Day 27 Goodbye Vietnam

It is 7.30 am and we are about 500 nautical miles from Hong Kong sailing north east on the South China Sea. The outside temperature is a comfortable 26 deg. Sea conditions are termed as ‘glassy. This is, a perfect description. It is as if we are sailing through a watery mirror with barely a ripple to disturb the reflection of the morning sun. We need to make the most of the next few days’ weather. Once we head north from Hong Kong, the T-shirts will need to be discarded for fleeces and jumpers.

Before I return to my impression of Vietnam, can I say thank you to those who have recently commented on my blog. It’s difficult for me to reply in the comments whilst onboard, but I do read your responses with great pleasure, and it keeps us in touch with home. Also many thanks for the donations to DiabetesUK which are beginning to grow. I have now reached 10% of my target.

Vietnam.... what can I say?

Yesterday we joined a private tour around the countryside of Nha Trang. At $50 each it was incredibly good value for money and included an authentic riverside Vietnamese lunch. It was infinitely preferable to being herded on the larger Princess tours, and our guide ensured we saw as much as possible of the ‘real’ Vietnam. Being the only Brits on the small coach meant that, for our survival, we had to discard our ‘reserve’ and become American for the day, but that story can be told in another blog!

Downloading photos takes up so much internet time but this day needs to be told through pictures:

Embroidery Factory

Ancient Temple

View from Riverboat

Rice Paper Making

Conical Hat Making

It took 3 hours for this lady to make one hat. She charged about £1 per hat...I calculate that at about 30p per hour. So our purchase of 2 hats represented 6 hours of work!

Our final visit was to a rural orphanage which cared for 129 children aged from 0 to 16. As there is no state aid, the orphanage relies entirely on charitable donations. I felt uncomfortable at the necessity for the children’s needs to be ‘displayed’ to the tourists in order to raise funds, but in their situation I would have done the same thing.

 As a fellow educator, they let me photograph one of the very basic classrooms. At least I could now be confident that the small donations we made would go much further than similar amounts in the UK.

I loved this country. I would so much like to return. But for now, it’s Goodbye Vietnam.

Day 26 Good Morning Vietnam

Morning All

It’s 6.30 am, and Chris and I are about to head for breakfast before boarding the tender to take us ashore for our second day in Vietnam at a town called Nha Trang....more of this tomorrow.

I am pleased to report that my body clock has now adjusted to Eastern time and for the past 2 nights, I have enjoyed my full quota of sleep.  This is fortunate since yesterday’s itinerary in Vietnam was very demanding. We left the ship at 7 am and were driven 2 hours to Ho Chi Minh City, otherwise known as Saigon.

This is what I have so far learned about Vietnam.....

Having been restored to Communist rule in 1975, the country opened itself up to tourists and foreign investment 10 years later. So yet again, we found ourselves in a city of contrasts...miles and miles of small makeshift family businesses lined the road from the port, interspersed with rice fields and cashew nut trees. The general impression was unsophisticated and near poverty. As we reached the outskirts of Saigon, the coach entered a newly built tunnel under the River Meekon. The exit to the tunnel revealed a completely different city full of modern skyscrapers and international businesses such as KFC. I wonder how long the Vietnamese will continue to call this progress.

The main form of transport in Vietnam is the moped.

Imagine the congestion if all moped owners suddenly drove cars!!

The maintenance of street electricity and communication wiring is passed from father to son. Understanding the system is an inherited skill.

We saw the tanks on display in the grounds of the Presidential Palace at the spot where they broke through the gates in 1975.

We visited the roof garden of the Rex Hotel, a favourite broadcasting haunt of international journalists in the 60s.

We watched a beautiful display of Vietnamese Water Puppets at the History museum.

The temperature was a constant hot and tiring  34 deg. The people were positive, welcoming and proud of their progress. I was bowled over by this country. And now we are visiting for a second day.

Good Morning Vietnam!

Day 25 Bangkok

Take a combination of immense humid heat with iconic eastern religion. Add congested chaotic traffic, vibrant markets, river water, palace, templess, and smiling Thai faces.  You have reached Bangkok.

We had an amazing day yesterday, cleverly organised by the Princess people to pace our activity in the constant 34 deg. Visits to temples and palaces were followed by  a cooler , shaded river trip and air-conditioned lunch.

Chris and I generally prefer a DIY style of day trip, but, being out totally out of our comfort zone, we chose to be led by Princess, and feel we definitely made the right decision. Following an early 7 am start, we  took the 2 hour coach ride to Bangkok through a mixture of surroundings, urban and rural, rich and poor, sophisticated and unkempt. For the first time in my life I saw rice fields and pineapple plants. On entering the city, the traffic appeared chaotic, but the city went about its business with remarkable speed.

