Howdy land-lovers! We
have finally arrived in Anchorage, Alaska after a very interesting 7 days at
sea. And boy was it filled with
characters and sights! Apologies for the
long message…but here goes!
The last time I wrote, we were about to board the MS Zaandam
at Vancouver. The itinerary of the
cruise was to take us up the Inside Passage of Alaska first to Ketchikan, then
to Juneau, to Skegway and then to sail in and out of the glorious Glacier Bay,
finally disembarking at Seward for a scenic train trip to Anchorage.
I was terribly excited when we got to Canada Place at
Vancouver to board the cruise ship. I
could see it in dock, and it looked a glorious and luxurious ship. We had splurged a little to get a cabin with
a verandah which was well worth it when we got to Glacier Bay – more on that
later! Boarding times were between midday
and 4pm, so we waited til around 2.30pm to avoid the mad rush, which meant
clearing customs and eventually walking the “gang-plank” to board was
relatively quick. Pretty soon, we were
in our stateroom and meeting our personal cabin attendant, Koko.
It was a great joy, after the last couple of weeks of short
stays to be in one spot for seven days.
I actually got to unpack my clothes!
We settled in and relaxed after the mandatory fire drill exercise. The first day was at sea while we motored our
way to Ketchikan. That allowed us the
time to acclimatise to life on-board. Life
on-board was almost like being in a casino. I forgot what the days were. Luckily the carpet in the elevators changed
daily with the name of the day to help you work out what day it is. So very helpful!
Of the towns that we stopped, Ketchikan was our
favourite. That was the first stop, and
by far the most interesting (I thought).
Ketchikan had an older part to the small town, which is essentially
built on stilts tiered and built into the side of the hills at the port. Houses were stacked above each other, with
some “streets” being just stairs to the various residences. Ketchikan was everything I expected of an old
fishing village. It was quaint, and the
people really friendly. The scary thing,
however is that it was an old cannery town which now derives most if its income
from tourist cruise liners like ours. We
spent quite a few hours walking around the town and loved exploring the various
side-streets and historical parts like the old “red light” district.
The next town we stopped at was Juneau, the capital of
Alaska. It is the only capital of the US
that isn’t approachable by road. You can
only sail or fly into Juneau. It was a
bit boring, the highlight being the trek out to see the Mendenhall Glacier and
its crystal clear glacier lake and Nugget waterfall. We also saw sock-eyed salmon swimming
up-stream to spawn, but didn’t manage to see any black or Kodiak bears who
habitually feed on these salmon.
After Juneau we sailed onto the Skegway. That was a strange town. It looked like the set of a Disney movie set
around the gold-rush times. It was a
town settled during the Klondike gold-rush era, but nothing looked old. It all looked contrived and made up. The highlight of the Skegway stop was seeing
seals swimming and feeding right in the port where we docked.
Leaving Skegway behind, we sailed into the glorious and
magnificent Glacier Bay. The Bay has
something like 16 glaciers but we only got close to two of them – Margerie
Glacier and Lamplugh Glacier. Both were
spectacular, with various icebergs surrounding them and the irregular
“cracking” sounds as parts of them break away into the bay. Having splurged a little on a stateroom with
a verandah, we had a great view of the glaciers without having to leave our
rooms! We decided the best way to do
this was with an in-room champagne breakfast.
Seeing that it was very windy, drizzly and cold 10 degrees Celsius
outside, we could duck out onto the verandah to marvel and oooh! at the view,
then run back in to thaw out over another glass of champagne! All very civilised, I thought. Others were rug up with wind-breakers, hoods
and gloves on the outside decks to have the same experience we had on our
individual verandahs.
On this leg of the sail, we also saw a small island in the
Bay heavily populated with sea-lions sunning themselves and frolicking in the
Bay. Speaking of the wildlife, aside
from the seals and sock-eyed salmon, we also saw whales from a distance (only
tails primarily) on the day we sailed to Ketchikan from Vancouver, but also a
pod of flying fishes and friendly seagulls which hovered along-side our
verandah in Glacier Bay. Unfortunately,
mountain goats, bears and other wildlife eluded us.
Now to the entertainment on the cruise ship….
To help in pass the time the cruise had various things to
see and do on-board which was listed in a daily activities menu. This menu was delivered to our stateroom,
along with a raft of other promotional materials. Each day, we got more and more paper,
sometimes three or four times in the day – each time we opened our doors! A bit much, I thought.
The daily activities menu listed the day’s entertainment,
fun activities, excursions, happy hours, on-board movie and screen times, plus any
special events. Most of the activities
weren’t really terribly interesting – like the Dancing with the Stars at Sea
competition or the $20 blackjack tournament round. We opted out of all of them. Not to say we
didn’t try. On two occasions, we
attempted to join the advertised LGBT drinks at the Mix Lounge. Despite seeing a couple of L’s and G’s around
(B’s are harder to spot and I’m not sure there were any T’s around although
some of the women confusingly had an over-abundance of facial hair) we found
that we were the “only gays in the village” at those occasions.
As for the entertainment all of them were pretty alarming, I
have to say! Nothing of real note, and
the quality was pretty ordinary when we tried to experience some of them. We watched one or two of the various shows,
including the all-singing-all-dancing shows, the piano bar crooners, the
on-board singer Darlene as well as various “guest” performers but none of them
really shone. As a matter of fact, I
think I have seen better shows at high school productions. Or community theatre. Or on “Australia’s Got Talent”.
