Just a little over a week ago we were in Hawaii and just a week before that, we were basking in the heat of Tahiti. Now Don is outside making a snow igloo with our nephews Markie and Scottie in my parent’s front yard in Oak Harbor, WA. Talk about adjusting the thermostat!

Our plans had been to fly from Hawaii to Panama then take a bus up Central America to Mexico City and fly home, on Feb 5^th, our target date of return. But after just two days in Hawaii, we realized that home was calling us stronger than we had been willing to admit. So we cancelled our flights and booked a flight to SeaTac airport instead, deciding to make our last month a tour of the western US, visiting family on the way home, starting with my family in Washington. While I was looking on-line to book our flight from Hawaii, I noticed that there were flights to Anchorage, Alaska and Don got all excited. “Let’s go!”  My response was “Nobody goes to Alaska in the winter!” Little did I know that we would be heading up there just a week later.

Delta Air was running a special so that we were able to buy first class seats for less than coach seats on the other days of the week. I snatched them up immediately. Don was thrilled! He could stretch out with plenty of leg room and maybe get some sleep. But for some reason we couldn’t sleep. It is only a 5 + hour flight but with the time zones, we ended up landing in Seattle close to 7 am after leaving Honolulu at 11 pm the day before. It was just too short of a timeframe to get sleepy enough to sleep. Or were we just too excited about coming HOME to the states? We landed at SeaTac airport Friday morning, Jan 13^th.  It was our lucky day. The crew on the Delta flight was fantastic, slipping us a “Welcome Home” bottle of champagne as we disembarked!

It was wonderful to be in a country where everyone spoke American English, every sign was in English, the money was US dollars and the customs were so familiar. Ah, it feels so good to be HOME in the States!

We caught the 8:40 am shuttle to Oak Harbor from the airport and headed up north. We reached the Mukilteo ferry to the island and Don, asleep in the van, slept right through the 15 minute crossing. I had to go up to the cafeteria and get something to eat and have some of their famous WA coffee.  The van dropped us off at the 7-11 in Oak Harbor and mom met us there in their Jaguar 5 minutes after we arrived. It was so nice to see a familiar face (mom does look very sophisticated in that Jag!) and get hugs from family. Dad was anxiously waiting for us at home.

I knew Mark and Kit were coming up sometime this month to work on their downstairs unit and I was so happy to find out that they were coming up the very next day! Marla found out we were at mom and dad’s, so she drove over Saturday morning with little Markie and Scott, who really are not that little anymore. We had a wonderful family reunion! As usual, one of my siblings was missing; this time it was Marlin and Dong but we will be seeing them in San Francisco on our trip south but it would have been so nice if we could have all been together.

Don took the boys to the hobby shop and bought them models to build (late Christmas presents!) while at the grandparents house. They spent the evening putting the helicopter and tank together, with Don and Grandpa’s help. I almost think that they were as excited about the models as the boys were.

We woke up to snow Sunday morning. It was beautiful! Don and I drove the Jaguar (thank you, mom and dad!) to church and on the return drive home, we just HAD to detour to the beach. Snow at the beach! It was wonderful!

Later that evening, after our tummies were full of mom’s good home cooking, and we were settled in for the night, Markie asked Don to help him build a snow igloo the next morning. They made a deal. Whoever wakes up first in the morning wakes the other one up. As I was crawling in bed, Don reminded me that there might be a little boy waking us up in the morning. Sure enough, I woke up to a whispered “Uncle Don, Uncle Don, it is time to build the snow igloo.” I opened my eyes. It was still dark outside! Don later confessed that he had considered “sleeping” through the call for early morning adventure. However, he got up and Markie discovered that all his snow clothes were in the room with his mother.  Not wanting to wake her up, they came back in our room and woke me up, again!  “We need gloves and a hat.”  I gave them a hat and a pair of socks, since my only gloves were suede, not good for snow. I rolled over and went back to sleep. A couple hours later I got out of bed to see the most original looking snow teepee I have ever seen. Soon Uncle Mark joined Scott, Markie and Don. The igloo looked like one of Santa’s elves’ hat that had blown in with the night’s flurries. Little Mark got bored at some point and decided to try out the ice on Grandma’s fish pond. It held long enough for him to dare to take another step into the deeper part and the ice broke and down he sank. Luckily it is fairly shallow and he was only wet to the knees. His wet clothes and waterlogged shoes didn’t stop him from continuing to help build the snow house.

There is something wonderful about us siblings getting together, something we don’t do nearly often enough.  Mark and Kit have a downstairs apartment and my parents live in the upstairs part of the home. After dinner we all ended up in Mark and Kit’s, just shooting the breeze. We almost felt like little kids, sneaking into each other’s rooms after lights out, and telling our secrets. We were all sitting on their couch and chairs, sipping on wine, jabbering away, and mom and dad showed up, saying that they felt left out. I couldn’t help but think that I would have felt the same if my kids had done the same to me!

We had been in Washington for several days and I was really looking forward to getting home. I had thought we were heading home and never thought about home to ALASKA! I had lived in Ketchikan, Alaska in second and third grade, but I never thought that I would be going to Alaska in the middle of winter. Who does that? I guess we do and my parents were game to come with us! So, here we are, planning a trip with my parents, age 80 and 81, to ferry the inland passage of Alaska in the dead of winter, the winter that has been one of their snowiest in decades! How did we ever switch from going home to taking another week of travel to see Alaska?

One evening, while I was looking up train schedules to California, and Don and my parents started talking about Alaska and the ferry and then it became “Why don’t we go to Alaska on a Ferry? Mimi, quick, look it up. See if we can.” I closed the Amtrak website and switched to Alaska Marine Highway.com. Sure enough, there was a ferry going to Skagway via Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, Haines, and Juneau. Don was ecstatic! “Book it Mimi!” Again I asked the question “Who wants to go to Alaska in the winter?”  Us. My parents were so excited about going north that my mom couldn’t sleep that night. Don was so pleased to give my parents a trip to Alaska, seven days of seeing the most beautiful country in the US, my mom’s favorite state. Because it is a ferry, as opposed to a cruise, it only stops in port long enough to let off cargo and passengers.  We have 5 hours in Ketchikan and 3 hours in Skagway, but only 40 minutes in all the other ports. On the return trip, we will take a detour to Sitka and Kake, but only have a short port of call.  Wish it were longer, but we will take what we can get!

We arrived in Bellingham a couple hours early, where we were to board our ferry. It had been snowing and we weren’t sure the freeway would be clear so we left with plenty of time. When we arrived the ferry at the dock and to my dad’s surprise, it was the same one that we took to Juneau, almost 50 years ago!  I called my brother Mark and told him we were riding the old ferry and he asked if it was the “Matanuska”. How does he do that? Who remembers names like that? The only thing I do remember was sleeping inside on the floor and I thought that was so fun seeing all the kids running around with their pajamas on at bedtime. We, on the other hand, were not allowed to run around.

It sounds like a ferry in our stateroom. You know, the low vibration of a big diesel engine. We have a bunk bed in our cabin and a bathroom with a shower. It is very basic and it is clean. When we were exploring the boat, we found the top sleeping deck that has three walls, a ceiling and the back wall is open. This area is for sleeping out on deck chairs. In the summer months, you can “pitch” your tent out on the open deck. Don and I looked jealously at the people rolling out their sleeping bags onto deck chairs. It is a little cold up there but there are heaters and it really is quite comfortable. Next time we will bring our kids and grandkids and tents! But trust me, it will be in the summer.

The ferry ride has been so smooth, except when we have had to go out on open waters. The ferry’s route is going up what is called the Inland Passage, going between islands and the main land. Twice, so far, we have had to go out into the open ocean with no protection from the wind and ocean waves. It is not my favorite thing, but I have to remember that this boat has been doing this passage for 50 years in much worse weather than this. But I am still glad when we go back in between the islands to the smooth waters.

The landscapes are beautiful. Surprisingly there is not that much snow in the southern part so far. We have had some rain and on the second evening got some snow. It is cold, especially when the wind picks up. We had gray skies in the morning and then we saw some clear blue ahead. We followed that blue sky all afternoon and the views were spectacular. We could see mountains with patches of snow in the hovering clouds behind the tree thick hills.   I particularly like the layers on shore: gray rocks, a layer of brown rocks then another layer of gray rock, then the pine trees. There are hundreds of logs on the shores and some in the water, floating as if on an adventure of their own.

We have seen eagles in trees, cormorants, and sea gulls. So far no other wild life.

Has the ride been worth it? Yes!!!

Tomorrow morning: Ketchikan, my home for two years from ’62 to ’64. Wonder if I will remember anything?

It was great seeing my old house and the church (we did go to the church since we were there Sunday morning) and I had time to show Don where I went to school. We also were able to drive out to the Potlatch and see the totem poles. Such good memories of being a kid there!

Another highlight of the trip was seeing the glacier just outside of Juneau. The color was a beautiful teal blue and was gorgeous. And it was huge! What a river of ice!

Skagway was a kick. We arrived close to 5 PM so everything was closed but the Skagway Brewery that we got a nice hot chocolate and fries. Don knocked on the door of a tourist gift shop as she was trying to close up so we could buy something from the quaint town of Skagway. These Alaskan towns are like stepping back in time, to when the gold rush was in full swing. They are delightfully quaint.

Don got his gold nugget! Sitka was the only port that we docked at in the middle of the day with time to shop. And Don found the only gold nugget store in town and bought himself an Alaskan nugget!

If you want to get to know an Alaskan, take a ferry ride in the winter. Alaskans are another breed of people. I think they are the last of the pioneers. There are no wimps in Alaska (once I leave!) They are such a hearty bunch. We chatted with some locals who moved to Alaska from the “lower 48” in 1967 and the husband taught school in Ketchikan for several years then moved up further north to live a much more rustic lifestyle. They are retired now and run a fish camp in the summer. To get their summer supplies in, they have to load up two boats, hire a large boat to tow these boats across 35 miles of water to their lodge. She grows her own vegetables in a green house that they built and all the seedlings, etc. has to be brought in the same manner. And this is what they do for fun!  My hat is off to them. They got off in Haines and were going to drive the 1000+ miles home in the worst snow Alaska has had in years to get home. They did say that they were going to caravan with several other cars attempting this drive. If you have car trouble up there, you want a friend nearby. As they say, Alaskan elements are unforgiving!    Most of the passengers going to Anchorage and Fairbanks were taking the ferry from Haines to Whittier over open sea and I heard it is a pretty rough ride! No thank you!  A little adventure is OK but 2 days worth…..my chicken is clucking inside!

Another passenger we met is a newly divorced, spunky woman in her 40s. She was on her way down to Palm Desert via Oregon to stay with her sister who is dying of cancer. She drove from Anchorage to Whittier to catch the same ferry to Haines. It was about 1000 miles of highway and she said she only saw 6 cars the whole trip! That sounds heavenly, if you are from California, but when you are driving by yourself in sub-zero temperatures, a few more cars would have been more comforting!

Probably our most impressive fellow rider that we met was actually from upstate New York on his way to a race in Fairbanks area. He had an old U-Haul type truck that he had built in dog kennels to house 31 dogs with space for other items as well as his sled. The dogs had their noses sticking out of the small holes in the side of the truck, sniffing in our odor. They are small, sleek dogs and they are raced for their speed, not endurance like the Iditarod. The ferry let people  go down to the car deck and check on their animals, weather permitting, 3 -4 times a day. At one point, he had all 31 of his dogs out on ropes, tethered to the truck.

Don was able to play “dog pharmacist” for one of the passenger’s dogs. The dog had been given a Valium to calm her for the three day trip but she was not doing well. I overheard the woman asking for some pills and thinking that she was looking for sea sick pills for herself, I introduced myself to her and told her we had some Dramamine if she needed some. Then she explained that she needed pills for her dog. I took her down to our room where Don gave her Pepto Bismo for the upset stomach, Imodium for the diarrhea, and an antihistamine for her stress. The dog was about 80 pounds so Don gave her the dosage amounts for a child.  The next morning we asked the owner how her dog was doing and she was so grateful that the medicine did the trick!  Being married to a nurse gives me the advantage of seeing a different part of life I had never experienced before!  

Alaska in winter means snow, rain, sleet, rough waters, low lying clouds and cold temperatures!  We felt them all and Alaska was just as we thought it would be! Very different from southern California! And my parents loved every minute of it and we were so glad we could share it with them.

 

Hawaii!

 

The big Island of Hawaii was great. We docked in Hilo early in the morning and were out the gangway by 8 AM.   We rented a car and since Don knows I am such a control freak, he let me drive, and we drove up to Mauna Kea mountain where there are 14 observatories. One was operated by the Smithsonian Institute, another by University of Hawaii, another by CalTech, the Keck Observatory, and the list goes on. They also have observatories that are run by different countries, like France and Japan. We couldn’t go in any of them, but they looked very cool from the outside. The elevation of Mauna Kea is 13796 feet high! It had patches of snow on the ground and it was cold. Who would have known that there was snow in Hawaii? Not me! My face was freezing cold and the wind went right through my hiking pants. There was a mountain peak that was close by that we hiked too. The air was pretty thin but we didn’t have that far to go.  We just knew that it had to be the highest peak so we really wanted to “bag” it. This mountain was the highest that I had ever been on by foot.  At the top of the mountain was a spiritual rock formation with some palm fronds and flowers. We didn’t know this at the time, but it is considered sacred to the Hawaiians. We had read not to add or take off any stones from the mountain so we didn’t touch it.  

One cool thing about the Big Island is not that populated or unspoiled. I loved it.

As we were leaving the port, I watched as the waves were rolling over the breakwater with just like the Hawaiian waves that people surf.  Wonder what those waves look like on a stormy day! The captain warned us that we would be experiencing some large waves as we left the island and he was right. What would Hawaii surf be like if it didn’t have any large waves?  It just wouldn’t be Hawaii at all.

 I think this was one of our favorite days of doing something we both enjoyed.

 

Kauai

Californians love to go to Hawaii for vacation and because EVERYONE goes there, I did not. Well, I need to change that opinion! I am so glad that I have been able to visit this wonderful state of Hawaii! Kauai is called the Garden Island and it really is beautiful. It is so green with trees and lush tropical plants. This island is covered in mountains that are very dramatic. The cliffs of Na Pali are truly magnificent and the fields and beaches on the leeward side were so lush as well.  We saw the “little Grand Canyon” that  Mark Twain wrote about on the west side of this island. How could we have seen all that in just one short day’s stay? Because we took a 55 minute helicopter ride that covered about 80 percent of the island. We saw the Waimea Canyon, saw where they filmed Jurassic Park (we did not see any dinosaurs though), the dramatic Na Pali cliffs and the crater of Mt. Waialeale, the wettest place on earth, and more that I can not name. We also saw several hump back whales spouting off so we buzzed around them a couple of times.   It was an amazing flight, the views and experience were top of the list of our favorite experiences.  (Even if my hands were clammy and cold all 55 minutes of the ride!

