The Italian staff on this ship were rude, arrogant and often told us lies. They need the sack! The Balinese staff, on the other hand were excellent - friendly, helpful, caring, considerate and could not do enough for you.

The food was a disgrace. I got food poisoning 3 times - twice from milk that had gone off and once from apricots that had been dried and then re-hydrated. The chefs tried to make food from different nationalities, but failed miserably. The Australian food night had sushi for an entree, for example. The chef had obviously done no research into what Australians ate. The food on the Thai night was so bland we could not taste any spices at all. There was not a single night where I could say that the food tasted authentic to the particular nationality being claimed to be served. On an Italian ship even the pasta was gluggy. The buffet was badly laid out. The bread and toast were about 30 m away from the margarine and jams, for instance. On such a long cruise they kept running out of more and more foods. These were not replaced / restocked during the cruise.

During embarkation we saw frozen meat fall out of its packaging onto the port. It was picked up and pushed back onto the crate, presumably to be served to some unwitting passenger. The meat was definitely not thrown away as it should have been. Read more