29 November (Sunday after our two Saturdays). 28°52’ N, 173°44’ E. Course: 107. Speed: 15 knots.
Though we don’t cross the international date line until this evening, sometime between 1800 and 1900 hours, the ship declared yesterday as our fall-back day, when we lose all the hours we’ve gained over the past 3+ months and are now behind the U.S. Early yesterday, we were 18 hours ahead of Chicago. Tomorrow, after yet another lost hour, we’ll be only 5 hours behind. One more hour to lose before we arrive in Honolulu. Most people on board are saying, “This ain’t the right direction to travel if you’re heading around the world.” Especially on this long, long leg across the Pacific, we’re all suffering a little boat-lag.
Moreover, the Pacific has been anything but pacific. We’ve been rocking and rolling since we sailed out into the ocean last Tuesday night. Most voyageurs have well-seasoned sea legs by now, so mal de mer hasn’t been much of a problem. But a moving house gets old, and it’s especially tough on tired joints. My right knee—the original equipment—has been aching since my long walk around Shanghai. Now, with the ship swaying constantly, both knees need to make quick adjustments as I walk down a hall or climb stairs. And the adjustments are involuntary, the kind we learn when we first start to walk and find ways to keep our balance. The ship sways right, I feel myself swaying with it, my right leg does what it’s supposed to do and locks slightly to keep me from falling, and a sharp pain shoots through the knee. Holding onto the rails that run throughout the ship helps. But only a little.
Most of us are looking forward very much to seeing Coronado Island off the bow.
I’m starting to make plans for my re-entry into the real, wonderfully boring world of suburban Chicago. I think some serious decompression time will be in order—lots of time sitting on my own couch, watching football and holiday specials on TV, and sleeping in a still bed. I’m planning a 3-day visit to Nevada immediately after arriving in San Diego. We’ll need a few hours to clear the ship and arrange shipment of boxes and bags. Then I fly to Vegas, arriving early evening for 3 days with daughters, son, and grandkids.
On the 18th, I fly from Las Vegas to Washington DC, where Haley will be preparing for her first concert with the Navy Band: their annual holiday concert in Constitution Hall. I’ll see her new digs just a few blocks from the National Mall and the Navy Yard, I expect to be treated to a free meal or two, and, of course, I’ll attend the concert Saturday night. I’m looking forward very much to watching Sailor (Musician 1st Class) Bangs play her flute with one of the great bands in the world.
Finally, Sunday night the 20th, I’ll head back to Chicago and Libertyville. Refuge! A home that doesn’t move.
But, once again, I’m ahead of myself. Back to Kobe and Hiroshima.
Kobe and Hiroshima
I woke at 0800 on Monday the 23rd to find us already tied tight to the dock in Kobe. The arrival and docking process has become so routine I don’t even try to get up to watch anymore.
Kobe’s arrival terminal wasn’t as impressive as the one in Yokohama: older, a few patches of rust running along the 3-story, 60s-style, white, glass-and aluminum building that ran the entire length of the 2,000-foot dock—long enough for two large cruise ships to tie up, though we were the only ones there at the moment.
Bob Chapel had left me a note before he departed the ship in Yokohama asking if I’d wait for him on Monday before heading for the train station to catch the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Hiroshima. Maria was going to Kyoto, and Bob, true to form, had “seen enough temples.” At 8:30, Bob appeared at my cabin door, and by 9:15, we were on the subway to Shinkobe, the bullet train station serving Kobe.
We bought 2 reserved-seat tickets on the 10:22 departure—probably an unnecessary luxury, but we wanted to make sure we had seats. Open seating for the over-200-kilometer trip costs about $50 each way; a reserved seat costs another $45 or so. But the assurance of having a seat was worth the extra cost to us.
As expected, the train pulled into the station precisely on time, a very sleek, needle-nose, white streamliner that truly does look like something out of the future. The train was at least eight cars long, having started in Tokyo and running all the way to Fukuoka on the far western island of Kyushu. And a similar train passes through Kobe about every 20 to 30 minutes, all day long. Based on what we saw, load factors are not a problem on the trains. Our reserved-seat car was at least 2/3rds full, and the other cars looked the same. I imagine the non-reserved-seat cars were closer to full. Obviously, Japanese travelers prefer surface travel to air travel. The reasons are obvious.
The train pulled out of the station as the second hand swept through 10:22, and very soon, the Japanese countryside was passing by in a blur. Everthing I had heard about the bullet trains is true: they are spooky quiet, smooth as riding a BMW on a new interstate, and far more comfortable than even economy-plus seating on a United cross-country flight. They leave our so-called fast service on the East coast—Amtrak’s Accela—in the dust. And don’t even ask about Metra in Chicago. I took some video as we passed through the mountains and fields of western Honshu, and, as I look at the video today, I think, “Somehow I must have done something in the recording process to create this illusion of speed.” But I didn’t. The Shinkansen is just plain fast! We covered the 200+ kilometers—about 120 miles—in 70 minutes. That included 3 intermediate stops between Kobe and Hiroshima. Top speed was 180 kph. Why would anyone fly between cities with train service like this?
We pulled into Hiroshima station (the Japanese say “here-oh-shee-mah,” with no accents, not “here-ROH-shee-mah”) about 11:35am, found our way to the streetcar stop, and climbed aboard for the slow ride through downtown Hiroshima to Peace Park, the memorial to victims of the atomic bomb attack on August 5th, 1945. Hiroshima, as expected, looks like a city built in the late 40s, which, of course, is precisely the case, as it was completely destroyed when the bomb dropped. The day was perfect: clear skies, temperature in the low 60s F, exactly the kind of day August 5th had been.
We learned later that the Enola Gay crew had 3 potential targets that day. The decision to go to Hiroshima was made when the aircraft was about halfway from Wake to the Japanese mainland. The weather over Hiroshima that day was clear, little wind, just as it was on Monday. As we rode the streetcar, I commented to Bob that it was a day precisely like this one when people, riding on their way to work just as we were doing, suddenly saw the flash, wondered for a brief moment what that might have been, then felt for only an instant the heat and blast as they, their families, and their city were literally reduced to smoldering dust.
