Sunrises

I could exist off the sunrises here in Vietnam.  I'm a morning person, so I get to see them, and having the sunrise as a backdrop for the boats on the river is very scenic.

A few other people were up as they were catching a quick bite to eat before heading out to trips like: Cambodia, the Mekong Delta and service projects.

 

Nancy and I wanted to get an early start seeing more of the city--specifically what goes on in the parks in the morning.  On this morning (Sunday) we found what looked to be a scout jamboree, although it could have been a young communist rally.  The uniforms were almost identical to our scout uniforms.  They seemed to mix the girls and the boys in the older groups.  Here, we watched them raise a flag and sing.

 Other activities included badminton--you can buy badminton rackets everywhere but not golf clubs-- and a cool concert with some hybrid music of traditional instruments plus modern keyboard and electric bass.
Around the park were athletic fields where kids were playing soccer and basketball.  This park is actually used and is not just for scenery although there was scenery enough and young couples courting.

I was also able to get a few more photos of people on motorbikes carrying interesting stuff (I'm collecting these). 

Look carefully in the background of this one to see two guys transporting a ladder.  I hope they don't go under any low hanging electric wires.

 Or a load of sugarcane.

Then we sought out Vietnam coffee and shopped for some gifts.  We found a cool shop where they make all of their stuff.  They make some bags from re-cycled heavy plastic packing bags.  We struck up a conversation with the proprietor, and he had been to the U.S. and has a daughter in Florida. His first trip to the U.S.(just called America) was to visit Dallas after the assasination of JFK.

Lunch was at a small restaurant recommended in one of the guidebooks.  It was started by a former street person who learned English and has since hired street kids to teach them English and how to work in the service industry.  It was not your typical inexpensive Vietnam restaurant, but we did have a superb multi-course lunch served by a charming teenage boy  who was willing to spend time with us and teach us some Vietnamese phrases. 

Then we headed back to the ship to recuperate from the 95 degree heat and 95 percent humidity.
Nancy needed the rest because she was headed back in to get one of the famous Vietnamese massages--total body.  The pedicure included removing callouses from her feet. A bunch of the ship folks had already done this, and they start at your scalp and go down, using thumbs, elbows and arms.  They even massaged the palms of her hands and walked on her lower back. (Total cost $56 US for a couple of hours ) She said she slept the best she has in months.

While she was doing the massage, I joined my friend, Mike Ellerbrock, who is a professor from Virginia Tech, and we continued our Virginia-Virginia Tech banter.  (Hey Mike, I found a guide book your Tech students might like--it's got little words and lots of pictures).   After dinner, Mike and I walked around, and I heard someone yell "Hey Warner" from the motorbikes waiting at a light. Yep, there were some of our kids on the back of a couple of bikes. Then we rode the shuttle back to the ship.  Some of the kids were waiting at the shuttle with loaded duffel bags.  They had found an in-expensive place to have their laundry done.  I'm constantly amazed at what the kids are able to do in the ports.  When we got back to the ship, we were behind a group of kids who were returning from Cambodia.  One of them said his experience was second only to his trip to the Coliseum in Rome--pretty high praise.  The dining room crew had saved dinner for them.  The highlight of my day was having a couple of kids introduce themselves and tell me that their parents were enjoying my blog.  It's my pleasure.

Saigon Day2

OK, I'll admit that I'm a day behind in my posts--largely from exhaustion.  I fell asleep early last night from a day of a lot of walking.  I'm also including some photos from Day 1 that Nancy took, like the one above.  I think she captured a few of the parents who made the trip to join their kids.  They were excited.  Before we left the ship we also got to see a short demonstration dance by some kids from "Cambodia's Hope", a school for orphans that was started by one of our staff--Marvel Harrison. The kids performed beautiful traditional dances.

 Students have been collecting shampoos and toiletries from any hotel where they stayed to donate to the school.

On our second day ashore in Saigon, we happened on a concert that was going on outside the Opera House.  The music was mostly traditional and was gorgeous to hear.

 

It's nice that they are sustaining the traditional music and instruments.

It was also interesting to note the except for a few of us in chairs, most of the audience was perched on motorbikes for this outdoor performance.

Speaking of motorbikes, I've developed a fascination with them, and I've started to collect shots of things they carry.  Like propane cylinders.

 

Or people.  Hey, isn't that Nancy on the back of that motorbike! She went by the tailor to check on her jacket, and they didn't have the fabric she needed, so the folks in the shop offered to take her to the market to pick up some fabric, and their mode of transportation just happened to be the motorbike.  You won't catch me doing that.

Some of us visited the "Independence Palace" . It was the former presidential palace, and the President of South Vietnam surrendered when a tank drove through the gates in 1975.  There is a replica tank outside. The inside is mostly exhibits of the way the building looked at the time and pictorial presentations giving the North Vietnam version of the end of the war and the re-unification as the south was liberated.

We also checked out the Notre Dame Cathedral.  Then, after a super cup of Vietnam Iced Coffee with some friends, I headed back to the ship, walking while Nancy did a little more shopping.  I wanted to see what kind of walk it was, and I did get a little lost--making the trip longer than expected.