We are starting to feel our trip coming to an end and we really wanted to do a WOW! in Hawaii.  The helicopter ride was definitely a WOW! Experience.

Maui

Whale watching! I didn’t even want to go. But Don begged me to go with him so I did, half heartedly. Once we spotted the first whale, I was so glad I went! I might have missed the highlight of the trip. We were on a fairly large boat that looked like an old ferry for about 150 people and we went out to the middle of the bay, not more than 2 miles from shore and we started seeing whales. It is mating and calving season so they were having fun! These whales are humpback whales from Alaska. They were breaching (their bodies out of the water), pectoral slapping or were showing us their huge tails as they dived into the deep water. We saw them at least 40 times and at least 10 times they were completely out of the water.  It was so exciting. Two whales were playing near our boat and came within 20 meters. They are huge when they swim nearby. Amazing creatures. What a treat!  And the staff were as excited to see them so close as we were. They said that rarely happens and this is the best viewing day that they have had this season. I am SOOOOOOO glad that I went whale watching today in Maui!

The town that we visited on Maui is called Lahaina and it is the art town of the island. I walked through several art galleries, missing mine back home. I collected as many business cards as I could so that I can go home and look them up on line. It was wonderful seeing so much art. We bought three tiles and I bought a bracelet that was called World Traveler Bracelet. I love it. The quote on the bracelet is “ We are heroes of our own stories.”  Hmmmm, not sure what to make of that quote.

Honolulu

We spent the day at the Pearl Harbor War Memorial. It is quite the thing to see. We saw a movie with all the details about the bombing of Pearl Harbor then we went out to the Arizona Memorial. The film was so moving that no one spoke at the end of it but walked out of the theater quietly. We also went into the Bowpin submarine and that was a very cool tour. I remember going in a submarine when I was just 7 years old when we lived in Ketchikan, Alaska and that left such an impression on me. This one seemed larger than the one I remember from my childhood but it was still amazing how 80 men would volunteer to go into one of these contraptions for months on end.  Took some special guys!

We love Hawaii and the people here. It is one of the most laid back states we have been to. Any state and city that can put up with so many tourists, yet still be so nice and happy, they are people you want to know. The weather is great, the beaches wonderful, and it is still America. What can be better?

We have been on Oahu for four days now. It is so weird to be “home”, in the US. I didn’t know that I would feel this way when we got here but we have suddenly realized how much we want to go home and see family and get back to a normal life! Wandering is OK for a certain amount of time, but there does come a time when I want to have more direction. True, we were seeing the world, but being an observer without time for participating, makes me feel a bit “unuseful”. (Now if I wrote a book about our travels, that might make a difference!) Don and I both talked and agreed that going home now, visiting our family members on our way to Idyllwild would be FABULOUS!!  We had planned to go to Central America to see the Mayan ruins, but that can wait for another trip. It is time to go home, see family and get on with life as we have known it for the last 30 some years. So, tonight at 11 PM, we board the flight to Seattle and start our journey down the coast of America, the greatest place on earth!

Tahiti and Moorea
I have got to start writing these things down as I see them so I don’t forget all the cool things about these beautiful green islands. We visited Moorea on the ship and plan to visit it once again on our way to Hawaii. It is only a ferry ride over there from Tahiti so it is close enough if we wanted to visit before then. A very dramatic port with mountains, up to 2900 feet, all the way around us in the little harbor.  It really was beautiful.  But we are staying in a very nice resort, probably a little on the pricey side but there isn’t much that isn’t pricey here. It is a French territory and it has French prices and pretty much the French atmosphere. The hotel brags the largest fresh water man-made lagoon swimming pool in the south Pacific.  It is wonderful and it is open 24 hours 7 days a week.  I love it! It is only 3 feet deep at its deepest and that is the majority of the pool. It is sand made from coral that is poured over plastic sheeting so it is like being out in the ocean but no salt to burn the eyes. I want one in Idyllwild. However, the coral can be vicious on the feet. I have been nursing a shard imbedded in the heel of my foot for a week and I think it is finally out but it took a lot of coaxing!

We have an egret that comes and eats fish out of the pond below our hotel window. We are above the hotel dining room whose roof is filled with pond water and swimming koi and some other very small fish. The egret stands quietly in a group of lilies and  waits for the poor innocent fish to swim by him and then it quickly grabs it before it knows what happened.  This morning there was another white bird that looked more like a duck, standing on the edge of the pond. I love this hotel. We see the ocean, the sun sets, the huge lagoon pool and this lovely pond, all from our balcony.

There are several kinds of birds here in Tahiti that I have noticed.  A little delicate dove;  a small brown, yellow, with dark/brown markings, chickadee looking bird that is so cute; another bird that is the same size but it looks like someone but red eye liner, lipstick;  a shiny gunmetal gray large bird;  pigeons; and a smaller brown/gray bird that has a patch of bright red feathers under its tail that likes to sit on our balcony. I know that there are others, but these are a daily sight around our hotel. I must be getting old……I am finding that birds are fun to watch.

Fish. I must talk about the reef. We went snorkeling in Bora Bora and the reef was fascinating. In Tahiti, the hotel provided unlimited kayaking and snorkeling. I love rowing so we kayaked every day. I loved to row out until I was on top of a coral and then stop to quietly watch. Suddenly the ocean comes alive with fish. One day I counted 30 different types of fish. It was wonderful. I am sure that I saw more than 30 because I counted all the black fish as 1 type of fish, since they were hard to distinguish them apart.  My favorite were the bright blue fish and the bright teal colored fish. They were only about 2 inches long but they were so bright it was like they were fireflies of the sea. They would be in schools of several hundred so you can only imagine how beautiful the coral appeared with all these bright blue fish dancing around it.  

It has rained every day here so far. It is hot and humid then by afternoon the clouds roll over the mountains behind us and dumps a few gallons of rain and it cools off.  Around midnight last night we say the flashes of lightning that lasted until we fell asleep. This morning it rained first thing so I am hoping it will be a cooler day.

We have befriended a couple from MA in their 30s who are also traveling around the world who were on the Ocean Princess with us and are staying at the same hotel as we are. We taught them Canasta, pretty much because we couldn’t remember the rules to any other card game and it has been fun having some company. On Thursday we decided to rent a car and do a spin around the island. It is a very small island and including stopping at all the sights, we were back to the hotel in 6 hours.  We visited the caves that have fresh water in them. You can swim but it doesn’t go very far back. The we went to the blow hole that is crazy. The road used to go between the blow hole and the ocean and it has been re-routed, thank goodness. When it blows, it is loud and it would frighten the most seasoned driver as they came around the corner and was met with a puff of steam. We saw the beach that is famous for surfing and the black sand. That was very cool. Then we visited the Paul Gauguin Museum and got bit by a zillion mosquitoes. I had 12 mosquito bites behind my right knee! Grrr! We went on around island to a light house that Robert Lewis Stevenson’s father built in the mid 1800s. I love history and how it comes around full circle. No wonder RL Stevenson thought about coming to the south Pacific to live.

Bora Bora

Girls, this is where you want to go on your honeymoon.  It is amazing!  The volcanic mountain that formed this island is very dramatic with its cliffs and great shapes.  The island is surrounded by a reef that creates a beautiful teal green playground of coral, fish, sting rays, clams and sharks. And we were in the middle of it all! It was beautiful!

We had bought tickets to go on a tour with the ship for snorkeling with the sting rays and sharks as well as doing some reef snorkeling. We were happy because Callie, our gym instructor was also going. She was as nervous as I was!  We climbed into a catamaran bottomed boat that carried about 40 of us to a section of the reef where they knew we would find sting rays. Sure enough, everyone but a few of us got into the water that was only chest high and they soon showed up. I, being the cautious one, watched for a while just to make sure I really had the nerve to get in and stay in. I snapped a bunch of photos of Don watching the sting rays and soon sharks showed up. They were black tip sharks, the kind that don’t hurt humans and are actually pretty shy and will avoid you. They were actually really beautiful.  I couldn’t help but feeling a little scared. However, I determined that I would be safe in the water so I climbed down the ladder into the water. It was cooler than I thought it would be.  The ocean was much warmer in Cairns.  Anyway, I walked in the water and watched for sting rays. They did come by and one brushed by me and it was very silky and they just touch you ever so lightly. Those sting rays are so unearthly! They remind me of space ships of the future.  I tried feeding one by shoving the fish into their nostrils that are behind their eyes but I just couldn’t do it. It was too weird and I didn’t watch long enough to get up the nerve. We were told by the guides that you could get your finger sucked if you tried to put it into their mouth so that is why they recommend it through the nostrils. In fact, they told us to only touch the sting ray on their top surface and avoid the tail. I figured if they touch me I am good with that. I didn’t want to end up like Crocodile Dundee with a tail in my heart! Today’s experience swimming (I was standing very still but it was called swimming) with the tip sharks and the sting rays is definitely a highlight of our trip to French Polynisia!

I have seen many Samoans in the States and it was fun seeing them on their own island in their own environment. It is a beautiful island! We entered Apia by going between two reefs and it was a narrow entrance!  Our captain is so good at what he does!  The people are so friendly here! They only get cruise ships docking here a couple times a year so they are very happy to see us come. Most ships dock on the other side of the island, where there are wonderful beaches and this side is more mountainous. We were greeted on this gloomy looking Sunday morning with a SDA Church choir, singing traditional Samoan songs as well as Christian songs with the leader thanking God for our safe travels. That was pretty unexpected but a great way to start the day. We were told that Samoa is a very religious country and that they send many missionaries around the world.  There was not a store open and usually the Stevenson’s house and museums were closed on Sunday, but they made an exception for us.  That was pretty nice of them, otherwise there would have been very little to do or see other than driving through the island or hiking a mountain.  Hmmm, doesn’t sound too bad after all. Our goal was to get to Robert Lewis Stevenson's home just outside of Apia in a town called Vailima.  We asked a taxi cab how much it would cost and it was only $10 so we got it.  The sprawling European-adapted-Samoan house was set on a beautifully cultured lawn that was huge!  The lawn was bordered by wonderful tropical plants and trees. There were some turkey like wild birds that seemed to be grazing on the lawn. We arrived before the ship group tour arrived so we got a private tour of the house. The house is pretty much how the Stevenson’s left it. It had all the books he wrote, including first editions of Kidnapped and Jekyll and Hyde, two of his famous books. It was fully furnished as well as the drawings and paintings that his stepdaughter had done of him and their life there in Samoa. Don really loved being in the home of a famous writer and tried to get as many good vibes from his house as possible.  Maybe, just maybe, some of the stardust will fall on his writings! Soon the place was crawling with Princess people!  They had a dance and Kava ceremony planned so we watched. Their dancing was great. I wish that America had a traditional dance.  Oh, that right, we have western country dancing! After the dancing, and everyone left, we decided to climb the mountain to where Robert L. Stevenson was buried, along with his wife, who died 20 years later in San Francisco. It is sad that Robert L. Stevenson built this beautiful home but died 4 years later. He had TB and thought it best to be in a warmer climate but it didn’t prolong his life that much. He was fairly young when he died.  Anyway, there was a break in the weather so it seemed like a wise thing to do….there was a well marked path so we headed out.  Then it started to rain and boy did it rain! I had brought the umbrella and rain poncho so we were protected but I was wearing flip flops (I didn’t know we were going to climb a mountain!) and I was slipping all over the place.  The sign said it was a 30 – 40 minute walk but it took us well over an hour.  Once we got to the top, there was thunder and lightning and I don’t like being the high point on a mountain holding the aluminum umbrella! We photographed the grave, read the inscription and headed down. By the time we got down, the house and grounds was deserted and the sun was just peaking through the clouds! Murphy’s law.  It was sunny again. It was a good adventure.  It should rain in a tropical rainforest, right?

We really enjoyed Samoa and were glad that we had time to see Robert Lewis Stevenson’s beautiful home.   

Fiji wasn’t quite what I expected it would be but I certainly wasn’t disappointed. I don’t know why I have this image in my head that I can’t dispel of these exotic destinations. I see deserted white sandy beaches with palm trees swaying in the warm ocean breezes. Instead, I am met with crowded white sandy beaches, small cities with noisy polluting traffic and hot sticky weather with no cool ocean breezes at all! Fiji felt like we were back in the Caribbean. It made me miss Rashawna! The first thing I noticed were the little busses, the HiAces made by Toyota, that are in so many parts of the world. But one unique bus they had were old big busses that were built with windows that were not supposed to have glass in them, but had plastic shades that could be pulled down if it rained. They looked like so much fun to ride in. Great idea for a tropical island.

We didn’t plan any tour with the boat and hoped we could find a tour on shore that would take us to a beach to go snorkeling. Sure enough a group met us and told us that they would drive us to a beach as soon as they found another couple. A very nice Fijian woman named Jess drove us through the city of Suva, a small bustling town, then headed out for a 45 minute drive to a resort where we could snorkel. The country side was definitely tropical. There were trees that were massive with hundreds of shoots from the limbs to the ground. There were some beautiful mountains in the distance, not higher than 1000 feet or so, but quite pretty. One mountain looked like a thumb, hence its nickname, The Thumb. We passed by a large graveyard that had the traditional tombstones but many of them had canopies covered with streamers of bright colored cloth. The country is mainly Christian, but there are many Indians who settled here centuries ago and brought Hinduism. There is also a group of Muslims as well.

We followed the coastline to Paradise Cove and pulled into a resort. The boats had already left for the outer reef where the snorkeling is best and this beach didn’t look too promising so Don decided to forego the snorkeling idea.  I was still feeling the effects of my cold so I wandered into a community called Makasoi and drew one of the typical homes.  There was laundry drying out on the front porch with a perfectly mowed front lawn. The house was up off the ground about 3 feet on wood posts, either to keep the house dry in wet weather (it rains about 200 inches a year) or it is to keep the house cool in their year round warm weather.  As I was drawing people looked at me curiously and said “Bula”, or “hello”. I did talk to some girls who were out canvassing for the SDA church and they invited me to their house for some tea. Everyone is very friendly and so nice here. Even though we only had a few hours to enjoy the island we got an overall good feeling about the people. People seem to be “what” we remember the most about a country.

