Our recent Flights

Hong Kong, fantastic, fun, and delicious. We're taking in the city, and it's fabulous harbor, from the window of our suite here at the Peninsula Hotel. The historic Peninsula, with its reputation as the place to see and be seen, its famous afternoon high tea, its fleet of dark green Rolls-Royce cars, and ivory clad page boys, is celebrating its eightieth anniversary. Hong Kong itself...

Halong Bay, we're cruising aboard one of the many wood "junks" that sail these waters; a popular tourist activity here. Our boat is the "Bhaya", and is quite nice and comfortable. Halong Bay itself is fantastically beautiful, with amazing natural jungle covered pillars of rock that are scattered in all directions. Earlier today we stopped and explored a famous cave here, "Surprise...

Our first stop in Vietnam was Saigon, in the south. Now known as "Ho Chi Minh City", Saigon today is the most populated city in Vietnam, with a glitzy skyline and seven million bustling inhabitants. The memory of that final helicopter lifting off from the roof of the American embassy here has faded- something mentioned in passing by a tour guide. The guides seem more interested in...

This journey has been predicated on a heavy reliance on computers for all sorts of tasks. For one, while we have our primary airports approach charts printed out, we are relying on the electronic display for an alternate airport on our laptops if we need them during the flight. While I once considered this a frail solution to the problem of having proper information in the cockpit...

OK, this has to go down as the weirdest flying issue of the trip so far. When we left Phuket, Thailand, a few days ago and flew over to Siam Reap, Cambodia... both our primary and backup AHRS (attitude heading and reference system) had total, simultaneous failure numerous times during the two hour flight. For those who don't know what an AHRS system does, it is the system in the...

We completed our Cambodian adventure with a boat tour on Tonle Sap Lake and a visit to one of the unique Cambodian nomadic fishing villages, Chong Khneas. This is a traditional way of life that has been around for countless generations. The entire village is on bamboo floats; the hospital, school, mechanic's shop, pool hall, basketball court, TV repair man, grocery store- all of it...

Siam Reap, Cambodia- Kampuchea in Khmer; we're in the heart of southeast Asia. From an around the world journey perspective, I feel like we've reached the cream filling in the middle of the Ho-Ho. Asia is where the excitement really begins. From the moment we arrived we knew we were back in civilization again- only better. Clean modern airports (much cleaner and prettier than the ones...

Sa wed dee ka (Hello!) from Thailand, and our second stop here, the tropical peninsula area known as Phuket. Pronounced; "poo-ket", this is the second visit to Thailand for Art and I, our first visit was a few years ago when we came here for the terrific scuba-diving while aboard the Ocean Rover. No diving this time, but we've seen much more of the country and experienced even more of...