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INFORMATION AND COMMUNITY FOR EXPATS IN INDONESIA
Cruise Time Anyone?
- Thread starter Daniel50
- Start date
We had actually not seriously considered a cruise. It seemed like being stuck in a hotel/mall at sea. But after some of the comments here I/we may consider a cruise at some point in the future. I can see some benefits to having a room and food while getting to see different places. I am sure I will not be on the upper deck sun bathing and doing group activities.
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Cruising is like being trapped in a floating Mall of America.
Hahaha.........now if the Mall of America just made some ports of call.........I may consider it in the future.
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harryopal1
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While I am quite good at not being prejudiced towards people of any particular group, race or religion I do tend to have generalized prejudices and slipped into that when assuming that the troublesome family on the Cruise ship was Middle Eastern (I was thinking Lebanese) but it turns out they were Italian. Yes, and I have no trouble with meeting individual Italian strangers but Italian in my mind immediately links mafia and I have to kick that to the side each time I meet an Italian
As for the general theme of cruise or not to cruise.... this piece below is from today's Guardian.
Opinion
'Is Ewok having a nice time?': the special hell of a going on a cruise
Brigid Delaney
Outside the scene is serene and beautiful. Inside, not so much
‘The Big Kahuna of the boganfreude genre is cruise ship stories.’ Pictured: the Carnival Legend in happier times. Photograph: Andy Newman/AP
There should be a new word, boganfreude – meaning the thrill you get from reading about bogans behaving badly.
Boganfreude arises after reading about anyone who gets really sick drinking arak in Bali, or arrested for sex on a beach after a boozy brunch in Dubai.
But the Big Kahuna of the boganfreude genre is cruise ship stories. Last weekend up to 23 members of an extended Italian family were reported to be behind brawls – or “bloodbaths” as News Limited called them – terrorising passengers onboard the Carnival Legend. Remarkably, some passengers were underwhelmed by Carnival Cruise’s offer of 25% off the victims’ next Carnival cruise.
We love to read about cruise holidays gone wrong. Remember the Sick Ship – a massive gastro outbreak last year that affected 200 people on Ovation of the Seas? Or the hideous excesses of the cruise taken by the late David Foster Wallace, and explored in excruciating details in an 18,000-word Harper’s Essay?
Who hasn’t felt a spiteful shiver of delight in reading about people who spew non-stop for a week on a mega-ship, or who have raw sewage seep into their cabin as they sleep?
I don’t do cruises anymore. The first one I went on – a uni booze cruise along the Yarra when I was 19, resulted in me almost losing an eye. I danced too close to someone holding a cigarette and it was inadvertently – perhaps – put out on my eyeball.
Years later I can hear the sizzle of my right retina as the burning ember connected with the delicate, light-sensitive tissue.
I spent the rest of the term wearing a large eye patch; a sad, friendless pirate who had trouble reading the blackboard. The retina eventually repaired itself.
I didn’t set foot on a cruise ship until many years later, when I accepted a travel writing assignment to take a seven-night, 1970s disco-themed cruise around the South Pacific.
It was a strange experience. The inside of the ship was like an enormous shopping mall or RSL, filled with shops, dining rooms, a theatre, bars, nightclubs and poker machines.
Around us and below were the cabins, each level down as socially stratified as the Titanic (one shudders to think how dark and small the cabins must have been for the crew, the Dalits of the ship).
On the walls in the public areas there were many screens – always advertising the pokies (BE A WINNER), or that night’s concert, or the exclusive onboard restaurants, where you paied a “supplement” to dine. Even as a captive in this place – where the ship has a monopoly on your money – there was still the feeling of an aggressive market competition for your attention.
I asked the ewok’s owner if I could dance with the ewok. Photograph: Brigid Delaney
The first person I met on the ship was a genial farmer whose wife had cheated on him and, on a whim, he booked a cabin – an inside one, without windows. He barely saw his own bed, hooking up with a different woman each night. The ship was full of divorcees and, after the singers from the 1970s had packed away their wigs and makeup, the late-night bars heaved with drunken fumblings. In the dark, at 3am, the place resembled the uni booze cruises of my youth.
On a shore excursion, I didn’t watch where I was going and snorkelled – with some violence – into a member of the Village People.
