You can probably skip this day

11122016

Rainy day at sea, we went to the buffet and had an OK lunch, because without prompting why would anyone wake up early enough for breakfast.

We then wandered the decks, and settled on the Promenade to read books and watch the rain.

Hit up trivia, did ok, no win but good score. We then went to the dining room, and shared a table with a couple from New Jersey, but currently living in San Diego. They were both on their second marriage, as their first spouses passed years before. They were really interesting, Maxine was the lady, and have no idea what the gentleman's name was. I presume both of them are now retired, and other than small talk, and discussions of other travels we learned little. He had served in the US military, and was sent to Korea at some point.

After dinner we went to the Stand Up show in the auditorium/lounge thing. The comedian seemed a little hamstrung by the audience. His act was pretty formulaic, he was clever, and I think if he wasn't on a ship, with predominantly retirees/pensioners, he would be a pretty good act. A two drink minimum would help too.

After the show, we just went back to the cabin and went to sleep for the early excursion hit time.

Dollar Beers and Ancient Bricks

12122016

Asia, Cruise, Vietnam

Another tour day in Vietnam, Nha Trang (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nha_Trang), it was a little rainy, and the rain got worse over the course of the day.

First stop on the tour was at a temple, the Long San Pagoda (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_S%C6%A1n_Pagoda) they did not allow us inside because we were all wet. I did sneak some pictures though.

then we walked up the hill to see the big sitting buddha

This was big, easily the largest Buddha I have ever seen.

Then on the way back down we saw the reclining buddha, and this one is symbolic of buddha after having ascended to Nirvana.

the tour then took us to a tourist trap embroidery place. they had very expensive works, and upstairs you could watch all the ladies making them.

Laura used the toilet here, and we hurried through to use the WiFi on the bus.

It is a little upsetting that we paid a not-insignificant-sum to be on the tour, and they still force us into a place that is really just a place for me to buy overpriced crap.

anyways we then went to a large market, again enclosed, claustrophobic walkways full of shit tourists buy.

This was interesting as it was full of the same clothes that we found in Hong Kong, but these were probably authentic. China had a bunch of knockoffs, that's why they were so cheap, but here in Vietnam they are cheap because the factory is across the street. The Nike shirts are sold at cost plus like 1000 dong (its 22,000 VHD to USD).

It was also interesting because this town is full of Russian tourists. The business ladies are very savvy, obviously they speak their native language, and seemingly French, and English and Russian they understand enough to try to sell you shit.

Our last stop of the day was at a Cham temple, the Po Nagar towers, which were built by this king Po Nagar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po_Nagar). The Cham or Champa have their own flavor of Hinduism and ruled Vietnam a while ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chams).

This is the major temple for the Cham in Vietnam, and as such is the site of some pretty neat festivals. Including their new year festival, which requires a series of virgins to climb some very steep steps (as pictured above) with various fruits and flowers and such on their head.

We then took the bus back to the dock, and found a vendor selling beer out of her cooler for 20,000 VHD to 1USD. We spent all of our Dong, and then dollars here.

We just drank beers and wandered around the docks.

We stumbled into Chris, one of the Australians we have run into at Trivia events on the ship. We had a good chat, and he gave us some hints on how to be better at cruise ships; namely how to ensure the right people get your tips, and how to save money.

We then got back up on the ship, ate some tasty grilled food on the pool deck. The ship had some kind of event, I dont remember what the event was, just that there was various grilled meats, and delicious pork steam buns.

We got in on some trivia, hit the happy hour, and then went to bed.

Visiting Relics with Relics

10122016


Earliest wake up we have had yet on the cruise, made it to the buffet breakfast. This was subsequently the busiest we have seen the boat, I guess everyone was waking up for their excursions at the same time.

We sat with Ray, one of the gentlemen we met at trivia the night prior, chatted and inhaled our breakfast before rolling to the showhall for our gathering of the tour group.

The boat was docked at a container port, probably because it is the only one in the area big enough to service this ship

The port is Da Nang, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danang) which is one of the bigger cities in Vietnam. Mostly we drove through it to get to Hue which is another major city of Vietnam (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hu%E1%BA%BF).

pics here

immediately off the boat we went through Vietnamese customs and hopped on the bus.