Darwin

What a great day we had. It didn’t start out very well but it did end being a fabulous day after all. We couldn’t find our Australia Visas and I had inadvertently put it up in the bookshelf with a stack of papers and it ended up between two books. We didn’t have that many places to look in our cabin so Don did find them but we did send out a few @$#@ fireworks to start the day! We do have our moments of frustration.

We booked a tour that took us for a two hour ride from Darwin out to the grasslands.  We were really regretting not getting to see the interior of Australia by train as we had planned so this was the best we could do from our cruise ship. We had to be happy with two hours of grasslands instead of 2 or 3 days of Australian scenery.  It turned out to be a tour that we were glad that we took. The bus headed out of Darwin just after 8 am and I kept pinching myself, I was so happy to be in Australia. I never thought I would ever be here. My first surprise was that Darwin is very green with lots of trees and brush and green, green grass. Australia had always been, in my mind, that huge desert with ranchers in dusty boots. Not Darwin.  There are only 95,000 people living here so it is a very small city. And the outskirts are not that far away. Darwin does have a skyline, but it is only a few skyscrapers and not even that tall. I have a good feeling about this place. We drive out to the outskirts and I saw some brightly colored homes and see that they belong to aborigines. I wish I had had my camera ready!  Those were the first and last aborigines I saw that day.

The Northern Territory is tropical so the hills are covered with palms and trees with big leaves and wandering vines.  There were plenty of mangroves growing along the ocean front that supposedly had crocodiles lurking in their shadows. It was not that hot at 8 AM because of the cloud cover but it did heat up as the sun rose and the clouds dispersed. But this was only temporary. Once the air heated up to well over 100 degrees and the humidity was so thick you could slice it, the raindrops began to fall and so did the temperature. Thank goodness we were in Australia (and not Africa) because our bus was air conditioned and it felt very good.  The road was pretty empty and I guess that is due to it being a Thursday, Thanksgiving to be exact. Not that they celebrate Thanksgiving in Australia. We zoomed down the two lane freeway that soon became one lane. The road was still deserted and we were soon at the Wangi Waterfalls.  It really is pretty but the swimming hole was closed due to crocodiles. I didn’t see any crocs and the water was clear enough to see in the streams but who knows about those dark areas in the middle of the pool! Don and I decided to try another trail since we had a little time and as we were walking deeper into the rainforest, we saw a big black sow and her three darling little piglets, foraging for something wet and yummy to eat. We also saw a huge spider just like the kind we saw in Hong Kong on Lamma Island. They are so nasty looking. The body is about the size of my index finger and the legs extend out to the size of my hand. Yuck! But they are quite harmless to us, thank goodness. As we were walking out of the forest, we saw our group looking up in the trees and pointing. There hanging upside down on branches was over 20 bats, Flying Foxes, with their wings wrapped about them. One would fly from one tree to another, showing his silver grey fur. They were just creepy, yet fascinating! I was a little glad to be out of there and on the road again!

Lunch was served in an outdoor covered patio next to a burned out restaurant. It had been struck with lightening just two weeks earlier that had collapsed the roof and burned the majority of the kitchen area. They said that it didn’t take more than 15 minutes and their place was almost completely burned. However, it was a delicious lunch and we were glad that they had kept this restaurant on the itinerary.  They were “world” famous for their mango cheese cake so we had to have one and were pretty disappointed. It was more of a sugary chiffon with orange squares of sweet things. Don doesn’t even like mangos but he loved this, so that tells you that it didn’t taste a thing like mango. I gave him my piece as well. If I am going to have dessert, I would rather it be chocolate!

Next item on our agenda was another waterfall, Florence, that had a more dramatic view point and we were able to go to this pool. We climbed down a wooden staircase that dropped us to the bottom of the falls. Australians make it so easy to enjoy their waterfalls.  We didn’t have time to swim, even though we did bring our suits. We had our feet cooling in the water and were busy watching the young couples and groups of 20 something’s that were enjoying the water.   We waded a bit before we realized that our entire group had already left. We ran up the 100+ steps to find everyone cooling off in the bus, waiting for our group of three. Oops!

Our last site was to see the termite mounds. We almost didn’t go on this tour just because we had seen the termite mounds in Botswana, but I am glad that we did. These mounds were quite different shaped from the conical mounds in Africa. We saw two kinds. One kind of termite built flat walls, about 5’ high and 5’ wide and just a few inches thick, so when you saw a group of them on a plateau, it looked like a graveyard. The other one we saw was barrel shaped, a lot like a cactus, the kind that has vertical ridges that go around the entire thing. And the heights of these were amazing. I am sure the one we stood next to was at least 17 to 18 feet high. The outside of the termite mound is hard like a rock, held together with the termite’s spit.  Each one of these mounds has a queen termite and as long as the queen lives, the mound is a busy well maintained city. Once the queen dies the mound deteriorates and crumbles apart. The queen termite can live well over 50 years.  Pretty amazing stuff!

 Cairns

I know that this word looks like the word cairns, a mound of rocks that signify a place of significance. But in Australia, it is pronounced as Cans, much like the city Cannes in France. The same is true of Airlie Beach. The R is silent and it is pronounced Ally Beach. Now you can talk like an Aussie.

The ship was offering a day on the Great Barrier Reef for the price of….well, a lot! Someone suggested to me to go on TripAdvisor.com and see if I could book an excursion for less. I had never used TripAdvisor.com for activities but sure enough, they have that category and I just never noticed it before.  TripAdvisor had one reef excursion company on their site and so I emailed them and asked for info. I waited. I emailed again. I waited. We went to their website and tried to book a trip with them and that had problems. I finally gave up and searched through Google and emailed 4 different companies. Only one replied. They got the job!  (There is obviously no recession here!) We had a total of 16 people who were interested in snorkeling from Green Island so we all met at the dining room and disembarked together. We walked just a short 10 minute walk to the pier and boarded the boat. Next to us was another larger boat of the same company. Guess who were boarding the boat….that’s right. Our cruise ship. They were paying $100 more than the asking price and we were paying $200 less than they were for a 2 hour shorter trip. I was very glad that I had taken the time to find a better deal for us. 

Green Island is a resort island that is lush and green with beautiful beaches and was jelly fish free. Very important feature at this time of the year. Between the months of November and May there are jelly fish that not only sting you but can kill you within a few short hours! I purposely did not go to hear the speaker who was talking on this subject! I already have issues just getting into ocean water; I really don’t need to hear anymore horror stories. We changed into our suits and headed into the water. It was a beautiful blue, almost as nice as in the Caribbean, so very clear. First fish I saw was a baby shark. It was only 2 feet long so I was pretty brave and put our underwater camera as close as possible for a good photo. Then we saw several turtles floating with their heads above water then they would disappear under the water once again. I was determined to snorkel and headed out. I had on bright green flippers, a mask and snorkel and a life jacket (and my bathing suit, of course!) I learned in Galapagos Islands that if I wear a life jacket, I am so much more relaxed and won’t freak out. I swam out to deep water and floated quietly on the surface of the water. At first I didn’t see any fish, but soon my eyes adjusted and there were fish all over the place. Fish with stripes, fish with spots, big fish, little fish, silver fish, yellow fish, fish with “caps” on, fish with blue “masks”, and the list goes on…….. I loved it. I might get over my fears of snorkeling yet! 

We rented a kayak for a half hour and really enjoyed it. We will have to get a kayak when we return home. I really do love rowing!

It was a good day and time to return on the 12 noon boat. We got back to Cairns by 1 PM and had lunch with Jens and Jenny from the ship’s health spa. We found a great Australian gift for Tom, Don’s brother that we mailed so he could have it for Christmas. We also found a souvenir shop going out of business and we bought a bead and shell belt for me and a boomerang for Don. I love these exotic things that are going to be such sweet memories of our trip.

A good day in Cairns!

Airlie Beach

Half way down the Great Barrier Reef is a beach town that is called Airlie Beach. In this area there are 74 beautiful islands, called Whitsunday, that are just a short distance by boat from Airlie Beach. One of these islands has pure white sand that sparkles like sugar! I wished that we had had enough time to see this amazing island. The town was quite small and obviously a tourist destination. This part of Australia is rainforest so the hills were very green with flowers blooming everywhere. There were apartments overlooking the ocean all along the beach. It looked like a fabulous place to live!

It took us over 2 hours to get to shore because they were only using 2 tenders and it was a good 30 minutes to shore.  There were quite a few annoyed people on board. Once on shore we were met by volunteers that gave us maps and answered any of our questions. How wonderful to be met by these people! We walked the Centennial boardwalk into town and got an iced coffee. It had a cup of cold coffee that had cream, milk, ice cream and whipped cream on top! Yummmm!  No calories in that, I am sure! There was no one in the ocean because there are so many jelly fish in the water this time of year even though the temperature was in the 80s. However, the town made two man-made lagoons so that there could be swimming year round. We saw one of these lagoons in Cairns and it was so impressive. It is a large area of salt water that is next to the beach that is completely manmade. Most of it is very shallow so children can play and adults can wade. There is a small area, that is about 2 meters deep, but it only a small fraction of the lagoon I think this lagoon is such a good idea instead of a regular pool. I want one in Idyllwild! And then it can be turned into a ice rink and we would have something to skate on in the winter!

We walked back to the boat dock and I left Don there while I walked in the direction of the Post Office. The volunteers told me that it was a good 25 minute walk and it turned out to be quite a bit longer but a lovely walk. The Centennial Boardwalk took me along the coast, by mangrove trees, beautiful rocks and flowering trees with noisy birds. I only had to ask twice to find the little shop that served as the town’s post office. It was $16 to mail a book to Rashawna that may take 12 weeks to arrive, $30 to guarantee it in a week. That is very expensive! The book only cost me $10 in Hong Kong but it was such a good book that I really wanted to share it with Rashawna. I sent it the cheap route and hoped for the best. Instead of walking back, I took the city bus.

By the time I got back to the dock Don was pacing. I had been gone at least two hours and he was concerned. We climbed in the tender and headed back to the ship. A good, relaxing day in Airlie beach. Sydney, here we come.

 At Sea

I am trying my hardest to stay calm. But 18 to 20 foot swells. Come on!  I wish we had a room on the 4^th floor, not 7^th and in the middle of the ship, not second cabin from the bow. These high waves had subsided for a short while, lulling us into believing it was over but now they have returned with a vengeance!  First I heard the wind howling through the crack between our sliding door of our balcony and then the pitching and rocking and rolling and slamming started up again.  I am getting just a tad bit tired of this storm. The captain had the 5^th floor outside deck closed then he closed the 10^th and 11^th outside decks mid morning. Then the waves started up. Around 2 PM I was in the Tahitian Lounge on floor 10 when the waves really gained momentum. The art auctioneer was trying her best (in stiletto heels) to do the auction and barely finished when paintings started falling off their easels. During a break, I was wandering the room looking at the paintings. A woman beside me started to lose her balance so she grabbed the pin holding up the painting on the easel, and the pin fell out in her hand. The painting fell, sending the easel flying, taking out another easel beside it holding a painting. She caught her painting in mid air and I caught the second one just as it hit the carpet. That was a bit of excitement. I was hoping that no one thought I was the one who created the mess! For once it wasn’t me.

Dinner was really bouncy! I watched out the stern window of the dining room as the sea would disappear from view (the bow of the ship was taking a dive) and then the ship stern would suddenly come crashing down with a huge slap, the angry ocean filling up the view of the window. This was repeated throughout dinner. The waiters and waitresses did their best to pour the wine without spilling and carefully weave between our chairs with plates of food in both arms. They did a stellar job and I wouldn’t doubt that they went back to their rooms at the end of their shift with a few new bruises.  Towards the end of dinner the waves seemed to be subsiding a bit. I went up to our room and Don finally woke up. He had taken a seasickness pill and was groggy enough to sleep through dinner. He went upstairs to the buffet, got a little dinner and came back with three green apples that the wait staff said would help. Sour green apples seems rather counter-intuitive to me!

The captain told us it would be calmer by midnight ……..it is 12:48 AM and the seas are rougher than before!  It is just not letting up!  I want to sleep but know it is pointless.  Maybe if I get really, really, really tired I will fall asleep. Maybe I will turn on the TV and see if something is on……..good night. ROCK! ROLL!  JOLT! SLAM!

Sydney   

Sydney is the closest to the U.S. that we have felt since leaving last February. The city is beautiful, clean and contemporary. It is built around a harbor that has several fingers of water.  Since our ship is a smaller cruise ship, we were able to come in under the famous 1923 Sydney Harbour Bridge, past the world famous Sydney Opera house and slid into Darling Harbor. We had an appointment at the US Consulate to get Don a new passport. It disappeared sometime between Darwin and Sydney. I know, we have travelled all the way around the world, in 63 countries, on trains, planes and busses. Then we board a secure, safe ship and we let our guard down, and the passport disappears.  We don’t think anyone stole it on board but Don cannot remember the last time he saw it after Australia gave us our entry visa.  We were making plans in anticipation of Don having to wait a couple of days for a new passport. I would stay on the ship and he could fly to New Zealand a few days later and meet me. We were ready for the worse scenario. However, the ship called the consulate, made an appointment for him, and he walked in with his CA driver’s license, copy of the front page of his lost passport, and two hours later, he had a new passport! The US is wonderful!

We walked from the Consulate to a mall nearby that housed the Sydney Tower.  After eating some food, we purchased the tickets that were $65 AU each. It is very similar to the Seattle Space Needle with a 365 degree view.  I snapped photos of the city 304 feet below us that was shining in the sun that had appeared with the clearing of the clouds. Just as Don was getting his pressed coin souvenirs, a group of people walked in with orange suits, looking a little haggard. We chatted with one of them and discovered that they had done the SkyWalk. We looked at our tickets. We had paid for it not realizing what we it entailed.  Don and I looked at each other. I knew that I didn’t want to go up on the top of this tower and walk on a ledge, even if I was attached by clamps and ropes! No Thank You!!  Don wasn’t up for it either.  We took back our tickets and they were gracious enough to refund us our money. No wonder it cost us so much!