Each day a strange man (was he as strange as me?) roamed the deck filming with an iPad everything up close and with intensity (the food, the empty swimming pools, the fingers of the keyboard players in the cheesy reggae band). At the conclusion of dinner each night, people sang: “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi, oi, oi!”
There was a woman at my table (you get assigned a table and dine with the same people each night) who was travelling with a life-sized stuffed ewok. The ewok had its own seat and other people at the table spoke to the ewok as if it was a real person: “Is Ewok having a nice time? Does Ewok want dessert? Did the ewok meet anyone special at the disco last night?”
At the Leo Sayer concert Ewok was passed around, aloft and dancing and, by the last night, bloated and bored and as friendless as I’d been the year I wore the eye patch, I succumbed to the collective magical thinking. When a Bob Marley song I liked came on, I asked the ewok’s owner if I could dance with the ewok. And she said yes, and I did. I also got a selfie with the ewok.
Maybe the fault is in cruise ships themselves – the way they are designed for excess, they way you are all trapped in there together. A brawl in these circumstances is not so much a surprise as an inevitability.
On a cruise, out there the ocean is flat, beautiful and mesmerisingly monotonous. Inside the sensory load is overwhelming.
The playwright David Williamson gave a memorable lecture in 2005 that linked cruise-ship culture with a peculiarly Australian sense of entitlement that had developed under the leadership of John Howard.
“Aspirational Australia will doubtless party on, playing deck games and comparing prices, but when the ship finally berths they may look out to see a destination much bleaker than they’d imagined … An obsessive focus on material acquisition, encouraged by governments who worship economic growth and little else, have locked us into a probable long-term disaster scenario for Cruise Ship Australia and for the planet as a whole.”
To be on the cruise ship was to be aspirational in that early 2000s sense: working class, but no longer Labor, in thrall to materialism but without bourgeois-approved taste, gorging on food and drink without moderation or restraint.
It’s a snobs’ view – a birth of this current strain of boganfreude. A more expensive holiday doesn’t make you a better sort of person. But it does mean there are fewer people around to film you brawl.
As for the general theme of cruise or not to cruise.... this piece below is from today's Guardian.
Opinion
'Is Ewok having a nice time?': the special hell of a going on a cruise
Brigid Delaney
Outside the scene is serene and beautiful. Inside, not so much
‘The Big Kahuna of the boganfreude genre is cruise ship stories.’ Pictured: the Carnival Legend in happier times. Photograph: Andy Newman/AP
There should be a new word, boganfreude – meaning the thrill you get from reading about bogans behaving badly.
Boganfreude arises after reading about anyone who gets really sick drinking arak in Bali, or arrested for sex on a beach after a boozy brunch in Dubai.
But the Big Kahuna of the boganfreude genre is cruise ship stories. Last weekend up to 23 members of an extended Italian family were reported to be behind brawls – or “bloodbaths” as News Limited called them – terrorising passengers onboard the Carnival Legend. Remarkably, some passengers were underwhelmed by Carnival Cruise’s offer of 25% off the victims’ next Carnival cruise.
We love to read about cruise holidays gone wrong. Remember the Sick Ship – a massive gastro outbreak last year that affected 200 people on Ovation of the Seas? Or the hideous excesses of the cruise taken by the late David Foster Wallace, and explored in excruciating details in an 18,000-word Harper’s Essay?
Who hasn’t felt a spiteful shiver of delight in reading about people who spew non-stop for a week on a mega-ship, or who have raw sewage seep into their cabin as they sleep?
I don’t do cruises anymore. The first one I went on – a uni booze cruise along the Yarra when I was 19, resulted in me almost losing an eye. I danced too close to someone holding a cigarette and it was inadvertently – perhaps – put out on my eyeball.
Years later I can hear the sizzle of my right retina as the burning ember connected with the delicate, light-sensitive tissue.
I spent the rest of the term wearing a large eye patch; a sad, friendless pirate who had trouble reading the blackboard. The retina eventually repaired itself.
I didn’t set foot on a cruise ship until many years later, when I accepted a travel writing assignment to take a seven-night, 1970s disco-themed cruise around the South Pacific.
