March 27 & 28 - Hong Kong, SAR, People’s Republic of China

SAR stands for Special Administrative Region.   We’ve spent the last two days docked at the Ocean Terminal right in downtown Kowloon.  How convenient is that?  We have a front row seat to the view of the harbor and Hong Kong Island across the way and easy access to all the shopping, food and excitement of Tsim Sha Tsui, the area closest to the harbor in southern Kowloon.

Hong Kong Island

The Star Ferry terminal

One of the Star ferries  There are two decks - upstairs is first class and downstairs is second class and the fare is less than $1

Hong Kong came under British control after the Opium Wars between 1839  and 1842 when the Chinese were defeated and ceded first Hong Kong Island and then the Kowloon Peninsula in the Convention of Peking. In 1899 the area was further expanded when the British obtained a 99- year lease on the New Territories.  On July 1, 1997 the United Kingdom turned over all of Hong Kong to China with an agreement that China would give the area special status for 50 years.  Promises were made that Hong Kong would retain freedoms that the city and its residents enjoyed under British governance.  Surprise, surprise!  The Chinese didn’t keep their word.  Freedom of the press has been curtailed as has freedom of assembly.  Among the people with whom I spoke  there were very mixed and guarded opinions.  For those who must do business with Chinese manufacturers and get permits from the government, there was cautious optimism that business will still be allowed to operate freely.  For those who are better able to relocate should it become too repressive, there is a much more pessimistic outlook.  I could see some major changes since I last visited prior to the handover.  Obviously there had been an explosion of new buildings rising up around the harbor and everywhere the eye could see.  The more significant change that I saw was that whereas before much of the signage was in both Chinese and English, now it is almost exclusively in Chinese.  Before almost everyone I encountered including taxi drivers spoke some English.  Now that isn’t the case; I rode in two taxis in which the driver spoke not a word of English.  Fortunately I was with someone who could communicate.

The first day we were here I slept late and didn’t go ashore until mid-day.  I was on the hunt for a tailor shop.  Hong Kong in the past was renowned for their tailors who could make custom suits, shirts, and dresses in a matter of days.  I had in fact had a couple of things made many years ago.  I have absolutely no need for a suit, but I had found a photo of a  silk evening caftan which I thought I would like to bring on future cruises.  I found a tailor in another of the vast multi-story malls and spent an hour or so looking at silk swatches and talking with a tailor there.  With some advice from him I selected a lovely fabric and he took my measurements.  We agreed on a price and he is going to make my caftan and ship it to me to arrive after I return home.  I’m not sure I saved any money but that wasn’t really the point anyway.  Instead I want something that’s not long enough for a 5’10” model and instead looks like it was made for me.  I showed him something else I really liked with a silk fabric he didn’t happen to have and we agreed that if he can find that fabric and I like the dress he’s making for me, I’ll order the second dress.  After all, he has my measurements.

When I got back to the mall attached to the cruise terminal I did a little wandering through it’s hundreds of stores and bought a couple of things.  There were a lot of shoppers in there, mainly Asians.  Someone told me that a lot of Malaysians come here to shop.  It wasn’t my impression that there were any real bargains, but I probably would have had to go wandering off on side streets in Kowloon to find them.  I don’t really need anything so I didn’t try that. Many of the stores in the malls were designer brand shops. The mall is somewhat divided into areas by type of merchandise so I walked past one area with nothing but athletic shoes and others with only make-up and beauty products.  The one wing that really got me was an entire section of stores selling designer kids clothes -  Gucci, Armani, Dior etc.  Thinking back on how fast kids outgrow things, I just don’t understand buying Baby Gucci playsets, but clearly there are people who want them.

On our second day I had decided to have lunch ashore in a restaurant my friend Patricia dined in yesterday and highly recommended.  The place was in the mall at Harbour City and had big windows overlooking the harbor and Hong Kong Island.  My friend Claudia and I went and we had an absolutely exquisite lunch.  I’m even putting photos of the food because it was so good.  After lunch we walked a little in the mall to work off the food and did a little more shopping.