We found the Hop-On Hop-Off bus and did a tour of Sydney. We love those bus tours! Once we got to the Sydney Opera house we got off and took the tour of the building. It is truly an amazing structure. Kind of a sad story how the original architect was not able to finish the building. He went home to Denmark and never returned to see it finished.   It took 16 years to build. The roofs are tiled in over a million self cleaning tiles from Sweden and are a very light beige, that appear white in the Australian sun. I was able to take photos in the building but not in the three auditoriums. They say it is for security reasons, but I am sure it is so we will buy their photo package! The main auditorium was beautiful with golden wood and black walls. There is a pipe organ that was made specifically for this auditorium and it took 10 years to build. One of the entry foyers was brilliant red and another one was purple, so purple that Pavorotti would not sing in this auditorium.  He believed that the color purple was bad luck. Another one of the auditoriums is actually under water. They room couldn’t be air conditioned so they have seawater flowing over the steel plates in the ceiling cooling the room. Pretty clever!

After spending a day in Sydney, we fell in love with the city and could easily see ourselves living here!

Update on Don’s passport:  After we searched our cabin and three ship staff searched and could not find it, the passport appeared under a notebook in the drawer that we had designated as the drawer for our important papers. Every one of us had searched that drawer and had not found it……..how things hide and then suddenly reappear is beyond me!  The passport is no longer valid but at least Don has all country entry stamps of our trip this year.

We do become lonely while travelling. I know that doesn’t make sense but we really have missed our family. And we do miss having a conversation with an American, someone who gets our jokes and we know that we share the same love of our country. So when we get to see one of our family members twice in one month, we are ecstatic. I didn’t know Katie that well. My memories of her were when she and her twin Kristie were 6 years old and they were racing around the house stark naked after their shower giggling like only little girls can do. Then I saw them a couple times as teens, at their graduation from high school and then at Katie’s wedding to Chris. Now they have three children and have been married for 15 years. How did time go by so fast? We saw Katie and Chris, their three children, Abbey, Lucie, and Jake in Hong Kong with my cousin Suzie, her husband Monte and their two other kids, Katya and Alex. Katie, along with her twin, Kristie, are Suzie and Monte’s oldest children so that makes them my second cousin, I think. They are also travelling around the world for the year. And with three kids!! Those kids are the greatest. They are homeschooling this year and are staying for longer stretches at each place they visit. Frankly, I am in total awe of their family! So when we heard that they were going to be in Bali the same time that we were, we planned to do something together.  Our ship pulled into port around 7 in the morning but we didn’t get a tender until close to 9 AM. We came into shore and were met by the usual barrage of taxi drivers. We told them we needed to go to Nusa Dua and they quoted us $50. Chris had told me that their hotel was very close to the dock so don’t pay over $5. When I told the taxi cab drivers that $5 was my final price to pay, they looked shocked and told me it was a long way away from our ship. I didn’t believe them of course but then I saw a sign of the “Official Taxi” and it said Nusa Dua: $35. At that same time, Don had been talking to one man and he agreed to drive us for $20. He got the job! And it was a long way from their hotel! Evidently, the dock near Nusa Dua was being worked on so we used a different dock on the other side of town.  Their hotel was in this beautiful exclusive area that was a gated community. After the bombing in 2003, a group of hotels built up walls around them, making like a compound, and had guards at the gates for protection. It was a little different to have our doors opened and the guards put in a scanner to check for metal. A little like going into an Embassy. President Obama had just been here and security must have been a nightmare. Thank goodness we were there two days after he left even though it would have been nice to have maybe caught a glimpse of him. Katie said that several times this week they couldn’t leave their hotel because Obama was expected at to his hotel nearby and they shut down all the streets a couple hours before he was expected to arrive. Wouldn’t it be terrible to plan and save your money for a week in Bali and you are there the same time Obama is and you can’t leave your hotel for hours, days!We decided to go for lunch and Chris and Katie had heard that Jimbaran beach had great fish meals on the beach. They hired a taxi for the day and he drove us to the beach. Sure enough, we got to chose what fresh fish we wanted, they cooked it up fresh and they served us on tables at the beach. It was great food, even though the kids weren’t too thrilled with fish with heads and shrimp with legs!  Then we headed over to Kuta beach to try surfing. I had sunburned my back so bad that I didn’t want to be exposed to the sun but Don, Jake and Chris rented two boards and gave it a try. Don did fantastic. He was able to stand up and caught the gentle waves into shore. I was so impressed! Just when I was almost thinking I might give it a try, they all came into shore, with sea weeds, grass, and plastic hanging off of them. The ocean was so stirred up that there was coconuts, branches, plastic bags and tons of seaweed floating on the water. Don said he was afraid one of those coconuts was going to come flying at him with one of the waves he caught and he would really go flying. He had a scratch that was bleeding where a branch had hit him. I decided that if I ever wanted to try surfing, I’d do it in San Diego where they keep the  beaches clean! While we were watching the guys surf, we were bombarded with vendors selling everything under the sun to us. Ice cream, sodas, jewelry, massages, nails, toys, and the list goes on. There were two ladies that had 4 women around them, doing their nails and giving them leg massages. It looked very odd to me but I guess that is what they like for their vacations!Our time was up and we needed to get back to the ship. Bali was a beautiful island, with jungle wooded mountains not far from the white sandy beaches. The architecture was very different from what we had seen in the rest of Asia. Their art was more geometric and it was wonderful. Bali is 94% Hindu so there are thousands of temples and all with the Indian influence in art. We saw several wood working shops making those fabulous hand carved doors and tables. We wished we could have bought several!!We were sad to leave Bali and the Bonga family. We promised we would get together in the States when they get back in June 2012.

Travelling through Vietnam was part of our Big Plan.  We had planned to take the train out of Hong Kong to China then down to Vietnam, a quick bus ride to Cambodia and back, fly from Ho Chi Mien to Kuala Lampur then train down to Singapore to catch our cruise. We had wanted to take the train through Thailand but that was changed by the flooding so then we went to Big Plan “B”.  Then Don got sick. It was just a cold but he had a bit of a fever and he felt miserable. We waited three days, sunning ourselves on the beach and taking it easy.  On day four we packed our bags and Concerto Inn took our bags to the ferry. The manager, Karl, had written down exactly what trains, at what stations, and at what time to get us to Vietnam. We took our last ferry ride from Lamma Island feeling like we were leaving our best friends, but we were glad to be on the road again. It had been almost 3 week and we were getting very soft!

We found the metro at Hong Kong Central that would take us to the border of China and got on. At first there were no seats available and the ride was to take around two hours. We were glad when a seat finally came open, even if it was in the last half hour. The border crossing went fairly quick, unlike the border crossing on the bus! We were out of Hong Kong and into China in one hour. From there we walked to the train station, not far away, and paid for a ticket to take us to Guangzhou. There was one leaving soon so we sat in the waiting room and waited. We waited and waited. The train was delayed. The waiting room was full now and people were starting to line up. The announcement was made that the train had arrived and we made our way to the swelling crowd.  Soon the doors opened and we moved with the crowd to get to the platform. We had to walk downstairs follow an underground passageway then upstairs to the platform. People started pushing as we were in the tunnel to our platform. I was not very comfortable with all the pushing and tried to walk in front of Don, using him as my shield. I was getting really annoyed that these people were shoving so they could get in first. I assumed that we all had tickets with seats assigned. Once we got to the platform, we got out of the crowd and let them go first. Just as we were getting on, the conductor started shouting and blowing his whistle. I was able to get on but Don couldn’t. The doorway and the aisles were completely packed with standing people. The conductor yelled at Don to get on and blew his whistle emphatically. Don was barely able to get in before the doors closed. The train didn’t move for a full 5 minutes but we were all in. There were people everywhere! They were standing in the aisles so we couldn’t get to our seats assigned to us. We looked at our seat numbers. Even though our seat numbers were 33 and 34, I was in one car and Don was in the other. We decided to go with my seat number since there was a little more room to maneuver.  We finally reached my seat and someone was sitting in it as well as the one beside mine. The crowd laughed when I showed my ticket and they willingly gave up our seats to us. Don started to protest that this wasn’t his seat but we figured if someone claimed the seat next to me, he would go and claim his in the next car. No one did.  Now we understood why they were all rushing to get on the train.  They buy a cheap ticket with no seat number and then grab the first seat on a first come first serve basis, until someone shows a ticket for it.  Funny way to sell tickets, but I guess it works. However, we had people leaning up against Don’s aisle seat the whole way to Guangzhou.

It was late by the time we arrived and we decided to sleep in Guangzhou. We found a booth for tourism and asked about a hotel. She didn’t speak English but she pointed to a hotel near the station and wrote the figure 300 Yuan.  That is less than $50. Would it be clean for that price? We tried to ask for a more expensive hotel and she couldn’t understand us. We decided we would just go and take a look and maybe it was ok.  We were pleasantly surprised at how nice it was and more than happy with our room. (The shower was huge with a smoked glass wall that made up one wall of our bedroom. Nice!)  It was one of the better hotels we have stayed in!

Before I go on, I have to describe our experience in purchasing a train ticket in China. We had read that it is recommended to go to a Ticket Office, not the train station to get your tickets. Unfortunately, when we have traveled, we have just purchased them from the train station, since that was a destination taxis understood. The people were very helpful but there is a real language barrier. Most people do not speak English though we usually found someone who could speak at least broken English and were always very happy to help. Then there is the written language. If you can’t read the characters, you can’t even begin to figure out what the words are saying. At least the numbers are in the English characters! At train stations, the town or city is in Chinese and English. Here is an instance of what we experienced to get tickets from Guangzhou to Nanning, China. Once we arrived to Guangzhou, we decided we had better find out when the train leaves for Nanning. We exited the building that we arrived at, walked out the front door into a partitioned off area that had a fence between us and an open area where there were taxi drivers and hotel sales people begging for our attention. There was another building right next door that had the same set up: fencing partitioning off the area with an aisle to walk up to the front door. Halfway up to the front door, a security guard would ask to see your ID and if you were Chinese, they scanned your ID card (so someone in China knows that you are travelling). Seeing that we were foreigners they would just motioned us through. We then walked up the front entrance and we put our things on the conveyer belt to be inspected, walked through a metal detector and then we were patted down.  We walked around the train station and realized that there were no ticket booths in this building. So out we went and we were directed to yet another building to purchase tickets. Tin all, this train station had three buildings; an arrival building, a departure building and a ticket building. The ticket building did not have any security which should have been our first clue.  There were at least 10 lines of people so we asked several people which line to stand in. They pointed us down to the end lines. Once we got to the window, we asked for a sleeper to Nanning. It was going to be an overnight train and so we bought what we thought was a sleeper. They were all sold out in 1^st class, or soft sleeper, so we bought what we thought was a 6 sleeper. Someone in line helped translate even though his English was pretty poor, we were so grateful. Don kept making sure that the ticket lady knew we needed a bed, not a seat.  Yes, yes, she insisted that she understood so we were happy. She told us that it was a top bunk, but we thought we could deal with that. We bought our tickets and worked our way back to the hotel. The area in front of the train station was like a huge square, with throngs of people selling anything from food to phones to barking stuffed dogs! There was an underground shopping area that took us across the street to our hotel.  It took us quite a while to figure out how to get out of this square to our hotel, just a hundred yards away.

 

We slept in the next morning, leaving the hotel half past twelve.  We wandered the streets of Guangzhou a bit, grabbed some Ramen noodles and water for the train before returning to the station. We had planned plenty of time just to make sure we wouldn’t be rushed. We went through security and went upstairs into a large waiting room that had the number of our train on the board. Now, there are no elevators in Chinese train stations, except in Peking, so they have cemented in a small section of the stairs so you can climb the stairs and drag your luggage up the cement ramp. It is an alternative, for which I am grateful, but it is really steep. It is hard work to pull your heavy luggage up the ramp and hard to control its speed when you are coming down. As I was pulling up my suitcase, a girl came from behind me and helped by pushing my luggage. Once I made it to the top of the stairs, she raced back down and gave Don’s much heavier luggage a push.  We were very grateful for such consideration. But when we got to our waiting room, it was virtually empty. The cleaning lady told us that the train was already loading and that we needed to go back downstairs to the platform. Ugh!  Down we went with our friendly helper/translator, giving us a steadying hand.

Once down on the platform we start looking for our car number. The words are all in Chinese, but the numbers are the same as ours. As we are approaching our car I see that it is the open dormitory. That is a car with 6 bunks to a section with at least 12 sections. And there are no doors. There were 4 men already in our section and we had paid for the top bunks. Don knew I wouldn’t like it so he started canvassing the train, to find a more private room. He came back and told me that there were no rooms at all.  I had had a chance to “talk” (no one spoke English) to these gentlemen and they had offered me the lower bunk.  They seemed like nice enough men so I had determined that it would probably not be that bad of a night after all.  However, the steward thought of another idea and took us to another dormitory that was being used by the staff and gave us a room to ourselves with the bottom bunks. Hooray! The pricing on the bunks is interesting. There are hard beds and soft beds, softer being more expensive. The top bunks are the least expensive, the middle bunks being middle priced and the bottom bunk is the most expensive. We had to pay 14 Quay more for the bottom bunk, a whole $1 each.  Not much difference in price but much better in position! We did get two more passengers in the night, but we didn’t care, we had the bottom bunks, even if we didn’t have a door!  I got up once in the middle of the night to use the restroom and ended up in one of the dorm cars. The lights were on and there were people milling around talking like it was the middle of the day! I was so glad that we got a quiet, dark car!

We arrived in Nanning, no worse the wear. Now we needed to get our tickets for the train to Vietnam.  We could only buy tickets to take us to Ha Noi so that is what we bought and this time, Don bought all the beds in a 4 person sleeper cabin just to make sure we had our privacy! It was $120 well spent!  After buying the tickets, we returned to the train station because we had seen that they had luggage storage and we wanted to roam a bit without lugging our suitcases. We had to go through all the screening and frisking to get to the Left Luggage room. The man explained by sign language that it was 30 Yuan (less than $5) for 24 hours. He wrote up a receipt for the 30 Yuan dated it and we signed it. It was so nice unloading our luggage and heading out to explore Nanning. We were both tired and not very energetic so we didn’t go far. We explored the Terminal Mall close by.  It was at least 7 or more floors of shopping. To cross the road from the train station we had to go across a foot bridge where there were venders selling all sorts of wonderful Chinese goods. There were also beggars.   There were the usual beggars that had no arms or no legs but one stood out amongst the rest. He was a young man, beating his head on the cement walkway next to an elderly woman lying down, covered in heavy blankets, seemingly asleep or in a coma. (It was no less than 90 degrees out that day). People stared out of curiosity, as we did, wondering what the story was.  We entered the mall and were met with hundreds of little shops, not any larger than 6’ X 10’. There were the side walls and the back wall but the fronts were wide open.  And those shops were packed, to the brim, each one carrying pretty much the same as their neighbor, maybe with a slight variation.  One whole floor would be dedicated to women’s clothes, and then the next would be shops of children’s clothes and another floor just of cell phones. Very different from our malls. You could feel the hubbub of capitalism!