It was a strange experience. The inside of the ship was like an enormous shopping mall or RSL, filled with shops, dining rooms, a theatre, bars, nightclubs and poker machines.
Around us and below were the cabins, each level down as socially stratified as the Titanic (one shudders to think how dark and small the cabins must have been for the crew, the Dalits of the ship).
On the walls in the public areas there were many screens – always advertising the pokies (BE A WINNER), or that night’s concert, or the exclusive onboard restaurants, where you paied a “supplement” to dine. Even as a captive in this place – where the ship has a monopoly on your money – there was still the feeling of an aggressive market competition for your attention.
I asked the ewok’s owner if I could dance with the ewok. Photograph: Brigid Delaney
The first person I met on the ship was a genial farmer whose wife had cheated on him and, on a whim, he booked a cabin – an inside one, without windows. He barely saw his own bed, hooking up with a different woman each night. The ship was full of divorcees and, after the singers from the 1970s had packed away their wigs and makeup, the late-night bars heaved with drunken fumblings. In the dark, at 3am, the place resembled the uni booze cruises of my youth.
On a shore excursion, I didn’t watch where I was going and snorkelled – with some violence – into a member of the Village People.
Each day a strange man (was he as strange as me?) roamed the deck filming with an iPad everything up close and with intensity (the food, the empty swimming pools, the fingers of the keyboard players in the cheesy reggae band). At the conclusion of dinner each night, people sang: “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi, oi, oi!”
There was a woman at my table (you get assigned a table and dine with the same people each night) who was travelling with a life-sized stuffed ewok. The ewok had its own seat and other people at the table spoke to the ewok as if it was a real person: “Is Ewok having a nice time? Does Ewok want dessert? Did the ewok meet anyone special at the disco last night?”
At the Leo Sayer concert Ewok was passed around, aloft and dancing and, by the last night, bloated and bored and as friendless as I’d been the year I wore the eye patch, I succumbed to the collective magical thinking. When a Bob Marley song I liked came on, I asked the ewok’s owner if I could dance with the ewok. And she said yes, and I did. I also got a selfie with the ewok.
Maybe the fault is in cruise ships themselves – the way they are designed for excess, they way you are all trapped in there together. A brawl in these circumstances is not so much a surprise as an inevitability.
On a cruise, out there the ocean is flat, beautiful and mesmerisingly monotonous. Inside the sensory load is overwhelming.
The playwright David Williamson gave a memorable lecture in 2005 that linked cruise-ship culture with a peculiarly Australian sense of entitlement that had developed under the leadership of John Howard.
“Aspirational Australia will doubtless party on, playing deck games and comparing prices, but when the ship finally berths they may look out to see a destination much bleaker than they’d imagined … An obsessive focus on material acquisition, encouraged by governments who worship economic growth and little else, have locked us into a probable long-term disaster scenario for Cruise Ship Australia and for the planet as a whole.”
To be on the cruise ship was to be aspirational in that early 2000s sense: working class, but no longer Labor, in thrall to materialism but without bourgeois-approved taste, gorging on food and drink without moderation or restraint.
It’s a snobs’ view – a birth of this current strain of boganfreude. A more expensive holiday doesn’t make you a better sort of person. But it does mean there are fewer people around to film you brawl.
