To Lakshadweep on Star Cruise - Part Two

Star Cruise Libra is a BIG ship with 10 decks. Facilities like Restaurants and Bars, Sports and Fitness, Entertainment lounges and others like shopping arcades, photo gallery etc are all spread on these decks.

Deck 1 on the bottom has a medical centre and few cabins and rooms. Although I never visited it but someone told me it has all the necessary medical facilities that you may ever require on a ship. However, I was also warned it is damn costly. Believe me, I won't have enjoyed making a decision if ever confronted with something like either bleed-to-death or get a tetanus injection from a smartly dressed Star Cruise Medical Officer who in all probabilities might have looked more of an Hollywood actor and less of a medicine man and who would have looted my entire lifetime earnings for that one injection which normally would have cost me not more than a hundred rupee note outside. Either of the options would have killed me. And that was how I decided not to fall ill.

There is a very beautifully and elegantly designed Crystal court on Deck 4 which has a reception and a travel desk strategically equipped with ultra pretty looking creatures in short blue skirts ever pleasant to help you with your queries. Like others, I was immediately hooked up and took a little time to realize that like everybody else I was frequenting them every four minutes with one stupid query or the other. Finally I retired with a sigh.

Star Cruise has many Restaurants and Bars to prevent its passengers from dying of hunger or even thirst for that matter. Deck 4 has two of the restaurants – “Taj by the bay” which is essentially an Indian family style restaurant and “Four Seasons” which is a continental dining restaurant. Other than these there is a “Blue Lagoon” – a 24 hours open refreshments and snacks outlet, “Two Trees” – an exclusive lounge and restaurant, my all time favorite “Coconut Willy’s” and “Pool Bar” which are basically a poolside bar, “The Saffron” – an Indian restaurant serving only vegetarian food, and “Lickety Splits” – a superb Ice-cream bar. All these serve an array of exotic cuisine expertly prepared to indulge you into gastronomic delights. However I have a feeling that it’s a cunningly designed Star Cruise strategy to make you overeat so that you get forced to visit the medical centre at Deck 1 and eventually end up loosing all your belongings.

Ironically Star Cruise also provides you a whole range of sports and fitness facilities to keep you in good health and shape of your own. It has a sports deck (on Deck 6) with a jogging track running across the deck and a basketball court at the end. It also has an ill-maintained table tennis set. The Outdoor Golf driving range was too small to appeal and I never saw anyone practicing there. However the outdoor swimming pool and twin hot tub Jacuzzi’s was everyone’s favorites.

On the entertainment side it has an Open-style karaoke lounge aptly named – “The Bollywood”, a discotheque called “Boomer’s”, a cocktail and pre-dinner lounge – “Galaxy of the Stars” and everyone’s including mine topmost favourite area on the cruise (second favorite being the Coconut Willy’s and Pool Bar) Show-lounge called “Star Dust”. Star Dust was not only my favorite late night joint but it was equally popular with every stratum of travelers. Not because it use to host a series of dance shows featuring most beautiful girls in vibrant colors – red, blue, green with further enhanced effect by the ultimate fusion of light and sound. It was entertaining to a certain extent. However it was made real engrossing after 12:30 PM when the same girls performed the same kind of shows but topless. Now how a small piece of cloth can make all this difference I wonder. But this was the actual reason of Star dust’s popularity. You could find people of all ages right from 15 to 70, sitting mouth wide open, peacefully lost gaping at the best found assets on cruise. It never pinched to pay the outrageously high priced entry fee (Rs. 900 for the top 2 front rows where you could get the best of views – all clear and prominent, Rs. 500 for middle rows which offered acceptable view, and Rs. 200 which was useless as you will be sitting so far that the centre-of-attractions looked more like mosquito bites and eventually you end up day dreaming and imagining how they might have looked).

To name a few other facilities Star Cruise Libra has to offer are a small shopping area called “Ports O’Call” selling cruise souvenirs (from where I bought a coffee mug, a ball pen and a pack of playing cards all with Star Cruise photo embedded on them), an outrageously priced photo gallery selling your photographs clicked while boarding, an Internet café (again outrageously priced), a beauty saloon I never went inside but the demeanor suggested - again to be outrageously priced, a children’s playroom called “Porthole”, and a very elegantly designed (in all red) casino. I would have enjoyed going to Casino and trying my luck but Star Dust lounge offered a better alternative to waste my money.


(To be Contd. In Part III)