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Woke up in Aswan to a beautiful warm day, perfect for a slow sail down the Nile to Luxor aka Thebes. The Felucca was quite a bit larger than I had imagined, room enough for 13 passengers on the covered deck and a crew of three below. Since it was a cross wind we had to tack back and forth, not making much headway. Not really a problem since we weren't in a rush. That evening we moored on the shore and made ready to spend the night on the Felucca. Interesting to say the least. The next morning it was a short sail and a bus ride to Luxor. The Luxor museum was the next stop. Containing the best of the best it had statues that could take your breath away. After that it was ... read more

Sorry for the delay, but the interent is not a accessible as I would have thought. Well better late than never. I'll try and keep the entries as brief as possible so as not to bore the pants off anyone. As always if you do not want to get update for the blog just remove your name from the list, I won't be offended. The flight to London went off without a hitch. Since it was a one day layover we didn't even leave to airport to find a hotel, we stayed at the capsule hotel in Gatwick. Twenty meters square and cute as a button. I did decide to go out for a swift pint and ended up on a pub crawl of Westminster. The next day was Athens and sightseening on the Acropolis. It ... read more

Angkor Wat is the largest temple complex in the world and a UNESCO Heritage site. It truley is massive. You could spend days walking around it but we only had one day left so we decided to do some of it by hot air balloon. The Angkor Wat temple is the most famous and gives it's name to the entire complex of over 100 temples built over 400 years between 800 and 1200 AD. So there was no way to see all of them in one day. I saw only the best 5 temples, Angkor Wat, Bayon, Ta Prohm and 2 smaller ones. It was inspiring but the huge numbers of tourists took away from the ambiance. Mea culpa. Our time is quickly coming to end and we're off to Bangkok and Istanbul. Later.... read more

After a short flight from Hoi An we arrived it HCMC aka Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon. We decided to take a tour of the Mekong Delta which included the "floating market". There were thousands of boats. Big ones, little ones, packed with everything from pineapples to pigs. Quite the show. The farmers were all there selling as much as they could 'cause Tet was less than a week away. Tet of course being the Vietnamese New Year. We also saw them making rice paper and coconut candy at small farms. It was interesting watching them make use of every bit of the rice plant, even the husks were burnt and then the ash used as fertilizer. Well enough of HCMC, we're off for some more beach time on Phu Quoc Island. Later, Leslie & ... read more

We have left the lovely country of Lao behind and we're moving on to Vietnam. The calm of Lao has been replaced by the frantic hustle and bustle of Ha Noi. With it's 8 million people and 36 million scooters it is a nightmare crossing the street. Luckily we decided to stop off on Ha Long Bay for a short cruise. Wow, what a difference. Quiet, peaceful and most of all the view of a lifetime. The best part of the cruise had to be the Surprising Cave. It was huge. Nestled in one of the islands it blew us away with it's size and beauty. Back to Ha Noi for a night and now we're off to Hue on the overnight train. Later.... read more