Pampered passengers aboard small-scale Seabourn Spirit
SMALL-SCALE CRUISING | Seabourn Spirit turns everyone into a special-request guest
SOUTH CHINA SEA -- Taking a harbor ride on Hong Kong's Star Ferry, I overheard the couple behind me commenting on a ship, the Seabourn Spirit, docked in the distance.
"It looks more like a private yacht, not a cruise ship," the woman said to her husband, who nodded in agreement.
ASIA EXPANSION: Seabourn will operate year-round in Asia for the first time next year. New Asian ports include Dalian, China; Busan and Inchon, Korea; Nagasaki and Kagoshima, Japan, and several Indonesian destinations, including Bali and Borneo. (The cruise line will add 44 new destinations around the world in 2010-11.)
MORE INFO: Contact Seabourn at (800) 929-9391; seabourn.com.
My husband and I were scheduled to board that ship, um, yacht, later that afternoon for a two-week Southeast Asia cruise, so I turned around and struck up a conversation. Turns out the couple was booked on the same trip -- their fourth voyage with the Yachts of Seabourn.
"We keep coming back for the service," said Kathy Pounds, a retired attorney from Jacksonville, Fla., who grew up on Chicago's South Side.
"If you want popcorn and champagne in the hot tub at midnight, they'll do it," chimed in her husband, Ralph. "And it doesn't take long before they all know you by name."
The service on Seabourn's three vessels -- Spirit, Pride and Legend -- consistently rates among the highest in the small cruise ship category in travel magazine polls. That's all well and good, but I tend to think of myself as a low-maintenance traveler who rarely plays the special request card, so all that "whatever you want, whenever you want it" premium pampering is a bit wasted on me. Give me some fantabulous food, a comfortable bed and spectacular scenery and you can call me Mrs. Bernie Madoff for all I care.
What really appealed to me about Seabourn was the small size of its ships. Each holds a maximum of 208 passengers in 104 all-suite cabins. Part of the reason Seabourn can offer such attentive service is that the number of crew members is almost equal to the number of guests.
The Spirit's intimate size meant we wouldn't languor in long buffet lines and it wouldn't take half the trip for us to get our bearings on board. Being more yacht than floating city also meant we could cruise where the big ships couldn't, docking right downtown in Ho Chi Minh City, for example, and sailing farther up Thailand's Chao Phraya River to Bangkok, where passengers on large cruise ships are stuck with a two-hour drive to the capital city.
Another Seabourn perk: We could eat whenever we wanted and with whomever we liked. That's because there are none of those set seating times and assigned tables common with many cruise lines.
My husband and I quickly became regulars at Spirit's Restaurant 2, a more casual alternative to the ship's formal dining room. At Restaurant 2, you can sit under the stars and enjoy the multi-course tasting menu, which was as good as any haute cuisine I've had in Chicago's four-star eateries.
The restaurant serves no more than 40 people a night. Only once were we unable to snag a reservation, which surprised me. Every cruise ship worth its sea salt has a fancy dining room, but few offer this kind of high-end al fresco experience. I thought it would be booked solid every night.
Few ships also offer the opportunity to tag along with the head chef as he shops for food. About 20 of us followed chef Rajat Adhikari through stalls overflowing with exotic edibles at a sprawling market in Ho Chi Minh City.
Adhikari passed out samples of juicy milk fruit, mangosteens and guava before leading us through the seafood section, where petite Vietnamese women sat on upside-down buckets as they gutted live fish and clobbered frogs.
Cities like Ho Chi Minh and Bangkok can be fascinating but chaotic places to visit. They're densely populated and noisy, and crossing the street is like a game of Frogger as you dodge stampedes of motor scooters. After a full day of sensory overload, it was always nice to head back to the calm confines of the Spirit, where we could kick back in a deck chair, put our feet up and sip a cold Singapore Sling.
"At 5:30, with the sun going down and 20 people on the deck, it feels like your own private yacht," said fellow passenger Christoph Watzke from Munich, Germany. "You don't have that on a ship with 3,000 people."
The Spirit's small size tended to get passengers talking to one another. The icebreaker invariably was, "Is this your first cruise with Seabourn?" And the answer usually was no.
Some 75 percent of passengers on our trip were repeat customers, including one Australian couple who clearly had lots of practice playing the special request card. I watched one evening as the maitre d' made them a special order of steak Diane at their table. Mrs. Australia told me she liked ouzo but the bar didn't have any, so staff picked up a bottle for her in town. And when she wasn't too fond of her bed's mattress, staff swapped it out with a new one.
Seabourn customers expect more than your average cruise ship passenger -- and they pay for that privilege. Seabourn's two-week Asian Capitals & Vietnam cruises start at $4,999 a person. That's not cheap, even by the real Mrs. Bernie Madoff's standards. But the price includes just about everything, from an open bar to staff gratuities. Mini-massages on deck were complimentary, as was a decadent beach party on the Thai island of Ko Kood, where Seabourn staff stood waist-deep in the Gulf of Thailand, serving guests caviar off a surfboard and topping off glasses of champagne.
While the Seabourn experience is all about luxury, the ship itself looked a tad tired in places. The Spirit is 20 years old, and despite numerous renovations, it's had its share of wear and tear, including a pirate attack in 2005 off the coast of Somalia. (The heavily armed bandits opened fire but never managed to board the boat.)
I could forgive the worn look of the carpeting in the stairways when I saw how much traffic those stairs got from staff members carting massive room service trays to various cabins around the clock.
Even on formal nights, guests can dial room service and have their lavish meal brought to their cabin, course by course. I thought this sounded like a fine way to celebrate our wedding anniversary, which happened to be at the end of the cruise. I asked room service if it would be possible to throw in an extra course of caviar. And would it be too much trouble to whip up a special chocolate dessert? As long as I was playing the special request card, could they scatter a few rose petals on the bed and decorate the room with some balloons, too?
"Absolutely, we can do that," the staff member said. He jotted down my multiple requests on his note pad before wishing me -- a formerly low-maintenance traveler -- a happy anniversary. By name, of course.