A pre-meal snack of pickled mushrooms and celery

Steamed spinach dumplings 

Steamed shrimp dumplings

Wagyu Beef Buns with fried scallion strings (we'd already attacked these before I remembered to take a photo - they were so good!)

Mango custard in the middle surrounded by shredded grapefruit and topped with mango sauce and edible flowers

As I write I realize that it sounds like a pretty dull couple of days because I didn’t take a tour or go wandering around the night market or Wan Chai, but I’d been to Hong Kong a few times before and seen all the major sights.  Lots of things may have changed but not the Peak tram or the big Buddha on Lantau Island, so I didn’t think I needed to go there again.  I had a chance to see the hustle and bustle of the traffic and people on Nathan Road and I ate good food so it was a successful visit.

It’s Friday now as I write this and I have to say that I stayed up pretty late even though I was tired so I could watch first the light show that goes on every night at 8 PM.  The various buildings on both the island and mainland have lasers criss-crossing the skies and changing patterns of lights on their sides.  It’s very neat to watch.  I also wanted to stay up to see us sail away from Hong Kong.  There are lots of pretty spectacular places from which to sail, but I think Hong Kong at night is right up there with the best.  I’ve given up on trying to upload videos, but I’ll upload some pictures of the sights around us.

The first night it was a little foggy over Hong Kong Island and I liked the way the tops of the taller buildings vanished in the mist, especially the next one.

This is the same building as above but on our second night I could see the top.

Two of the colorful junks in the harbor

Now we're sailing to Taiwan where we'll spend the next several days.  I've never been there so it's going to be all new ground It's been a quiet sea day. We had trivia with some new team members and we didn't do very well.  This leg it isn't cumulative so each day's competition stands alone.  Here's today's  final, bonus question: give the day of the week, month, date and year of the battle at Waterloo.  We couldn't believe someone actually knew it and got double points.    

March 26 - Sailing to Hong Kong

The day after our departure from Ha Long we sailed through the Strait of Hainan which separates the Chinese island of Hainan from mainland China. The strait is roughly 20 miles wide and about 390 feet at its maximum  depth. These are all troubled waters with the Chinese claiming islands and atolls that are also claimed by Viet and the Philippines. I didn’t see this but my neighbor did.  He and his wife are from Hawaii and he has seen his fair share of fishing boats.  He told me that around 5 or 6 AM while standing at the stern drinking an early cup of coffee, he saw a purported fishing boat approaching us very fast.  He said the boat had more antennas on there than he’d ever see on fishermen.  We agreed that it might very well have been one of China’s poorly disguised spy boats.

Later in the day as I sat writing and answering e-mails I saw several more small boats race toward us very fast and then back off. Perhaps they were just curious but one can’t really know for sure.

It was the last Trivia day and TADA! We won again. We got a bag full of prizes again and I’m almost finished doling them out  to various staff members who’ve been especially helpful.

Following trivia our team went as a group to another Galley Lunch which is always fun.  In the evening two friends, Patricia  and Claudia, and I sat in the Club and had something to drink and talked and laughed a lot.  They are such fun to be with.  Eventually we had sushi for dinner. We laughed so much that we missed both the pre-dinner and after dinner show.  We all turned in fairly early because the next morning we’ll be arriving in Hong Kong for an overnight stay.  So signing off for now.

March 25 - Ha Long Bay

After sailing from Da Nang we headed northwest into the Gulf of Tonkin on our way to Ha Long Bay, our last stop in Vietnam.  For those of my era the Gulf of Tonkin  has some historical significance; for those younger but interested in history it’s worthwhile googling the “Gulf of Tonkin” resolution. It played a pretty significant role in some of the events of the 60’s and 70’s.

