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I took a four day break while building Princess Donia and booked a cabin on the next available cruise boat heading from Luxor to Aswan, which was a very nice cruise boat mainly catering for the German tourist market. I wanted to see what the big cruise boats offered, how they performed, the quality of the food, the wine and entertainment.  After all, the big cruise boats would be our main competition when I completed the build of the Princess Donia Dahabeeyah. What I learnt was considerable. The main point being that though the holiday package was cheap as chips, once you were on board, they charge a high price for everything.

The best part of my journey on the cruise was that I met a confident and very competent waiter called Adham. His attention to detail was very impressive and nothing was too much trouble for him.  He really wanted to look after the passengers; he had a good command of English, some German and Dutch, and of course his native Egyptian Arabic. I observed Adham for 4 days and discovered that he was very consistent every day. He liked the passengers and the passengers loved Adham!  I knew I had to offer him a job, to be in charge of our bar/salon and Head of Housekeeping on Princess Donia Dahabeeyah.

On the final day of the cruise, when we arrived in Aswan, I offered Adham this big career opportunity.  Adham accepted immediately. He soon joined the rest of the crew and helped to fit out the cabins and the bar/salon of the Princess Donia Dahabeeyah.

Adham was on the maiden voyage of Princess Donia and worked for many years serving our passengers and they loved him in return. Again nothing was too much trouble.  Unfortunately in 2011 Egypt had a revolution, which put many cruise boat companies out of business. Fortunately we managed to survive but at the time we needed to reduce our operational costs and we had to let Adham go to Hurgharda to work. So, Adham left us for a little while but we took the first opportunity we had, to get him back. Now he is back as our Head of Housekeeping and in charge of the bar/salon.  We are very happy to have him back on Princess Donia and so are our passengers.