Pig Huts, Dragons & Divers 8:30 and we’re off for a tour of Jeju City, South Korea. This island, located to the south of mainland Korea has 10 million visitors a year. To put this into perspective, Hawaii has about 6 M visitors a year and Bali about 3 M a year. Jeju City is a two hour flight from Shanghai and a 2 hour flight from Seoul so lots of Chinese and Korean tourists. Jeju is a volcanic island and the volcanic rock is used for everything from steps, to walls to artwork and homes. 15 minutes by bus to the Natural History Museum where we learned about the women divers of Jeju. The women dive for fish as an occupation. They are “fish divers”. They go down to 40 feet without breathing apparatus. They ... read more

FINALLY…. Sunshine and Fukuoka, Japan Note: We are at sea and the photos do not want to publish! Will send photos of Fukuoka when we get to shore. 7am in full sunshine, for the first time in more than 2 weeks, we came into the beautiful Port of Hakata in Fukuoka, Japan on the Sea of Japan. If I knew any Japanese at all, I might consider moving here part of the year. It is a city of 1.2 million but feels smaller. The streets are all tree lined with old interspersed with modern high rises. Yes, there are 7-11’s, Kinkos, Mc Donalds and all the things you’d expect to see in any large city but there are also beautiful stores, parks, Shinto Shrines and clean spacious beaches. The first place we visited this morning was ... read more

Avoiding Typhoon Phonfone As we left you on the last blog, we were going to ditch Tokyo and head to the backside of Japan in the Sea of Japan, staying away from Typhoon Phonfone. We were initially disappointed to be missing Tokyo as we’ve never been there… but alas, I’m sure the weather gods have something else equally wonderful planned for us. img=data:image/png;base64,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... read more

Dateline: The Bearing Sea, 500 Shades of Grey… We left Dutch Harbor and headed into the grey fog of the Bearing Sea. Small (by comparison to our ship) fishing boats, tankers and tugs we alongside us for a ways. The skies were hundreds of shades of grey and the waters hundreds more. 500 shades of greys would change from light to dark, from misty to opaque. The seas, as they rolled beneath us reflected the sky’s greys and took on their own dark and shadowy greys from below. Grey everywhere… hard to tell the sky from the horizon from the sea. We are heading west toward Figure 1 Entering Fog Bank Dutch Harbor Russia and the Kamchatka Peninsula. Later we will turn south and set course for Amerika Pass and our destination, Kushiro. Even with all ... read more

Phoenix to Seattle The flight to Seattle was quiet and uneventful as it should be. Amazingly, the mountains were “out” for us… we flew by Mt. St. Helens with the sun shining it was awesome. Then into Seattle with another spectacular view… Mt. Rainier. As I always have an aisle seat, my very nice seatmates leaned back so I could have a view of these beautiful mountains. On into Seattle where we grabbed the bus to the rental car and picked up a snazzy red job. Hey, we’re on vacation ;-) A quick overnight at the Fairfield Inn by SeaTac and we were off to breakfast with our step-daughter and her friend Danny at the Portage Café in Downtown, Washington. After spending 10 minutes trying to figure out where to put the parking sticker on our ... read more