It may sound like a clichE but we really did not want to leave the Azamara Quest after 24 days onboard. We have never had such a wonderful, relaxing holiday and home seemed a world away.

Let me start with some information to put the cruise and this review into perspective. I am 54 and my husband 64. This was our fourth cruise and we have previously sailed on Celebrity Millennium, Celebrity Constellation and Norwegian Sun. I understand that there were 650 passengers onboard with 130 British. We met a number of lone travellers but did not come across any groups of three or four in a stateroom. Obviously with a cruise of this length, the average age was probably fairly high but there were many people younger than me aboard. The range of nationalities was higher than we have met before on a cruise. There were a large number of North Americans, Australians and New Zealanders. Most western European nationalities seemed to be represented with a large number of Germans. There was a German film channel on the television and destination talks were given in French. There were also Japanese and South American passengers. A surprisingly large number of passengers were made up of couples of different nationalities or people otherwise living as expats.

We had prepared ourselves for the cruise by staying at Singapore Raffles for three nights, never moving out of the hotel. This was a treat we had promised ourselves since our first visit to Singapore 17 years before when Raffles was being renovated and, if you can afford it, we would highly recommend the experience. We took the hotel classic Daimler to the cruise terminal where embarkation was really smooth with absolutely no queues. After choosing to eat in Prime C that evening, we went straight to our suite. Read more