There was to be about a 150min drive to our first destination. Including ourselves there were about 20 people on the tour, including my veteran friend that had been carried out of Vietnam full of bullets 50 years prior.

The tour guide was very knowledgeable, a group of older Americans started asking questions, apparently too many, because a German lady lost her shit and stared yelling at them about how this isn't a private tour and we want to hear the narrative the guide is giving.

The German lady was basically ostracized at that point, i think it was a bit to early to be riding these people for asking questions.

The ride took us along the lagoon that appears here

To include rice paddies (which are off season right now) and water buffalo, as seen above.


The cities are pretty clearly ‘third world” i think that the weather here really exacerbates this perception, it never gets cold here, so people can without much difficulty survive in corrugated steel shacks, and cinderblock-only buildings. Everyone has electricity, and most people have a scooter, if not car, and cellphones and whatnot, it is a modern nation, just less developed than anywhere else we have been on the trip.

Our first stop was the Citadel, as our guide called it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_City,_Hu%E1%BA%BF). As i understood this was the imperial palace, much like the Forbidden City in Beijing.

The tour guide was also very knowledgeable here, pointing things out and explaining the significance of this or that. He was also able to illustrate for us what it would have looked like before the 20th century*

I also asked some questions about Vietnam:

Have the Catholic minority, or Buddhists been negatively impacted at all by the Communist government?

The guide explained that for the most part, no. While religion is outlawed, unless you are very very public about your practices, or are looking for a distinguished position in government, no one was going to have a problem with your being catholic or Buddhist or Taoist or whatever.

How much Chinese money have you seen?

The guide said it is pouring in, both public and private monies. The Chinese government is helping to develop major infrastructure, and Chinese businesses are opening ventures all over Vietnam, very clearly trying to break into the 94ish Million person market that is Vietnam.

When and why did Vietnam adopt the Latin alphabet rather than the Chinese or their own script?

He said that Vietnamese has its own script

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_alphabet

that was used alongside Chinese. Despite Vietnam (much like Korea) hating the Chinese for being the imperialist monstrosity that it was until the 1780s, they still saw the power and majesty, and much of their (Vietnamese and Korean respectively) royal/official goings on were modeled after the Chinese. It wasn't until the late XIX century that the Latin script was introduced. The french missionaries adapted the Latin script with all kinds of accents and phonetic notations to work for Vietnamese. And that's the one that stuck

After this we were hurried into Hue proper to an old hotel. This hotel goes back to the early 1900s, and has been used since as a fancy hotel for receptions of dignitaries and what not. This meant the food was very good, it was a spread of some of the less exotic foods of Vietnam, alot of shrimps, some fish, some chicken, rice, fried stuff. All of it was very good.

Our second stop of the day was the Tu Duc Tombs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_T%E1%BB%B1_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c). This tomb complex was built by one of the monarchs to provide a nice place to visit while honoring his ancestors. It was essentially a small palace, with a throne room from which the king could receive important guests, King and Queens quarters, the harem for all the concubines, and a man made lake and island for some pretty nature to enjoy.

this again suffered pretty badly under the circumstances of the XX century, even after the fighting was over Vietnam didn't have any money to restore none the less maintain these places. Despite that it was still amazing, and the restoration work that has been done is excellent.

We piled back in the bus and made the 2 hour trip back home before traffic got too bad. We did stop at one point near the lagoon to take pictures of the fishing nets and huts over the water.

re-boarding the ship was easy. We claimed our scrabble board and sat on one of the upper decks to play and watch us leave port.

We also attended the trivia game, though this time didn't do quite as well. And afterwords chatted with our friend Ray more before hurrying to one of the last seatings for dinner.

When getting to dinner we sat with an English Expat living in Cypress, shortly thereafter joined by a Scottish couple. We had nice conversation, they asked us about the election, and how we felt. We chatted about global politics, and our other travels and we thanked them for being so welcoming and nice, explaining that we would rather be on the bottom of the age range of a ship and have conversation like the one we were having, than hang out with other 20 somethings and get drunk all day (we needn't travel halfway around the world to partake in that activity).

