Small World Photos

Today we are back in Thailand, and taking an early, full day excursion to the Sea where we will take inflatable canoes into the caves. As we read the details of the excursion we realized that we will each have a paddler so we won't even be paddling the canoe - nothing like living in luxury. We took a bus to the pier where we loaded onto a speedboat that would take us to the caves. There were inflatable canoes onboard as well as a group of young men who would be paddling for u

Today we docked in Penang Maylasia and our excursion took us to nearby Georgetown We first visited the The Pinang Peranakan Mansion (Malay: Rumah Agam Peranakan Pulau Pinang) in George Town, Penang, Malaysia, is a museum dedicated to Penang's Peranakan heritage. The museum itself is housed within a distinctive green-hued mansion at Church Street, George Town, which once served as the residence and office of a 19th-century Chinese tycoon, Chung Keng Quee. The mansion contains

Today we docked in Kuala Lampur Malaysia, and we had a tour scheduled that left fairly early in the morning. Our first stop was The Batu Caves which is the iconic temple in Kuala Lumpur featuring 272 vibrant, rainbow-colored concrete steps leading up to a massive Hindu limestone cave shrine. Located just north of Kuala Lumpur, this popular site is guarded by a massive 42.7-meter (140 ft) golden statue of Lord Murugan and offers a challenging climb We climbed the stairs to the

We had the day to ourselves in Singapore today and it was a scorching hot day. We decided to take the cable cars over to Sentosa Island where there are beach areas, Universal Studios, a water park and other attractions. We mostly wanted to get the aerial view of the city. We didn't expect that the cable cars would not be air conditioned and it was awfully hot but the rides were short. We purchased tickets online and took the Mt Faber line over to Sentosa island and then switc

We arrived in Singapore at around 10 this morning. We pulled in to the Harbor Center which is the cruise terminal for smaller ships. There is a beautiful bridge in front of the skyline. Today we had 2 different excursions from our ship into Singapore. We started the day with an excursion from the ship that would give us highlights of Singapore. First we had to get through immigration and customs at the port. That consisted of a relatively short line where we had to scan our p

Today we have a sea day as we sail towards Singapore. Clocks changed overnight and we got up a little bit early so that Shawn could attend a Pilates class. We got a malfunctioning safe in our room replaced and then both went back up to the gym to exercise - Shawn on the treadmill and Conrad on the bike. Afterwards we had showers and headed to La Veranda for lunch. We are planning a lazy afternoon before going to one of the speciatly restaurants - Prime 7 for dinner. Pretty ty

Today we arrived in beautiful Ko Samui Thailand. We anchored offshore and took a tender to the dock where we boarded another ship to take us snorkeling. View of our ship from the tender We traveled about 45 minutes in very blue beautiful water to a coral reef just off of a small island. Once we arrive to our location, we were given snorkel gear and we were able to snorkel by the coral reef for about an hour. We tried a new underwater camera that we ordered from Amazon before

Today is the day that we leave the Shangri-La Bankok and move to the Regent Seven Seas Navigator. We turned in our bags at 8:30 but had some time to hang around the hotel before our bus left at 12:30. We had one final lunch in our favorite spot overlooking the river and then got on a bus that took us to the port city of Laem Chebang. It is an industrial port about 3 hours outside of Bankok (with traffic). We were able to board the ship and get our luggage unpacked, tour the s

We visited the Grand palace this morning. It was very crowded and hot and humid but we made the best of it. The palace is no longer occupied by the current King, Queen or main royal family but other royals do live there. The grounds are massive and a year after the queen mothers death, people are still arriving to mourn her. They had large sitting areas where people queued until there was a group of 100 mourners and then they were taking to view her where she was laid out an

Today we had a 7:00 AM departure and breakfast opened at 6:30 so a bit of an early wake up but we aren’t completely used to new time zone yet so we didn’t mind. Breakfast was an elaborate buffet spread around a large room and represented food from cultures all around the world. I had some traditional American breakfast mixed with some Thai dishes which were delicious . It did seem odd to have Pineapple fried rice with breakfast but quite tasty. Conrad likes to eat earlier tha

Upon arriving to the Singapore airport we spent some time in the lounge but left a while before our flight to walk through the terminal. We were in Terminal 2 and it was beautiful and unique. View of an indoor Koi pond in terminal 2 There were lots of areas with plants, a “dreamscape” where the ceiling was like a sky with clouds and planes and birds flying, and the floor had fish swimming in water underneath. Dreamscape coffee store in the terminal open space in the terminal

Today we are heading off on our trip. We will start things off with a bang, taking the longest flight in the world (as of this date, there will be a new longest flight coming soon) we are traveling from JFK to Singapore’s Chanji airport, 18 hours and 40 minutes. From there we have a layover and then another short flight to Bangkok Thailand where we will spend a few days before we board our cruise ship. This was not our original plan. We were supposed to fly to Dubai, spend a

We will be embarking on our next journey soon. We will be visiting Thailand, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, The Maldives, India, and South Africa. Stay tuned for our daily posts.

We had a very early morning again this morning with Jason. We had a togo breakfast from the coffee shop and met him outside. We were driving into the mountains to meet a friend of his, Michael who had a farm where the Resplendent Quetzal's nested. The drive was along steep mountain roads and it was so foggy we could barely see the front of the car. To make matters worse there were trucks and construction happening on the road. Somehow we made it safely to a small roadside caf

We got up very early this morning for our birding tour with a private guide, Jason. Conrad went to the coffee shop to pick up our to go breakfasts and we then met Jason at the entrance to the hotel. We headed out of San Jose while it was still dark to visit from national parks outside of San Jose. We stopped for breakfast on our way. We hiked through a heavily wooded area in a national park for what seemed like a long time. Jason was focussed on very small birds through his s

We disembarked the ship today in Costa Rica in a port town about 2 hours from San Jose. We were loaded into a van inside of the secure port area and bussed to a parking lot outside of the port where after a bit of confusion, we found our private transfer. He ended up being a very nice guy who took us from the port to the Marriot Hacienda Belem. The area appeared to be very industrial and was only 8 miles from the airport, but we were pleasantly surprised as we entered through

Today we visited Quepos, a small port town which was mostly rural. We drove to the Manuel Antonio National Park where we took a guided tour. This wasn't an excursion that we would recommend to others. The entrance to the park was in a small tourist area with narrow streets and long lines to get into the entrance to the park. Once inside the park we were guided by tour guides with spotting scopes who took us down very crowded paths, and when they were told by other guides abou

Today we are on Puerto Jimenez Costa Rica. We anchored in the harbor and were tendered to shore in the life boats today. Puerto Jimenez is located on the Osa Peninsula on Costa Rica’s southern Pacific coast . The town sits on the southeastern side of the peninsula, adjacent to a wide bay called the Golfo Dulce (Sweet Gulf). This bay is actually a tropical fjord, a deep ocean inlet that is rich in marine life. It’s one of the only tropical fjords in the world. Aside from a few