From a land down under....

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Hey everyone...figured it was time for a new blog. It's a little delayed though, I wrote this at the end of the world cruise, which was last week, so I haven't written anything about the new cruise yet. Topics in the next blog will contain things like my scuba trip to the Great Barrier Reef. Asia will have to do for now though. Sorry. Anyways, here we go:

I feel a little guilty about our trip to Hong Kong. When we docked, the gangway led us directly into a huge mall and I really didn’t leave the mall all day long. I spent the day with the rest of the youth staff and we all needed to pick up a few things, so it didn’t leave much time to explore. A couple of us got outside and walked along a seawall of sorts before cutting back to the mall by going though a couple streets packed with stores. There were so many stores that many were duplicates of stores on the previous block. The mall that we were docked at was four floors and it took 15 minutes just to walk one wing of it without stopping to look at anything. One store that we stopped in was a grocery store which carried two types of Granville Island beer! Of course us Canadians each bought a couple of bottles, because well, why not, eh? That night there was a laser show over the harbour, unfortunately, the Port Authority made us leave before it happened, but when we did leave, it had been dark for at least an hour so all the buildings on both sides of the harbour were all lit up and the scene was just amazing.

After Hong Kong we made our way to Vietnam for two stops in two days and I was fortunate enough to get on a passenger tour for both days; unfortunately they were both very similar. On the first day we were in Nha Trang in central Vietnam and our tour started at a local kindergarten school. We had a chance to look around the school which was just four or five medium sized rooms that overlooked a cement courtyard. From what our tour guide said, kindergarten in Vietnam is more like preschool because it starts with 2 year olds and goes up to 5 years; each age group had a separate room which had a TV and a few toys and a little bit of decorations on the wall. Across the street from the school was a market that we went to next. Now, when I say market, it’s a little different then back home - it’s basically just a big roof held up by a bunch of posts. The front half of the area covered by the roof is divided up into a bunch of aisles and has people selling things like clothes, medicines that sort of thing. The back half of the market was a big open area with slabs of cement about 4x4 in size. On each slab was a woman who was selling the various groceries on her slab of cement. Some were selling vegetables, while some were selling meat. No matter what they were selling, it was just lying out in the open with no way of keeping anything cold. At this market, there were flying buzzing on most of the food. After the market we went to a couple of temples, one was dedicated to the founder of the town, while the second was built for religion. From the temples we went to what was basically a rice farm. As we were driving down the road from the second temple, we stopped in front of a set of 5 or 6 houses with some rice paddies next to them. There were a couple of guys in the paddies moving water buffalo through the water and some folks on the side of the road were sifting through piles of rice. After took a few minutes to watch what they were doing we headed into one of their homes (there were a couple people bagging rice outside of the house) to have a look around. There really wasn’t much to see. We maybe went into 3 rooms, but from the outside it didn’t look like there was room for much else. The living room had no furniture and the kitchen had a table and a very old wooden stove. There were no cupboards in the room, so the few pots and pans they had were hanging off hooks on the stove. From the farm, we headed to a restaurant in the town which was right on the river to have some fruit and some coconut juice before heading back to the boat.

The next day we were in Vung Tau, which is about 2 hours from Ho Chi Ming City. I was hoping to go on a crew tour to Ho Chi Ming, but it got cancelled because there wasn’t enough interest so I went on the passenger tour. Like I said it was very similar to the previous tour - we started at a temple, but to get there our bus dropped us off across the street so we had the experience of trying to cross the road. Now, there are very few cars in Vietnam, but there are many, many little scooters. These scooters are everywhere and the people make them work; there were a couple bikes going past with two or three people on them, one guy had a fridge on the back of his and another had a couple 2x4’s strapped to the back. The other thing about the scooter drivers, they own the road. When we went to cross it, I was a little shocked we didn’t lose some of the passengers. Basically we just started out into the crosswalk and then dodged the scooters as they went past; if we had to stop part way in the road while a bike went by, so be it. Anyways, after we went to the temple, it was off to another rice farm with house tour (a few more rooms and a TV in this house), had some rice wine with 40% alcohol and then stopped at another market. The ship’s art dealer was on the other bus of the same tour and while we were at the market he accurately commented that while the tour was very good, it was probably too real for some of the passengers who you could tell were very shocked at this point. Fortunately for them, our next stop was for lunch at a beautiful beach side resort. Think of any resort you’ve seen in the movies and make it even better and that’s the kind of place where we were at. Lunch was pretty good too - they did a bit of a BBQ buffet for us and had a band playing as well. After lunch we wrapped up the tour by going to see a huge statue of Jesus that was on the top of a hill overlooking the water, another temple and then another market, this one was more mall like and sold electronics.

Our next stop was Cambodia and I have to admit I got a little scared. A few of us had planned to go in to a resort that day and just lay on the beach. However, when we arrived the weather was pretty poor so we scrapped the resort idea. Since I wanted to see some of the area anyways, I decided to go into town anyways and went in on my own. So, I caught the shuttle that took us into town and while we were headed in, we drove through what would be kindly described as the suburbs of the town and despite seeing what I did in Vietnam, things were pretty bad in terms of poverty and such. Then once we got downtown, I didn’t really see all that much and once again the poverty was pretty high, so I took a couple pictures and got back on the next shuttle to the ship. Fortunately I ran into a couple of the people I was going to go to the resort with and they wanted to know if I wanted to go into town and walk around with them for a bit. I figured I’d give the town another shot, so I went with them and I’m glad I did. Although we just walked around and went to the market (similar to Vietnam) and poked our head into a few stores we had a great time. Then, just before we headed to the shuttle we heard some of the dancers calling our names - they had found a restaurant owned by a Swedish guy and while they were about to leave, they suggested we have a bit to eat. A great capper to what turned out to be a pretty good day.

The last Asian port we visited was Singapore, but I had IPM in the afternoon so I didn’t get a chance to do too much. Similar to Hong Kong we basically docked at a mall, so I looked around a bit then walked over to the park across the street. It was a nice park and at the top of the hill in the park was a gondola ride that went over and through the mall, over the ship and out to an island on the other side of the inlet and back again. I went on and rode it until it went back though the mall on the return trip where I got off and headed back to the ship.

After Singapore, we had 4 sea days before we arrived in Darwin, the final port on the Pacific Cruise. We docked on a Sunday, so a couple of the musicians who’d been there before suggested that some of us youth staffers join them and head to the park for a picnic since not much would be open (although even if everything was open, there still wouldn’t be much to do - Darwin is a very small city). So when we docked we went into town and grabbed some deli stuff at the grocery store and headed for the beach. It was a very nice, quiet day ( I think all of us slept a little bit while we were laying in the park) and also very nice being back in a country where English is the primary language.

So that's it. No new pictures because I've given up trying to use the connection on the ship; probably wont get another chance until I get home at the end of the month. Until then, or until my next post take care

Zach

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