Eating on board Princess Lala

Somebody is in the galley before you are awake. That somebody is the chef, one of the five people who sail with Princess Lala, and the day on board is arranged around what leaves that room.

The plates travel two ways. Most go to the long table in the indoor dining room, which has sea-view windows along it and the tea and coffee station at its far end, so the kettle is never more than a few steps from your chair. The rest go aft to the open-air table at the stern. It stands under a timber roof beside the water, and on a still morning it is the better seat for breakfast.

Nobody books a table. You sit where there is room and where you like the view, and at the next meal you can sit somewhere else.

The long table is one table for the whole boat. A grandmother, a teenager and a couple travelling on their own sit down together to what the chef has cooked, and that is the way we like it.

On the first day the cabin keys are handed out, the safety briefing is done, and lunch is the first thing you eat. Dinner that evening is at the long table, after the fruit bats have left the mangroves off Kalong.

Day two is the long day, and breakfast is the reward for the early start. You climb Padar in the first light, you come down, and breakfast is waiting on board. Lunch follows the swim at Pink Beach, and dinner closes the day. On the three-day sailing there is one more breakfast on day three, before the last swim at Kanawa.

The two-day fare calls at the same stops on both days, but not at every meal. Guests on that fare eat lunch and dinner on day one and breakfast and lunch on day two, and go ashore that evening between 19:00 and 20:30, so dinner that night is in town.

We describe only what our photographs show, and they show this. A whole fish, grilled, laid on a platter at the long table. Prawns and calamari with corn. Crumbed prawns. Sambal ground in a stone mortar and left on the table beside the plates. Fried banana with cheese, and dragon-fruit juice in the glass next to it.

Those are the kind of plates that come out of the galley. They are examples. We do not print a fixed menu; the chef decides what goes on the table.

What we can say for certain is the shape of it: a chef, a galley, two tables and a mortar of sambal. If one food matters to your trip, ask us about it by name before you book.

Allergies and special diets are handled in writing, booking by booking.

Tell us when you book, and we confirm with the galley in writing before you pay. You read the answer while the money is still yours.

A message that is easy to answer says four things:

• Who it is for, by first name or by age, so the galley knows whether it is an adult or a six-year-old.
• What the person cannot eat, in plain words, and whether it is an allergy, a diet or a dislike.
• What they do eat, if it is a child who eats five things.
• The sailing you are looking at, so we write back about that boat on those days.

Send it with your booking request if you can, and in any case before you pay the deposit. For anything else about food, ask us before you book.