We arrived off Muscat, Oman around 7.00 am on the 29th April – Maureen’s birthday. I’d not seen Muscat for about fifty years, and my memory of the city was of ‘yesterday’, so when we arrived the only piece of Muscat I remembered was the cliffs, the old fort and a few houses along the […]
Three guesses for our next destination. I was eighteen when I first visited Japan and have always wanted to take Maureen, so when a positioning cruise came up, at the right price, – I booked Diamond Princess. We sailed in the Diamond Princess from Sydney to Singapore in 2016 so hopefully it’ll be like coming […]
Having flown with nearly fifty different airlines I have finally found an airline that I would not wish to fly with, even if they offered free seats. Rayani Air began services last Sunday (20th Dec). This airline is the first Malaysian Sharia compliant airline. Of course they don’t carry wine, which is not a problem, […]
When 4780 vaults, containing the remains of people, becomes a tourist attraction, it can be hard to think of them as no longer alive. Recleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires is such a place – the above photograph is the entrance to the cemetery. I’m not sure but I think the last person to be entombed […]
Our accommodation in Broken Hill was a converted pub that used to be called the Duke of Cornwall I’d asked for an upstairs room so that we could use the balcony in the evenings. ‘You know who’ on the balcony – in the background can be seen the ‘tailing’ or waste products from the old […]
I asked this lady’s permission to take her photograph. It was during a ‘formal’ evening on the Diamond Princess when a number of Japanese ladies dressed in the national dress of Japan. Our next port of call was Akita, which would be the last for Maureen & I, because we would leave the ship in […]
One leaving the Royal Flying Doctor we had to find a cold drink so we decided to visit Bell’s Milk Bar , which is an icon in Broken Hill, and not far from the airport. Bell’s goes back to 1893, but is now stuck in the 1950’s. Regardless of Bell’s age the drinks were cold and […]
To carry on from Singapore 1963 and all that . . .Our next port was Hong Kong. We anchored in the harbour, just a week after entering Singapore harbour. Once again the smell of Asia fired my imagination of day’s gone bye. They do say that you can smell money in Hong Kong – everyone […]
If London was fogged in, the first alternate was Manchester, and winter generated quite a few ‘foreign’ visitors. If they were in the BOAC partnership ‘camp’ we would handle the aircraft, if they were Japanese Airlines, Thai or US airlines then these airlines would be handled by an agency called that were located across the […]
Das Island The photograph of Das Island has been downloaded from the net – I’ve marked the position of Das Is – under the ‘er’ of Persian under lined in cream. I think the only main change since 1963 would be the upgraded runway. I always had the feeling that the island was floating on […]
Many of us have a book inside that we would like to write if we just knew how – I am not talking about putting pen to paper, but to construct a story that others would wish to read. For years I wanted to write and would throw away my attempts, because I was not […]
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 […]
There were eight of us (four couples) and we’d visited Malaysia & Sri Lanka so where next. Because I was responsible for arranging the two previous holidays the question was aimed at me. I was reading ‘Brighton Rock’ by Graham Green, so I thought why not Vietnam to see the Continental Hotel in Saigon (now […]
Over fifty-five years of flying as a passenger, with comments on various airlines that I have used. In alphabetical order, not in historical order. I flew part way across the Pacific Ocean in the above aircraft, and years later I found her at a small aerodrome near where I live – no longer in service. […]
