Ethnicity on the Ship
I do try to make travelogues into 'should I do this?' reviews and I'll get back to doing that. I've come this far with plenty of mentions of travel groups, though, and I haven't touched on race or ethnicity. Those are groups Americans think about a lot.
The number of African Americans or African Canadians aboard the Koningsdam was small, maybe one or two percent.
Chinese Americans and/or Chinese Canadians were better represented. They were still no more than fifteen percent of the crowd, though.
Ethnically, I can't tell Canadians and Americans apart unless they're being really obvious. I could tell we had a fair number of Dutch, Germans, French, Scottish, English, and other Europeans, though. We had some Indian Americans (not American Indians) and some non-Chinese, non-Indian Asian-Americans but not many.
The crew, of course, was totally different. The main dining room staff were composed totally of Indonesian nationals, almost all of them men. In other places, we met cruise staff who were Indian, Philippine, Indonesian, Sri Lankan, Thai, Laotian, Dutch, and Mexican. We may have had a few Africans as well, possibly from Ghana or South Africa to judge by accents. The only European Americans I noticed on the staff were the entertainers.
Of course, the most important categories are these:
Friendly and open
- Most guests fall into this category
Friendly but shy
- A minority number but still significant
Mostly polite
- Over-populated with the ship staff
Disdainful of others
- This includes multi-generational families
- And includes large groups of retirees traveling together
- And any other group preoccupied with their members
Unfriendly
- Almost none (yes, actually)
Food Service
The full service restaurant had bad service by American standards. However, that’s maybe a too high (or just too different) standard. It was still very good but it wasn't what we're accustomed to having.
* If your fries come with vinegar, there will not be enough
* No one will check with you to bring more
* If you ask for any condiment, you will not get enough
* You will need to learn to ask for two helpings of sauces if you like them
* The food is like Golden Corral, always a bit bland
* The cooks don’t know how to make good fries
* The waiters won’t leave a menu at the table
* They really want you to order everything at once, even the dessert
* You need to get a manager if you want to add to your initial order
* You probably won’t see your waiter again
- the team system means you’ll see six different waiters instead
- none of them will know what you said to the others
* The system is super efficient, fairly uncaring, and very polite
* And the food is good. And the service, too. It really is - but it's different.
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