 As chairman of the Royal Melbourne Hospital's Vietnam Committee, he travelled extensively through South East Asia demonstrating operating techniques with "energetic enthusiasm" .In India in 1964, and in Vietnam in 1966, he was accompanied on his travels by fellow surgeon Sir Edward ("Weary") Dunlop.Hughes was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1971 for "services to medicine and international relations", and he was knighted in 1977 for "distinguished services to medicine in the field of surgery".