I had pork medallions that were so far the best meal of the cruise, Laura had turkey, a sort of belated thanksgiving dinner. And for dessert i had an exquisite Nutella Cheesecake.

We then went again to our favorite evening bar, for some wine before heading to the cabin for bed.

*If you didn't know, the 20th century was real bad for Vietnam, first the West began colonizing, then the Japanese invaded, then the French occupied, than the US occupied, then the Communists took over. Vietnam had people shooting at each other for 75 of the last 120 years.

The outside, is inside

(To keep you all interested I will attempt to post as we go similar to how i was before the the cruise, i will also post some of the cruise stuff retroactively Ive got about 5 more posts stacked up that need minor editing, and another 5 posts that need to be written, so keep checking in)

20122016

Last wake up on the cruise, everything was alive as the vast majority of the passengers were getting off the ship and everything needed to get cleaned and turned over.

We chesed down our cabin stewards to give them a tip. As i stated yesterday we elected to drastically diminish the pre-determined automatic tip and tip our service directly.

After finding our towel-animal-making-duo and slipping them the tip, we went back to the cabin to wait out some of the madness. We certainly didnt want to add ourselves to the nonesense of the people trying to get off.

When our disembark time was called we exited the boat, and waited in the immigration lines in Singapore. The port immigration office was quick enough considering both our boat and another was disgorging its tourists.

We then found our way to the subway to get over to our hotel. Of course it was only 1030, so the room wasnt ready, we handed our bags over and hopped on the wifi in the lobby.

Both of us binged on some internet.

We then left to meet our new friends from the ship, the Australian couple of couples, Chris and Lisa, Henry and Heather, and an American couple Maurine and Patrick. We had agreed to meet at the Chinatown subway stop exit A. Laura and i arrived first, then stumbled into Maurine and Patrick showed up, and just as we started to worry about the Aussies (or ozzies as it sounds when they say it), the popped out of the subway exit.

the 8 of us wandered only a few feet before stopped for some food. We settled on an Asian seafood restaurant, ordered some beers, and some food, Laura and i got Chicken Satay and the stir fried green beans we had had elsewhere in Asia, the rest got various bits of their own preference, that i dont particularly remember. All of it was tasty, it was a little pricey, with our 2 beers and plates coming to 41SGD.

We then wandered around Chinatown, shopping a little bit, mostly the other couples were doing the shopping, Laura and I have pretty much covered all of our bases when it comes to purchases over here, but the people watching is always prime.

After a bit of shopping we stopped for coffee, at an italian coffee shop, luckily Lisa speaks Italian fluently, which helped with the service. The group elected to go check out the domed gardens, the Gardens By the Bay here in Singapore ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardens_by_the_Bay ). This required a subway ride, and incedently took us to the Marina Bay Sands Hotel.

This is the iconic hotel in Singapore that everyone sees in the pictures, the one with the island on top of the building with an infinity pool that looks over the bay.

Apologies for the not great pics, google it for professional picture.

We wandered through the parks making our way to the actual domes.

these domes were pretty spectacular. While they kick the shit out of the Mitchell Park Domes that i grew up with ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Park_Horticultural_Conservatory ), they make me appreciate the Mitchell Domes, and the fact that they are in Milwaukee, they arent in Chicago, or New York, more commonly thought of as world-class cities, they are in Milwaukee.

Anyways, they were beautiful. The first one is a cloud forest horticultural dome. It is an emulation of the ecosystem that you would find in Central America and Indonesia/Malaysia ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_forest ).

other than little plaquards about all the plants themselves there was little to appreciate other than the views, which as i said we astounding. The dome started with a large manmade waterfall, and then wound around to an elevator to take you to the top. At the top is some great views of the city around you, and then you slowly descend the "mountain" on various catwalks and gantries.

The second dome was more temperate, a mediterranean climate. it wasnt nearly as interesting as the cloud forest manmade mountain. There were the kinds of plants one would find in a mediterranean climate, which by its very nature is less colorful and less exotic to me than the mountain tropics.