Bob and I got off the streetcar across from what they call the Peace Dome, the remaining shell and dome of what had been a government building during the war. It has since become the symbol of Hiroshima as it was one of the few buildings left standing after August 5th. It survived somewhat intact because it was almost directly below the point 600 meters above where the bomb exploded. The blast and heat went outward from the explosion point, leaving the building directly below only badly damaged.
We spent a few minutes walking around the dome before debating whether to go directly to the museum in the middle of the park across the river, or to go to lunch.
Lunch won. We walked into the city, a couple blocks away from the river, and found a local spot serving excellent noodle soup and teriyaki. Then we walked back to the river, crossed the bridge across one of the rivers that flow from downtown to the Inland Sea, and walked into Peace Park.
Peace Park is an island formed by a split in one of the several rivers that flow out to the sea from Hiroshima. It was selected as the location of memorials to the victims of the bombing because it connects to the rest of the city by what’s called the “T” bridge, a bridge that spans the main river just west of the park, with a perpendicular span connecting the bridge to the park. The intersection of the main span and connecting span form a “T,” and it was this prominent landmark that the Enola Gay had used as its primary aim point for the drop: point zero.
We walked through the park toward the museum, a long, modern building sitting on the eastern end of the park. In front of the museum, a couple hundred yards toward the “T” bridge, is what’s called the Peace Cenotaph, a hangar-shaped memorial to the victims. A group of middle-school-aged children—dressed very neatly in dark-blue shorts, skirts, and jackets, and each topped by a bright yellow cap—were visiting the museum and, as Bob and I passed, were listening to a very animated talk by a guide or teacher. A good photo op.
We then walked to the museum. There’s not much point in describing what’s in the museum. It documents the time leading up to August 5th, the moment of the attack, and, in gruesome detail, the aftermath, particularly the effect on people who had been near the bomb’s point zero. It includes replicas of letters from Einstein, Truman, Oppenheimer, Stillwell, Eisenhower, and other American leaders, some counseling restraint, others advising to use the weapon. It was interesting to see that people like Eisenhower and Stillwell advised strongly against dropping the bomb because, as General Stillwell said, “we’ll never be forgiven.” But, of course, the US did drop the bomb. The aftereffects were chilling, documented by shreds of burned, bloody clothing worn by children who had been near the blasts’ s center. All died within hours or days of the attack.
We spent about 2 hours in the museum, then left to walk through the park back toward the streetcar stop. The skies were still absolutely clear and blue, and the trees, as they had been in Yokohama and Tokyo, were at the peak of color. It was a strangely anachronistic scene compared to the grim, gray, relentless displays inside the museum.
After a brief stop in a department store so Bob could buy some gifts for his housesitters in Charlottesville, we took the streetcar back to Hiroshima station. We had time for a quick beer before heading to the train. Then we rode the 70 minutes back to Kobe.
Monday night, I joined Maria—who had returned from Kyoto about the same time we got back from Hiroshima—and Bob for dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse across Kobe Bay from where the MV Explorer was tied up. No taxis were waiting outside the terminal, so Bob suggested we start walking down the long ramp leading away from the terminal because, surely, we’d be able to find a taxi. About an hour and a couple of miles later, after several false starts down dead-end piers that looked like they led to the bright lights of the harbor area, we managed to flag down an available taxi for the remaining ½ mile to the restaurant. The eventual meal was OK. My knee was burning.
Tuesday morning, I stayed onboard to grade a few papers and catch up on some blogging and photo editing. Then, about 11am, I headed into Kobe for some last-minute foreign-port shopping—Christmas shopping—on our final day in a non-US port. Kobe is a rather non-descript city, though every bit as neat, clean, orderly, and quiet as I had found Tokyo, Yokohama, and Hiroshima. I managed to find everything I had been looking for—or didn’t know I was looking for—before heading back to the ship around 4pm.
We sailed out of Kobe Tuesday night at 2100, our final departure from a foreign port.
25 November 2009
Day 94--En route to Honolulu
25 November. 33°17’N, 139°43’E. Course: 090. Speed 16 knots.
We’re 18 hours east of Kobe, about 8 miles north of the Isu Islands, which (I think I remember this) are the peaks of the tallest mountains in the world. That’s true because (again, I think I remember this) we’re just about to sail over the Japan Trench, part of the Marianas Trench, which is the deepest point of all the world’s oceans—something over 30,000 feet. Six miles down. In brief, there’s a lot of water below us. And funny thing: it all looks exactly the same as all the other water I’ve seen over the past 3 months.
We left our final non-US port, Kobe, Japan, last night at 2100 (9pm) to the Big Band sounds of a local ensemble of musicians, assembled and playing on one of the decks of the port terminal. It was the city’s and country’s farewell to a group that had, over the past 5 days, pumped much yen into the Japanese economy. And Japan returned the investment many fold. A beautiful, orderly, amazingly clean, extraordinarily friendly, wonderfully quiet (I heard one car horn the entire 5 days), exceedingly polite people. Most on board are talking today about the time spent “in my new favorite country.”
There is a dark underbelly to the Japanese nirvana, however. They have the highest suicide rate in the world. Their economy is still reeling from the “lost decade” of the ‘90s and taking a belly punch from the current world recession. A million Japanese kids have locked themselves in their rooms (literally!), refusing to come out, because of the stress to succeed created by the school system. And the young generation, especially the women, are rebelling, striking out on their own, refusing to follow the old traditions and to fall into the old roles. So the question is will Japan be able to continue their near-idyllic world, or will the cultural rules break down and will Japan become like the rest of the developed world: a little noisier, a little dirtier, a lot less pleasant? It’ll be interesting for my kids and grandkids to watch. Meanwhile, Japan sure is a wonderful place to visit.