The other performers included a couple of girls who played
classical music (who looked like they just stepped out of the set of Mary
Poppins – long hair tied in ribbons and long dresses sashed at the waist -
creepy), some old craggy looking dude playing the guitar and signing Elvis one
night and Neil Diamond the other night, another old dude with shaggy black hair
tinkling the ivories and the Zaandam Dancers, none of which were slim or sexy looking
and who were very stiff. The pick of the
entertainment for us was a three-piece band with a crooner that sang
golden-oldies. However, each night their
song sets were pretty much the same, just in different order. After a while, that got tedious too. Our ability to consume of alcohol was the
only saving grace for the entertainment!
Let’s talk about the staff and the service. In short, it was really haphazard and quite
disorganised.
The staff were generally very friendly and smiled a lot, but
weren’t very helpful. Koko, like many of
the staff on the cruise ship is from Indonesia (I started to call him Ketut). They make up something like 50% of the
staff. The next largest nationality of
staffers was from the Philippines.
English is not their first language, and there were communication
issues. Also, there was a lack of
consistency in the service. For example,
some days we got two daily activities menu, some days just one. Some days new towels, some days not. And there was a distinct lack of forethought
in the services (no clocks in the rooms or fruits delivered without plates or
knives) and often a long wait for things, including food and drinks. Also, the services and the experience showed
a level of disorganisation at many points (clocks in the common areas all told
different times – some 30 minutes apart), all of which I thought was
disappointing given the money paid and the level of “luxury” this cruise liner
advertises itself to be.
Speaking of the service, I also have to tell you about the
food. There were several options for
each meal. Formal breakfast, lunch and
dinner at the main dining hall came with the price of the cruise, along with
informal meals at another area, served buffet style. There was also a pool-side restaurant for
lunch and another restaurant for lunch and dinner, the latter requiring a
nominal fee of $10 per person for lunch and $50 for dinner.
Unfortunately, all of the meals at each of the various
restaurants were pretty ordinary. Some
of them, a haphazard mix of cultures, mostly which didn’t work (like bourbon
glazed salmon with a Hokkien noodle salad or quinoa crab cakes with coriander
pesto and chilli bean salsa) and some of them just plain unappetising (like
tofu and berry soup as an appetiser). This
wasn’t an exception even at the restaurant where we paid for one of our
meals. Instead of an interesting menu,
we got choices like steak, sandwiches and burgers. This is the restaurant that boasts that it
has the licence to serve from the famous Le Cirque restaurant of New York. Not quite the menu that meets up to its
reputation.
Now, of course you realise the ordinary nature of the food
didn’t slow me down at all! With so many
options, food was abundant and constantly on tap. You could even eat each meal at two different
venues. And I took as much advantage of
that as I could! Porky Paramananthan
managed to do just that within 24 hours of getting on-board – two dinners, two
breakfasts and two lunches! Epic effort,
even if the food wasn’t amazing..!
There was one fun thing which I enjoyed during the cruise
though. Each night during the turn-down
service, Koko would leave a “towel creature” on our bed. Imagine origami animals, but made with
towels. One night it was a lobster, one
night an elephant. My favourite was the
orang-utan that hung from the ceiling.
Very cute and very creative! They
even had a session where you could learn how to make these towel
creatures. Unfortunately, it clashed
with my planned activity of sitting in my stateroom and staring at the ceiling
while drinking vodka…
Let’s turn to the other guests. Generally they were white older people, bland
and boring in that middle-of-the-road thinking way. I garnished the median age to be around the
mid-70’s. As such, we had to be patient,
particularly during boarding and disembarkation at each port to account for
Zimmer-frames, walking sticks and ride-on motorised wheelchairs. Plus the slow shuffling around the boat and
indecisions/hearing issues when ordering drinks, food or getting information. As for their attire, the general theme is
matching track-suit pants, preferably velour with embedded diamante studs. That wasn’t as alarming as their penchant for
also wandering around the ship in their cabin-assigned terry-towelling robe and
slippers, with nothing else on. Some,
even to meals. I know – it won’t be long
til I am there too… I am not far away from that age bracket, after all!
Another thing I found entertaining was the range of
conversations amongst the guests – and boy could they talk! And loudly, making eavesdropping quite
easy! But it wasn’t just the subject
matter of these conversations that was entertaining, but also because of who
was speaking. For example, the one
between two burly Canadian guys in their late 50’s who looked like
lumber-jacks. They had a heated
discussion about the rudeness of people who have more than 10 items at the
express check-out lines and then about shop-assistants who dress badly. Not a topic of conversation I would have
expected them to have. And another
conversation between two well-dressed older women about their latest hunting
expedition (“And then a bear appeared – we didn’t know what to do because we
didn’t have a bear hunting licence. We
just wanted to shoot it, but were worried about being caught!”). I swore, until I eavesdropped I thought they
were talking about knitting… My mistake!
But I have to give these people credit for enjoying all the
facilities and activities that the cruise had to offer. They were there at every show, every happy
hour, every excursion. They went to each
formal dinner (dressed up to the nines) and happily chatted with strangers at
the open-seating tables. In fact, they
were the first in the pool and the hot-tubs, at the tennis courts and the
ping-pong tables – even before the ship started to sail off from
Vancouver! They even got up and warbled
(albeit somewhat out of tune) at the karaoke night. One particular older couple would be seen
every night on the dancefloor waltzing to whatever was being played by the live
band. I guess in hindsight I was the one
who lost out.
So now that’s our Inside Passage cruise experience. I learnt a couple of new things on the cruise
(like “panhandling” = begging, “floatplanes” = seaplanes), including the
realisation that I need to lower my expectations if I am going to go on another
cruise. And to leave inhibitions behind
and join in the “fun”. Maybe by the time
I get the itch to go on another cruise, I would have reached the
Zimmer-frame/walking frame age and become one of the normal-guest
demographic? Maybe then I will enjoy it
more…
So next time will be a brief run-down on our short visit to
Anchorage and then our days in the Hawaiian sun! Can’t wait to thaw out…
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