We then were quite pekish, electing to hit one of the food courts "hawker confederacies" as i have come to describe them. You have heard me earlier describe the idea that mall foodcourts are not to be scoffed at on this side of the Pacific, Singaporean foodcourts are a step above that.

We went back to the Marina Sands Hotel and Entertainment complex, for their basement foodcourt. This place was great, most of the countries on this side of the Pacific were represented at least partially in this food court, to name a few; Hong Kong Dim Sum, Thai fried rices, Japanse Noodles of various types, Indonesean, Singaporean, Hotpot, and korean wings. Between Laura and i we had three plates, some Singapore wings, i had a plate of Singapore noodles, and (im learning this right now) Laura also had a different styled plate of Singapore noodles.

After everyone ate their food, we resolved to meet up the next day at the zoo for another venture through Singapore.

We all broke for our specific homes, when Laura and i got back to our hotel, I updated the blog some, and we researched the zoo. Turns out its a little pricey, and really far away. We decided to sleep in, and bailed on the zoo, shooting them emails with this info and headed to bed.

Onboard Entertainments

09122016

We woke up late, Laura thought we had slept till 1115, making lunch at the fancy on board restaurant very unappetizing. But, Laura never changed her phone clock when we left Hong Kong, so actually we were waking up at a more respectable 1015, so we reserved a seat at the Pinnacle Grill, and got ourselves looking presentable.

The food was great, this place was one of the restaurants that you pay for (on top of the actual cruise fare), normally i wouldn't go for this, as it is only marginally better than the dining room, but often $35-$40 USD. But lunch is another story, for 10USD a head, you get a three course lunch that is 60% the portion of their dinners. Laura had a tomato-lemongrass soup with spicy chicken, a tenderloin and a strawberry pavlova, I had beef carpaccio, salmon fillet, and a fudge brownie, that in reality was a square of uncooked brownie batter with coffee ice cream on top.

We then wandered around for the afternoon, playing scrabble, drinking whatever beer special was going at whatever bar we were at.

Evening rolled in and we decided to check out bar trivia, and joined a group of very knowledgeable people, we got 14/15 questions right, and the one we got wrong was debatable.

We then scooted to dinner in the dining room, i had pork orecchiette (or however the italians tried to shoehorn their language into english), and laura had a salmon dish. We didn't sit with anyone, so we didnt get any great stories of near ancient mariners.

We then went to one of the shows, the music variety show. There was a german guy that was the son of a clown and opera singer that grew up on cruise ships and learned to play “more instruments than i have fingers”. he played a xylophone thing, a cornet and a guitar for this show.

It was ok, i'm sure if i was born before television and the internet i would have been more impressed.

We then went to bed as the next days activities were to start very early.

Dragons and Chickens

08122016

Asia, Cruise, Vietnam

We woke up when we wanted, as our activity for the day did not depart until after noon. We had a continental breakfast delivered to our room at the last possible minute. For “free” food delivered to our room it was pretty alright, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, toast. We have also gotten in the habit of ordering a pitcher of ice water whenever we have anything brought to our cabin, cause water is good for you.

we then wandered around the boat a little more, finally making our way to the main lounge gathering point for our activity of the day.

We were assigned our sub-vessel for the tour of Halong Bay.

The boat that was to take us through the rock formations was a “chinese junk” which as i understand is a shallow boat ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_(ship) ). And on the boat they had a full kitchen to feed tourists local sea food.

The spread was pretty great, there was doughy-fried-calamari balls, very much like the Takoyakis of Japan, buttered shrimps, some kind of light seafood wontons like things, a battered fish and veggie plate, a full steamed fish, and watermelon to finish it off. All of it was very good, our junk was not full, of the 8 tables on the boat, each of them were at least 1-2 people short, and one table was made up of a family of four with 2 children under 4 yrs (so they werent eating much). This meant there was plenty of food to go around, I actually didnt even make it to the latter parts of the meal, as i was full of squid balls and battered fish.

The boat then took us around the rock formations, including the so called kissing chickens, pictured below, ill let you imagine whichever you want to be said kissing chickens

these were beautiful, very similar to the little islands we snorkled around in Brazil. Considering how close we got to some of them, I imagine they are relatively straight/sharp outcroppings of rock coming from the sea floor. There is a legend as to how they came to be

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hạ_Long_Bay

The whole area is a UNESCO heritage site, because it is beautiful, natural, and a significant part of the history/culture of the Vietnamese people.