We began sailing through Ha Long Bay around two in the afternoon and it was a spectacular few hours as we made our way to the port for an overnight stay.  I had seen pictures of this place but they didn’t fully convey the beauty of being here.  Ha Long Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The name means “descending dragon” in Vietnamese and there is a local myth about how this bay was formed.  The versions I heard varied but all involved dragons who helped local people in their battle against invaders.  Ha Long Bay covers an area of about 600 sq. miles and has close to 2000  limestone rocks and islets scattered throughout the bay.  It was cloudy and misty as we sailed along and rocks and little islands which have been eroded by millennia of wind and water would appear as we glided by.  In the photographs I’ve seen the Bay was always shown on sunny days which probably brought the colors out more, but in some ways I thought the mist and low clouds added a little touch of magic to the place. Some of the islands are hollow and have large caves.  Others have arches which have been created by the action of the elements.  Almost all the islands that I saw were topped with lush tropical vegetation.

There is evidently a community of people, mainly fishermen, who live in the Bay. I think there may be as many as 1500 people who live on floating houses and make their living fishing and doing marine aquaculture like cultivating pearls.  As we passed I saw a couple of boats that looked like people were living on them.  The provincial government of this part of Vietnam has a program to relocate the inhabitants of the Bay to the mainland and a few hundred people have already been moved.  I suspect that in the not-so-distant future most of the population will be removed leaving only a token few to man the tourist sites which exist because it is a very popular destination.

I think someone lived on this little boay.

Around four in the afternoon we docked in Ha Long city where we spent the night.  From the ship I could see a very large cable-stayed bridge crossing an inner part of Ha Long Bay. Next to the bridge is the Queen Cable Car.  This runs parallel to the bridge with two towers that are close to 600 feet high. Between the two land stations the system runs two two-story cars which each have a capacity of about 220 people.  At the opposite end from where we were docked above the cable car station was a large ferris wheel.  I’ve seen ferris wheels in every place we’ve stopped here in Vietnam.  I guess they must be very popular. 

We were able to go ashore in the evening but I didn’t.  A few friends who did said they took the shuttle to a modern 3-story mall where the lights kept going out so they came back pretty quickly. Instead I had dinner and went to a show with a wonderful Australian tenor named Mark Vincent.  It was the first show with a guest entertainer that I really enjoyed in the last couple of weeks.  I hope we’ll have more like him in the upcoming weeks.

The cable-bridge in the bacjground with the Queen Cble Cr in front of it.

On Monday morning the 25th I had to get up early to go on my “Deluxe HaLong Bay Junk Cruise.”  When I hear the word “junk” I think of something that looks like this.

This is what I think of when I hear the word junk

This was our "junk"

Instead we boarded a boat that looked like this and we set off to cruise around the bay. There was a cabin with seats and tables downstairs and an open deck on top so we were able to go up and take photos or stay inside and watch the rock formations go by through the windows.  It was still cloudy when we started but as the day progressed it eventually became sunny.  We had a guide who was very congenial but spoke very accented English and I had a hard time understanding lots of what he said.  There was a lot of debris in the water and there were some things that looked like the kind of floats people in the US use to mark where they have crab pots or lobster pots.  Some of these things looked like they were in a line so I asked our guide.  I don’t think he understood what I was asking and he told me they were just trash floating.  Given that the people living in the bay area do some aquaculture I’m not sure that was the real answer but I guess I’ll never know.

I'm pretty sure these were some of the residents in the bay

Eventually we got to our first stop which was a little fishing village on one of the larger islets.  There all but a couple of us got off our boat and went for a ride in little bamboo boats that held five people and were rowed by a resident of the village.  I guess I’ve become a chicken in my old age but I opted not to go.  I find that my balance isn’t as good as it used to be and the boats looked a little tipsy to me (that was later confirmed by a couple of my friends who did go).  I did get some pictures of them when they were rowed back and a friend got a photo of me taking shots of them.  Apparently during their ride they passed some of the rocks which have been eroded into interesting shapes.  Also where we docked there was a shop which sold pearl jewelry made of the pearls cultivated by these fishermen. One of my friends bought a lovely necklace but pearls aren’t really my thing so I passed.

