Big cities in Southeast Asia have so much in common that it's almost "see one, you see them all." But not quite.

Penang and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Bangkok in Thailand and Singapore in Singapore: are very, very big; have many very, very newer big buildings; have streets infested with automobiles, tuk-tuks and motorcycles; are paradises for shoppers with countless stalls and stores lining most streets as well as large public markets and super-sized high-end malls with every major brand of everything; have temples, lots of temples. Somehow each city is almost spotlessly clean (Singapore excels at this), English-speaking and friendly.

Here's what made each city special to us:

Penang is a smaller and growing version of the rest thanks to Chinese investment and construction. The biggest temple was not enormous and had lots delightful looking Buddhas and demons. The wall of glass cases was especially novel. Taped to each case were photos and descriptions of the people whose cremated ashes were inside.

Never-ending Kuala Lumpur had the Batu Caves just inside the city limits. Batu had 272 steps I scaled, several monkeys, temples of different religions, a rooster and a couple of holes in the roofs of the caves. In center city, we zipped up 85 floors to the observation deck of one of three big towers. There I sat for pictures in a 5-sided glass booth.

We learned that Malaysia has 14 states and 8 of them have kings. Every 5 years, one of the 8 state kings becomes the national king and lives in a palace in KL but does almost nothing.

You've got to be really rich to live in Singapore and the many who work there are not. It's such a vibrant city-state in culture, financial and retail that you drive around the city mesmerised. What's that on top of the three-towered building over there? Oh, that's a concrete boat-shaped terrace with swimming pool, hotel, restaurant and bar. We spent our time at Gardens by the Bay, an amazing horticultural treasure. I plan to make a video out of all the beautiful flower snapshots I took.

Bangkok is the biggest version of everything above. We most enjoyed a cruise through a small canal that branched from the city's main river. We got a peek of what Bangkok was and is away from the glitz. We saw hundreds of residences. Most were inhabited by people of little means. Scattered between them were\ houses of people that had a little more and a few of the marginally wealthy. The side-by-side contrast was striking and moving. I'm not sure why.

Before and after Bangkok, the Nautica stopped at Ko Sumai, a small island off the Thai coast. It's a big vacation spot for Europeans with great restaurants, beaches and hotels. There were many things to see and do but we did the same thing twice. We got Thai massages. I'm not a massage person. Bonnie is. Now I am too.

So the two top suggestions of my trip thus far to all of you are: 1) safari; 2) Thai massage.

I'm ending with a paragraph on Myanmar, the military dictatorship northwest of Thailand and once called Burma. We did not stop there. No one would want to or live there. Our current stateroom steward, Min, is a native. His wife and son live there but not together. So that his 14-year-old can get a good education and have a lesser chance of encountering dangerous military or police, he lives with an aunt. All the family earning go to his private education. That's not enough for him to board at the school, but the aunt lives close enough to commute. Min and his wife will never be able to leave the country. He hopes somehow his son will. The situation they live in sounded to me like what I learned about apartheid in its heyday. Min's story keeps Bonnie and I grounded.