Posts for February, 2026

Today is the last of our prep days and we think everything is in order.

As you can see time has got away from me and it is already day 4 of the trip and this is my first post. So let me give you a quick catch up.

Today we had our first excursioin ashore. The location was an Island called Ko Samui and our excursion was a tour was over the islands main mountain and return along the coast. Our transport was sitting in the back of a Toyota HiLux 4x4. Fortunately the cargo area of these vehicles was fitted out with seats and canvas roof.

Today was our first full day at sea and it should have been a relaxing day, but it was not. We discovered last night that we had failed to bring along the full supply one of the drups that I take every day. So I spent much of the day trying to arrange a doctors appointment in Singapore which is where we will stop on the 24th and 25th of this month.

Today turned out to be very successful. The first win of the day was obtaining an ample supply of the medication I was foolish enough to leave at home. This required a visit to a doctor to get a prescription; this was arranged online even before we got to the port. Second was getting the drugs from a local hospital pharmacy, the doctors office helped by calling the pharmacy to ensure they had an adequate supply. The doctors visit cost me about AUD$60. The running around from ship to doctors to hospital and then back to the ship was easy. Most Singapore cabbies speak a little English and take credit/debit cards. Also Grab is the Asian equivalent of Uber.

Another day in Singapore and we had scheduled an outting called "Round The Island Tour". This was a bus tour that stopped a number of times at locations, designed to give us a flavour of life in Singapore. In order these stops were:

It is Thursday so it must be Malaysia. The day started inauspiciously as we had to run about 500 meters to the port building and the tour bus in torrential rain. But the day got better after that.

George Town is the capital of the Malaysian Island State of Penang. When approaching George Town by sea one is struck by the large number of tall buildings that crowd the township and nearby waterfront areas.

Today we were on the island of Langkowi, which is in Malaysia, and as you can see from the first photo below we arrived there at dawn.