The little bamboo boats

One of my friends got this picture of me taking pictures of them

After everyone was back aboard we had lunch.  We were served a multi-course feast of fried chicken (sort of Vietnamese chicken nuggets), fried fish and squid, sweet and sour shrimp, stir-fried noodles and stir-fried vegetables.  There was also bread, some delicious grapefruit slices, and tea.  It was way too much food but all tasty.  After lunch we came to our next stop.  This was a place where people could go and see a small beach and a cave in the limestone island.  The guide had shown us photos of the steps to the cave (120) which looked rough and of varying heights and with minimal or no handrails.  I had no problem deciding I wasn’t going to either place and many of my shipmates made the same decision.  I got some pictures from the ones who did so I’ll put them here.

Some of our feast

A photo of the cave taken by my friend Matt

And another

Then it was time to head back to the dock.  Our guide played a kind of Vietnamese history game as we puttered back.  We were women playing against men and he had a wacky scoring system which I don’t think any of us understood.  It did pass the time but I think we were all happy to get back to the dock.  I ought to mention that there was a tour offered that went to see the sights of Hanoi, the capital of the country.  I didn’t choose to take it because I wanted to see Ha Long Bay up close, but also because it was a two-hour ride to Hanoi.  We set sail around 6 PM and we’re now on our way to Hong Kong.  

I forgot to mention there was an adorable dog on the junk.  Her name was Lily ans she was a white min-poodle with hot pink ears.  She wore a diaper most of the time.

Lily the boat poodle

I’ve been on the ship now for 63 days!  That’s a record for me and I still have a long way to go.  I’ve stopped at 6 countries including five I’d never visited before.  I can stick lots of little pins into the map Katie and Stan gave me a couple of Christmases ago.    

March 23 - Da Nang and Hôi An

What a day!  We docked in the port of Da Nang this morning and I had to be up early because I was booked on an all-day tour (more about that in a moment).  I want to say something about Da Nang first. The city lies on the central coast of Vietnam and during the Vietnam War it was a major base for the US Air Force and the South Vietnamese Air Force as well. Thousands of US troops began their tour of duty here and it was one of the last places from which the US withdrew.  I came here a little over 29 years ago on a cruise with my husband.  I shall never forget talking with one of our fellow passengers after our day in Da Nang.  That man had been a Navy SeaBee (the United States Navy Construction Battalions) who came to Da Nang in 1964 to help build the American base there. Somehow he had gotten permission to do a private tour with his wife to visit some of the sites he helped to build.  (That was rare back then because we all had to go on official ship tours.) On a sea day after that we were talking to him about what he saw, and what he told us was that everything he saw was what he and his fellow Seabees had built with no improvement or upkeep being done in the ensuing 30 years.  That impression was borne up by what we saw as we passed through Da Nang on our ship’s tour to Huê.  Everything we saw was dilapidated, mildewed and standard government style barracks and buildings.

Now that I’ve said what I saw in the past, let me tell you that what I saw on our way back to the ship was like something from another planet. We passed miles of high-rise luxury hotels and vacation resorts (timeshare condos) along a spectacular beach.  There were glitzy multi-story shopping centers and modern bars and restaurants.  Tomorrow is the Da Nang International Marathon (in this heat and humidity!!) so the place was packed with people who had come for that.  Meanwhile just past that area is the same kind of gritty warren of streets where the people who work at the glamorous beach live.  What a huge contrast!  Is this better?  I guess so because  people have jobs but our guide happened to mention (I don’t know if it was accidental or on purpose) that local people aren’t allowed to go in some of the places we passed.

I'm cheating here because I was in a bus and couldn't get a photo like this, but this is what I rode by courtesy of the internet.  Any big hotel name you can think of was represented here.

Enough about Da Nang because my destination was actually the old city of Hôi An where I was to take a Vietnamese cooking class.  There were 15 of us and we took off with our first stop being what I can best describe as a communal garden.  Our guide Phuong  told us rather a different story than Lee, our guide in Saigon did.  (I’ll talk about the differences more some other day.)  At this garden people were allowed to grow on a plot which I think was about 10 square meters which is a little over 100 sq. ft.  In the plots that we walked past we saw all kinds of herbs, lettuces and a few other vegetables growing.  People were tending their gardens and we stopped at one where the farmer was getting ready to plant some new herbs.  He dug a bed, put in some dried seaweed which was the fertilizer, covered it back up with dirt, and then with his thumb made little holes where he planted little individual plants which I think were basil.  Then with two watering cans he got water from the communal water supply and watered the new plantings.   For as far as I could see there wasn’t a single modern looking piece of equipment.

