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| Pulling out of Singapore. About to rain; as usual. |
Speaking of the Chinese New Year, let me tell you if you
ever intend to travel in parts of the world with a large Chinese population
during this particular holiday that you should book your travel well in
advance. Since Colleen and I had been
flying by the seat-of-our-pants so to speak, we were booking most of our
flights, hotels, etc as we needed them. Originally,
we had planned to fly out of Singapore.
We couldn't find a reasonably priced flight so we had decided after our
cruise that we would take a bus from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and
then figure out what the hell we were doing from there. Such is life.
With our newly altered travel plans, the girlfriend and I
headed down to the Singapore Cruise Terminal, with Colleen super stoked about
her second ever cruise. The first thing
we noticed was the fact that the cruise passengers were 99.5% Indian and
Chinese. I guess this should not have
been surprising, given the fact that these two ethnic groups made up the bulk
of the population in Singapore, but it just seemed odd. Usually when you think of cruises you think
of old white people and families with fat middle-aged American parents toting
their soon-to-be fat American kids from buffet table to buffet table. Once we got the initial culture shock out of
the way, we boarded the 20-year old ship and made our way to our room. We were pleasantly surprised to see that we
had been upgraded from an inside room (what we paid for) to a room with a
balcony. While the ship was certainly a
couple of rungs down the ladder from the Celebrity Equinox we had been on
previously, it was still a nice ship that had apparently just been in dry dock
(see: not on the sea) for a month undergoing some renovations and
upgrades.
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| Who invited Derek Zoolander on the cruise. Blue Steel! |
Once we got settled in, Colleen and I did what all good
cruisers do: head straight to the lunch buffet!
We ordered a couple of adult drinks and settled in with our mountains of
food. Sadly, they forgot to put the most
important ingredient in Colleen's drink...the alcohol. We had been told that the ship had a ton of
new staff right now, as is usually the case when a ship comes out of dry dock. Being the non-confrontational experts that we
are, we were too afraid to go complain, so we just relegated ourselves to the
fact that it was a rookie error and moved on to go watch some Russian
contortionist do things that I still can't figure out if they turn me on or
repulse me. This was quickly followed by
a ten minute blackjack session in the casino where I lost $100 and proclaimed my
disgust for all things gambling related (these feelings never last).
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| Freak between the sheets, no doubt! |
During the reservation process for our cruise, we had
requested for a table of two at dinner time, so we were a little surprised when
we were seated at a ten-person table.
Initially this was ok, as for the first half-hour we were the only
people there. Eventually we were joined
by two other couples and some random guy who was sitting by himself (can't say
I've seen this on a cruise before). It
was a super awkward dinner, as one of the other men at our table kept
constantly berating the wait staff and his wife/girlfriend was beyond
embarrassed. I shit you not, when I say
he requested three different types of water, two appetizers, and then had to
try three different main courses before he found one that was up to his
ridiculous standards. He also felt it
necessary during his Hitleresque dinner to demand the dessert menu while he was
still eating. To say it was an uncomfortable
dinner for all involved would be a major understatement. To make matters worse, the wait staff were
really slow and terrible (we shall assume they were some of the new recruits). They spilt our bottle of wine on me (no
apology), served us super warm water, never checked on us once, and to top it off we had to go
and procure our own bottle of wine that they had stashed away from the table as
they were supposed to pour it for us. If you aren't going to pour it, just leave
the damn thing in front of me; it will disappear quick enough. I guarantee it! On top of this the food was super bland and
when we wanted to pay for our wine and leave we couldn't find a staff member
for the life of us. By this point we
were so pissed off and wanting to get out of there that we just decided to leave
without paying for our wine and figured we had pulled a fast one. Sadly, the inept wait staff still managed to
track down our room number and charge the wine to our accounts, but at the time
it felt like a minor victory.
Doing our best to put our dinner experience behind us, we
headed over to check out a Village People review that was actually pretty
entertaining. The cruise director was
dressed up as the construction worker, while another portly (and exceptionally
white) member of the staff was dressed up as the Native American. His Sketcher shoes made the whole thing feel
that much more authentic. One thing I
must say about the Chinese tourists is that they sure loved their YMCA. They were singing and dancing along as if we
were at a Bon Jovi concert for Christ's sake.
Once we had our fill of the cheesy shtick, Colleen and I headed up to
the bar/nightclub for a couple of drinks.
Instead of a nightclub atmosphere, we were greeted by large packs of men
standing around in groups, not drinking and just looking generally like
perverts on the prowl. Needless to say
it was a sad state of affairs and after a couple of drinks and Colleen feeling
like she had been eye-fucked enough for one night we made our way back to our
room.
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| The shoes just authenticate the performance that much more. |
Back in our room we searched high and low for our breakfast
card to place on our door for room service the following morning, but I could
not find it. I had to ask at least four
different people who were all quite rude about the situation if I could
possibly have a new breakfast card. It
was literally as simple as handing me a piece of paper. All of them insisted that it was in my room
on the desk (it wasn't) and basically called me a liar. Eventually, a gentleman brought one to our
room for us, but in keeping with the ridiculously bad service decided not to
knock on our door and just barged right in.
What if Colleen and I had been
having a mud wrestling match or had our dominatrix gear setup? That would have been doubly awkward. To say I wasn't impressed with Royal
Caribbean so far would be a fair assessment of the situation. We did our best to drown our sorrows by
ordering three plates of room service, which I quickly devoured before passing
out in a gastro-induced coma.
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| Don't judge me. |
~Brentski~
Note: I realize this posting may make me sound like
some kind of "service snob". I
am actually the furthest thing from it.
As someone who has worked in the industry for years, I actually despise
said snobs. The service was THAT BAD,
made even worse by the fact that it was on a cruise where service is usually
far superior to that which you receive elsewhere.
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