I keep forgetting to take my iPad mini to take pictures but it's no wonder. The day we went on the Royal Barges excursion, I took a picture from the boat I was on. If I can I'll show you how bad it is. But it got worse. I caught a nice picture of a golden Buddha statue but then somehow I pushed the video on and the picture segues into some detailed shots of the concrete we were walking on and people's feet and fleeting movements, within one tantalizing photo of a tiled tower and then more feet. I couldn't isolate the Buddha and the tower was gone in an instant. I told you.

Yesterday was perfect, though, without pictures. I met, by prearrangement, Harry Currie and his Thai wife, Toy, and they took me to the Jim Thompson House and Museum. Jim Thompson (never referred to as Mr. or as Thompson, or as Jim) is credited with establishing (or reviving?) the Thai silk business. He retired from the US army and settled in Thailand. The house/museum we looked at was his private home, assembled form three traditional Thai houses he bought in the country and moved to Bangkok to live in. You can find some good pictures on the net, better than I could take. We had to take off our shoes to walk around. (I had little footlets and I was allowed to keep those on. We had lunch in the Jim Thompson restaurant after browsing through the Jim Thompson silk shop (gorgeous!) I had never seen the source of silk. In the courtyard a young man sat pulling the silk out of a cocoon, a small yellow egg warmed in a pan of them dwindling to reveal the little worm inside.

I wrote more than this but it seems to be missing. That was yesterday now. I'll write some more today.

Anon, anon.

I think I did it - two photos of the library where I m right now, at 5 a.m. on Sunday March 29. My computer thinks it's last night, Mach 28 at 6 p.m. So that's why the dates on my blogs are out of sync with my activities. It's okay, it's all okay. As some of you have realized, I have been struggling with my iPhotos, taken with my iPad mini, transferred to Little Mac and then somehow jockeyed into sight on the blog. This morning I finally did it.

And today I finally, no, not finally, but temporarily or partially, get caught up. We have been busy since boarding the ship and today is the first full day of sailing, with no excursions, across the Gulf of Thailand to Vietnam. It never occurred to me that I'd ever get to this part of the world. I have to study the map to see where I am.

I have tonnes of things to say in blogs, from descriptions of places and activities to encounters with people, fellow passengers, to ideas and queries and musings on things that come up. Example, nothing to do with a travelblog: a dinner partner last night was talking about the laundry lists, how unrealistic they are, how inaccurate and behind the times and how difficult it is to make out a decent laundry list, with no room for adequate instructions and she went into detail. Funny? She's right, of course.

So many things like this make me think of kids' camp. I remember one camp experience that my son Matt had when some kids in the camp developed ringworm and the staff panicked and took ALL the laundry and washed it all at once without sorting or labelling or categorizing or anything. Matt came home with about half of the clothes he left with. But he didn't have ringworm.

The cruise staff must view all of us passengers as barely competent campers who need constant guidance. When I was researching for my play Time Bomb, about mentally ill people in a boarding house, I went undercover and lived with the residents in such a home for about three weeks. I remember thinking as I joined them for my first dinner in the dining room, that the atmosphere was like that of a cruise ship, slightly skewed.

And here I am, on the real thing. So what is real?

More anon. It's Sunday, and I have time.