I got back from Cebu, and it was quite a long trip. We boarded the ship at exactly 4:00 Tuesday afternoon. Well, Rose and I were assigned the responsibilities of a mystery shopper. My friends know about the whole voyage back here in Manila. I have to be blatant to say that I'm very disappointed boarding the San Lorenzo ship of NN- from the time of looking for their ticketing office to disembarkation. It took us hours to look for a ticketing office. We were lucky enough to find a small kiosk swarmed by NN porters stalking all prospective ticket buyers like crazy, and almost hidden among the pedicab-sedans of street vendors at the terminal gate. I won't complain about how come there wasn't a computer to machine-validate my transaction, but rather how come I couldn't locate a convenient ticketing office where I could do my transaction safely and conveniently. Well, so much about it. I amused myself watching the dancing porters groove to the music of Buttercup. It was quite a sight. But it did not compensate the horrible observations I had as I went from one deck to another. Images of broken mirrors, rusty floors and rails, malfunctioning air-conditioning systems, filthy bathrooms, inattentive crew, overcooked side dishes, and 27 hours of asking, "Are we there yet?" (an exaggeration for the last item). Rose and I stayed at Anj's state room - The Golden Lotus Room! And it was a First Class Disappointment too! The carpets seemed uncleaned for years and the wallpapers were almost torn off the walls. The curtain rods and the Oriental Dividers were lethal! Tetanus galore!
Some people were attentive to my queries though, but there were lots of areas for them to improve on, customer service wise. The ship and the service need one major overhaul.
Well, the voyage going to Cebu and our entire stay in Cebu were quite memorable. We really had fun, and made the most out of the limited time we could go around the city and visit the famous places and hangouts. I'll relate my story on my next post.