Tokyo and Yokohama
We arrived in Yokohama harbor right on time: 0800 the morning of 20 November. It was the Friday before a 3-day weekend in Japan, and most of the MV Explorer voyageurs had had trouble finding hotel rooms—at least, affordable hotel rooms—for their overland trips, especially in the cities everyone wanted to visit: Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, and Hiroshima. I, on the other hand, had no plans other than wanting to take a day trip to Hiroshima on the 23rd, our first day in Kobe. And I had no expectations for Yokohama and Tokyo other than another typical port city and another typical big city. I was wrong on both counts.
We sailed into the port of Yokohama under a glistening white bridge spanning the opening to the bay like a grand welcoming gate. In front of us was a skyline of new, sparkiling skyscrapers interspersed with traditional-style brick buildings, all lining a waterfront of parks and trees. The port terminal itself is, as I said earlier, a work of art mixing steel, wood, and parkland in a flowing building that gracefully rises and falls as it swoops from its endpoint in the bay to its terminus at the city park.
Jim and Shamim had made reservations at a Tokyo hotel—the Villa Fontaine—and they were going to follow Maria Chapel and Betsy Bloom into the city. Maria planned to meet a friend at a train station near the Ginza and then, after lunch, envisioned a walking tour of the heart of Tokyo. Betsy, Jim, and Shamim planned to tag along, so I invited myself to join them. Bob Chapel stayed at the ship as duty dean—babysitter—for the day.
After clearing the ship, the five of us walked, first, to the local post office to get cash at one of the few ATMs that accept non-Japanese credit cards (at least that’s what we were told). Then we walked down into the Yokohama subway and took a 10-minute ride to Yokohama Station, where we caught the JR (Japan Rail) train to Shimbashi Station, Tokyo. It took some bewildered looks to figure out how to buy tickets for the train, but soon we all figured out the system that is, despite the very different language, pretty simple to manage. All signs on the public transportation system are in Japanese and English. And, though not always easy to find, signs telling where to go next are nearby all exits from trains and subways. Despite the to-Western-eyes indecipherable characters of the Japanese language, Japan is a surprisingly easy country in which to get around.
Maria’s friend, Edsko, met us at Shimbashi Station, and led us via underground halls and malls to the Villa Fontaine, which is only a few blocks from the station and a few blocks from the Ginza, Tokyo’s Times Square and Michigan Boulevard. I had brought with me only things to get me through the day, intending to return to Yokohoma and the ship that evening. But the hotel was very nice, brand new, excellently located. And Jim and Shamim had gotten a for-Tokyo excellent rate of just under $200/night.
I asked a clerk if they had any single rooms available. To my astonishment, they offered me a room for the night at ¥10,000—just over $100. I didn’t pause an instant and took the room. The rate even included breakfast, a toothbrush, a razor, and shaving cream. A fresh pair of underwear, and I’d be set.
We left the hotel and went first to a restaurant on the top floor of an office building just outside the Ginza. The restaurant was a typical business venue, but very Japanese, with small, private rooms, complete with sliding doors, for small parties like ours. I had teriyaki with udon noodles, all delicious and accompanied by an excellent view across a park to Tokyo Bay.
After lunch, Edsko led us to the grounds of the imperial palace, home of the emperor and empress. The palace sits on a series of islands square in the middle of Tokyo, the islands defined by stone-lined moats and marked by guard towers that retain the traditional, multi-storied look common in Japanese painting. To get to the palace grounds, we walked across a wide park—Hibya—that runs along a 6-lane boulevard—Hibya Dori. I had stayed in a hotel on this same boulevard when I was in Tokyo about 12 years ago—the November it snowed—and I thought then how much that area reminded me of Michigan Boulevard in Chicago where it runs along Grant Park. Today, the area seems even more like Chicago, except, of course, Grant Park has no views of medieval guard towers and ancient bridges curving over imperial moats. I suppose Tokyo doesn’t have anything quite like Taste of Chicago either. I’ll bet Tokyo likes it that way.
We walked around the imperial palace grounds—you can’t go inside—then walked the few blocks over to the Ginza, stopping first at a wonderful little coffee shop for what turned out to be the best cup of $10 coffee I’ve ever had. It was little; it was delicious, truly the best I’ve ever had; and the cup, slightly larger than a demitasse, really cost $10. No refills. The preconceptions that people who have never visited Japan may include crowds, traffic, noise, and exorbitant prices. Only the latter is true . . . except for my hotel room at the Villa Fontaine.
By now it was dusk, and the lights of the Ginza were starting to appear as we turned onto Chuo-Don Avenue, Tokyo’s 5th Avenue. This Buddhist/Shinto country goes into Christmas big time, and all the stores were decorated with the secular icons of the season: big Christmas trees, lighted Santas, elves, all the typical decorations we could see at Macy’s or used to be able to see at Marshall Field’s. We saw the same thing in Hong Kong and even, to a lesser degree in Shanghai. Christmas—at least the gift-buying, merchandising part—has become a worldwide holiday.
We found a department store—Sogo—that intrigued the ladies and was a likely place for me to buy a fresh pair of underwear for the morning, so we went in and split up, Jim and I to the men’s floor, Betsy, Shamim, and Maria to . . . wherever. We agreed to meet 40 minutes later.
The men’s floor contained a terrific selection of suits, shirts, sweaters, jackets, everything for the well-dressed businessman and everything very expensive. I didn’t see a shirt priced under US$100, and all the suits were over US$1,000. All this in a store that, from all appearances, is a step down from a Nordstrom’s, probably on par with Macy’s. I finally found the men’s fundamentals—underwear and socks—and picked out the least-expensive pair of pants: one pair, US$11.50. So now the room price had gone up about 10%, still a bargain.
Jim and I had completed our shopping in about 10 minutes, so, with 30 minutes left to kill, we left the store and found a small yakitori and soup counter, where we ordered and enjoyed a couple of draft Asahi beers while we passed the time.
