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We had arrived in Halong Bay, Vietnam, before we awoke and witnessed early morning activities and the front line of limestone pillars that we will explore this afternoon. At lunchtime we departed, on board a converted fishing junk, for a cruise around Halong Bay. This included lunch of local produce. Delicious! Halong Bay is, according

A day at sea. At 8:30 a.m. this morning we saw fishing boats from a local fishing community hard at work as we approached, having left Da Nang last night. Currently we have a heading of 341° at approximately 110°E and 17°N. On land this is the DMZ or demilitarised zone established in 1954 in

We arrived at Da Nang, Vietnam around 6:30 a.m. and will use this as a base from which to explore the Imperial City of Hue. The city was the capital of the Nguyên Empire during their reign from 1802 – 1945.  To reach Hue we drove along the dramatic coastline and through a mountain range.

Today we are at sea. At 10:00 a.m. we are at 110E and 13N in the South China Sea area of the Pacific Ocean as we head towards Hue. It is 25C with a force 5 wind from the northeast and the decks are wet from the humidity and spray from the ocean.    

Nha Trang, Vietnam. At 6:30 a.m. we slipped into the bay of Nha Trang. We were greeted with the sight of a  ring of rainforest clad inactive volcanic peaks in front of which was a ring of smaller limestone peaks forming a ‘necklace’. This is because we are leaving the ‘ring of fire’ and entering

Phu My ( Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam It was at the entrance to the Mekong River at 4:00 a.m. when the ship left the South China Sea to a deep-water port where the mangroves have been cleared. In the 1920s and 30s passenger liners were able to navigate the meandering river (known locally as

Today is a day at sea, accompanied by our latest towel friend. We travelled overnight across the Gulf of Thailand and at 08:30 a.m. we were off the southwest tip of the enormous Mekong Delta. We were sailing through waters that had entered the gulf from a distributary which has its source near Tibet. This

By 7:00 a.m. we had docked at Sihanoukville, Cambodia. This is not a pretty place but does give us access to the countryside, forest and coastline. We participated in a town and village exploration which enabled us to visit a pepper plantation. We saw how the young trees matured to produce green peppers for up

Today we were having breakfast at dawn to enable us to get to the historical town of Chachoengsao, the location of a traditional market of shops and houses of wooden construction built upon land and above the irrigation canals. Unfortunately being a Monday morning we were the first there and did not see or meet

We had an early start this morning to drive from the deep seaport for about 2 hours to Bangkok city centre. It is a city of about 13 million people so Sunday morning traffic helped ease the journey. We drove to Wat Pho which is one of the quieter Buddhist sites in the city. It