaring conversation. Maureen and Bob from Canada, who run a metal door frame company, got a howl out of Toni's descriptions in her heavy Portuguese accent. Her husband, Bill, could add some knowledge to every topic.

Then Bob voiced his frustration over running a business which demands measurements in both metric and decimal systems. After a moment Steve let go: "Wouldn't it be tough if we had to judge in a Miss American Continent contest, and after measuring your young beauty, you said, 'She's a perfect 36,' then I'd say, 'I've got a perfect 88?'"

Steve and Marilyn have lived on a 45-foot trawler on the southern California coast for 23 years and are now looking for a trailer, house or condo on dry land. Their first purchase will be the biggest recliner chair made.

From dinner, the group walked back to the theater to see another complete distraction, Chris Pendleton, a female stand-up comic from Irmo, South Carolina. In less than a minute she had everybody laughing hard.

"We don't really eat grits in the South; we just serve them to Yankees so they won't come back."

Then she said: "We want you all to come down in August for our S.C. Humidity Festival. When you get off the plane, it's like stepping into a dog's mouth."

Two more weeks of distractions followed.

Retired editor and public relations executive Thomas Langford's column is titled "Some Edisto stories." Let him know if you have stories to share: 803-534-2097.

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