After a swift stop at the Wat Trimir Temple we watched a monk calmly  making sacred bracelets.

The coach then took us to the Grand  Palace and the Emerald Buddha. This was undoubtedly the highlight of the trip, with exquisite jewel encrusted  golden statues and decorations over an extensive area. Some amongst the group questioned the morality of such opulence, when we had earlier passed vast areas of makeshift housing and poverty. To me the contrast was not a problem. Clearly the Thai authorities were preserving their historic and spiritual heritage, and bringing substantial visitor income into the city for the benefit of all.

A much needed cooler river cruise then took us for a Thai style buffet lunch with a variety of stir fries and fresh exotic fruits. It was a lovely day.

By the time we returned to the ship, we had been in the Thailand heat for over 10 hours. The tour guide helped us to stay in the shade wherever possible, and kept us supplied with cold face cloths and iced water. Nevertheless, some were overwhelmed by sleepiness on the return journey!

Next stop, Vietnam..... 

Day 24 First Impressions

This blog post is written particularly for those cruisers who are joining the ship in Beijing on 1^st May.

The ship is lovely, very similar in design to the Grand, but the organisation seems to run more smoothly. The food so far has been extremely good. The staff, as always, offer very good service. I will review the ship more fully in a future post.

We had our first cruise critic ‘meet and greet’ yesterday. Most of the members turned up, and we had a chance to meet our tour leaders. The badges were very useful, in that we could recognise people we had ‘met’ online. Most of us were travel-weary, so,  although the meeting was friendly, we did not move around the room much. I suspect that our next ‘meet and greet’, when we are joined by the cruisers who join on 1^st May, will be more lively as we all be less tired and have loads to talk about!

There are 700 passengers onboard who are staying for the full 35 days. The majority are American with smaller but significant numbers of Australians, British  ,and  Canadians. Of the non-English first-  language speakers the largest groups are from Brazil and Switzerland.  The Captain is Italian, Dino Sagani. He seems very personable and is quite high profile around the ship. He introduced himself at the ‘meet and greet’. The Cruise Director and his Deputy also came to the ‘meet and greet’. They are both English and very funny. Their morning TV show is very entertaining and worth a look. Chris and I haven’t been to any of the shows, but last night we watched both a comedian and an illusionist...all extremely good. There is a very good selection of recent films scheduled throughout the cruise.

We are looking forward to meeting you. Our holiday has got off to a brilliant start. If you have any specific questions, post them below in the comments and I will try to answer them in my next blog post.

See you soon! Claire

Day 23 Heat, Humidity and Lifeboats

It is 5.00 pm (ship’s time) and we are sailing in a north easterly direction in the North China Sea. The temperature is a constant 30 deg. The sea is very calm (small wavelets). The humidity is 94%. Although the sky is quite clear, you can smell the damp in the air. We are still very close to the equator and the heat is constant, day and night. The climate is a good way to start a holiday, as it has forced us to slow down, almost to a stop.

Our compulsory lifeboat drill yesterday was very well attended. In a new stricter system, undoubtedly brought about by recent events on the Costa Concordia, our cruise cards were scanned on arrival at the drill. There was no escape! We were lectured about  the large fines payable by anyone who broke the new balcony smoking ban as well as the usual demonstration of how to wear a life jacket and jump overboard. Considering the recent events on Concordia, it was quite amazing that some passengers still chose to talk over the safety instructions and put on their life jackets before they were instructed to do so. This seemed particularly relevant as we were setting sail on he 100^th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

The RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton  to New York.  The sinking of the Titanic caused the deaths of 1,514 people.

Her passengers included some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as over a thousand emigrants from Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and elsewhere seeking a new life in North America. The ship was designed to be the last word in comfort and luxury, with an on-board gymnasium, swimming pool, libraries, high-class restaurants and opulent cabins. She also had a powerful wireless telegraph provided for the convenience of passengers as well as for operational use. Though she had advanced safety features such as watertight compartments and remotely activated watertight doors, she lacked enough lifeboats to accommodate all of those aboard.

After leaving Southampton on 10 April 1912, Titanic called at Cherbourg in France and Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland before heading westwards towards New York. On 14 April 1912. The collision caused Titanic’s  hull plates to buckle  and opened five of her sixteen watertight compartments to the sea. Over the next two and a half hours, the ship gradually filled with water and sank. Passengers and some crew members were evacuated in lifeboats, many of which were launched only partly filled. A disproportionate number of men – over 90% of those in Second Class – were left aboard due to a "women and children first" protocol followed by the officers loading the lifeboats. Just before 2:20 am Titanic broke up and sank bow-first with over a thousand people still on board. Those in the water died within minutes from hypothermia caused by immersion in the freezing ocean. The 710 survivors were taken aboard from the lifeboats by the RMS Carpathia a few hours later.

