Yesterday was 7December2025, We are on the other side of the International Dateline, so this can get confusing.  Day 1 of our continuing cruise of the Diamond Princess from Singapore to Thailand, Malaysia, Viet Nam and back to Singapore on December 23.  Sixteen more days on this ship.  This the view from our veranda in Singapore, It was three years ago that we were on the Regent Seven Seas Explorer from Dubai and  arrived in Singapore on December 12 .  We took the end of cruise hotel package, so the company first sent us on a tour, then to the Fairmont, where we stayed.  That photo to the right is a one I took then. Maybe that's the most convenient way to end up in port, for we received a message that taxis were scarce at the two cruise terminals, and we should consider making arrangements to be picked up when we return to Singapore.  However, I asked Google AI: Yes, taxis are readily available at both of Singapore's main cruise terminals ( Marina Bay ...

Well the most important thing to report has to do with that typhoon that formed the day we originally departed Yokohama.  According to  Wikipedia : Typhoon Koto , known in the Philippines as   Typhoon Verbena , was a fairly strong and erratic  tropical cyclone  that impacted much of the  Visayas  and portions of  Luzon and  Mindanao  in the  Philippines . The twenty-seventh  named storm  and fourteenth  typhoon  of the  annual typhoon season , Koto developed off the eastern coast of Mindanao on November 23, then tracked westward across the country, making seven landfalls before emerging over the South China Sea, where it strengthened into a typhoon. However, the system gradually weakened and became virtually stationary off the coast of Vietnam before dissipating altogether. Let me begin with Day 9 on the Diamond Princess.  Did not do much except eat and sleep.  Lunch came in two parts. ...