Next we drove to a soft noodle maker's workshop.  This man takes rice and soaks it in alkaline water.  To get the alkaline water he burns wood and puts the ashes in water.  After the rice has soaked, he mashes it and makes a dough.  In his workplace he showed us the two methods for making the noodles.  He rolls out dough into thin layers and either cuts in very thin strips with a very sharp, big knife or he uses a hand-cranked machine that looked just like an old-fashioned pasta machine.  He  then puts the noodles into bags and either delivers them by bicycle to other places in the town or people come to pick them up.  The only sign of anything modern in this ramshackle place was an electric fan on a stand. Upon leaving his shop we walked to another place that takes the soft noodles and dries them on bamboo baskets outside to make them hard.

The noodle maker followed by some photos of his workshop

Noodles drying outside in a courtyard

From the noodle-maker we drove into Hôi An where we had to leave the bus and take a very long walk into the old city.  Hôi An is a tourist destination because part of the city along the Thu Bon river is a well-preserved example of a Vietnamese trading port from the 15th to 19th centuries. Because of its historic status cars and buses aren’t allowed in, just pedicabs, bicycles and the ubiquitous motorbikes.  It was hot and humid again and the walk which might otherwise have been lovely was strenuous.  We walked through a market, which was an absolute waste (shades of Saigon).  Had we bought anything other than vegetables or fruit there to cook later I would have been reluctant to eat it. As it was we bought nothing. Then we  were off to our cooking class on the third floor of a very busy restaurant along the river.

The promenade along the river on our way to the school

At our class we each had our individual seat, gas burner and ingredients.  We made a spring roll with shrimp and a little pork and some fresh green herbs in rice paper.  I liked this enough that I might actually make them for dinner sometimes.   Next we made something that was a cross between a pancake and an omelet, then barbecued chicken rubbed with a bunch of spices and marinated in a combination of sauces, and finally a mango salad which we ate with the chicken.  I got the recipes should I ever want to prepare them.  I’m not a big fan of some of the spices we used so I don’t know that I’ll try them unless I vary them a little.  It was fun though and the teacher Tam was excellent.

My station with the ingredients for the rice paper spring roll

My creation.  It tasted better than it looked.

The classroom was open air with a courtyard next to it

My barbecued chicken with mango salad

After lunch we crossed over the river to the old city and some of the group went on a walk through a Chinese temple and a couple of old houses.  I stayed with a few others at a rustic café watching the throngs of tour groups go by with their leader at the front with a flag or sign leading the way.  It was hot, crowded and I was tired.

After our drive back through the beach resort of Da Nang which I wrote about above, we reboarded the ship after the all aboard time.  As we crossed the gangway they were getting ready to remove it and cast off. I had a very nice time but I was exhausted.  I missed the sailaway deck party and for dinner went down kind of late with one of my friends for sushi.  I did something unheard of then and went to bed with lights out earlier than I can remember in ages.  

March 21 - Saigon continued

This place was fascinating and I spent two days here so I’ve got to write more. On the evening we spent in Saigon Seabourn arranged a special event for those of us on the Grand Voyage. After racing to get cleaned up and changed after our tour, we boarded buses to go to the Hotel Continental in downtown Saigon for a cocktail and hors d’oeuvres party.  A Vietnamese band was playing traditional music in the background. After an hour we walked as a group across the street to the Saigon Opera House for a performance by the Vietnamese Bamboo Circus.

