NHA TRANG

First a sea day, nice after all the hectic coach tours. You don't actually dock at Nha Trang, I think the docking area was deemed unsafe for tendering and the ships are now docked at Cam Ranh. This is a military naval base complete with armed guards, barbed wire, the full nine yards. There is no just wandering off the ship. 

Took a ships tour on cyclocabs - these are like the pedal rickshaws you see around London. You can flag them down just like a taxi.

Very busy, difficult to decern the rules of the road, lots of motorbikes and very noisy.

They don't have Uber, their equivalent is Grab. They have Grab bikes as well as cars. You just use the app, the bike turns up and gives you a helmet. I don't know if they take 2 passengers on a bike, you do see bikes with three people riding.

There was a communist festival of some sort going on. They lit a fire in our honour.

We finished our tour at a craft centre for a Vietnamese buffet lunch. This is a large outdoor centre where artists & crafts people come together to work and sell their products. There were painters, sculptors, basket weavers, jewellers and many other crafts people. All of the work was excellent. They had tables, solid wood probably 25ft x 10ft and 9 inches thick - beautiful.

Interesting little game - the sitting folk bang their poles together to music, the dancers try to avoid getting their ankles trapped, count the bruises at the end to see who's won, 10 point bonus for a fracture.

All the cane furniture was made by them, wine as well.

DAY2 HONG KONG

 Refreshed, refragranced in the fragrant harbour. Ships tour Highlights of Hong Kong. Really nice weather, warm but not too humid.

First stop on Hong Kong Island at Aberdeen for a sampan tour round the harbour. Lovely old lady captain with single cylinder engines sampan. Floating restaurants, house boats, plenty to see. Next off to Stanley to visit the craft market.

Nice little town surrounded by beautiful sandy beaches where millionaires live in mansions overlooking the sea. On to the peak.

Nice outlook over the harbour, nice place to visit with breezes when it's really hot & humid. Drove up in the tour bus, but went down by tram. Very steep track, all the seats face up the hill as you fall out of you seat facing downward. Got to the bottom and discovered we had left a couple of Muppets behind at the top.

Still like their bamboo scaffolding here.

HONG KONG

 Left the dismal day that was Taipei in Taiwan bound for Hong Kong. We had a day on our own on day 1 & a ships tour on day 2. It's generally pandemonium getting on & off the boat what with extra border security, taxi queues and the rest. Day 1 was no exception. You needed your hiking self in full gear. Went out mid morning on to the terminal gangway, uphill for about quarter of a mile, into nice modern terminal, thankfully it had travelators. Then up hill down dale security people and then out on the concourse where cabs & buses stop. Directed to shuttle bus, walked to join queue, got to shuttle to be told it's the wrong one, it was the free one & the paid one is at the other end of the terminal. The terminal is about half mile long. By the time we got to the proper shuttle, a woman who was walking with us told us we had already walked a mile. Knackered!

So we did our usual wandering, on & off with rain, but not bad. Found our way to Tsim Sha Tsui, strolled around the harbour and the Star Ferries and chanced upon the Hong Kong Discovery Centre in Kowloon Park. The discovery centre was the former British army Whitfield Barracks built in 1890. They had a special exhibition running on the Tang Dynasty. Very impressive, up to British Museum standards. The capital city, Chang An now Xian had a population of 1 million in 800ad and was designed in a functional grid system. They were so pleased to see us, making us really welcome and gave us souvenir gifts when we left.

Nice light & music show using the buildings & lasers put on in the evening. At least the terminal connector to the ship was downhill on the way back.

TAIWAN

 In the olden days used to be called Formosa, now probably the best integrated chip manufacturers in the world. Arrived early, plans were to wait to late afternoon, take a cab up the steep hill to Zhongzheng Park, visit the giant Buddha, climb the inside, visit the Dutch fort then wander down the hill to the night market.

This is what greeted us. Tug had to give us a nudge to dock in the wind.

Pouring with rain, cloud right down, blowing a houlie. You can barely see the Buddha at the top of the hill. It can only get better, we thought - not. So we stayed home with cocktails & a movie. We saw people coming back on board soaked to the skin. Umbrella's were useless.

KAGOSHIMA

 Another day, very little in the way of a plan, weather now not too good, forecast for rain, Donner & blitzen, & I don't mean Rudolf's mates. Decided on a cab to town followed by public transport trip to a Japanese Garden & then a ferry to a volcano.

That is Sakurajima, gently boiling just off the coast.

Decided to directly to Sengan-en, a Japanese Shogun's family home built in the mid 1600's. The Shimazu family lived there throughout in in the 1850's were responsible for modernising Japan. They built a modern armaments factory using western technology. The remains of the blast furnaces can still be seen.

The home a gardens are beautiful, lots of western movers & shakers had visited, including Prince of Wales (Edward VIII)

Poor Linda had a wobbly on that bridge, I had to go and rescue her.

We had some sweet potato ice cream, yum.

You can hire dressing up kit here, and cat lovers will be at home. There's a cat shrine??

Anyway, we decided to set off to our next location, but the weather arrived & we grabbed a cab that we shared with 2 Singapore for an early return to ship.

KOCHI

 Small port, not very nice as ports go, only commercial & when we arrived they were bulldozing some smelly stuff that generated flies on board! You could go to town 30mins away for shops & shrines. We had enough of both of those so opted for a Wally ship tour.

Which comprised, pools hot tubs & cocktail bars. Went well, except I got a little burnt. A little what, I'm not saying.