On our way back from the mall, after buying more noodles and bottled water, we saw a building next to the station that had a sign that read “Soft Seat Waiting Room”. Hey, that could be for us!  We went inside and showed them our tickets and sure enough, this was our waiting room! We went in to cool off in the air conditioned room before going out in the heat to the next building to get our luggage. Ah! It won’t be so bad waiting the next 6 hours for our train in here. Once we were cool, we walked back to the train station, went through the screening and frisking again and went to the luggage storage room. The old man wasn’t there but two ladies were and we asked for our luggage. She brought it out and Don walked away with his luggage while she was getting mine. She noticed him leave and started fussing, demanding another 30 Yuan. We told her we just arrived 3 hours ago, we paid 30 Yuan and we want our luggage. She didn’t speak a word of English. She showed us the receipt. He had written down that he had received the luggage on the 6^th and today was the 7^th so it appeared that we had left them overnight. We hadn’t notice the incorrect date because we rarely know what day it is, much less the date!  Don was so frustrated with her and she was so frustrated with us. I kept taking her to the clock on the wall and counting the hours but she insisted on two days fees. The other woman ran to find someone who spoke English. In the meantime, the lady called the older man who had taken in our luggage and finally got hold of him. You could see her face change from anger to a shy, embarrassed look.  He told her he had taken our luggage just three hours earlier and to give us our luggage. She hung up the phone and said in English “Sorry, so sorry!”  Whew!

The train left close to 7 pm. It was an older train but it was clean and we had a room of our own. There was no dining car so the staff walked by encouraging us to buy their packages of fruit. If this had been the States, they would have been selling chips and soda, but not here. They do eat much healthier than we do. Our train was to cross the Chinese/Vietnamese border around 11 PM so we played a few hands of Canasta and roamed the train. To our surprise we found some foreigners, a group of Swedish guys that we knew from the Trans Siberian train ride, a month earlier. It was great seeing them again. They had gone to Tibet and one of them had run in a Himalayan Marathon and placed 2^nd.  What a coincidence that we would be on the same train!  We asked them what they had heard about crossing the Vietnamese border, since we had heard several different versions. They had heard different stories as well.  We would soon find out.

The border was town in China was not much to look at. It was pretty small and obscure and dark. The guards came on the train, took our passports, recording us leaving China and sent us on our way.   The steward of our car kept our passport for the next border, Vietnam.  Once we reached the Vietnam side of the border, everything looked quite different. There was a European architectural look to the public buildings and the houses looked different too. They were more decorated, with words on the door frames, prayer flags flying and artistic iron balconies and gates.  We had left the religious stifling of China and were in a free country again. I hadn’t noticed the constraints in China until I left and I noticed I felt so much more at ease.  We got out of the train at the border town and walked into the train station where the border patrol had our passports.  There were not enough chairs for all of us to have seats so some stood or sat on the floor. We waited not knowing what they were doing behind the glass windows. It was taking forever.  We waited some more. Finally one of the border patrolmen came out with a small stack of passports and called out several names.  They came up and were given their passports and they returned to the train. The man disappeared for another 10 minutes. He reappeared with another stack of passports. He called up the next group of names, gave them their passports and they left for the train. This happened 2 more times and the crowd of us got thinner. There was only a few of us left. The patrol came out and called up a young man. He had problems with his passport. They discussed it at length and finally the patrol was satisfied and stamped his passport to enter. Now it was just Don and I and two others. It took another 10 minutes and they returned with our passports, stamped to enter their country.  This took an incredible amount of time! But we were cleared to go. We climbed back on the train and finally crawled into bed.    Soon, we were sleeping like babies. We had a good, very short night’s sleep and woke up to a knocking on our door.  Ten more minutes and we will be in Han Oi.  We got up and were ready to go. It really helps when you sleep in your clothes and don’t even open your suitcases.

We asked the ticket lady when the next train left for Ho Chi Mingh (Saigon). What we could understand was that the only train leaving today, with a sleeper, left at 6:40 AM or we would have to wait until tomorrow. It was only 5:30 so we had an hour to wait.  Don and I had figured out that we really didn’t have enough time to spend a night in Han Oi but needed to keep going south .We were disappointed that we didn’t have at least the day to walk around this famous city, one we had heard about daily in the 60s and early 70s.    We did need some Vietnamese money so I found an ATM inside the train station. As soon as I finished my request, the machine froze and after a very long 2 minutes, it ejected my card. It gave me a fright! I went outside and found another ATM machine that would accept my card and gave us some money for our trip through Vietnam. This almost catastrophic situation made us stop and think about what would happen if we lost our debit card. Next chance we get we are going to activate our other debit card that we have as an emergency back up!

Our train arrived and we found our room. It was 6 bunks so we knew that we would possibly have to share it with 4 other people but I was OK with that. But the condition of this train was not nearly as clean as the Chinese train we had arrived in. It was obvious that someone had been on this bunk before us and the sheets and blanket looked very worn and used. We knew that coming to much of South East Asia meant visiting developing countries and we thought we were ready for it. It was hard not to be critical.  The Chinese trains were old but they were not dirty. I lay down on the bed and looked at the walls. They were filthy. People had cleaned out their noses and used the wall as their tissue. There was a very old piece of chewed gun on top of my light by my head as well as several stuck to the bunk bed above me. I was grossed out! I willed myself not to look at any of it! I pulled out my book and engrossed myself in the story. Soon we went for lunch and went searching for a dining car. We found a kitchen with a few tables and assumed it was a dining car. The kitchen was at one end of the car, with boxes stacked on either side, in total disarray. No one was in the car except the kitchen staff who were sitting at one of the tables. We asked if they served food, motioning shoveling food in our mouths, and they nodded. We sat down, having to move old newspapers and used dishes on the table. I kicked something with my foot and found a napkin, smoked cigarettes and some chicken bones under the table. I shoved them to one side, disturbing a few feeding cockroaches, so I wouldn’t be playing footsy with them while we were eating.  There was no menu and one of them said the word “chicken” so we agreed that would be good. We knew we would get rice without asking for it. Our food arrived and it wasn’t that bad. But not that good either.  We ate as much as we could and paid the $3 or $4 that it cost.  As we left, we gave the kitchen a last look in disbelief that we had not only considered eating in there, but had actually eaten their food. We never did get sick from it.

We reached our first stop and a mother and her 3 year old daughter got on board and settled into our room. I was relieved that they were very nice and the mother spoke English. She was a manager of a bank in DaNang and had been visiting her husband’s family. The daughter watched us with interest. Soon the mom fell asleep and the daughter came and sat next to me. We played with her Lincoln logs and other toys while her mother slept. Wanting to make something personal (and do something artsy) I made the little girl a paper doll that looked like her (who was very cute!) with some paper clothes. One outfit was the one she was wearing and then I made up several others I thought she would like. . I even painted them with my watercolors.   This little girl was so happy with the doll and clothes. I showed her how to put the clothes on and bend the tabs behind the doll so they would stay on. Her favorite clothing: The hat. Every outfit had to have the hat on the doll’s head. She loved the doll so much that when she took her nap she insisted on sleeping with the doll and all the clothes in her hand. It warmed my heart!

While I was working on the doll and clothes, I noticed that the mom was sleeping a lot and that the daughter was running a fever. The little girl kept coughing and sneezing, (not covering her mouth) and I noticed her sweating. She lay down for a while and slept but woke up sweating, fussing, waking up her mom. I pointed out to the mother that her daughter was sick but she quickly dismissed it. I think she was trying to hide the fact that they were both sick feeling bad that we were in a small, enclosed space with them.  I wonder when that cold will catch up to us? But we have all been there…..what do you do if you have a ticket for home and you are sick?  You have to travel and hope you don’t spread it! In China, the sick person wears the mask so as not to spread their germs. Good policy. We did see a lot of people wearing cloth masks in Vietnam when they rode on the motorcycles and we were told that the girls wear it so they don’t get a tan. I think it is so they don’t swallow bugs!

Another thing I discovered while I was working on the doll was that our room had a mouse. I was sitting on one bunk, with everyone asleep and I saw something moving in my peripheral vision but when I looked down on the floor near my feet, there was nothing there. I went back to my drawing and I saw the movement again, but this time I was fast enough to see the cutest little grey mouse scurry between the table and the suitcases under the bed. Great. A mouse in our room! If I moved, the mouse would hide, but if I was perfectly still, he had run of the floor space. I envisioned that little mouse would play all night while we were sleeping and that was not a good picture.  I reached under the bottom bed and pulled my suitcase up, brushed off the 4 mouse poops that he had already delivered and put it in the overhead space.  I was totally grossed out, again! I took off my shoes and tucked my feet up under me and turned my back to the floor. If I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist!   Now I am glad that my bed is the middle bunk instead of the bottom bunk! I am sure that mice don’t climb Formica walls.

It had been raining off and on since we had arrived in Vietnam. It was usually a light sprinkling, just enough to make our photos rather gray. As the day progressed, the rain got a little harder. We had been going though mountains that literally looked like they were out of National Geographic. They were rock structures that rose high out of the ground with rice paddies surrounding them. The villages were quaint and the people would walk on the paths between the paddies, carrying tools or crop in baskets on either end of a bamboo pole. Their hats were cone shaped, just like the photos we had seen in magazines. It really was very picturesque, if only it hadn’t been drizzling.  As we descended out of the mountains, we saw waterfalls rushing over ledges, into swollen streams and rivers. It was a beautiful view for us but quite another matter for the people in the valleys below. By the time we arrived to the low lands, the sun had gone down and we were creeping along at a slow pace. We stopped many times and waited for a train to pass or move off of our tracks. Ahead, the tracks were flooded so the trains were sharing tracks, undoubtedly a nightmare for the tower. Our railroad tracks were on a cement platform above the miles of rice paddies and other crops that were flooded from the deluge.  But once in a while, even our tracks would be covered with water and the train would slow to a crawl.   This was when both Don and I started thinking about what would happen if the train did become derailed and would fall into the flooded water on either side of the train. We checked our windows. There were only three windows in our whole car that opened and they were on the left side of the train. That wouldn’t help if it fell on the left side, those windows under water. How would we get out. We checked the doors at either end of our car. They were locked with padlocks. We went to find the train staff. The only people we could find were the kitchen staff. We tried talking to them but they didn’t speak English. One of them called a woman on their cell phone who spoke English and we explained the situation to her. She tried to reassure us that everything was fine and she didn’t think it was unsafe that we were inside a train with little chance for escape. Then she remembered that there were hammers at the front of every car. We hung up and started our search. We found the box in the first car, but there was no hammer in it. We went to the second car and there were two boxes and two hammers. But when we got to our car, a sleeper car, there were no boxes at the front of the car, as in the seat cars. Then we saw the little metal boxes, one in front of each of our rooms at the base of the wall. And ours had a little red hammer. What a relief!  I took the hammer, sat in a chair in the hall and tried to read my book, trying to ignore the sound of the water rushing between our train wheels. It was hopeless. I was scared and I didn’t want to be on this train anymore. When Don gave me a hug and asked if I was OK, I broke down crying. “I want to get off this train, at the next stop, and I don’t care where it is!” Don was so understanding. I think he felt the same way, but was just being braver than I was. He was being more logical and I was being emotional!  We were running about 4 hours behind and didn’t reach DaNang until almost 2 AM. This was the destination of our cabin mates and I asked her if she could help us find a hotel. She was wonderful and once we disembarked, her father and brother met us with a taxi that took us to a hotel near their apartment.  The front doors were locked to the hotel but the desk clerk was sleeping on a mattress nearby and  got up to open the door. He found a room key and took us to our room. I hadn’t had a great impression of Vietnam so far and was a bit worried since the room only cost us about $35.  But it was perfect.  It was clean! The room was huge with two double beds.  The bed was very hard, like we were sleeping on the box springs, but we have learned to sleep on just about anything, as long as it is clean!

The next morning we took a taxi to the airport and asked for a plane ticket to Siem Reap. China Air was the only airlines that flew there but they did not have a ticket office at the airport. They gave us the address downtown and we took another taxi to their ticket office. I waited in the car for Don to return and since he did not speak much English, we quickly ran out of things to talk about.  I was a little embarrassed that it took over 20 minutes  but the taxi  cab driver wasn’t concerned about it at all, even though we had agreed on a price and he didn’t have a meter to charge us for waiting. Don finally returned and was very generous with the taxi cab driver for being so patient. (We were probably the highest fare he would have all day but it was still very inexpensive!)  We had tickets for Siem Reap for tonight and one for Singapore in three days. Don did good!

Since we only had 3 hours before we needed to return to the airport, we walked into the hotel for some lunch. Don spotted a sign for massage and made an appointment. While he was being worked on, I got caught up on my emails. I love hotels that have internet! I sat at a corner window and could barely take my eyes off of the traffic going around a round-a-bout.  It was so impressive, I film it on video. It was a visual symphony. There would be no less than 100 motorcycles and scooters entering and exiting the circle of cars and other two wheeled vehicles from 5 roads and all came out  totally unscathed. I didn’t see a single accident and I watched for at least two hours. And it rained almost continually! There were scooters carrying passengers in rain ponchos, ladders, boxes of food, balloons, and mothers taking multiple children to school. It was thoroughly entertaining to watch. However, I did hear that there are 30 people a day killed in Vietnam on motorcycles.  Many are children and hardly anyone wears a helmet. What a shame!