 

The 95 degree temp had sapped our strength,so we were happy to have dinner on the ship.

So far, (knock on wood) we have not seen a single mosquito--probably because we have been religious about our anti-malarial meds.

In Country

We arrived in Vietnam this morning after a scenic cruise up a narrow Saigon River where the Captain had to sound the horn a few times to warn other vessels to give way.  It was definitely worth getting up at 6 am to see as we cruised past forests of mangrove trees and inlets of fishing boats.  The scenic area then morphed into an industrial area, so we went to breakfast for a busy morning.

We all had to get into lines to pick up a "passenger's landing card" which no one has ever looked at. Then we all met in the Union to have our "diplomatic pre-port".  Two consul members gave us some background on the country, present situation, and safety tips.  The main safety tip concerned getting hit by  motorbikes.

 

Ten years ago, this was a bicycle country.  Development has moved it into the motorbike stage, and everyone rides them.  More on the motorbikes later.  We were also warned about the mosquitoes and pick pockets.  Interestingly, in our dinner with some of our extended family members last night, two of them confessed that they had credit/debit cards stolen in previous ports. As Loren Crabtree, our executive dean, said last night in Cultural pre-port, if you used a football analogy to describe our country visits, we have just been scrimmaging.  Vietnam would be the first "game".  The opponents would all be on motorbikes.

A lot of people have SAS trips at this port, so that will help them ease into this country.  We've already heard from students who went to see the Cu Chi tunnels that the North Vietnamese used in the "American War" (as they call it).  They found the tunnels quite interesting.  Another group visited the Mekong Delta and were taken by that sight.  SAS is also providing a shuttle bus from the ship to the downtown.  It is easily walkable except for the lack of sidewalks in some places and the motorbikes.

We caught the shuttle to downtown because one of the things that you do in Vietnam is visit a tailor to have some clothes made.  We had gotten the name of a reputable tailor from one of our Inter-port visitors.  Two American women who have lived in Vietnam for 15 years got on the ship in Shanghai to be resource people and give presentations on present-day Vietnam,  We also had a couple of students from Vietnam who had joined us, as they do for every port.  Anyway, we arrived downtown and were dropped off at the Rex Hotel.  The Rex Hotel is famous for being the place that the military used to brief the press during the Vietnam Conflict.  Next door is the City Hall (now the home of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee) shown below with the accompanying sign.

 After a couple of map checks, we had our first street crossing.  With trepidation, we picked the least busy street to cross.  Our pre-port had come with instructions for crossing. Option 1: Step out and do not try to dodge the motorbikes.  They will avoid you.  Just keep moving at a steady pace while looking at the sidewalk ahead of you.  I led the way with Nancy and Theresa behind me, and it really worked.  I got to the other side and looked back, and Nancy was still planted on the other side.   This is my wife who jumps over big jumps on horseback.  We coaxed her across and tried the next street that was a little more congested.

OK, we really didn't try to cross here,  but we did get fine with crossing the streets, and this method worked.  I didn't mention option 2: Find a little old lady who is crossing the street and follow her.  There were none.  I really think this is the Vietnam equivalent of running with the bulls.  We finally go to the tailor, and Nancy took care of her business of getting a riding jacket made, and I ordered a vest.

Then we headed for the market to shop and have lunch. I got three shirts for 447,729 dong (dong is the currency). The U.S. equivalent is $24.  You can burn through some dong pretty quickly in this country, but fortunately, most places will take U.S. $.

Apparently, a lot of other SAS folks had the same shopping idea, because we ran into them all over the market.  The vendors in the market would latch onto you like a Jack Russell, but we did have some interesting conversations with a few of them. Did I mention that the outdoor temperature was 94 degrees today?  The sun was almost directly overhead at noon so after shopping for much of the afternoon, we decided to see what it might have been like to have been a war correspondent who was attending a briefing at the Rex Hotel.

 

We went for some late afternoon refreshments on the upstairs open terrace and considered what it might have been like to have been there in the War era.  A group of SAS students were doing the same thing at a table nearby.

I suppose we could have hitched a ride on a motorbike, but we waited with the students for the shuttle and headed back to the ship--all shopped out.

As a pre-port note, our Global Studies class on Thursday featured presentations by four of the faculty and staff on the ship who talked about their Vietnam War activities.  Two discussed their time as participants as members of the military, and two discussed their time as protesters against the war.  These were moving discussions and evoked a lot of emotion from the presenters which manifested itself in teary eyes among most of the audience.  Everyone appreciated the heart-felt stories and witnessed the difficulty some of them had in just talking about those days, and most students left with the feeling that this was one of the best Global Studies classes of the entire voyage, so far.  It was the only one that has gotten a standing ovation for sure.

Hong Kong Impressions

Hong Kong is definitely two distinct places--the island and Kowloon, and these distinctions seem based on wealth.  As we walked about Kowloon, it was definitely a working-class place with lots of people moving about everywhere, hustling for everything they could get.