After rejoining the ladies—they were later than 40 minutes, of course—we left the store and split up: Maria, Betsy, and Edsko going to dinner; Jim, Shamim, and I to the hotel a few blocks away.
My room was very small—no bigger than 12’ X 12’—but it had everything I wanted: king-size bed, high-speed internet, TV with BBC news, and a bathroom with toothbrush, saving gear, and a Japanese toilet. When I first visited Japan in ’67, a Japanese toilet was a hole in the ground with a porcelain appliance at ground level shaped something like a spittoon. A few of those remain in Japan today. But most Japanese bathrooms today come equipped with a toilet for those who wouldn’t mind spending hours, even days, on the toilet. These 21st –Century “crappers” (named after the Englishman who invented the first toilet) are equipped with heated seats, even with adjustable temperature settings. And most come with built-in cleansing sprayers. The push of a button causes a few seconds of buzz and whirr while the toilet warms the water, followed by a perfectly aimed spray that is, to say the least, shockingly pleasant. Pleasant comes after the shock. The spray is even adjustable, from gentle mist to something short of tidal wave. There’s also a built-in bidet and, on some, air-drying.
We had been told about the toilets during our cultural pre-port briefing, but I thought they’d be novelty items, maybe only in the very best hotels or Tokyo Disneyland. They’re everywhere. The Japanese are setting new standards for even our most personal activities. Sir Crapper never could have envisioned what this Asian nation would do with his device.
Jim, Shamim, and I found a restaurant in the adjacent mall and had an unusual though very good dinner of asparagus spears, grilled pork, grilled chicken, and something that was similar to a pork egg-foo-young, all served on a hot grills similar to, but smaller than, the ones used at a Benihana’s restaurant in the US. But no chef appeared at this tapanyaki restaurant to fling shrimp at us or put on a show while grilling a steak. Instead, the grill was used to keep the food warm, nothing more. But the food was very good, and we still had room for ice cream after dinner. I stopped by a 7-11 and bought a Haagen-Dazs ice cream sandwich with cookies and cream; Jim and Shamim opted for a McDonalds soft-serve cone.
Then we went back to the hotel, and I was in bed by 10:30pm.
The next morning, following a breakfast of yogurt, rolls, hard boiled eggs, and miso soup, we checked out of the hotel and went across the street to the Hamarikyu Gardens, an ancient garden that was once reserved for the emperor but had long since been given to the city as a public garden. I took lots of pictures in the garden, so I won’t try to describe it except to say that, like everything else in Tokyo, it was perfectly manicured, spotlessly clean, and interlaced with old bridges, ginko-lined paths, sea-fed ponds swimming with carp, and a gazebo sitting on a small peninsula where walkers could stop for a quiet cup of tea. All this was surrounded by the shiny skyscrapers of Tokyo. The trees were especially beautiful because they were at their peak of fall color, and it all made me feel like I was back home in the Midwest, a wonderful place to be.
After a 1-hour walk in the park, the three of us went back to the hotel, where Jim and Shamim grabbed their bags, and we went to Shimbasi station to catch our respective trains, mine back to Yokohama, Jim and Shamim’s to a small village at the foot of Mt Fuji.
That afternoon, I returned to the ship briefly then went out into Yokohama to find an internet connection and to see the city in the vicinity of the port. As I said in my previous entry, Yokohama is a city that makes me happy. I felt very much at home walking through this Japanese version of Evanston IL. I walked along the park that lines the waterfront, watching families out with their kids and being entertained by street artists. Then I turned around and returned to the port area along a street that could have been in the area of the Orrington Hotel: lined with maples and ginkos fronting ‘30s and ‘40s-era buildings housing restaurants and hotels.
At the port terminal, I turned inland and walked a few blocks to the baseball stadium—playoffs are still going on in Japan—turned north a few blocks until I found a Starbucks, where I had an excellent cup of tea and a wonderfully strong WI-FI connection. I remained there for well over an hour nursing the tea and working on blog and e-mails. Then I packed up and headed back to the ship.
It was about 6pm, and ship time—the time we have to back onboard before sailing—was 2100 (9pm), so I stopped for dinner at a small Italian restaurant a few blocks from the port, where I had a Bolognese pizza accompanied by a glass of newly arrived Beaujolais Nouveau, my Thanksgiving swill. The wine was excellent (for swill), the pizza was delicious, the price was reasonable (about US$20). I was back onboard by 2030, and we sailed for Kobe at 2300—11pm.
We’re 18 hours east of Kobe, about 8 miles north of the Isu Islands, which (I think I remember this) are the peaks of the tallest mountains in the world. That’s true because (again, I think I remember this) we’re just about to sail over the Japan Trench, part of the Marianas Trench, which is the deepest point of all the world’s oceans—something over 30,000 feet. Six miles down. In brief, there’s a lot of water below us. And funny thing: it all looks exactly the same as all the other water I’ve seen over the past 3 months.
We left our final non-US port, Kobe, Japan, last night at 2100 (9pm) to the Big Band sounds of a local ensemble of musicians, assembled and playing on one of the decks of the port terminal. It was the city’s and country’s farewell to a group that had, over the past 5 days, pumped much yen into the Japanese economy. And Japan returned the investment many fold. A beautiful, orderly, amazingly clean, extraordinarily friendly, wonderfully quiet (I heard one car horn the entire 5 days), exceedingly polite people. Most on board are talking today about the time spent “in my new favorite country.”
There is a dark underbelly to the Japanese nirvana, however. They have the highest suicide rate in the world. Their economy is still reeling from the “lost decade” of the ‘90s and taking a belly punch from the current world recession. A million Japanese kids have locked themselves in their rooms (literally!), refusing to come out, because of the stress to succeed created by the school system. And the young generation, especially the women, are rebelling, striking out on their own, refusing to follow the old traditions and to fall into the old roles. So the question is will Japan be able to continue their near-idyllic world, or will the cultural rules break down and will Japan become like the rest of the developed world: a little noisier, a little dirtier, a lot less pleasant? It’ll be interesting for my kids and grandkids to watch. Meanwhile, Japan sure is a wonderful place to visit.