We had a wonderful quick flight to Siem Reap and you probably read my blog about Cambodia, one of our favorite places we visited. Then we flew to Singapore and caught our Love Boat, the Ocean Princess, for the next 47 days.  Our first two ports of call were in Thailand and our third port was Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam. After a very disappointing time in Vietnam, I was really looking forward to seeing this very famous Saigon and giving this country a second chance.  We docked in Phu My, a 2 hour drive from Ho Chi Minh. We booked  a bus with the ship booking office, the only way to get to town. Our dock was out in the mangroves far from any town.  We hopped on the bus, squeezed into the back seat with 6 others and I snapped away at huge beautiful Buddhist  temples along the 2 hour drive. Once we arrived in Ho Chi Minh we could see where there had been flooding but was now receded. Our bus dropped us off at a hotel in the center of town. I asked a guard of the hotel where the art museum was but he didn’t know and some very persistent ped-taxis kept interrupting our conversation declaring they knew.  “Oh, it is very far, 2 KM. Ride in my taxi.  Only US$8.”  I knew that they would probably say anything just to get us in their cab and I didn’t appreciate them butting into my conversation. So I asked another person walking by. He very politely explained how to get there, saying it wasn’t far and that we could easily walk.  Don is wanting to ride the ped-taxis. Because they are very unusual (we would sit in the front of the pedals on a seat inside of a triangular metal frame) and we have never ridden on one. 2. Because it is very hot and they have told us that it is far. But, me being the stubborn one, I refuse to ride with them on the principle that someone told me it is close and I feel they have lied to me to get a fare.  I am walking!  Sure enough, it wasn’t that far but these ped-taxis followed us the entire way, directing us how to go.  I tried to think of them as being helpful, but they were just annoying!  I was so glad when we found the not-so-far-away museum but we were VERY hot and sweaty by the time we arrived.  The museum was once a villa for a wealthy Frenchman at the turn of the century. It was set up more like a gallery, since we could purchase the art, rather than a museum but it was good seeing all the local artist. The best thing was that there were some artists hanging out so we could speak to them and the museum had a collection of books on local artists that they were selling. I ended up buying several of them.  The art in Vietnam is good, but it doesn’t have the education of the Thailand artists.   You get a sense that the Thai artist spur each other on, motivated as a group to excel in their art, a sense we didn’t get form the Vietnamese  artists. Interesting that you can get so much from an art show.  After we spent several hours in the “museum”,  we went to a restaurant close by and had real Pho. It was as good as it is in the States but we didn’t feel that we could add the raw greens so that made it not quite as tasty. We didn’t have much more time before we needed to catch the bus back to the ship so we didn’t do any more exploring. But our general consensus is that Vietnam is still a developing country, not as progressive as the Chinese, nor as ready for the foreign traveler. We will have to come back and try it in the dry season and spend more time to get to know Vietnam and the Vietnamese people when WE are fresh and not rushed. It really does make a difference in how you see a country!  

       

Travelling through Vietnam was part of our Big Plan.  We had planned to take the train out of Hong Kong to China then down to Vietnam, a quick bus ride to Cambodia and back, fly from Ho Chi Mien to Kuala Lampur then train down to Singapore to catch our cruise. We had wanted to take the train through Thailand but that was changed by the flooding so then we went to Big Plan “B”.  Then Don got sick. It was just a cold but he had a bit of a fever and he felt miserable. We waited three days, sunning ourselves on the beach and taking it easy.  On day four we packed our bags and Concerto Inn took our bags to the ferry. The manager, Karl, had written down exactly what trains, at what stations, and at what time to get us to Vietnam. We took our last ferry ride from Lamma Island feeling like we were leaving our best friends, but we were glad to be on the road again. It had been almost 3 week and we were getting very soft!

We found the metro at Hong Kong Central that would take us to the border of China and got on. At first there were no seats available and the ride was to take around two hours. We were glad when a seat finally came open, even if it was in the last half hour. The border crossing went fairly quick, unlike the border crossing on the bus! We were out of Hong Kong and into China in one hour. From there we walked to the train station, not far away, and paid for a ticket to take us to Guangzhou. There was one leaving soon so we sat in the waiting room and waited. We waited and waited. The train was delayed. The waiting room was full now and people were starting to line up. The announcement was made that the train had arrived and we made our way to the swelling crowd.  Soon the doors opened and we moved with the crowd to get to the platform. We had to walk downstairs follow an underground passageway then upstairs to the platform. People started pushing as we were in the tunnel to our platform. I was not very comfortable with all the pushing and tried to walk in front of Don, using him as my shield. I was getting really annoyed that these people were shoving so they could get in first. I assumed that we all had tickets with seats assigned. Once we got to the platform, we got out of the crowd and let them go first. Just as we were getting on, the conductor started shouting and blowing his whistle. I was able to get on but Don couldn’t. The doorway and the aisles were completely packed with standing people. The conductor yelled at Don to get on and blew his whistle emphatically. Don was barely able to get in before the doors closed. The train didn’t move for a full 5 minutes but we were all in. There were people everywhere! They were standing in the aisles so we couldn’t get to our seats assigned to us. We looked at our seat numbers. Even though our seat numbers were 33 and 34, I was in one car and Don was in the other. We decided to go with my seat number since there was a little more room to maneuver.  We finally reached my seat and someone was sitting in it as well as the one beside mine. The crowd laughed when I showed my ticket and they willingly gave up our seats to us. Don started to protest that this wasn’t his seat but we figured if someone claimed the seat next to me, he would go and claim his in the next car. No one did.  Now we understood why they were all rushing to get on the train.  They buy a cheap ticket with no seat number and then grab the first seat on a first come first serve basis, until someone shows a ticket for it.  Funny way to sell tickets, but I guess it works. However, we had people leaning up against Don’s aisle seat the whole way to Guangzhou.

It was late by the time we arrived and we decided to sleep in Guangzhou. We found a booth for tourism and asked about a hotel. She didn’t speak English but she pointed to a hotel near the station and wrote the figure 300 Yuan.  That is less than $50. Would it be clean for that price? We tried to ask for a more expensive hotel and she couldn’t understand us. We decided we would just go and take a look and maybe it was ok.  We were pleasantly surprised at how nice it was and more than happy with our room. (The shower was huge with a smoked glass wall that made up one wall of our bedroom. Nice!)  It was one of the better hotels we have stayed in!

Before I go on, I have to describe our experience in purchasing a train ticket in China. We had read that it is recommended to go to a Ticket Office, not the train station to get your tickets. Unfortunately, when we have traveled, we have just purchased them from the train station, since that was a destination taxis understood. The people were very helpful but there is a real language barrier. Most people do not speak English though we usually found someone who could speak at least broken English and were always very happy to help. Then there is the written language. If you can’t read the characters, you can’t even begin to figure out what the words are saying. At least the numbers are in the English characters! At train stations, the town or city is in Chinese and English. Here is an instance of what we experienced to get tickets from Guangzhou to Nanning, China. Once we arrived to Guangzhou, we decided we had better find out when the train leaves for Nanning. We exited the building that we arrived at, walked out the front door into a partitioned off area that had a fence between us and an open area where there were taxi drivers and hotel sales people begging for our attention. There was another building right next door that had the same set up: fencing partitioning off the area with an aisle to walk up to the front door. Halfway up to the front door, a security guard would ask to see your ID and if you were Chinese, they scanned your ID card (so someone in China knows that you are travelling). Seeing that we were foreigners they would just motioned us through. We then walked up the front entrance and we put our things on the conveyer belt to be inspected, walked through a metal detector and then we were patted down.  We walked around the train station and realized that there were no ticket booths in this building. So out we went and we were directed to yet another building to purchase tickets. Tin all, this train station had three buildings; an arrival building, a departure building and a ticket building. The ticket building did not have any security which should have been our first clue.  There were at least 10 lines of people so we asked several people which line to stand in. They pointed us down to the end lines. Once we got to the window, we asked for a sleeper to Nanning. It was going to be an overnight train and so we bought what we thought was a sleeper. They were all sold out in 1^st class, or soft sleeper, so we bought what we thought was a 6 sleeper. Someone in line helped translate even though his English was pretty poor, we were so grateful. Don kept making sure that the ticket lady knew we needed a bed, not a seat.  Yes, yes, she insisted that she understood so we were happy. She told us that it was a top bunk, but we thought we could deal with that. We bought our tickets and worked our way back to the hotel. The area in front of the train station was like a huge square, with throngs of people selling anything from food to phones to barking stuffed dogs! There was an underground shopping area that took us across the street to our hotel.  It took us quite a while to figure out how to get out of this square to our hotel, just a hundred yards away.

 

We slept in the next morning, leaving the hotel half past twelve.  We wandered the streets of Guangzhou a bit, grabbed some Ramen noodles and water for the train before returning to the station. We had planned plenty of time just to make sure we wouldn’t be rushed. We went through security and went upstairs into a large waiting room that had the number of our train on the board. Now, there are no elevators in Chinese train stations, except in Peking, so they have cemented in a small section of the stairs so you can climb the stairs and drag your luggage up the cement ramp. It is an alternative, for which I am grateful, but it is really steep. It is hard work to pull your heavy luggage up the ramp and hard to control its speed when you are coming down. As I was pulling up my suitcase, a girl came from behind me and helped by pushing my luggage. Once I made it to the top of the stairs, she raced back down and gave Don’s much heavier luggage a push.  We were very grateful for such consideration. But when we got to our waiting room, it was virtually empty. The cleaning lady told us that the train was already loading and that we needed to go back downstairs to the platform. Ugh!  Down we went with our friendly helper/translator, giving us a steadying hand.

Once down on the platform we start looking for our car number. The words are all in Chinese, but the numbers are the same as ours. As we are approaching our car I see that it is the open dormitory. That is a car with 6 bunks to a section with at least 12 sections. And there are no doors. There were 4 men already in our section and we had paid for the top bunks. Don knew I wouldn’t like it so he started canvassing the train, to find a more private room. He came back and told me that there were no rooms at all.  I had had a chance to “talk” (no one spoke English) to these gentlemen and they had offered me the lower bunk.  They seemed like nice enough men so I had determined that it would probably not be that bad of a night after all.  However, the steward thought of another idea and took us to another dormitory that was being used by the staff and gave us a room to ourselves with the bottom bunks. Hooray! The pricing on the bunks is interesting. There are hard beds and soft beds, softer being more expensive. The top bunks are the least expensive, the middle bunks being middle priced and the bottom bunk is the most expensive. We had to pay 14 Quay more for the bottom bunk, a whole $1 each.  Not much difference in price but much better in position! We did get two more passengers in the night, but we didn’t care, we had the bottom bunks, even if we didn’t have a door!  I got up once in the middle of the night to use the restroom and ended up in one of the dorm cars. The lights were on and there were people milling around talking like it was the middle of the day! I was so glad that we got a quiet, dark car!

We arrived in Nanning, no worse the wear. Now we needed to get our tickets for the train to Vietnam.  We could only buy tickets to take us to Ha Noi so that is what we bought and this time, Don bought all the beds in a 4 person sleeper cabin just to make sure we had our privacy! It was $120 well spent!  After buying the tickets, we returned to the train station because we had seen that they had luggage storage and we wanted to roam a bit without lugging our suitcases. We had to go through all the screening and frisking to get to the Left Luggage room. The man explained by sign language that it was 30 Yuan (less than $5) for 24 hours. He wrote up a receipt for the 30 Yuan dated it and we signed it. It was so nice unloading our luggage and heading out to explore Nanning. We were both tired and not very energetic so we didn’t go far. We explored the Terminal Mall close by.  It was at least 7 or more floors of shopping. To cross the road from the train station we had to go across a foot bridge where there were venders selling all sorts of wonderful Chinese goods. There were also beggars.   There were the usual beggars that had no arms or no legs but one stood out amongst the rest. He was a young man, beating his head on the cement walkway next to an elderly woman lying down, covered in heavy blankets, seemingly asleep or in a coma. (It was no less than 90 degrees out that day). People stared out of curiosity, as we did, wondering what the story was.  We entered the mall and were met with hundreds of little shops, not any larger than 6’ X 10’. There were the side walls and the back wall but the fronts were wide open.  And those shops were packed, to the brim, each one carrying pretty much the same as their neighbor, maybe with a slight variation.  One whole floor would be dedicated to women’s clothes, and then the next would be shops of children’s clothes and another floor just of cell phones. Very different from our malls. You could feel the hubbub of capitalism!

On our way back from the mall, after buying more noodles and bottled water, we saw a building next to the station that had a sign that read “Soft Seat Waiting Room”. Hey, that could be for us!  We went inside and showed them our tickets and sure enough, this was our waiting room! We went in to cool off in the air conditioned room before going out in the heat to the next building to get our luggage. Ah! It won’t be so bad waiting the next 6 hours for our train in here. Once we were cool, we walked back to the train station, went through the screening and frisking again and went to the luggage storage room. The old man wasn’t there but two ladies were and we asked for our luggage. She brought it out and Don walked away with his luggage while she was getting mine. She noticed him leave and started fussing, demanding another 30 Yuan. We told her we just arrived 3 hours ago, we paid 30 Yuan and we want our luggage. She didn’t speak a word of English. She showed us the receipt. He had written down that he had received the luggage on the 6^th and today was the 7^th so it appeared that we had left them overnight. We hadn’t notice the incorrect date because we rarely know what day it is, much less the date!  Don was so frustrated with her and she was so frustrated with us. I kept taking her to the clock on the wall and counting the hours but she insisted on two days fees. The other woman ran to find someone who spoke English. In the meantime, the lady called the older man who had taken in our luggage and finally got hold of him. You could see her face change from anger to a shy, embarrassed look.  He told her he had taken our luggage just three hours earlier and to give us our luggage. She hung up the phone and said in English “Sorry, so sorry!”  Whew!

The train left close to 7 pm. It was an older train but it was clean and we had a room of our own. There was no dining car so the staff walked by encouraging us to buy their packages of fruit. If this had been the States, they would have been selling chips and soda, but not here. They do eat much healthier than we do. Our train was to cross the Chinese/Vietnamese border around 11 PM so we played a few hands of Canasta and roamed the train. To our surprise we found some foreigners, a group of Swedish guys that we knew from the Trans Siberian train ride, a month earlier. It was great seeing them again. They had gone to Tibet and one of them had run in a Himalayan Marathon and placed 2^nd.  What a coincidence that we would be on the same train!  We asked them what they had heard about crossing the Vietnamese border, since we had heard several different versions. They had heard different stories as well.  We would soon find out.

The border was town in China was not much to look at. It was pretty small and obscure and dark. The guards came on the train, took our passports, recording us leaving China and sent us on our way.   The steward of our car kept our passport for the next border, Vietnam.  Once we reached the Vietnam side of the border, everything looked quite different. There was a European architectural look to the public buildings and the houses looked different too. They were more decorated, with words on the door frames, prayer flags flying and artistic iron balconies and gates.  We had left the religious stifling of China and were in a free country again. I hadn’t noticed the constraints in China until I left and I noticed I felt so much more at ease.  We got out of the train at the border town and walked into the train station where the border patrol had our passports.  There were not enough chairs for all of us to have seats so some stood or sat on the floor. We waited not knowing what they were doing behind the glass windows. It was taking forever.  We waited some more. Finally one of the border patrolmen came out with a small stack of passports and called out several names.  They came up and were given their passports and they returned to the train. The man disappeared for another 10 minutes. He reappeared with another stack of passports. He called up the next group of names, gave them their passports and they left for the train. This happened 2 more times and the crowd of us got thinner. There was only a few of us left. The patrol came out and called up a young man. He had problems with his passport. They discussed it at length and finally the patrol was satisfied and stamped his passport to enter. Now it was just Don and I and two others. It took another 10 minutes and they returned with our passports, stamped to enter their country.  This took an incredible amount of time! But we were cleared to go. We climbed back on the train and finally crawled into bed.    Soon, we were sleeping like babies. We had a good, very short night’s sleep and woke up to a knocking on our door.  Ten more minutes and we will be in Han Oi.  We got up and were ready to go. It really helps when you sleep in your clothes and don’t even open your suitcases.

