Intro

We went on a cruise by P&O (For reference, the ship is Pacific Adventure) for 4 days and 4 nights.

The cruise experience was possibly the sharpest disjuncture between the neutral liminal space aesthetic of the ship interiors and the racial post-colonial capitalist labor that runs the ship. The ship experience is a production by South-East Asian + Indians for White people.

You should try it at least once, and it's pretty cheap at ~$120/person/night without extras inclusive of meals and room. This is on the cheaper end of cruises available in Australia.

My take is that as a product offering, it affords middle class people in high wage countries a chance to eat, drink and chill out in a zone of South-East Asian wages, without having to pay for/deal with flights. ^[1]

By vibes, think a combination of Changi Airport + an international hotel in Singapore circa 2005.

Now let's talk about interesting stuff

1. Labour on the boat
2. Food
3. Physical Aesthetics
4. The Rooms
5. The Guests
6. Summary: The Deal

Labour on the boat: There's a lot of it

Everything is incredibly labour intensive.

Our cruise boat was called the Pacific Adventure. For our trip, there were 1,088 crew with a maximum capacity for guests of ~2,600.

That’s about 1:2.4 ratio of staff to guests.

Note that a lot of the staff are relatively invisible. Looking at the “crew member of the month” board reveals that there’s electricians and technicians on board that generally never interact with guests.

Racialised labour

It's all made possible by South-East Asian + Indian wages.

Most of the staff wear name tags that say first "[Name] - [Country of Origin]", so “Lyra - Philippines” as an example.

I can’t tell if this is meant to make you feel like you're somewhere international (P&O’s motto is “Like no place on earth”) but it has the effect of really increasing the salience of the race of the staff.

The racial hierarchy in staffing then becomes really obvious.

• Captain: Italian
• People in charge: There's a combination of Europeans and like 2 Indians at the top of the hierarchy as "Head of guest experiences" etc.
• Entertainment team: From the UK. There's a segment of the crew called "Anchors Aweigh" that welcomes you on the deck, does a little dance at the start of the cruise and then runs stuff like trivia.
• Lower-level managerial staff: The staff that organise people are Indian or (Indonesian/Filipino) Chinese.
• Cooking and Cleaning: The staff that cook and clean are Filipino/Filipina, Indian and Indonesian with some South Americans likely in the mix.

Other specialised categories

• Casino dealers: Mostly Filipina.
• Child minding: Staff looking after kids at the kids club are almost all Filipina.
• Alcohol service: Those serving and clearing alcohol are majority (but not entirely) Indian.

The mix of staff is somewhat international, giving it a post-colonial rather than colonial vibe.

Wages have got to be super low to sustain this level of staffing. I was chatting with one of the Filipina ladies who was clearing plates in The Pantry and she mentioned that she works an 8 month contract (This was her third contract), which can get extended to 10 months if the company needs you. In between contracts, it's a couple of months of rest at home. I didn't ask her how much she made, but I'm guessing it's on part with the other opportunities Filipinas have to make money working overseas.

Consequences of mass labour

The mass labour warps everything on the boat, at least to Australian eyes.

Everything is manual, automation sucks

P&O has an app, and it is terrible. Truly. It fails at basic tasks like, allowing someone to log in and stay logged in. Everything about it sucks.

For example, some of the dining options require you to book a reservation. Not every dining venue supports in-app booking. The solution? Call someone at the booking desk using the room phone.

Looking for extra towels? Call the desk. Someone will bring it to you immediately.

All calls I made were answered in 4 rings or less and were to ship phones, which means that there's a human standing next to each of these phones at all times.

Where possible, they chose the labour intensive option over the capital intensive option

So much of the work on the boat is done in a labour intensive way.

The rooms are cleaned/made everyday, with the staff coming around all the time.

In the food court like eating areas, plates are cleared very quickly, with tables sitting idle for very short periods of time. (I wonder if this is necessary to feed everyone in that space in a reasonable amount of time).

Empty beer bottles or cans around the swimming pool get cleared very quickly.

The casino table games have human dealers, even though the boat has electronic versions of them.

Every element on the ship that feels "old school" actually has an incredible amount of human labour embedded in it. I'll note more of these as we go along.