Tokyo and Yokohama
We arrived in Yokohama harbor right on time: 0800 the morning of 20 November. It was the Friday before a 3-day weekend in Japan, and most of the MV Explorer voyageurs had had trouble finding hotel rooms—at least, affordable hotel rooms—for their overland trips, especially in the cities everyone wanted to visit: Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, and Hiroshima. I, on the other hand, had no plans other than wanting to take a day trip to Hiroshima on the 23rd, our first day in Kobe. And I had no expectations for Yokohama and Tokyo other than another typical port city and another typical big city. I was wrong on both counts.
We sailed into the port of Yokohama under a glistening white bridge spanning the opening to the bay like a grand welcoming gate. In front of us was a skyline of new, sparkiling skyscrapers interspersed with traditional-style brick buildings, all lining a waterfront of parks and trees. The port terminal itself is, as I said earlier, a work of art mixing steel, wood, and parkland in a flowing building that gracefully rises and falls as it swoops from its endpoint in the bay to its terminus at the city park.
Jim and Shamim had made reservations at a Tokyo hotel—the Villa Fontaine—and they were going to follow Maria Chapel and Betsy Bloom into the city. Maria planned to meet a friend at a train station near the Ginza and then, after lunch, envisioned a walking tour of the heart of Tokyo. Betsy, Jim, and Shamim planned to tag along, so I invited myself to join them. Bob Chapel stayed at the ship as duty dean—babysitter—for the day.
After clearing the ship, the five of us walked, first, to the local post office to get cash at one of the few ATMs that accept non-Japanese credit cards (at least that’s what we were told). Then we walked down into the Yokohama subway and took a 10-minute ride to Yokohama Station, where we caught the JR (Japan Rail) train to Shimbashi Station, Tokyo. It took some bewildered looks to figure out how to buy tickets for the train, but soon we all figured out the system that is, despite the very different language, pretty simple to manage. All signs on the public transportation system are in Japanese and English. And, though not always easy to find, signs telling where to go next are nearby all exits from trains and subways. Despite the to-Western-eyes indecipherable characters of the Japanese language, Japan is a surprisingly easy country in which to get around.
Maria’s friend, Edsko, met us at Shimbashi Station, and led us via underground halls and malls to the Villa Fontaine, which is only a few blocks from the station and a few blocks from the Ginza, Tokyo’s Times Square and Michigan Boulevard. I had brought with me only things to get me through the day, intending to return to Yokohoma and the ship that evening. But the hotel was very nice, brand new, excellently located. And Jim and Shamim had gotten a for-Tokyo excellent rate of just under $200/night.
I asked a clerk if they had any single rooms available. To my astonishment, they offered me a room for the night at ¥10,000—just over $100. I didn’t pause an instant and took the room. The rate even included breakfast, a toothbrush, a razor, and shaving cream. A fresh pair of underwear, and I’d be set.
We left the hotel and went first to a restaurant on the top floor of an office building just outside the Ginza. The restaurant was a typical business venue, but very Japanese, with small, private rooms, complete with sliding doors, for small parties like ours. I had teriyaki with udon noodles, all delicious and accompanied by an excellent view across a park to Tokyo Bay.
After lunch, Edsko led us to the grounds of the imperial palace, home of the emperor and empress. The palace sits on a series of islands square in the middle of Tokyo, the islands defined by stone-lined moats and marked by guard towers that retain the traditional, multi-storied look common in Japanese painting. To get to the palace grounds, we walked across a wide park—Hibya—that runs along a 6-lane boulevard—Hibya Dori. I had stayed in a hotel on this same boulevard when I was in Tokyo about 12 years ago—the November it snowed—and I thought then how much that area reminded me of Michigan Boulevard in Chicago where it runs along Grant Park. Today, the area seems even more like Chicago, except, of course, Grant Park has no views of medieval guard towers and ancient bridges curving over imperial moats. I suppose Tokyo doesn’t have anything quite like Taste of Chicago either. I’ll bet Tokyo likes it that way.
We walked around the imperial palace grounds—you can’t go inside—then walked the few blocks over to the Ginza, stopping first at a wonderful little coffee shop for what turned out to be the best cup of $10 coffee I’ve ever had. It was little; it was delicious, truly the best I’ve ever had; and the cup, slightly larger than a demitasse, really cost $10. No refills. The preconceptions that people who have never visited Japan may include crowds, traffic, noise, and exorbitant prices. Only the latter is true . . . except for my hotel room at the Villa Fontaine.
By now it was dusk, and the lights of the Ginza were starting to appear as we turned onto Chuo-Don Avenue, Tokyo’s 5th Avenue. This Buddhist/Shinto country goes into Christmas big time, and all the stores were decorated with the secular icons of the season: big Christmas trees, lighted Santas, elves, all the typical decorations we could see at Macy’s or used to be able to see at Marshall Field’s. We saw the same thing in Hong Kong and even, to a lesser degree in Shanghai. Christmas—at least the gift-buying, merchandising part—has become a worldwide holiday.
We found a department store—Sogo—that intrigued the ladies and was a likely place for me to buy a fresh pair of underwear for the morning, so we went in and split up, Jim and I to the men’s floor, Betsy, Shamim, and Maria to . . . wherever. We agreed to meet 40 minutes later.
The men’s floor contained a terrific selection of suits, shirts, sweaters, jackets, everything for the well-dressed businessman and everything very expensive. I didn’t see a shirt priced under US$100, and all the suits were over US$1,000. All this in a store that, from all appearances, is a step down from a Nordstrom’s, probably on par with Macy’s. I finally found the men’s fundamentals—underwear and socks—and picked out the least-expensive pair of pants: one pair, US$11.50. So now the room price had gone up about 10%, still a bargain.
