If you want a cruise with everything "English", pick this ship - lots of formal nights (suits and tie and lots of guys in penguin suits), indifferent staff (with a few very pleasant exceptions) many of whom would walk past and not even make eye contact (in complete contrast to the staff on our last cruise with Holland America who went out of their way to be friendly and pleasant), average food ...
We went to swim and snorkel with the whale sharks and that indeed was fabulous. They are beautiful calm fish and we got up close to them. Be warned though, it is a somewhat artificial experience. The fishermen on the bagans are paid to feed them for the tourists. Also, to get the most out of the experience one needs to be able to free dive if not scuba dive. Snorkelling on the surface is third ...
We decide to cruise from Darwin to Broome with Ponant from July 24th 2017 to 2 August 2017 because we wanted to experience the Kimberley from the ocean side. We had travelled the region by car back in 2007 and love the colours and the landscape.
We chose Ponant because it was a 5 star French ship, the price was reasonable and it was doing the areas we wanted to visit. $750 per day, per person ...