Food

The food is actually much better than I expected. I have long believed that good food at affordable prices is ultimately about the cost of labour. No surprises that the cruise punches above its weight here.

Note that except for 1 meal, we ate at "free" meal options (i.e. meals were included in the price of the cruise).

The how of food

We mainly ate at the food court like space called "The Pantry" that has a bunch of food option at each meal.

Interestingly, instead of laying things out in a self-service buffet, food is served by people standing behind counters, much like at a food court - even though there's no money changing hands and you can have as much as you want. I couldn't really figure out why they did this. Possible explanations include:

1. Ensure a steady flow of food - i.e. preventing someone from taking all of one dish
2. Ensure that food is doled out in a steady proportion - i.e. preventing someone from picking all the chicken out of the fried rice
3. Improving the "experience"

Note that non-buffet service is a labour intensive way of serving free, unlimited food.

The who of food

The food is very obviously cooked by Indonesians and Indians (and some South Americans) for predominantly White people.

You can tell it's cooked predominantly Indonesians and Indians (and some South Americans) because:

1. The Indian food is good, with an obvious attempt to ensure tasty vegetarian options
2. The "Asian" food is really Indonesian food ("Chicken with a sweet sauce and Sambal Oelek" is a dead giveaway)
3. The fried food is great (Fried fish, hot chips)
4. There is occasionally reasonable South American food (nachos, beef, pork etc.). The guacamole was closer to fast food tier guacamole (i.e. kinda of runny, presumably heavily processed rather than made from fresh avocados)
5. The Western roasts are reasonable
6. The Italian food is terrible (Every attempt at pasta was not good)

You can tell it's cooked for predominantly for White People because:

1. The food is unapologetically Asian, but there is nothing that would be super challenging to White people.
2. The food is predominantly carbs and meat. The balance of vegetables to meat is very far away from Asian norms.^[2]
3. Almost all the vegetable dishes include potatoes.
4. The cutlery set you pick up yourself is fork + knife.

One thing that was genuinely impressive were the sauce stations around The Pantry, which as a default included not just Tomato sauce, BBQ sauce and Worcestershire Sauce, but also Sriracha, Soy Sauce, Kecap Manis and Fish Sauce.

Another labour intensive option was for the default napkin/cutlery in the Pantry to be served as a cloth napkin wrapped around a fork and knife. The napkin is presumably washed, dried then hand folded around the cutlery.

The what of food

The food that's included in the cruise was:

1. The Pantry - Food court style with Indian option, "Asian" option, Fried/Grilled Fish + chips and a Western roast type option. Also includes desert (Jelly, mass produced cake slices etc.) and nespresso machine coffee, diy Dilmah tea and juice.
2. A Chinese Restaurant
3. An Italian Restaurant

Pretty good, especially given that meals were included in the price of the ticket.

We did go to the Italian restaurant and paid extra for one item - Prawns to be added to the Arrabiata for $4.50. I thought it was interesting that they even had options on the menu at a $4.50 price point.

Additional food options

There are also opportunities to spend extra money on nice stuff, specifically soft drink cans, fancy meals (steak, pizza), alcohol, espresso coffee and good ice cream.

If ordered ala carte, these are charged at approximately Sydney prices, which makes them seem reasonable, but also high margin for the cruise.

You can also get packages (e.g. all you can drink packages) but they only really make sense if you're actually going really hard. The soft drink package for example only makes sense economically if you're drinking 5 cas of soft drinks a day.

We did pay extra for a high tea experience, it was pretty reasonable! Not that I've ever been to High Tea before, but it seemed pretty reasonable for the price and service.

Physical Aesthetics

One thing that is kind of weird on the boat is the physical aesthetics. After a few days, I realised that the interior of the boat has the aesthetics of an airport.

I don't entirely understand why it feels that way, but my current hypothesis is that it's driven by the physical layout of the boat requiring things to be placed alongside corridors that others are constantly walking through.

The key feeling is that a lot of the places on the boat feel like liminal spaces rather than destinations in and of themselves.

One theory I have is that people on the cruise don't necessarily adhere to regular schedules ("We're on holiday!"). So you can rock up to The Pantry at 9pm and find someone just showing up to start eating dinner. It contributes to the overall sense that everyone isn't on some fixed time zone which adds to a sense of dislocation. "Like no place on earth" indeed.