The only cruise on was at Her majesties pleasure on a troop ship from HongKong Back to Blighty, there was initially only 8 of us RAF surrounded by 900 soldiers, unfortunately at the first stop Singapore we rather over indulged in Tiger, and just managed to get back to the boat, they had to lower the gang plank, the ships RSM not too pleased, a little fat man who for some reason wore spurs, he lined us up and said we would all be demoted as a RAF officer had joined the ship, a Wing Commander came and Said,Now now chaps don’t upset these pongos just go and lie on your beds and sober up, well those remarks marked us with the RSM for the rest of the trip, I was given the duty of cleaning up the bar on closing at night, I was in charge of ten soldiers we had a great time as the Scouser bar man would keep the bar open for us, then I got prickly heat due to showering in salt water, so I would go down to the bowels of the ship to see this old army major, leave an army corporal to clean the bar, so for the rest of the voyage i would go down and see the major, really odd I was the only one who ever went sick, after Gibraltar I didn’t vist him as I was cured, but the the RSMs first words, I been looking for you, we just didn’t get on,
We were the first troopship to sail up the Suez canal after it had been opened, strick orders, do not upset the natives, we got the same order when we docked at Southampton, don’t upset the dockers, they were very sensitive and go on strike for any reason, anyway a cruise on a troop ship not recommended, the Troopship Oxfordshire was converted to a floating school when UK didn’t have anymore troops left, it caught fire in the Med, all the school kids rescued, I think it sank there, I did go to the channel Isles in a tank landing craft in a force 9 gale, threw up all the way, cracked my ribs when the boat came up and hit me, so they would have to pay me to go on a cruise
We were the first troopship to sail up the Suez canal after it had been opened, strick orders, do not upset the natives, we got the same order when we docked at Southampton, don’t upset the dockers, they were very sensitive and go on strike for any reason, anyway a cruise on a troop ship not recommended, the Troopship Oxfordshire was converted to a floating school when UK didn’t have anymore troops left, it caught fire in the Med, all the school kids rescued, I think it sank there, I did go to the channel Isles in a tank landing craft in a force 9 gale, threw up all the way, cracked my ribs when the boat came up and hit me, so they would have to pay me to go on a cruise
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I loved reading about your 'cruise' on Oxfordshire... and sorry to hear about your prickly-heat as I also got that once.
I was on the maiden voyage on Oxfordshire in 1957.... Liverpool to Singapore around Africa as the Suez was closed..
I hope the air-conditioning on the ship was OK as my duty on board was to test the ships system 3 times daily with a wet/dry bulb thermometer in various areas of the ship. I was permitted into areas nobody else was allowed like the dependants cabins and lounge. There were many single ladies traveling out to get married to their fiancees and I believe I 'consoled' them well on the trip.....as they were obviously anxious about their future.
I hope the builders of the ship didn't notice that I tested some cabins a lot more than others....
I was on the maiden voyage on Oxfordshire in 1957.... Liverpool to Singapore around Africa as the Suez was closed..
I hope the air-conditioning on the ship was OK as my duty on board was to test the ships system 3 times daily with a wet/dry bulb thermometer in various areas of the ship. I was permitted into areas nobody else was allowed like the dependants cabins and lounge. There were many single ladies traveling out to get married to their fiancees and I believe I 'consoled' them well on the trip.....as they were obviously anxious about their future.
I hope the builders of the ship didn't notice that I tested some cabins a lot more than others....
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My little crew of soldiers had to toss all the cigarette end and ash and bar sweepings off the back of the boat, they badgered me to go with them one night as there was supposedly lonely ladies wandering about, anyway we tipped the rubbish down the back, bit of a problem, the wind was blowing the wrong way and all the shite blow up over the Laskers laundry, they were highly pissed off, I thought they were going throw us overboard, we managed to escape, but no lonely ladies that night and I was fearful of going back in case they remembered me
Really the people on the cruise have nothing to complain about. There was a generous offer given by Carnival. I mean who could resist, after a possible vacation from hell, 25% off one's next Carnival cruises.
For Paris, try again replacing "cruise" by "shopping" ?
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Barkho, which is the family name of those involved in the brawl, is a typical Assyrian name. Nothing in common with Italian names the way it writes (kho).
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I wasn’t sure about cruising, but did a short 4 night one last year on Carnival and was pleasantly surprised. There were people drinking, but I never saw anyone obnoxious.
Just like Indonesia isn’t for everyone, some people just aren’t the target market.
Booze isn’t free on the boats. You’re paying $5-10 per drink. You can buy a drink pass for $60-65 per day, for up to 15 drinks.
Most ships have do have extra cost restaurants. Ours had a great steakhouse, that for $35 total, you got a 5-6 course meal, with prime cuts of beef, lobstertails, etc. We tried it on the last cruise, and it was really great, and even came with a bottle of free wine.
We even did a Chef’s table, which was a nice experience, too. If you just eat at the buffet, you’re missing much of the best food on board.
Just like Indonesia isn’t for everyone, some people just aren’t the target market.
Booze isn’t free on the boats. You’re paying $5-10 per drink. You can buy a drink pass for $60-65 per day, for up to 15 drinks.