Jim and I had completed our shopping in about 10 minutes, so, with 30 minutes left to kill, we left the store and found a small yakitori and soup counter, where we ordered and enjoyed a couple of draft Asahi beers while we passed the time.
After rejoining the ladies—they were later than 40 minutes, of course—we left the store and split up: Maria, Betsy, and Edsko going to dinner; Jim, Shamim, and I to the hotel a few blocks away.
My room was very small—no bigger than 12’ X 12’—but it had everything I wanted: king-size bed, high-speed internet, TV with BBC news, and a bathroom with toothbrush, saving gear, and a Japanese toilet. When I first visited Japan in ’67, a Japanese toilet was a hole in the ground with a porcelain appliance at ground level shaped something like a spittoon. A few of those remain in Japan today. But most Japanese bathrooms today come equipped with a toilet for those who wouldn’t mind spending hours, even days, on the toilet. These 21st –Century “crappers” (named after the Englishman who invented the first toilet) are equipped with heated seats, even with adjustable temperature settings. And most come with built-in cleansing sprayers. The push of a button causes a few seconds of buzz and whirr while the toilet warms the water, followed by a perfectly aimed spray that is, to say the least, shockingly pleasant. Pleasant comes after the shock. The spray is even adjustable, from gentle mist to something short of tidal wave. There’s also a built-in bidet and, on some, air-drying.
We had been told about the toilets during our cultural pre-port briefing, but I thought they’d be novelty items, maybe only in the very best hotels or Tokyo Disneyland. They’re everywhere. The Japanese are setting new standards for even our most personal activities. Sir Crapper never could have envisioned what this Asian nation would do with his device.
Jim, Shamim, and I found a restaurant in the adjacent mall and had an unusual though very good dinner of asparagus spears, grilled pork, grilled chicken, and something that was similar to a pork egg-foo-young, all served on a hot grills similar to, but smaller than, the ones used at a Benihana’s restaurant in the US. But no chef appeared at this tapanyaki restaurant to fling shrimp at us or put on a show while grilling a steak. Instead, the grill was used to keep the food warm, nothing more. But the food was very good, and we still had room for ice cream after dinner. I stopped by a 7-11 and bought a Haagen-Dazs ice cream sandwich with cookies and cream; Jim and Shamim opted for a McDonalds soft-serve cone.
Then we went back to the hotel, and I was in bed by 10:30pm.
The next morning, following a breakfast of yogurt, rolls, hard boiled eggs, and miso soup, we checked out of the hotel and went across the street to the Hamarikyu Gardens, an ancient garden that was once reserved for the emperor but had long since been given to the city as a public garden. I took lots of pictures in the garden, so I won’t try to describe it except to say that, like everything else in Tokyo, it was perfectly manicured, spotlessly clean, and interlaced with old bridges, ginko-lined paths, sea-fed ponds swimming with carp, and a gazebo sitting on a small peninsula where walkers could stop for a quiet cup of tea. All this was surrounded by the shiny skyscrapers of Tokyo. The trees were especially beautiful because they were at their peak of fall color, and it all made me feel like I was back home in the Midwest, a wonderful place to be.
After a 1-hour walk in the park, the three of us went back to the hotel, where Jim and Shamim grabbed their bags, and we went to Shimbasi station to catch our respective trains, mine back to Yokohama, Jim and Shamim’s to a small village at the foot of Mt Fuji.
That afternoon, I returned to the ship briefly then went out into Yokohama to find an internet connection and to see the city in the vicinity of the port. As I said in my previous entry, Yokohama is a city that makes me happy. I felt very much at home walking through this Japanese version of Evanston IL. I walked along the park that lines the waterfront, watching families out with their kids and being entertained by street artists. Then I turned around and returned to the port area along a street that could have been in the area of the Orrington Hotel: lined with maples and ginkos fronting ‘30s and ‘40s-era buildings housing restaurants and hotels.
At the port terminal, I turned inland and walked a few blocks to the baseball stadium—playoffs are still going on in Japan—turned north a few blocks until I found a Starbucks, where I had an excellent cup of tea and a wonderfully strong WI-FI connection. I remained there for well over an hour nursing the tea and working on blog and e-mails. Then I packed up and headed back to the ship.
It was about 6pm, and ship time—the time we have to back onboard before sailing—was 2100 (9pm), so I stopped for dinner at a small Italian restaurant a few blocks from the port, where I had a Bolognese pizza accompanied by a glass of newly arrived Beaujolais Nouveau, my Thanksgiving swill. The wine was excellent (for swill), the pizza was delicious, the price was reasonable (about US$20). I was back onboard by 2030, and we sailed for Kobe at 2300—11pm.
23 November 2009
Day 92--In port, Kobe, Japan
22 November. 33°18’ N, 135°50’ E. Speed= 11 knots. Course= 247°
We’re sailing toward Kobe at a blistering 11 knots, scheduled to arrive at 7am tomorrow. Bob and Maria Chapel have been traveling overland between Tokyo and Kobe, and will rejoin the ship in the morning. Then Maria will go to Kyoto, and Bob I’ve-seen-all-the-temples-I-want-to-see Chapel and I will board a bullet train for the 75-minute trip to Hiroshima. We’ll spend our last couple of days in a non-US port visiting the site of the first city to have suffered an atomic attack. I imagine it will be sobering. It’s on my bucket list.
Back to Shanghai.
Shanghai
I think I said this already, but visiting Shanghai is visiting the future. We docked on the northwest side of the Huangpu River, about a half-mile north of the Bund district, which is the old financial area of colonial Shanghai. The Bund riverbank is lined with buildings from the ‘30s and ‘40s that look a little like the older buildings that line Grant Park in Chicago. Behind the classical façade rise the steel, brick, and glass skyscrapers of the newer Shanghai.
