in the South China Sea

March 12:

... in the South China Sea en route to Vietnam - Nha Trang and Vung Tau (Ho Chi Minh City)...

In Hong Kong I wandered with Carolyn Shadle and John Meyer, making sure we took the tram to the Peak, stopped in at the Peninsula Hotel, and did a little shopping. Felt I was in an international city rather than a foreign country.

March 11th:

Aware of global climate - drought, fire, wind and typhoon in Australia, volcano eruption in Japan - and of global unrest - North Korea closed the border yesterday; Sri Lanka (won’t be there but will be passing by), Bangkok, and Athens in turmoil; pirates from Somalia, etc.... Oh well, they don’t charge extra for excitement.

Each segment of this journey has a slightly different cast because about half of the passengers are on the world cruise and half are taking just segments. When we left Sydney the average age dropped significantly - lots of short segment travelers to Singapore, including a few with young children.

Cunard does pay special attention to the full world cruise folks - parties, lounge for coffee, gifts which show up now and then. In Singapore, Cunard’s president Carol Marlow and the officers will host us at a black tie dinner at the Shangri-la Hotel. Could be interesting to hear how Cunard plans to deal with the economic crisis. Surely their bookings for next year will suffer. [Those of you looking for cruises will find some good deals!] And, many cruise lines are bringing new and larger ships on line in the next year or so. There could be overcapacity at just the wrong economic time for the companies. There’ll always be people who’ll travel anyway, because they still can afford it, because they get bargain trips, or simply because they’re addicted to these trips. I can see why they’re addicted - on the days at sea there’s plenty to enjoy and we are never in any port long enough to see all we’d like. As for living in a small cabin - one can adjust to living with smaller space and fewer possessions when one has the world to see.

just pulling into Hong Kong at the moment, though we are docking at a container port instead of at the closer docks - did the same at Shanghai...