During the Corona Virus lock down, I decided to do a spot of Spring cleaning of my study. All went well at the beginning until I started to find things that I’d forgotten about, so of course I welcomed the distraction by checking out my own bits & pieces, which I had not seen for […]

Considering the current pandemic I thought I would throw in a comment or two about a visit to Fremantle to load cargo for the Middle East, but before we could leave port a number of us had to have our vaccinations updated. This happened periodically to protect us from ‘catching’ something dangerous from yellow fever […]

While in Georgetown, Penang, we decided to visit an unusual place. I like to hang around a place. Even the dinning room looked a little odd. The kitchen was clean, but the fridge door kept opening when ever someone leaned on the fridge. The piano could have done with a tune up. The strange environment […]

Breakfast was in the hotel, after which, we were ferried by private Emirate Airline car to the airport, for the final leg of our journey to Rome. Departure area in Dubai Airport – very clean and impressive. We passed through emigration & security & boarded a train for the short ride to the satellite area. […]

Ceylon did not become Sri Lanka until 1972. The country has had a chequered  history, from the Portuguese arriving in 1505, followed by the Dutch, when the king of Sri Lanka signed a treaty with the Dutch East India Company, in the hope that the Dutch would get rid of the Portuguese. It was during […]

I heard on the grapevine that a certain bar that I used to frequent in the 1960’s, in Georgetown, Penang, was still in existence. My wife and I and two other couples were passing through Penang, so I had to try and find my piece of yesterday. The bar was (is) called The Hong Kong […]

When I arranged our holiday in Vietnam for my wife and I, and our friends, we were all price sensitive, so I had to be careful of the costs. Flying out of Sydney we could fly with Vietnam Airlines   or Qantas , but when I checked on the prices I realised that Vietnam Airlines had […]

Our driver arrived five minute early, I do love efficiency, and at 3.00 am we had the fastest drive ever to the airport, which was just over twenty minutes instead of the normal 45 minutes. Check-in went smoothly and our bags checked through to Rome. We were given vouchers for a hotel near Dubai airport, Le […]

The gap at the mouth of Port Phillip Bay is called the RIP , or The Heads, which can be very dangerous. The gap between the two points of land is just over three kilometres, so of course to pass into Port Phillip requires a pilot. It is said that this stretch of water is […]

A radio message arrived to inform us that we were to call at Trincomalee to pick up mail and to investigate the situation before leaving the area for Fremantle in Western Australia. This suited us all of us on board because picking up mail was one of the most important events for anyone at sea […]

Once the decision had been made to join the Majestic Princess in Rome, and to sail back to Singapore, the next thought was how to get to Rome and home from Singapore. I checked various airlines that we have used in the past, and considered the cost via each one, but as one gets older one […]

We sailed from Fremantle on the 5th April, the weather was fine and we hoped it would remain so as we were about to cross the Great Australian Bight, renowned for rough seas and sensitive stomachs. The Great Australian Bight stretches from Cape Pasley in Southern Western Australia to Cape Catastrophe in South Australia. There […]

Upon sailing from  Colombo we cleaned ship – the crew hosed down the decks and all rubbish was thrown overboard (well before it became un pc), the smell of the land fell away and we could unlock our windows and doors, we were free of petty thieving and the smell of industry, our destination was […]

We flew with KLM’s Boeing 777-300ER (ER = Extended range) from Buenos Aires to Santiago in Chile, so as to connect with the Qantas B 747 to Sydney. All went well until we reached the Andes when I realised that I’d left my camera in the overhead bag, and I was sitting in the centre […]