Our first stop was in Cairo, where we stayed in the Maadi Tower Hotel.  The rooftop swimming pool had magnificent views over the Nile.  A shopkeeper in the hotel’s arcade offered me 20 camels for Cheryl.  I wouldn’t accept less than 200.  We visited the Egyptian Museum, and we hired horses to get to the Great Pyramids at Giza via the Sahara Desert.

Our next destination was Bangkok.  We had guided tours of the royal palace and various temples, including a huge reclining Buddha.  To see the night night street markets (full of fake goods), which, as it happens, is also in the red-light district (reputedly full of fake women) we used a couple of tuk-tuks.  We saw a tourist ‘culture’ show that included some fake kick-boxing.  At the end of our stay, we joined in the celebration of Loy Krathong in the hotel.

Finally, we moved on to the Cape Panwa resort on Phuket, little knowing that we would return there 14 years later (see the ‘Thailand’ page).  On this visit we went on a ‘safari’ that included paddling on a river and a short trek on elephants.  We were also introduced to monkeys that had been trained to pick coconuts, and we had various rides with water buffalo.  Then we took a speedboat out to the Phi Phi islands.