But the newest skyline of Shanghai is on the south bank of the river. Jim and Shamim were in Shanghai on their honeymoon in 1987, only 9 years after Deng declared that China had suffered enough years of poverty and that the time to make money had arrived. In ’87, the south bank of the river was nothing but rice paddies. Today, the south bank resembles the waterfront of Hong Kong: high-rise buildings of every style, from retro art deco to ultra-modern avant garde, each one trying to outdo the other in height, curves, glass, and lighting. And dominating the skyline of the south bank—the Pudong region—is the Oriental Pearl Tower, which looks a little like a giant toothpick that someone had used to spear two enormous olives. Each olive contains several hundred hotel rooms. It all looks like a scene out of the old Flash Gordon serials I used to watch at Saturday matinees in Birmingham, Michigan. “Ming the Merciless” was the inscrutably Chinese villain in those 20-minute episodes. I imagine that politically incorrect character is still lurking the towers of Shanghai.
My first job after docking was to try to reach Jesse Xia. Jesse is president of Anderson’s Asia/Pacific region and would be my host for our FDP on Monday the 16th. Don Finkle, Cousin Nancy’s husband, had told me about the challenges Jesse and he had faced setting up their joint venture with the Chinese company, Power Dekor, and I thought seeing the operation and hearing the stories firsthand would be a good experience, especially for my business comm. students.
To my amazement, my cellphone worked in China even though the country is on a different system than the CDMA cellular system of the US. After several false starts—probably expensive false starts—I finally reached Jesse, who invited me to join him for dinner that night. I accepted, of course.
Next, I bundled up in sweater and UM windbreaker and headed out into the streets of Shanghai. The weather was chilly—probably in the high 40s Fahrenheit—but dry, so I was comfortable as I walked out the entrance to the dock area and was immediately accosted by vendors trying to sell me “Rolex watch, very cheap.” My destination was Nanjing Road, the famous shopping district of Shanghai, about a half-mile away. That half-mile was a maze of construction as the city prepares to host next year’s world’s fair, Expo 2010. So I negotiated through the traffic and over fences until I finally turned north onto Nanjing Rd.
I spent the next 3 hours walking down Nanjing. The street and stores that line the street could have been in any large city in the US. Except, of course, that the signs were written in large Mandarin characters. But the store windows were full of mannequins dressed in the latest Paris fashions, furniture and appliances of the latest designs, and brand names one can see on store fronts along 5th Avenue in New York or Boul Mich in Chicago: Gucci, Tiffany, Prada, Rolex . . . they’re all in China.
About an hour after leaving the ship, I was getting hungry, so I walked into a restaurant that looked inexpensive and inviting. I walked down to the main dining area, a MacDonald’s-looking place with many plastic tables and chairs and several walk-up counters. I stood in line and, when I got to the front, pointed to a couple of dishes on the menu that looked pretty good: noodle soup and a plate of dumplings. The woman taking my order was very helpful and escorted me to a table, where she apparently told a young waitress what I had ordered. After a few minutes, the waitress delivered my meal, including a Tsing Tao beer, and it was every bit as delicious as it had looked in the pictures. It is possible to get a good meal anywhere, I’ve learned, as long as you can smile, point, and look just a little hapless. I’m good at all three.
After lunch, I continued walking up Nanjing Road, which now had become a pedestrian mall, packed with people out doing their Sunday shopping. I learned that stores are open in China every day, Monday thru Sunday. And the Nanjing mall was as crowded as a US shopping mall in the weeks before Christmas.
I walked through a pedestrian underpass and came up into People’s Park, a green, grassy, tree-lined stretch that began where the pedestrian mall ended and continued 3 blocks or so to the ultra modern J.W. Marriott hotel and condos. Across the street from the hotel was a Starbucks, where I stopped and ordered a latte, the first latte I’ve ever had. True. Not bad, though I prefer just plain coffee. I walked back to the Radisson Hotel to finish the coffee, and, as I sat down on a wall lining the sidewalk, out of the hotel walked Jim and Shamim. They had checked in that morning and planned to stay there until ship time Monday evening.
Seeing them was a nice surprise, and the three of us walked back down Nanjing toward the river until they had to peal off to visit a museum. I continued back to the ship.
Jesse said he’d pick me up for dinner around 5:30, and, by the time I got back to the ship, it was already close to 5. So I quickly showered and changed clothes. Jesse pulled up at 5:30, and we headed to the French containment area for dinner.
From the mid 19th century to the mid 20th, various European countries had occupied China under the pretense of controlling the opium trade. During those years, each country claimed various sections of Shanghai and, in fact, all of China. And the colonial powers had left their marks. The old French area contains elegant old buildings and tree-lined streets that reminded me more of Newport Beach than Paris, and, of course, excellent restaurants.
Jesse took me to a Chinese-cuisine restaurant, where he ordered an assortment of very tasty dishes, including spicy beef, a deep-fried-and-spicy sea bass, tiny spring rolls, hot and sour soup, rice, and some prune-type fruit desserts. We sat on a balcony in the restaurant looking down on a wedding reception being celebrated on the main floor. The bride was beautiful; the food was delicious.
I returned to the ship about 10pm after Jesse drove me around the breathtakingly beautiful sights of Shanghai at night. It certainly rivals Hong Kong. In fact, Shanghai prides itself in fast overtaking Hong Kong as an economic powerhouse in China. I believe it.
On Monday, twelve of my students joined me on the faculty-directed practicum (FDP) visiting the mall where Anderson Hardwood Floors and Power Dekor maintain their joint-venture Shanghai showroom. Anderson and Power Dekor had invited the press to cover our visit, so we were treated like visiting dignitaries as we entered the huge mall that looked like a cross between Chicago’s Merchandise Mart and Orange County’s Fashion Island, the very upscale mall in Newport Beach, California, where we used to take 2-year-old Haley for a relatively inexpensive meal in their food court.