We asked the ticket lady when the next train left for Ho Chi Mingh (Saigon). What we could understand was that the only train leaving today, with a sleeper, left at 6:40 AM or we would have to wait until tomorrow. It was only 5:30 so we had an hour to wait.  Don and I had figured out that we really didn’t have enough time to spend a night in Han Oi but needed to keep going south .We were disappointed that we didn’t have at least the day to walk around this famous city, one we had heard about daily in the 60s and early 70s.    We did need some Vietnamese money so I found an ATM inside the train station. As soon as I finished my request, the machine froze and after a very long 2 minutes, it ejected my card. It gave me a fright! I went outside and found another ATM machine that would accept my card and gave us some money for our trip through Vietnam. This almost catastrophic situation made us stop and think about what would happen if we lost our debit card. Next chance we get we are going to activate our other debit card that we have as an emergency back up!

Our train arrived and we found our room. It was 6 bunks so we knew that we would possibly have to share it with 4 other people but I was OK with that. But the condition of this train was not nearly as clean as the Chinese train we had arrived in. It was obvious that someone had been on this bunk before us and the sheets and blanket looked very worn and used. We knew that coming to much of South East Asia meant visiting developing countries and we thought we were ready for it. It was hard not to be critical.  The Chinese trains were old but they were not dirty. I lay down on the bed and looked at the walls. They were filthy. People had cleaned out their noses and used the wall as their tissue. There was a very old piece of chewed gun on top of my light by my head as well as several stuck to the bunk bed above me. I was grossed out! I willed myself not to look at any of it! I pulled out my book and engrossed myself in the story. Soon we went for lunch and went searching for a dining car. We found a kitchen with a few tables and assumed it was a dining car. The kitchen was at one end of the car, with boxes stacked on either side, in total disarray. No one was in the car except the kitchen staff who were sitting at one of the tables. We asked if they served food, motioning shoveling food in our mouths, and they nodded. We sat down, having to move old newspapers and used dishes on the table. I kicked something with my foot and found a napkin, smoked cigarettes and some chicken bones under the table. I shoved them to one side, disturbing a few feeding cockroaches, so I wouldn’t be playing footsy with them while we were eating.  There was no menu and one of them said the word “chicken” so we agreed that would be good. We knew we would get rice without asking for it. Our food arrived and it wasn’t that bad. But not that good either.  We ate as much as we could and paid the $3 or $4 that it cost.  As we left, we gave the kitchen a last look in disbelief that we had not only considered eating in there, but had actually eaten their food. We never did get sick from it.

We reached our first stop and a mother and her 3 year old daughter got on board and settled into our room. I was relieved that they were very nice and the mother spoke English. She was a manager of a bank in DaNang and had been visiting her husband’s family. The daughter watched us with interest. Soon the mom fell asleep and the daughter came and sat next to me. We played with her Lincoln logs and other toys while her mother slept. Wanting to make something personal (and do something artsy) I made the little girl a paper doll that looked like her (who was very cute!) with some paper clothes. One outfit was the one she was wearing and then I made up several others I thought she would like. . I even painted them with my watercolors.   This little girl was so happy with the doll and clothes. I showed her how to put the clothes on and bend the tabs behind the doll so they would stay on. Her favorite clothing: The hat. Every outfit had to have the hat on the doll’s head. She loved the doll so much that when she took her nap she insisted on sleeping with the doll and all the clothes in her hand. It warmed my heart!

While I was working on the doll and clothes, I noticed that the mom was sleeping a lot and that the daughter was running a fever. The little girl kept coughing and sneezing, (not covering her mouth) and I noticed her sweating. She lay down for a while and slept but woke up sweating, fussing, waking up her mom. I pointed out to the mother that her daughter was sick but she quickly dismissed it. I think she was trying to hide the fact that they were both sick feeling bad that we were in a small, enclosed space with them.  I wonder when that cold will catch up to us? But we have all been there…..what do you do if you have a ticket for home and you are sick?  You have to travel and hope you don’t spread it! In China, the sick person wears the mask so as not to spread their germs. Good policy. We did see a lot of people wearing cloth masks in Vietnam when they rode on the motorcycles and we were told that the girls wear it so they don’t get a tan. I think it is so they don’t swallow bugs!

Another thing I discovered while I was working on the doll was that our room had a mouse. I was sitting on one bunk, with everyone asleep and I saw something moving in my peripheral vision but when I looked down on the floor near my feet, there was nothing there. I went back to my drawing and I saw the movement again, but this time I was fast enough to see the cutest little grey mouse scurry between the table and the suitcases under the bed. Great. A mouse in our room! If I moved, the mouse would hide, but if I was perfectly still, he had run of the floor space. I envisioned that little mouse would play all night while we were sleeping and that was not a good picture.  I reached under the bottom bed and pulled my suitcase up, brushed off the 4 mouse poops that he had already delivered and put it in the overhead space.  I was totally grossed out, again! I took off my shoes and tucked my feet up under me and turned my back to the floor. If I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist!   Now I am glad that my bed is the middle bunk instead of the bottom bunk! I am sure that mice don’t climb Formica walls.

It had been raining off and on since we had arrived in Vietnam. It was usually a light sprinkling, just enough to make our photos rather gray. As the day progressed, the rain got a little harder. We had been going though mountains that literally looked like they were out of National Geographic. They were rock structures that rose high out of the ground with rice paddies surrounding them. The villages were quaint and the people would walk on the paths between the paddies, carrying tools or crop in baskets on either end of a bamboo pole. Their hats were cone shaped, just like the photos we had seen in magazines. It really was very picturesque, if only it hadn’t been drizzling.  As we descended out of the mountains, we saw waterfalls rushing over ledges, into swollen streams and rivers. It was a beautiful view for us but quite another matter for the people in the valleys below. By the time we arrived to the low lands, the sun had gone down and we were creeping along at a slow pace. We stopped many times and waited for a train to pass or move off of our tracks. Ahead, the tracks were flooded so the trains were sharing tracks, undoubtedly a nightmare for the tower. Our railroad tracks were on a cement platform above the miles of rice paddies and other crops that were flooded from the deluge.  But once in a while, even our tracks would be covered with water and the train would slow to a crawl.   This was when both Don and I started thinking about what would happen if the train did become derailed and would fall into the flooded water on either side of the train. We checked our windows. There were only three windows in our whole car that opened and they were on the left side of the train. That wouldn’t help if it fell on the left side, those windows under water. How would we get out. We checked the doors at either end of our car. They were locked with padlocks. We went to find the train staff. The only people we could find were the kitchen staff. We tried talking to them but they didn’t speak English. One of them called a woman on their cell phone who spoke English and we explained the situation to her. She tried to reassure us that everything was fine and she didn’t think it was unsafe that we were inside a train with little chance for escape. Then she remembered that there were hammers at the front of every car. We hung up and started our search. We found the box in the first car, but there was no hammer in it. We went to the second car and there were two boxes and two hammers. But when we got to our car, a sleeper car, there were no boxes at the front of the car, as in the seat cars. Then we saw the little metal boxes, one in front of each of our rooms at the base of the wall. And ours had a little red hammer. What a relief!  I took the hammer, sat in a chair in the hall and tried to read my book, trying to ignore the sound of the water rushing between our train wheels. It was hopeless. I was scared and I didn’t want to be on this train anymore. When Don gave me a hug and asked if I was OK, I broke down crying. “I want to get off this train, at the next stop, and I don’t care where it is!” Don was so understanding. I think he felt the same way, but was just being braver than I was. He was being more logical and I was being emotional!  We were running about 4 hours behind and didn’t reach DaNang until almost 2 AM. This was the destination of our cabin mates and I asked her if she could help us find a hotel. She was wonderful and once we disembarked, her father and brother met us with a taxi that took us to a hotel near their apartment.  The front doors were locked to the hotel but the desk clerk was sleeping on a mattress nearby and  got up to open the door. He found a room key and took us to our room. I hadn’t had a great impression of Vietnam so far and was a bit worried since the room only cost us about $35.  But it was perfect.  It was clean! The room was huge with two double beds.  The bed was very hard, like we were sleeping on the box springs, but we have learned to sleep on just about anything, as long as it is clean!

The next morning we took a taxi to the airport and asked for a plane ticket to Siem Reap. China Air was the only airlines that flew there but they did not have a ticket office at the airport. They gave us the address downtown and we took another taxi to their ticket office. I waited in the car for Don to return and since he did not speak much English, we quickly ran out of things to talk about.  I was a little embarrassed that it took over 20 minutes  but the taxi  cab driver wasn’t concerned about it at all, even though we had agreed on a price and he didn’t have a meter to charge us for waiting. Don finally returned and was very generous with the taxi cab driver for being so patient. (We were probably the highest fare he would have all day but it was still very inexpensive!)  We had tickets for Siem Reap for tonight and one for Singapore in three days. Don did good!

Since we only had 3 hours before we needed to return to the airport, we walked into the hotel for some lunch. Don spotted a sign for massage and made an appointment. While he was being worked on, I got caught up on my emails. I love hotels that have internet! I sat at a corner window and could barely take my eyes off of the traffic going around a round-a-bout.  It was so impressive, I film it on video. It was a visual symphony. There would be no less than 100 motorcycles and scooters entering and exiting the circle of cars and other two wheeled vehicles from 5 roads and all came out  totally unscathed. I didn’t see a single accident and I watched for at least two hours. And it rained almost continually! There were scooters carrying passengers in rain ponchos, ladders, boxes of food, balloons, and mothers taking multiple children to school. It was thoroughly entertaining to watch. However, I did hear that there are 30 people a day killed in Vietnam on motorcycles.  Many are children and hardly anyone wears a helmet. What a shame!

We had a wonderful quick flight to Siem Reap and you probably read my blog about Cambodia, one of our favorite places we visited. Then we flew to Singapore and caught our Love Boat, the Ocean Princess, for the next 47 days.  Our first two ports of call were in Thailand and our third port was Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam. After a very disappointing time in Vietnam, I was really looking forward to seeing this very famous Saigon and giving this country a second chance.  We docked in Phu My, a 2 hour drive from Ho Chi Minh. We booked  a bus with the ship booking office, the only way to get to town. Our dock was out in the mangroves far from any town.  We hopped on the bus, squeezed into the back seat with 6 others and I snapped away at huge beautiful Buddhist  temples along the 2 hour drive. Once we arrived in Ho Chi Minh we could see where there had been flooding but was now receded. Our bus dropped us off at a hotel in the center of town. I asked a guard of the hotel where the art museum was but he didn’t know and some very persistent ped-taxis kept interrupting our conversation declaring they knew.  “Oh, it is very far, 2 KM. Ride in my taxi.  Only US$8.”  I knew that they would probably say anything just to get us in their cab and I didn’t appreciate them butting into my conversation. So I asked another person walking by. He very politely explained how to get there, saying it wasn’t far and that we could easily walk.  Don is wanting to ride the ped-taxis. Because they are very unusual (we would sit in the front of the pedals on a seat inside of a triangular metal frame) and we have never ridden on one. 2. Because it is very hot and they have told us that it is far. But, me being the stubborn one, I refuse to ride with them on the principle that someone told me it is close and I feel they have lied to me to get a fare.  I am walking!  Sure enough, it wasn’t that far but these ped-taxis followed us the entire way, directing us how to go.  I tried to think of them as being helpful, but they were just annoying!  I was so glad when we found the not-so-far-away museum but we were VERY hot and sweaty by the time we arrived.  The museum was once a villa for a wealthy Frenchman at the turn of the century. It was set up more like a gallery, since we could purchase the art, rather than a museum but it was good seeing all the local artist. The best thing was that there were some artists hanging out so we could speak to them and the museum had a collection of books on local artists that they were selling. I ended up buying several of them.  The art in Vietnam is good, but it doesn’t have the education of the Thailand artists.   You get a sense that the Thai artist spur each other on, motivated as a group to excel in their art, a sense we didn’t get form the Vietnamese  artists. Interesting that you can get so much from an art show.  After we spent several hours in the “museum”,  we went to a restaurant close by and had real Pho. It was as good as it is in the States but we didn’t feel that we could add the raw greens so that made it not quite as tasty. We didn’t have much more time before we needed to catch the bus back to the ship so we didn’t do any more exploring. But our general consensus is that Vietnam is still a developing country, not as progressive as the Chinese, nor as ready for the foreign traveler. We will have to come back and try it in the dry season and spend more time to get to know Vietnam and the Vietnamese people when WE are fresh and not rushed. It really does make a difference in how you see a country!  

       

There has not been a country that has caught our love and admiration in just two short days like Cambodia has. First of all, the weather was glorious! There was real sun, not filtered through a smoggy haze or a sporadic drizzle. It was clean fresh air and though it was hot, it wasn’t too hot. We flew from Danang, Vietnam on Wednesday afternoon and had a very nice flight, landing in Siem Reap, Cambodia an hour later.  This airport has the longest runway in all of Asia, thanks to the American military. The airport was built in the ancient style so that it looked like we were landing into a little village. It took us a while to get through the customs and immigration and money exchange. We had left our American cash for the entry visa in our luggage but luckily they had an ATM machine conveniently located near immigration that gave US Dollars. Since they can trade in US Dollars here, we got enough for our stay as well as some Cambodian Riel for Don’s coin collection. They no longer use coins since their currency is in such large denominations. For example: we bought an Angkor beer and it cost us 12,000 Riel. Sounds outrageous but it only cost us $3. So you can imagine why they don’t have any small coins! 

We were the last to leave the airport and as we walked out the front door a very nice young man asked us if we needed a taxi. We told him our hotel name, he nodded  and we climbed in. As he drove, he gave us a little information on what to expect in Siem Reap and as we neared our hotel, he asked if we would like him to be our driver for the next two days of our stay. He quoted us $30 a day as well as gas charge if we went farther than Angkor Wat. $30 a Day? What a deal. We couldn’t have done that in Europe or the US!  We agreed and planned to meet him at 9 in the morning.

