Cruise Lines

Over the past couple of weeks I've told you a lot about the destinations I visited on my South-East Asia cruise on Spirit of Adventure, but nothing about the ship, also called Spirit of Adventure. It's time to put that right.

First a little background. Although many passengers call it Saga, it's not. It was set up by Saga in 2005 but is now a brand within Acromas Holdings, which also owns Saga. But they are two quite different cruise lines.

For one thing, you don't have to be aged over 50 to cruise with Spirit (there is a 21 minimum age though), for another, Spirit operates an open dining system so you can eat when you want and with who you want, whereas Saga has fixed dining,

The chance to escape being regimented was one of the big attractions for the Spirited bunch I've just been cruising with. I probably hardly need add, it was for me too.

Lastly, as I noted in an earlier blog, the drinks are cheaper on Spirit than on Saga. A pint of beer for £2, bottles of wine from just over £10 (wine at lunch and dinner were included in the price on my cruise, but that is not always the case) and there are free shore excursions at every port. That all takes some beating.

Spirit of Adventure, the ship, is no spring chicken. It was built in 1980 and is looking its age in many places, but what it lacks in glamour and wow, it more than makes up for in service and attention to detail. And it is definitely one of the friendliest ships I've been on - that's crew and passengers.

An example of the Spirit way of dealing with gripes: One of the passengers was disappointed there was no natural yogurt at breakfast. Result? Someone was assigned the task of getting 20-odd pots of the stuff to last the rest of the cruise. True story.

The ship is small - just 9,570 tons with room for 350 passengers - so cabins and public areas are quite cramped.

Having said that, I was lucky enough to be in a spacious cabin at the front of the ship with a separate sitting area and a double bed. It was a good size for two people but it's sold as a single because of the way the bed is up against the wall and semi-enclosed at the end. Easy for one person, very difficult for two (especially the one on the wall side!)

The range of lotions and potions in the bathroom on Spirit always amazes me, with body and foot scrubs in addition to the usual range of body lotion, shampoo and conditioner. And look at the size of the bottles.

It's much better than anything you get in the higher-priced spa cabins on the likes of Celebrity and Carnival even though they are supposed to have "enhanced" toiletries.

On the downside, my shower was pretty feeble and had a nasty habit of going hot or cold of its own free will if you made the mistake of showering in the early evening along with everyone else.

The ship is what I would call functional rather than flash. There's a dining room, a self-service, one bar, one lounge and a big library with what has to be the most antiquated internet system in the cruising industry.

If I had a pound for everyone who asked me to write how terrible it was as they did battle with the three terminals (there are four but one was out of action for the entire two weeks) I would have left the ship a rich woman.

The passengers might have been on the wrong side of 50 - and many were way over that - but they still wanted to keep in touch with friends and family, and some were trying to do a little work, but it would either stop or go on a go-slow at any moment.

As I found many times, it's incredibly frustrating waiting five minutes for your emails to open, especially when you are paying 18p a minute, only for it all to crash when you've managed to read just one. A bit of investment in technology would not go amiss.

Spirit also has an outside swimming pool, so tiny that you can get from one side to the other in three strokes where Clive the pianist-cum-onboard action-man, holds snorkelling classes. Down in the bowels of the ship, is the one-room spa and gym and another small pool.

It's all very simple and all very comfortable, but that suits Spirit folk to a tee. They don't want to climb rock walls (I know that because several told me!) but they do want to make friends, enjoy the food - and I reckon executive chef George excelled himself with his tasty curries and Asian dishes - and have a reliable hand to hold while visiting exotic parts of the world.

But there niggles as well. That internet for one, but also no storage in the bathroom, no safes in the cabins (actually I believe a few do have safes but all I had was a very shallow lockable drawer), the fact that when the ship was full, as it was on my cruise, they could not seat everyone in the dining room at the same time.

Does it matter? Around 220 passengers on my cruise were repeaters and almost 80 were staying on for another two weeks. Many others were already planning when (note not "if") they would be back.

Frankly, it doesn't smack of too much discontent in the ranks.