Cruises are always fascinating. Its a different world. Indians love cruise and every year a large number of Indian tourists go to different cruise hubs in Asia like Singapore and Dubai exclusively for cruise experience. Indians have often missed a home cruise, despite a few attempts. Now Costa cruise has announced a cruise from Mumbai in the coming season and lets hope it changes things to come.
Singapore has been one of the topmost cruise destination in Asia, until Dubai came up with the biggest cruise terminal of all. Star Cruises has been one of the favourite Asian cruise lines for Indians, which had tailor-made itineraries and amenities suited to them. But there are many strong competitors and number of cruise operators. Every year scores of Indian tourists will be flying to Singapore, take a cruise for 3-4 days and fly back. Singapore has a big cruise terminal and it looks almost like an airport terminal and actually functions like that with similar operations
Cruise is a journey and a destination. Its indeed a journey in luxury with huge modern cruise ships being a floating town in themselves, with everything on offer. Only thing is feeling of being on ocean for a longer period of time. If you are comfortable with it, cruise can be thoroughly enjoying and relaxing. Also because they give you a lot of options to spend your time in your own way. Similar experience for me on board Super Star Virgo from Singapore for a three night cruise in Strait of Malacca, touching three countries on the way.
So here is the first look of Super Star Virgo and above the ship you can see the Singapore Cable Car which runs from Harbour Front Tower 2 to Sentosa.
Once on the board, that is how the crew welcomes you with a poolside dance, its entertaining.
Safety first, so immediately after coming to ship there is a necessary security drill to tell all the passengers about safety tips and about emergency evacuation procedures.
Best places to relax on a cruise are of course poolside. The ship has pool and a kids pool. It also has a water slide, part of which pops out of the ship onto the sea (minor thrill). There are many restaurants (as per cuisine), shopping plaza, playing area, bars, discotheques and much more.
Being from media, we also had a chance to interact with the Captain and his first officers at the ship’s command room itself. Learnt a lot about running of the ship from the master himself.
Cruise ships have many categories of rooms on different decks to suit different budgets and taste, some interior rooms, some with ocean view windows and even bigger suites on the upper decks with balconies towards sea. How deep is your pocket!
Cruise have a variety of entertainment programmes for the evenings- shows, musical programmes, fashion shows and even Las Vegas style cabarets (where you are not allowed to take any form of recording or shooting gadgets). In leisure time people in groups enjoy themselves.
Besides, there are also off-shore excursions. Ship will be cruising in night and during day it might anchor to a port for people to go on land and enjoy some sight seeing in another city for few hours. They plan some excursion itineraries too. But these excursions are optional and chargeable. Otherwise, one may choose to stay put on the ship and relax. Or one can manage the land excursion by oneself as well.
Enjoying views from the top deck itself is a fun- day or night. Being on a vastness of sea is a different feeling altogether. You have options to sunbath, read, relax, sleep and socialise.
Finally back to the home port, Singapore after a delightful trip.
I haven’t put any statistics here as they all are available online on respective websites.
Amazng pics
Thanks a lot!