The boat then took us to one of the grottos in one of these rocky islands.

There were a number of steps getting up there, certainly nothing Laura and I would bat an eye at, but the cruise given the demographics, had to emphasize (i dont know if i mentioned this, but so far, laura and I have seen maybe 2 other couples that are our age, i think we are one or two standard deviations away from the mean age on board).

Everyone on our Junk made it up and through all the steps

as you can see the Vietnamese government has put work in to make the place more attractive, personally i think it detracts from the experience, they laid in lighting and water features, and concreted in a path to keep tourists on.

I think it would have been cooler if the path was just ropes held to the wall by eye-bolts and maybe some rope LED lighting.

The more fun part of the excursion was probably chatting up the other cruise goers. We sat next to an older couple from New York/New Jersey, the wife (though Laura doesnt think they are married) being nearly deaf lent an extra layer to the conversations, and another recently retired gentleman that has been on various other cruises and done all kinds of adveture sports, including paddling through the entire Missouri River, and climbing some of the more dangerous canyons in Utah.

We also met 2 retired gay couples. These guys seemed like alot of fun, they learning this was our belated honeymoon, they provided unsolicited relationship advice, but considering between the two couples they have over 75 years of (only one each) marriage, i figure their advice is sound.

When we got back to the boat we elected to go to the Dining Hall for dinner.

It was muuuch better than the top deck buffet, we will be eating there at every opportunity from now on.

We have open seating, and ent up seated next to Brian. Brian is a character, he has been on over 130 cruises, he has basically been cruising for the last 10 years. He lives out of a less than 7kg backpack so he can hop any flight easily (we unfortunately both have 15kg backpacks and as you recall were forced to check them at one point). He had all kinds of advice for us on how to cruise, and was full of insight. he knows crewmembers on various Holland America Cruises, as well as other lines, hes got friends all over the world too, so when he is at port he has a place to stay and a local guide.

He also believes our plan to sneak into the will of some of the cruises is a totally viable plan. We chatted with him over diner (which was great, i had pine-nut-panko crusted chicken, and laura had the steak) and ent up hanging out for nearly 2 hours listening to his stories.

We certainly look forward to running into him more over the course of our trip.

We then went to one of the bars for another happy hour. Drank jameson and gingers, got to know one of the bar staff and headed for bed.

https://youtu.be/avaSdC0QOUM

07122016

slept in late, and it was glorious, ordering yet more uninspiring room service. we ordered the continental breakfast, but given how late it was in the morning i think they split the difference between the breakfast and the cheese and fruit plate, because we had minimal fruit, cheese, but still the yogurt and pastries that come with the continental.

i then went to the veterans meetup. There were two gentlemen already sitting when i arrived, and a third showed up shortly after me. all three of them had served in vietnam, one drafted into the army, one got the draft card, but joined the navy as a Seabee officer, and another got his draft card but joined the air force as a commo/electronics guy,

this was really interesting, the Seabee said this was the first time he had been to Vietnam since he was carried out. He lost one leg at the knee, and use of the other leg, and had both hips replaced due to 5 rounds of 12.7mm (the commbloc version of the .50cal). he also had all kinds of other health issues from being a combat engineer and dealing with Agent Orange all the time.

The army draftee had taken shrapnel to the appendix while crawling out of the treeline to recover his sergeant that had been mauled by another mortar round.

The air force guy was trained as an aircraft control/radar operator, and was sent to a mobile radar unit. his job was tracking the NVA and Chinese MiGs, and he took some mortar shrapnel to the leg.

This little chat was really interesting, hearing about their time in the service, their time since, over the next few weeks i will surely chat with them some more and get their feelings on coming back here 50 years later, and how veterans are treated nowadays, and explore the similarities between the political climate of the post vietnam and late OIF/OEF of today.

After that Laura and I met back up and got some food, and really just wandered around wasting away the hours.

We hit up one of the happy hours, buy one drink get the second at $2. And then went back to our cabin to sleep.