Got back today from a great 7 day trip through Asia and wanted to pay back all the great advice I have found on this site by writing of our experiences.

My husband and I are in our mid (ish) 40s and our 20th wedding anniversary was looming and on impulse we decided we deserved a holiday. We booked this cruise only weeks before sailing when a great deal came on Vacations2go.com We had cruised a number of times before but my husband always aspired to a suite and when some particularly "sweet" deals were announced we jumped on. Then I trawled cruisecritic and found a forum for the actual cruise we were sailing on and met a great bunch of people before we even left home. It was an easy fun way to find out ideas for before and after the cruise, and for tours and activities during the cruise. We scraped up the required 25-minimum to register for a free meet n mingle of our little group on board, which gave us a little something extra to look forward to. And RCC really came to the party (literally), giving us a private area, free nibblies and non-alcoholic drinks, and some gifts for each of us and some nice lucky-door prizes as well. You can do this for any RCC cruise, just go into the roll call forums on cruisecritic, scroll down to Royal Caribbean and search to see if there is a group for your tour and start or join a meet n mingle.

The other great advantage to roll call forums (for any cruise, not just rcc) is an opportunity to organise private tours in ports with other cruisers, a nice way to meet people and most importantly to save a whole lot of money! this is exactly what we did! A number of our group were interested in doing the tour to Borobudur in Semarang but just couldn't afford it through the ship. Instead we all pooled our internet skills, and searched for local tour companies and information. In the end we organised a 24-seater air conditioned bus with driver and English-speaking guide to take us to the world-heritage listed monument. We read up and realized the local traffic could potentially be a huge problem, and negotiated to have the tour company also organise a police escort for our group. The tour included a buffet lunch at a wonderful local Indonesian restaurant, and we visited another nearby temple, a silver factory and several photo opportunities. And all for the total price of $70US per adult, $50US per child! The ride was as exciting as the destination, there are millions of moped-riders in Indonesia, maybe more per square inch than road, so we dodged and weaved, crossed to the wrong side of the road (or the right side, depending where you came from!), drove through red lights and squeezed between impossible spaces. It was like being in a legal police chase! The temple / monument of Borobudur was beautiful and quite manageable for all our group. Lunch was delicious, and the tour company and our guide Awun were both exceptionally good. If you are touring this area, email Hans at info@borobudurholiday.com. We found them to be professional, reliable and friendly, a great day out enjoyed by all and we were back onboard with plenty of time to spare. Read more