Millers World Cruise 2025

March 6 Phuket is Thailand’s largest island and 2nd smallest province. It is our only stop in Thailand….which is OK. We like Thailand, but favor the northern part of the country. Our last ship-stop was at a port with access to Bangkok, but it required a 2 hour bus trip both ways. Then, the city…

March 5 Today is a “free day.”  We decided to invite a friend, Sally, to join us on an excursion to a shopping street. She’s a solo traveler and usually doesn’t get off the ship so it seemed to make sense. Karla grabbed us a “Grab”….read uber…and we footed the one dollar charge for the…

March 4 George Town, like Kuala Lumpur, was well situated to host visits from the Dutch, Portuguese and British as they were seeking commercial opportunities near the Straits of Malacca. In 1786 George Town became a British outpost and then a colony in 1867. After the prime of the spice trade, the economy was driven…

March 2, 2025 As we head into the port, we listened to the “port talk.” Viking described the city excursion to Kuala Lumpur as 5 1/2 hours with transportation requiring perhaps 1 1/2 hours both ways (only a 61 km distance so really bad traffic). We took this tour on our first visit and it…

Feb. 27 Since we’re away from the country and our news sources, I thought it was worth spending part of our sea day to check on the US of A. Naturally, I went straight to Truth Social to see what the president was saying;  . “”CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!  Were seeing complaining THE LIKES OF…

Feb. 26 Jakarta, the capital city of Java, is the second largest urban area in the world. There are 32.6 million people….about 9 Oregons. There is a higher standard of living in Jakarta than in much of the rest of Indonesia so it draws lots of people from the countryside.  The center of government, corporate…

Feb. 24 On our first world cruise (2017-18), we docked at Semarang and took an all day tour to Borobudur, the world’s largest Buddhist temple…..in the middle of a primarily Muslim country. It was a decent tour, but we didn’t even consider spending at least 6 hours on a hot and humid bus.  We chose…

Feb. 22-23 I think this is our 4th visit to Bali. About 30 years ago, we flew in and I drove around the island. I wouldn’t want to drive in the traffic today. We returned with kids and stayed in Ubud, an “artsy” city about 35-40 minutes from the city of arrival and capital, Denpasar.…

Feb. 21 Indonesia is a fascinating place. Its history and diversity make it different from perhaps all of the countries we will be visiting. There are 17,000 islands stretching across 3000+ miles; 922 are populated. The largest of the islands are relatively well known: Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, Borneo, and New Guinea.  Its 280  million people…

Feb. 19 We’re on the eve of a visit to Rinca Island and their Komodo Dragons. We visited Komodo Island on two previous occasions. Currently, it is closed to take the pressure off the Dragons and their environment. Komodo Island was configured so that we could walk among the creatures. We’re told that Rinca has…