Empty vessels: how a Hong Kong cruise into 'international waters' can be a lonesome affair

International waters. The very words have a certain hold on the popular imagination: a lawless zone where man can cast off the rules and inhibitions of an increasingly regulated world. In the popular cartoon series The Simpsons, characters set off into international waters to indulge in illegal activities from drinking on a Sunday to betting on a monkey knife fight. For Hongkongers, international waters are more than fantasy, they are a very real and often surprisingly affordable weekend leisure option.

Cruise companies from the disreputable to the luxurious offer short trips to the waters just outside Hong Kong's jurisdiction, where passengers can live for at least a night as people without a state, which in most cases means one thing: gambling. As spelled out in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a country's territorial water extends 12 nautical miles from its coastline. The area within the next 12 nautical miles is known as the "contiguous zone", where it has limited authority to institute activity such as border patrols. Beyond those 24 nautical miles lie the high seas, where national laws have no authority.

When I booked passage on the SuperStar Virgo for a 24-hour trip into international waters - known in the business as "non-destination" cruises - I was beside myself with excitement. Visions of the outlaw life at sea played in my head; I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying on outfits, each more garish than the last, and seriously considered packing a knife in my boot.

Later that evening, at sea, and sitting in a mostly empty onboard amphitheatre watching dancers embrace each other as Bryan Adams' Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman? blared overhead, I began to temper my expectations.

According to Su Yin Anand, a partner at Ince & Co which specialises in maritime law, the idea of the high seas being a lawless place is not entirely true - ships are still obliged to follow the statutes of its "flag state".

Perceptions of lawlessness are mostly a function of enforcement; since international waters do not belong to any state there is no one to enforce the law. The position of cruise ships is a bit more complicated. Because most are registered under flags of convenience for tax purposes, the chance of flag states enforcing laws would be very slim, Anand says.