Most ships have do have extra cost restaurants. Ours had a great steakhouse, that for $35 total, you got a 5-6 course meal, with prime cuts of beef, lobstertails, etc. We tried it on the last cruise, and it was really great, and even came with a bottle of free wine.
We even did a Chef’s table, which was a nice experience, too. If you just eat at the buffet, you’re missing much of the best food on board.
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Your point is well made Jaime C.
To just brush the cruise industry with a 'floating mall' concept shows ignorance. There are many cruise ships, and venues, and all have differences. There is NO generalization as each are unique.
You've also introduced a new subject which is...there are deals. Some are worth looking at... depending on personal requirements. You observed, as I've done on many a cruise, of the fine-dining experience. I can tell you my wife and I wait for that deal until the last moment when the discount gets even better. On a Holland American cruise, a couple of years ago, we were fine-dining free... so long as we dressed well and 'helped' make the restaurant look elegant.
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jstar
Mr. 10,000
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loose translation of an article:
mediafaktualhukum.com
Arcadia is a Bahamas-flagged Cruise ship which is expected to arrive at Bitung Port in 40 minutes after I write this with 1.642 foreign tourists and a crew of 843. This cruise ship comes from Cairns Australia and transits at Bitung Port for approximately 8 hours, after which it will continue the cruise to Puerto Princesa Port, the Philippines. About 500 tourists will take tours around Bitung City and Manado City. Now that’s not bad for local income. But tours so late in the evening?
Previously, on Monday, February 27, 2023 Bitung Port received 2 training ships of the Japan Maritime Self Defence Force (JMSDF), namely JS Shimakaze and the JS Asagiri. The crew was received by the Mayor of Bitung, Ir. Maurits Mantiri, together with the Japanese Ambassador to Indonesia, Mr. Kanasugi Kenji and some other officials.
The two warships were in Bitung for 2 days with memorial activities in the Japanese Hero's grave garden and they visited the Japanese Monument in Bitung City.
Furthermore, to extend cooperation in the field of Indonesia-Japan tourism, Garuda opens a direct flight Manado-Narita (GA884 5 hours 30 minutes) every Thursday departing from Manado to Narita and every Tuesday Narita to Manado.
PELABUHAN BITUNG SIAP MENERIMA RIBUAN TURIS ARCADIA CRUISE SHIP -
MV. Arcadia adalah kapal Cruise berbendera Bahamas berukuran 84.342 GRT dan panjang (LOA) 285,23 Meter diperkirakan akan tiba di Pelabuhan Bitung pada Hari Rabu 1 Maret 2023 jam 18.00 WITA.
mediafaktualhukum.com
Arcadia is a Bahamas-flagged Cruise ship which is expected to arrive at Bitung Port in 40 minutes after I write this with 1.642 foreign tourists and a crew of 843. This cruise ship comes from Cairns Australia and transits at Bitung Port for approximately 8 hours, after which it will continue the cruise to Puerto Princesa Port, the Philippines. About 500 tourists will take tours around Bitung City and Manado City. Now that’s not bad for local income. But tours so late in the evening?
Previously, on Monday, February 27, 2023 Bitung Port received 2 training ships of the Japan Maritime Self Defence Force (JMSDF), namely JS Shimakaze and the JS Asagiri. The crew was received by the Mayor of Bitung, Ir. Maurits Mantiri, together with the Japanese Ambassador to Indonesia, Mr. Kanasugi Kenji and some other officials.
The two warships were in Bitung for 2 days with memorial activities in the Japanese Hero's grave garden and they visited the Japanese Monument in Bitung City.
Furthermore, to extend cooperation in the field of Indonesia-Japan tourism, Garuda opens a direct flight Manado-Narita (GA884 5 hours 30 minutes) every Thursday departing from Manado to Narita and every Tuesday Narita to Manado.
jstar
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This is probably related to the Battle of the Java Sea, which took place on February 27, 1942 and therefore is commemorated. The battle took place between an Allied squadron led by Rear Admiral Karel Doorman and the Imperial Japanese Navy under Rear Admiral Takeo Takagi. The Combined Striking Force of 14 Dutch, American, British and Australian ships lost. The blow was particularly great for the Royal Netherlands Navy. In addition to Doorman himself, 900 Dutch sailors lost their lives at sea.
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