It’s difficult to describe what we saw and no photography was allowed.  The troupe of about 20 young men and women did acrobatic maneuvers with long bamboo poles and baskets. We had no explanation of what we were seeing but I surmised that they were doing tableaux of life in fishing and farming villages in times gone by.  Then suddenly we were in a modern era with the performers wearing hard hats but still doing acrobatic things with bamboo.  I thought we were seeing the evolution of Vietnamese life.  The performance concluded with hip hop dancing.  This troupe has performed all over the world and they perform once a week in the opera house.  It was a very interesting and enjoyable evening but I thought it would have enhanced the experience if we’d had a program or some kind of explanation of what we were seeing.  I’m glad I went though and it was a nice treat for us long cruisers. We were welcomed back at the ship in a signature Seabourn way.  Staff line a red carpet with banners that say "Welcome Home," music playing and champagne.  The people working on this ship are very special! 

The Opera House

This and the next are some of the lights of nighttime Saigon

Our welcome reception

After a pretty early night I got up and met with a group of fellow passengers to go shopping with the chef again. This time was very different from the last time in Melbourne a little over a month ago.  I thought we were going to the big market that the ship’s shuttle bus went to and that apparently sells everything in the world. Nope, we went off to a local street market somewhere. It was like a maze of stalls that wound around right off a busy street with no A/C or refrigeration in the various stands.  The produce looked pretty good but honestly I thought any meat or fish would be suspect.  There were vegetable stands across the aisle from underwear vendors across from people smoking fish over open fires.  Motorbikes would drive down the narrow aisles so you had to dodge out of the way.  There was one vendor of canned goods which kind of tickled us.  We had a couple from Hawaii in the group and they spotted cans of Spam, a favorite in Hawaii, on the shelf in this place. The chef didn’t find anything he wanted to buy so they called the bus back and a big confab took place while we waited.  Evidently someone recommended we go to a second market. Off we went.

Along the way we passed through a lot of the less modern Saigon and the sights and the traffic were amazing.  At a traffic light another bus decided it needed to cut in front of ours and in so doing took out the side mirror.  Nobody stopped or exchanged information or even shouted and gesticulated.  Both buses just kept going.  We had to cross a major street on foot to get to the market.  That was a harrowing experience as we just hoped that the traffic would give us a break.  We all made it.  This market was more rustic than the last one.  Motorbikes loaded with boxes taller than the riders went down the narrow aisles in both directions so you had to hope when you dodged one coming toward you that you wouldn’t be taken out by one behind you.  The pavement was uneven and crumbling in places and as I walked I was constantly hoping I wouldn’t fall over. The food for sale here looked less promising than the first market but we walked through the whole place.  At times we got splashed with water as vendors hosed down their spots.  It was an experience unlike any I’ve ever had when shopping with the ship’s chef.  Convinced that he wasn’t going to find anything, the bus was called and we headed back to the ship.  It was an abortive shopping trip, but I was glad I went because I felt like I got a clearer picture of the life of the average resident away from the glitzy malls with designer shops and the big hotels with their marble atria.  We passed those along the way and it was incongruous to see signs for Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Dior.

Here are some scenes from the market and Saigon away from the big office buildings and hotels.

The produce in the first market looked pretty good but the Chef didn't buy any.

I guess they make tea from these flowers

What happens if the lights go out and they have to sort through this mess?

If you look closely there are two guys sleeping on this steel structure. We hoped they didn't roll over.

We got back to the ship close to noon and I was tired and hot and really needed to get cleaned up so I didn’t go ashore again.  All aboard was at 3:30 anyway so there wasn’t time to do much else.  

So that was my visit to Saigon.  Everyone I met was friendly and charming and seemed genuinely happy we were here. As I said yesterday describing the place in words is really hard because it’s a place that you need to see, smell and hear to get the full picture.  The closest place I can think of that I’ve been in the last several years that had the same impact on my senses was when Al and I went to India. That too was almost overwhelming. I’m not finished with Vietnam yet.  Tomorrow we’ll be In Da Nang and from there I’m going to take a cooking class in Hoi Anh.  Yes, I’m going to learn to cook something despite the fact that I basically don’t cook anymore.  Maybe I’ll be inspired.  More later.