One thing I noticed distinctly in Hong Kong was smells. They were so rich and full and pervasive.  A typical walk down the street in Kowloon would find tea smells wafting out of one of the open front shops.  Then you walk half a block and you get knocked over by the enticing smell of something cooking--usually meat. Then you can wander through a market and get a snout full of raw fish.  We don't get the smell of raw fish even in our grocery stores and home.  Then you are walking along and an overwhelming sweet smell hits the nostrils, and you must be near a temple where they are burning incense.  There was only occasionally a bad smell, and it's usually something pungent cooking--probably squid--, or the smells associated with birds in the aviaries.  I learned to find places based on smell.  I was looking for a bakery, and I knew one was nnear by the smell.  Interestingly, the only odors that seem to come off people were cigarette odors.

I was also fascinated with the use of bamboo in construction.  I had only ever seen scaffolding made of bamboo in Jackie Chan movies.  It was everywhere in Hong Kong, and I watched as a crew set it up outside a building they were working on.  That's real sustainability, but I'm pretty sure OSHA would not approve in the U.S.

The wealth differences were manifested in lots of ways.  Consider the differences in the boats that were in the same harbor.

The contrasts are one of the things that makes this place interesting.

Drinking water is an issue.  We never drank the local water, and the island can only provide 30 percent of its water needs even though they have created several big reservoirs.  As a consequence, much of the water comes from mainland China, or it's delivered.

Travel was very easy in Hong Kong.  Streets were well-marked, and public transportation was easily available.  They also make it easy for walking with elevated walkways and wide sidewalks.  The extremes  that provided the contrasts of Japan and Shanghai were pretty averaged out.  You could eat on the streets, but very few people did.  Most people waited for traffic lights, but not everyone did.  Restaurant prices were reasonable or not.  Where we were accosted by money exchangers and fake Rolex hawkers in Shanghai, we were accosted by custom suit makers right off the boat in Hong Kong.  We definitely had to learn to say "no" repeatedly, and it helped  that I manufactured a story about my personal tailor that I was going to visit in Vietnam in a few days. 

Each of these countries prepares us in some ways for our next ports.

Massive consumption

Yesterday, our last day in Hong Kong, there was massive consumption going on--mostly bandwidth. The shopping mall right off the gangway of the ship had FREE WIRELESS.  The students consumed so much free wireless internet that the system slowed to a crawl.  I did get to stick my head down in front of a few computer screens and
say  "Hi Mom!".  Unfortunately, a few students were a few minutes late getting back on the ship and drew "dock time" at the next port. The lowest infraction is having to wait three hours to get off the ship in the next port--Vietnam, in this case.

All of us were frantically trying to use the last of our Hong Kong dollars so we wouldn't have to deal with currency conversion in Vietnam.  So far, we've had Japanese Yen, Chinese Yuan, and Hong Kong dollar, and currency converters don't deal in coins. So, students were lined up in the nearby convenience stores to buy small things like postcards and candy. To give you an idea of how strange the currencies work, a cup of coffee at Starbucks might cost $35Hong Kong which seems exorbitant.  That works out to about $4.50 U.S.--still high but enough for some Chinese to make a meal on at a place other than a mainstream store.

Nancy and I had gotten up early to walk about Kowloon, and we walked through their public park.  It was interesting to see people practicing Tai Chi or doing other exercises.

We were pretty amazed at the birds in the aviary (like this Rhinoceros Hornbill, and Nancy got into a conversation with one of the parrots that went something like: Nancy "hello", parrot "hello", Nancy "hello", parrot "hello", Nancy "goodbye" Parrot "        ". Obviously a limited English vocabulary.  The constant cleaning was also impressive, a result of previous avian flu, I suppose.

Our main quest was the "jade market" which we finally found in a covered concourse. Many of the sellers were still setting up, but you could not walk by a booth without someone latching onto you.  It was impossible to be left alone to just browse.  Your were either "first customer, very lucky" or "early customer, best price" or some permutation of that theme.  As you walked away, the price went down. My strategy from previous attempts at bargaining was to separate my money in my pockets. Then I could pull out a few bills to show that was all I had available.  I'm sure I overspent, but I got some nice bracelets as gifts.  Nancy got herself a carved horse which weighed about 15 lbs and got carried the rest of the day.

We then headed for the bird market, passing through the goldfish market and the flower market.  You had to be there to see all those things in one place.  The bird market was compelling in the guidebooks because it not only had birds for sell in beautiful cages, but it was a place that bird owners took their birds for walks and to be admired by other bird owners.  We only saw a few bird walkers but we heard hundreds of birds--most that seemed like they would prefer to be somewhere else.

We were now at least a couple of miles from the ship, so we headed back for Nancy to go on a trip to the Art Museum.   As I mentioned in a previous blog, students will often buy a birthday cake for a friend.  Last night's cake near us came with singing and bagpiping.

We also had a lifeboat drill after dinner, and then everyone settled in to watch the ship leave the port--a beautiful exodus from Hong Kong.