A Diamond that fades. . . . – silverfox175

I took the above picture of Diamond Princess at anchor off Nha Trang, which is in Vietnam.
Maureen and I boarded Diamond Princess in Sydney, in mid-March, for a twenty-two-day cruise to Japan.

The Diamond was positioning to Japan, to be based in Yokohama for the northern summer cruising season.

Our ports of call would be Darwin (northern Australia), Kota Kinabalu (née Jesselton ) in Sabah, Malaysia, Phu My (Vietnam), which is the nearest port to Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) for such a large vessel. The road trip from the port to Ho Chi Minh is about 90 minutes. Our next port was Nha Trang, still in Vietnam, and again we were too large to go alongside so we anchored off and went ashore by tender. Hong Kong followed, and then it was Osaka, Shimizu (Japan), and finally Yokohama (for Tokyo).

We’d sailed in the Diamond Princess two years earlier from Sydney to Singapore, so we were looking forward to a similar great experience as we made our way to Japan.

The price was right for us to upgrade to a mini-suite, our first time for this type of cabin. Nothing is ever called by its real name any more, so on the ship our cabin was referred to as our ‘stateroom’.