The interior

In the interior, the bars all feel like Airport bars. There is duty free shopping and a casino.

The areas with normal vibes are the "theatre" (stage + chairs room), and the restaurants where you have to book to enter.

Again, on the labour intensive options, the central lobby area with a bar, surrounded by duty free shopping has someone performing live music at night.

Exterior - Pools + Drinking Deck

There are two major pools, a family pool that is technically indoors, adjacent to a "main pool" that is outdoors. The outdoor pool has an upper deck over looking it with fake grass where you can sit around and drink and enjoy the ocean air.

The kids were in the pool most days and the pools were all reasonably attended but never too full.

Other areas

There is VIP area that has its own separate pool, and a separate kid-free hang out zone as well.

There is a gym, but it's way too small for the occupancy of the boat. I did try to go there 10 minutes after opening only to discover that every single treadmill (about 10 of them) were all occupied, and the one working exercise bike was also in use.

There's also a kids club (various categories based on age), an arcade and some other miscellaneous stuff.

The rooms

We chose a room that housed four (2 adults + 2 kids) on bunk beds and had a balcony looking out on the ocean. This lowered the cost of the trip quite a bit for us.

The rooms aren't luxurious, but it's not obvious that they need to be. The balcony was actually really nice to sit when the weather was good. Given how little they were, the kids were on the lower bunks and the wife and I were on the upper bunks (very chaste).

The Guests

So who exactly goes on this cruise? It's a combination of:

1. Retirees
2. Families with kids (children of all ages including teenagers)
3. Adults looking to chill out

Retirees

I chatted with a retiree on the cruise one morning. I said "This is my first cruise" and he replied "Yes, I can tell.".

He's apparently been on over 50 cruises. He told me he'd brought his daughter on this cruise, since she'd just gotten divorced. He was staying on the boat for 14 days, (for reference, the cruise was 4 days long) doing multiple back-to-back cruises, then being on land for 8 days and then getting back on another cruise for 12 days or so.

It's kind of incredible, but honestly, I thought of this video of Richard Nixon when he said that:

Families with kids

The families and their kids were actually really nice and well behaved. I saw zero kids being bratty, and while you could occasionally see someone scolding their kids, it was better than the alternative of letting their kids run riot.

A few of the other kids ended up playing with Ariya and Rohan in the pool, and were super nice and altogether very polite.

Conspicuously absent - Drunk Yobbos

I was also somewhat surprised to see that there were no obnoxious drunk yobbos on the cruise. I was expecting some and I'd wondered how the retirees would co-exist with drunk yobbos, but it turns out that people just weren't that obnoxious despite heavy drinking.

The culture

I would like to add one note on the culture of the people on board the ship. People on the ship (staff and guests included) were generally living an unironic life of pleasure.

One night, the ship had a Gatsby-themed party and people unironically showed up for it in large numbers and with great enthusiasm. On the last night, when we were in one of the restaurants, the restaurant manager came on the mike, thanked us all for the cruise and asked us to make please give them a 10/10 rating on the post-cruise survey. Then he got the guests to wave their black, cloth napkins in the air to say "Thank you" to the kitchen staff as a full line of cooks and kitchen hands came out in a conga line and paraded through the restaurant to loud pop music. The guests cheered and waved their napkins.

I thought I'd note it down because it's been a very long time since I've hung out in a space that was that unironically into stuff, without being self-consciously unironic.

Summary: The Deal

So that's the deal.

You pay ~$120/day for a room + meals. ($1,912 for 4 people over 4 nights). ^[3]

The room is ok and has a nice balcony.

Meals are included. The food is pretty good with basic coffee and tea included.

You can pay more for other nice stuff (soft drink cans, fancy meals, alcohol, espresso coffee and good ice cream) if you want to. There's duty free shopping and a casino.

But mostly, you're paying for an experience that you only get by going to a developing country with cheap labour.

Book here if interested.

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1. My take is that as the cost of flying drops to zero, this cruise experience gets made redundant by resorts in low cost countries. ↩︎

2. This diet, while very tasty, had the side effect of turning my poops into incredible, toilet clogging monstrosities. ↩︎

3. Note that this includes a built-in $49 of credit (per trip) to spend on premium stuff on the boat. ↩︎