Beautiful ship. Lovely and immaculate public areas. Excellent service. A comfortable cabin. But the food! It varied between poor and good, subject to the venue and the day. The so-called "King's Court" buffet area resembled an airport cafeteria, with frenzied diners who would have been better equipped with shovels, rather than knives and forks. The overly salty bread and rolls were in contrast to the excellent quality readily available at most Singapore supermarkets.  The pastries were second class. Decent lettuce was not to be found; only shreds of the ''frisee" type. The fare in the Britannia Restaurant, sometimes, was not much better: an insipid sole; tasteless monkfish; a miniscule game hen served with rice drenched in sauce.

Onboard, there are wonderful photos of celebrities who sailed on the ''first" Queen Mary.  My thought was, "the food had to be better." Indeed, it would be nice if Carnival sold this ship to an outfit who would offer cuisine compatible with its reputation. The reason for this may well be the fare structure. The lowest fare for the 8 day cruise was US$800-900 per person for certain cabins, while others were priced in the thousands. Cunard has 1300 cabins to fill and probably deems it necessary to draw in the bargain hunters as ''economic ballast." This doesn't make those who paid a bit more ecstatic. Would I cruise with them again? Only if the itinerary was compelling, with few options amongst the competition. One advantage of Cunard, is that their ships actually go places. For this trip, we sailed from Singapore, to Cambodia, to China, to Hong Kong. I would have preferred Crystal, but incredibly much of their Asian itinerary entails sitting in various ports for days on end.