After a busy 3 days in Vietnam, we were glad to have a day at sea today and spent the day relaxing in various places around the ship. The ship made steady progress along a direct line from Chan May to Hong Kong passing about 25km east of the island of Hainan. Due to a persistent mist, I was never able to make out Hainan. The sea was a little more disturbed than previously but hardly affected the ship at all.

The entry in to Chan May was through a narrow marked channel which led to a fairly basic wharf. We nosed in to the wharf at a snail's pace and then had to swing more than 90 degrees to line up with the dock. There was very little room to manoeuvre with boats in the way one side and a rocky promontory on the other. There can't have been a lot of depth either as we stirred up a lot of mud from the bottom with the side thrusters. However, we managed to d...

At about 7:30am we 'anchored' off Nha Trang and soon after 8am we were on a tender, heading to the port. On the way, we passed by a very long cable way which carries passengers from the mainland across to the island of VinPearl.The bus drove along the beachfront which is very pretty and full of tourist resorts and restaurants. The first stop was just before the bridge across the Cai River. We walked across the bridge and the bus met us on the far side....

At about 6:45am, we docked in Phu My, which is a container terminal about 1.5 hours drive from Ho Chi Minh City. The first stop of our tour was at Reunification Hall which was formerly the Presidential Palace of South Vietnam. First we saw the two tanks which famously broke through the Palace Fence in 1975. Then, we proceeded on a tour through the palace including the underground war bunker.Next, we visited the Lacquer Factory, where all sorts of decorative it...

Today was a sea day as we proceeded across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand towards out first port of call, Phu My, in Vietnam.