Today will be the first time I will leave this ship.  On a bus to Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City.  Saigon in the Rain sounds like a film, but that is what happened.  Started with a pho for breakfast, with a Bloody Mary and orange juice. Boarded the bus for our one-hour ride to Saigon, Took a photo of a cannonball tree.  The balls and flowers have terrible smells. We got to our drop off point, the Bitexco Financial Tower, also known as the Skyrise Tower, where the skydeck is on the 49th floor.  Was once the tallest building in Saigon.   However, in 2018, the Landmark 81 tower was completed, making it it the second tallest in southeast Asia to Merdeka 118 of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  Those numbers reflect the number of stories. We had available an hour to walk around the area, but it began to rain, so we decided to remain on the bus.  Thus I called today's posting, Saigon in the Rain.  Wonder what motorbike riders do in the rain?  Well, h...

Again, my tasting session in The Living Room Bar was the highlight of the day.  The Luminara is docked in the port of Phu Mai, Thailand.  I guess this is also called Saigon Port. Lunch was a steak salad with pepperoni pizza.  Except that this was not pepperoni but some other kind of sausage. On the way back to our stateroom, dropped by The Living Room Bar for a Kentucky whisky tasting, all bourbons, except the ninth one was a rye.  Started with Four Roses and Basil Hayden. You can see all the bourbons from left to right. I then mixed all nine bourbons into one blend.  Tasted it.  Great.  For something different, because there is no such thing as a peaty bourbon, I had Alfarino smoke my combo.   For further uniqueness, he had a way to add bubbles. He also had a foamy additive, but said it doesn't work for whiskies.  So he went ahead and made a foamy whisky sour. Should have gone for a long walk, but instead took a nap.  Went to Mistr...

The Ritz-Carlton Luminara was yesterday sailing at sea on our way to the port of Phu My, Vietnam.  Lunch at Haesu Bit.  Sushi Chef Joe. Sashimi and sushi My meal of yellow-fin tuna and hamachi sashimi, ikura-unagi-tobiko sushi, fried truffle rice, miso soup, , green tea, hot sake, cold beer and Nikka Day whisky. End of meal in Haesu Bit. Picked up an ice cream cone. This is my third time in less than a month at-sea between Thailand and Vietnam.  Tomorrow, Ho Chi Minh City,  We were supposed to have stopped at the Thai island of Koh Kood, but the captain decided to skip this because: Koh Kood isn't inherently dangerous but   recent concerns stem from reports of occasional gunfire from the nearby Cambodia border conflict   (late 2025), leading some governments (like the UK's FCDO) to advise against travel, though locals say tourists are unaffected and the border issue is distant, with risks mostly related to natural factors like  mosquitoes  and gen...