The Globe-Trotters will soon be departing on what is becoming our annual holiday getaway. We have found that one way to deal with the stress of the holiday season is simply to get the @#&& out of town.
This year we will be travelling to the Orient to sail onboard the Ocean Princess, the smallest of the Princess cruise ships, holding only 650 people. For 4 weeks we will be cruising up and down what is called the "South China Sea." Along the way we will make ports of call at:
Singapore, Singapore
Manila, Philippines
Xiamen, China
Shanghai, China
Hong Kong, China
Nha Trang, Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Ko Samui, Thailand
Bangkok, Thailand
Da Nang/Hue, Vietnam
Taipei, Taiwan
Our trip begins with a relatively quick flight to Los Angeles, where we will be met by our friends Chris and LaVerne Kilgore. They are kind enough to take time out of their day to visit with us to help fill our 8 hour layover before we depart for Singapore. Leaving Los Angeles at 8pm our 18.5 hour flight will take us directly to Singapore where we arrive around 6am their time. We will spend the remainder of that day and the next acclimating to the time change and allowing our luggage to catch up if necessary before on the third day we board our ship.
I am intending to blog about our journey and to post pictures as we travel, and I would really look forward to hearing back from our friends about happenings here at home. I will send our travelogues first as an e-mail, and then I will also post them on our blog, which will also include embedded pictures. That web page is located at http://www.theglobe-trotters.com. I have made some changes to that page so that the link to our photograph gallery is better identified. If you click on that link you will be taken directly to our photo gallery. In addition I will provide a direct link within my e-mail. I have learned that several people had trouble viewing the pictures from our Caribbean trip using the embedded link that I provided. After some work by my good friend Hunter Christophersen, I have learned how to solve that problem. By way of example, the following link will now take you directly to the Caribbean album, and if for some reason it does not, then I would really like to hear from you: http://picasaweb.google.com/jstevens10/SS201011CaribbeanPrincess?feat=directlink
Believe it or not, as if life was not already strange enough, we were visiting recently with our good friends Michele and Cathy. As each of us talked about the upcoming holidays we spoke about our cruise to the China Seas. Gee, seems that Michele and Cathy were also going to the China Seas, but two weeks after we were to depart. As it turns out, we are actually on two back to back cruises, and they will be joining our ship on the second of the two cruises. Just how neat is that! And, what are the odds?
Lisa and I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year. We hope you enjoy tagging along on our shared journey.
Jim
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