I pay tribute to the brave crew who worked hard 100 years ago to save lives in this momentous maritime tradgedy.

Tomorrow is another sea day, and hopefully our body clocks have fully adjusted. On Wednesday we visit Bangkok.

Day 22 Travel Broadens the Mind

It is generally accepted that travel increases our understanding of a range of universal truths because it  gives  a broader context to the way we make sense of the world . Simple constants, such as the cycle of sunrise and sunset,  gain flexibility as we cross time zones and move the hands on our watches to fit our changing locations.

As if to prove this, within 12 hours of our arrival in Singapore, my world view has already broadened, and my perceptions and concepts have been challenged in surprising ways.    

But first, apologies to fellow travellers and family to whom I had promised an ‘arrived safely’ text or email yesterday. We are safe and well, but I have no mobile phone signal in Singapore and have had to wait to use the ship’s wifi to upload this post.  The flight from Heathrow  was uneventful and on time. However 13 hours felt an enormously long time to be held in the confines of our economy airline seat.  Chris and I snatched only occasional moments of sleep.  We wriggled and moaned and grumbled about our lack of rest, so that we had reached the ‘why on earth are we doing this?’ phase of our journey by the time we  dragged our cases into the  wet, 29 deg humidity of Singapore. We were then processed through the somewhat disorganised check-in processes required by the cruise company, before we were finally allowed to access our overnight hotel room and the promise of horizontal sleep.  We are staying in the Swiss Hotel Stamcroft, a  skyscraper above a modern shopping centre in the Raffles area of central Singapore..This is the tallest hotel in south eastern Asia, and as the lift finally took us to the 43^rd floor of this70 storey building, our expectations were at most, moderate  However, as the door opened, the size and luxury of the room and the breathtaking views of Singapore at dusk cut through our travel weary perceptions and lifted our spirits. Space in Singapore is in short supply. If they can’t build out, they build up. Fen  Shui principles are central to  design with carefully constructed curves and angles, Building materials emit warmth and cohesion. My prejudice about the lack of beauty in all modern, high rise cities has gone. Singapore is stunning.

Sadly we had very little time and even less energy to fully explore the city, and my thanks to fellow traveller Fran for the photo below.

It is now early morning on 15^th April, and my time clock is beginning to adjust. But before we collect our cases to take to the ship, I will share one more of my previous misconceptions with you, namely that buildings are static. This skyscraper moves. It is designed to do so. You can feel the movement as the building sways gently with the vibrations of the outside world and, very occasionally, it shudders. Perhaps it is responding to an aftershock from the Indonesian earthquake.

This afternoon we will head for the ship, with the promise of a very strict post Concordia lifeboat drill before we sail, thence  2 sea days before we visit Bangkok. This will give me some time to blog some more, whilst trying to sort out my jetlagged body clock.

I’ll be back soon!

Day 21: Trains and Boats and Planes

By the time you read this post, Chris and I will probably be on our way.
Maybe we will be wandering around Heathrow waiting for our call to walk to the boarding gate. Perhaps we will be sitting in our tight fitting economy seats on a BA 747 with a little plastic tray of food, wiggling our toes to keep the circulation going and wondering how we will survive the 12 hour flight. We might already be in Singapore. It will be 5pm Singapore time when we arrive, though only breakfast time in England. If we have the energy we could wander to the famous Raffles Hotel and see if we are prepared to pay £12 for one Singapore Sling.
On Sunday we begin our adventure for real.....35 days of sea travel, sea ports and far flung tourist attractions. If all goes to plan, we will make 17 different stops in 10 different countries, and return to the UK having completely circumnavigated the globe.

Which will be our favourite venue, I wonder? Will it be the vast length of the Great Wall of China or maybe the rice paddy fields in Vietnam. Chris is looking forward to his high speed journey on the famous Shanghai Maglev train, and I am eagerly anticipating the rope walk to the top of the Japanese Mount Usu. The Peace Park in Nagasaki will, no doubt, be a profound experience as will our first sail in to Alaska to view the vast glaciers and snow capped mountains. Our whale watching trip is already booked...see a whale or get your money back!

During our journey, I will be completing a 'blogging challenge' which I started in 2010. The idea is that I have to write a daily blog, however busy our travels are. I have to write 30 more posts to reach my final target of 50. This allows for 5 days 'slippage' in case we lose signal at sea.  For younger readers, don't forget to look out for our mascot, Sir Francis Drake, in some of the photos!

Thank you so much for logging on.The ticker shows the number of clicks on the site, and it gives me great encouragement to know that someone is reading my words. If you have time, then please leave a comment or become a member/follower. It costs nothing to do so, but it does encourage me to make an effort with crafting my words.
The next post will follow shortly, probably on or before15th April, so friends and family know we have arrived safely in Singapore. See you then!
Claire