At the hotel we were greeted by a charming bell man, bowing with clasped hands, welcoming us to Tara Angkor Hotel. He took our bags and set them to one side as we were greeted by another hotel staff. She was dressed a silk blouse with a long silk brocade skirt, wrapped around her small body. She directed us to two comfortable chairs and gave us a small glass of cold lemon grass tea. She also set a platter with two cold, wet wash cloths, scented with ginger. What a wonderful way to be greeted as we signed our paperwork for the hotel room. We went up to the 4^th floor to our room and again, we were amazed by the spaciousness of the room. It was beautiful with local designs printed on silk panels for artwork.  There were two double size beds with a basket of fruit on a bedside stand. And we only paid $68 for all this!! And that included our buffet breakfast. Not only are the people wonderful here, but you can live very well on such a small amount of money. My kind of vacation!!

We were met by San, our driver, at 9 AM the next morning and planned out our next two days. We decided to postpone Angkor Wat and go to the floating village and Beng Mealea, a temple in ruins.  Friday is a holy day for the Buddhist monks and they close the 3^rd floor of Angkor Wat for their religious events. We decided to go there on Saturday when we could see everything.  Our first destination was a temple from the 14^th century that has not been restored so it is in its natural state of decay. The Strangler Fig and the Silk-Cotton tree have torn down walls and done a lot of destruction but they are so cool looking.  There were not many tourists there and we enjoyed the leisurely walk around the temple area. The cut stones were covered with moss and looked so soft against the black stone. You could see the arches of the temple and the library and walls with designs and carvings of beautiful women. The inside of the temple area had boardwalks cross-crossing the open areas, keeping you up above the water that had flooded here just two weeks ago. I found this temple so interesting, especially because it had not been restored. You can almost imagine being an explorer and stumbling across this broken down temple in the middle of the jungle.  We then continued on to a second temple that has a Thai name but has been renamed for the famous movie, The Tomb Raider that was filmed here. That is pretty sad when Hollywood can over-ride history and rename a temple that has been standing for 700 years under different name.  Whatever it takes to bring the tourist and their dollars! This temple was really cool, with trees growing out of the tops of walls with their roots spanning the face of the wall, hanging on for dear life. I love trees and I especially love roots, so I snapped a zillion photos! I could have spent a whole day doing a drawing of those roots.

Next we drove to the floating village. These are houses that are on the river and low lands of the delta and are built to accommodate the rise and fall of the river. Most of the houses in Siem Reap are built as two story homes, with only the upstairs walled in and the first floor is just the pillars holding up the house. This is not because of floods, but it provides a shady place from the afternoon sun.  Short platforms of wood are built just above the ground so that the family can sit on these to eat their noon day lunch and the kids can take naps in the shady breeze. However, the houses we were visiting near the river are built specifically for flooding. We climbed on a boat to see this village that was built for water.  This village has homes that are built on platforms, like those we had been seeing, but their first floor is completely under water in the rainy season. Since Cambodia was hit with more rain than it could handle this year, their river is swollen to historical heights and some of the homes are completely under water. The people use boats as their only means of transportation. They fish for a living in the lake nearby but with so much water, they can fish out their front door. We saw pigs in a pen, just above the water line. They had small floating stores, carrying dry foods. We saw a wood platform where people were putting out shrimp to dry.  Since these homes do not have electricity, there is a man whose job is to go from house to house, picking up their batteries, charging them all day, and returning them that evening so that people have power for their lights and TVs. Yes, they too enjoy the favorite pastime of the world. There were many TV antennas on top of their tin roofs. Everyone appeared so happy and we waved at the people passing us and they smiled their big gold toothed smiles. There seemed to be two kinds of boats. Small boats with a platform on top instead of rows of seats like a row boat. These were usually rowed with oars. Then there was a larger boat, usually painted bright primary colors and it had an engine at the end of a long pole. He would lower it or bring it up closer to the surface of the water, depending on how fast he wanted to go.  

November is the time of the year that the Boat Festival takes place in Cambodia. It is a time of boat racing and festivities but because of the flooding and so many people losing their homes, the government decided to spent the festival money on helping the displaced people instead of the festival. But that didn’t stop a few groups of young boys from racing their canoes against another group in a friendly competition. It was a Friday, so there were festivities going on in the temple on an island that served the floating village. Everyone seemed in such a festive mood. Unfortunately that wouldn’t allow our boat to get very close to the temple to get a closer look.

The next village we visited on the water was of Vietnamese immigrants. Their homes were built on either platforms or a boat and not in the ground at all. They really could ride out any flood that would come their way.  Our driver pointed out how their homes looked so different from the Cambodian homes, more like the Chinese.  Don and I couldn’t tell them apart. It is interesting how it takes a while to see the subtle differences between cultures.

On our drive home, San asked if we were interested in going to a dinner and a cultural dance that is put on for the tourists. It is at a local restaurant and it is only $12 per person for a full buffet of Cambodian food and a one hour performance of traditional dance. It did sound rather nice but we thought it would be even nicer if San and his family could join us. He wasn’t sure what the family had planned but he told us that he would ask and would see us at 7:15 to drive us there. 

At 7:15 prompt, San showed up with his whole family, his wife, two daughters and his mother-in-law. We were delighted that they could join us for dinner. The little girls, 3 and 5, kowtowed, clasping their hands together and bowing, and said “Hello, nice to meet you”. They were darling girls, their hair in dark little ringlets. Their mother had worked all day in a restaurant called Red Onion and I am sure she was tired. His mother-in-law takes care of the little girls when they are not in school.  All of them were very petite and pretty, with beautiful colored skin. We all piled into San’s Camry, us 3 women in the back holding the two girls and the men in the front. It was a short distance from the hotel and we had arrived just a few minutes before the dancing started. It was the oldest daughter’s birthday, so we were glad to give her a special treat. We perused the buffet that was wonderful and sat at a long table and watched as beautiful costumed men and women performed traditional dances for us. The Cambodian dancing is very slow, deliberate and graceful. They wore ornate gold headpieces and moved with such grace. Our favorite dance was the fish dance and of course it was a flirtatious love story. After the dinner and performance, San drove us through the market area of Siem Reap explaining what we could buy from each area. It looked like a lively place to get great deals, even though it was past 9 PM.

The next morning we set out to Angkor Thom, another temple near Angkor Wat. This whole area has several temple ruins within just a few miles.  We drove by San’s house that is within the UNESCO protectorate and on our way back he invited us for coconut milk under his house. The way the housing works is that the daughter brings her new husband to live with her family after they get married. In San’s instance, his wife was living with her single mom, who owned the home, and he moved in with her. The house is about 30 years old and the wood planks in the second story house were rubbed smooth with wear. The upstairs was a large square room, probably 20’ X 20’. The roof was made of corrugated aluminum with space between the roof and the top of the wall for the heat and moisture to escape. The mother had built a square room for her bed and San had just built another square walled room for him and his wife. One daughter slept with grandma and the other one with mom and dad. The two glass front cabinets in the living room held all their clothes. The only other piece of furniture was a television and a table.  The kitchen was a small room downstairs on the ground floor. San had told us that he is considered middleclass. It makes us stop and pause. Do we really need everything that we have in our middleclass homes?  San showed us photos of his wedding. They had probably 100 professional photos of them in different costumes that were lovely. His wife was made up so pretty. There were also some pictures of the wedding party that was held in their home and the dinner that over 200 people came to celebrate with them.  He handed us a wedding photo and a group photo of  his family. We felt so humbled by the gift and we felt bad that we had nothing to give in return. We tried to finish our coconut milk but they were so huge it was impossible!

On to Angkor Wat. We passed several temples on our way and stopped long enough to take photos. We could have spent another week there! Also on our way, we noticed small stands selling some gold looking liquid in Johnny Walker bottles. We were told that this was gasoline for the motorcycles. If they need gas, they just pull up to one of these stands, pay a little less  than at the gas station, fill up their gas tank and off they go. There are many, many motorcycles and scooters in Cambodia. And they will carry anything on them. We passed a man with a cage full of piglets, tied to the seat behind him. They can carry whole families on these bikes. The largest family I saw was a little boy standing, the father on the seat with two little children between he and his wife and she had a baby wrapped in her arms. That is a motorcycle for a family of 6! And these are little motorcycles, like 80s. Pick-ups haul people piled in the back. Workers from the field sit on top of bags of rice in the back of a truck. And of course the Tuk-Tuks and a few bicycles. It is amazing their forms of transportation!

Angkor Wat was truly amazing. It has been completely put back to the way it was in its day of glory. It is the largest religious monument in the world.  The gallery has carved rock bas-reliefs of past military conquests and everyday life. There are also carvings of beautiful women in so many nooks and crannies of this temple area. There is a stairway that goes up to the third floor so you can look down onto the inside of the entire temple area. Angkor Wat is still used by the Buddhist monks for worship, so we had to be dressed appropriately to enter the inner temple.  Unfortunately, I forgot my scarf in the car and was not allowed in because I did not have a way to cover my shoulders. Men could go in any way they wanted, but the women must be covered.  I sent my camera up with Don and the photos were great. As we were walking back to the car, we talked to two young Buddhist monks and the younger of the two was unsure whether he should, or was allowed, talk to me. Women are not allowed to touch a monk, which I didn’t know at the time, so it is good I didn’t hug them just because they reminded me of CJ.  You know how moms can be! We crossed the moat full of water, that is a couple hundred feet wide that goes all the way around the city walls. This place alone deserves two days to take it all in. Again, I wished that we had more time.

We said a very sad goodbye to our friend San, promising to write. He doesn’t have internet in his village, but his friend does, so we will keep in contact. It would be so wonderful if he and his family come visit us in the States and we could drive him to all the tourists spots. We have told so many people to come visit us once we are home and wouldn’t we be surprised if they really showed up! It would be fabulous fun!

I must say that we love Cambodia and hope to return and see more!  And this is all because of one man, San, who showed us who the Cambodian people are. Thank you San!! Cambodia needs to be on everyone’s list of “must see places” and ask for San!

EVERYTHING! For starters, I am big on Hong Kong!  It is one of the largest cities in the world.  It has more skyscrapers than any other city, maybe even country, in the world.  Hong Kong is the most vertical city in the world. More people live and work above the 14^th floor.  The whole country is only 426 sq. miles but has 7 million residents! That is a lot of people living in a little, itty-bitty space! Since the city covers such a small area, the metro system is great. The people are big on riding the metro and bus system, like 90% use it, more than any other country. Hong Kong has lots of roads and when there is no more room for a road, they just build up. There are so many overpasses on top of overpasses on top of roads. They also have the largest bronze outdoor seated Buddha in the world. And it is very impressive!  Did you know that Hong Kong claims to be the most international city of the world? That is a lot of Big facts about a very Little country!

I booked a hotel on Lamma Island through Expedia. (I am trying to get reward points so Rashawna can use them to go to Hawaii to her college roommates wedding in April) I read the description and it sounded great, though I had no idea where Lamma Island was in relationship to Hong Kong, that is also an island. It is actually very easy to get around in Hong Kong and since most people speak some English, if not perfect English, it is easy to get help as well. We arrived in Hong Kong by bus and we asked how to get to Lamma Island. We were directed to take the Metro to Central and walk to ferry Pier #4. Sounded simple enough and we did find all the above so it really was pretty simple.  The ferry ride was under US$2 and took about ½ hour to reach the island. We had taken the 3 PM ferry so it was full of school children, ranging from elementary through high school, all riding by themselves without any adult supervision. Hong Kong must be a very safe place and children are very well behaved here! We got off the boat and just followed the crowd walking to town. A school girl who sat near us had heard us say we needed to go to Concerto Inn and she gave us a very detailed explanation of the route. Once we took it, we understood why the details.

I should explain that there are NO vehicles on the island, at all! OK, there is A van that the power plant uses on the one road that goes from the plant to the wind mill in the middle of the island, but that is it. Everyone walks or rides a bike.  There are little carts with 9.5 liter engines that have a pickup back that carries supplies for the shops or luggage for tourists. These vehicles drive on the sidewalk, the only path through town and around the entire island. There are about 5000 residents on the island and about 40 percent are expats! No wonder we feel so at home. This island was settled by Han fishermen first, of course, then the British hippie in the 70s and 80s. Instead of skyscrapers like Hong Kong, they live in apartment buildings that are only 3 or 4 floors high. The law is that the apartments are either 350 or 700 square feet. Strange law! Pretty small apartments but everyone has a sea view!  But I am digressing from the story of our arrival.

We walked and we walked  and we walked, pulling our suitcases along the cement path.  We walked a good mile before we saw a wonderful beach and there was the hotel with the sign: Concerto Inn.  We made it. We had no idea it was such a long walk! Glad we only had one suitcase and one with wheels!  Our hotel was right on the beach. Yay! We were shown to our room overlooking the beach and we decided we wanted to spend more than one night. I asked the desk if we could stay longer and he told us that the room was reserved for the weekend. However, they had some apartments with a little kitchen if we wanted to stay a week or more. No prodding necessary! Yes, we will take the apartment. So we moved all our things over to the apartments and chose the one that had the glassed in balcony overlooking the beach. Ah, some beach time!

That was 19 days ago! Our one night stay became a week that grew into two weeks and then some!  We have loved it here, waking up in the morning, going for a swim, eating breakfast on the patio and tanning on the beach. We rented two bikes for $2 a day so we have our own transportation. What is there not to love?  I had lost my inspiration to draw but being here on this beautiful island, I have done four drawings. The island is covered with lush jungle that is home for tons of frogs and unfortunately mosquitoes. There are not that many beaches and the water isn’t clear like the Caribbean, but it is warm and the sand feels wonderful. On the week days the island is quiet, but on Fridays, the school children come to the beach, all wearing school shirts and pack the place out. On Saturdays and Sundays the beach is full of families and couples, having a great time relaxing from the stress of the city. It is a wonderful place to be a part of and watch the changes.  Another thing I noticed is that when we take the ferry from Hong Kong to Lamma Island, everyone is talking to each other. Everybody knows everybody else. It is so nice! I love Lamma Island and I actually really love Hong Kong as well. It is a great place to visit and Don and I have agreed, that this is the first place we could actually see ourselves living, if we didn’t have parents, kids and grand kids that we love so much.  I have a feeling we will be back!! In a BIG way, of course!