Jesse and Mr. Gore, a VP from Power Dekor, were wonderful hosts, having first treated all of us to lunch at the largest buffet restaurant I’ve ever seen, then making us feel like a part of Obama’s contingent—the President happened to be in Shanghai at the same time—with television and magazine reporters covering the event, banners welcoming “our dear American friends” outside and inside the mall, and even an “honored guest” boutonniere for me as the “distinguished professor from University of Virginia.” I was interviewed by the Chinese Financial Times broadcasting network and by a reporter from a local home décor magazine, who was very interested in how I decorated my house. I promised to send her pictures, particularly of the Anderson flooring in my kitchen and family room.
The presentations by Jesse and Mr. Gore were excellent, reinforcing much of what we had been talking about recently in class about the Chinese culture and way of doing business. But the mall itself was the star of the day. It’s one of several like it in the Shanghai area. And its 5 to 7 stories house individual stores displaying every conceivable home product, from bathroom fixtures to kitchen appliances, to dining room, living room, and bedroom sets. All of it top-of-the-line stuff. We didn’t see many patrons in the mall, but it was a Monday afternoon. Jesse told me that the mall is packed on weekends with Chinese families who are now gaining enough income to furnish their apartments and decorate them with the latest, most expensive styles. I took many pictures and videos. Again, only pictures can tell the tale.
We returned to the ship by 5pm—an hour before ship time—and found out that our departure from Shanghai would be delayed 18 hours because of bad weather in the East China Sea. It was already raining and cold in Shanghai, with winds blowing strongly out of the north. So as faculty and staff bundled up for a restful night on board the MV Explorer, many of the students headed out into the cold and rain for their bonus night in China.
The next day at noon, we untied from the Shanghai pier and headed down the Hunagpu River to the Yangzi and out into the sea for the short voyage to Japan.
As I think I said earlier, anyone who doubts that the 21st Century will be the century of Asia and, especially, China, should visit Hong Kong and Shanghai. The human rights record of China is poor. But what they’ve accomplished in the past 30 years is incredible. An example: 10 years ago, Shanghai had no rapid transit system. In the next 5 years (completed in 2004), they built an ultra modern, 15-line subway system on 3 levels that runs throughout the city. Meanwhile, it took the city of Los Angeles at least 10 years to build a single 10-mile, above-ground people mover from downtown LA to Long Beach. And the Big Dig in Boston still isn’t completed after . . . what? . . . almost 20 years.
Of course, China has the advantage of a very low-paid, huge workforce, and a centralized government that says “jump,” and the people reply, “of course.” At least they do today. Still, while the U.S. is debating over a watered-down national health plan (the Chinese abandoned their plan in the late ‘70s and are now reinstating it for all 1.3 billion citizens) and whether to spend stimulus money to rebuild crumbling bridges and roads or to cut taxes for people already earning more per capita than 99% of the rest of the world, the Chinese are building the new century. We may not like their political system. But that system is unlikely to change as long as the Chinese people continue seeing their living standard rise nearly every day. The people on the streets in Shanghai look very well fed.
Read Thomas Friedman’s “Advice from Grandma” op-ed in the Sunday(?) NYTimes.
More on the Japan stop when we’re enroute to Hawaii.
We’re sailing toward Kobe at a blistering 11 knots, scheduled to arrive at 7am tomorrow. Bob and Maria Chapel have been traveling overland between Tokyo and Kobe, and will rejoin the ship in the morning. Then Maria will go to Kyoto, and Bob I’ve-seen-all-the-temples-I-want-to-see Chapel and I will board a bullet train for the 75-minute trip to Hiroshima. We’ll spend our last couple of days in a non-US port visiting the site of the first city to have suffered an atomic attack. I imagine it will be sobering. It’s on my bucket list.
Back to Shanghai.
Shanghai
I think I said this already, but visiting Shanghai is visiting the future. We docked on the northwest side of the Huangpu River, about a half-mile north of the Bund district, which is the old financial area of colonial Shanghai. The Bund riverbank is lined with buildings from the ‘30s and ‘40s that look a little like the older buildings that line Grant Park in Chicago. Behind the classical façade rise the steel, brick, and glass skyscrapers of the newer Shanghai.
But the newest skyline of Shanghai is on the south bank of the river. Jim and Shamim were in Shanghai on their honeymoon in 1987, only 9 years after Deng declared that China had suffered enough years of poverty and that the time to make money had arrived. In ’87, the south bank of the river was nothing but rice paddies. Today, the south bank resembles the waterfront of Hong Kong: high-rise buildings of every style, from retro art deco to ultra-modern avant garde, each one trying to outdo the other in height, curves, glass, and lighting. And dominating the skyline of the south bank—the Pudong region—is the Oriental Pearl Tower, which looks a little like a giant toothpick that someone had used to spear two enormous olives. Each olive contains several hundred hotel rooms. It all looks like a scene out of the old Flash Gordon serials I used to watch at Saturday matinees in Birmingham, Michigan. “Ming the Merciless” was the inscrutably Chinese villain in those 20-minute episodes. I imagine that politically incorrect character is still lurking the towers of Shanghai.
My first job after docking was to try to reach Jesse Xia. Jesse is president of Anderson’s Asia/Pacific region and would be my host for our FDP on Monday the 16th. Don Finkle, Cousin Nancy’s husband, had told me about the challenges Jesse and he had faced setting up their joint venture with the Chinese company, Power Dekor, and I thought seeing the operation and hearing the stories firsthand would be a good experience, especially for my business comm. students.
To my amazement, my cellphone worked in China even though the country is on a different system than the CDMA cellular system of the US. After several false starts—probably expensive false starts—I finally reached Jesse, who invited me to join him for dinner that night. I accepted, of course.
Next, I bundled up in sweater and UM windbreaker and headed out into the streets of Shanghai. The weather was chilly—probably in the high 40s Fahrenheit—but dry, so I was comfortable as I walked out the entrance to the dock area and was immediately accosted by vendors trying to sell me “Rolex watch, very cheap.” My destination was Nanjing Road, the famous shopping district of Shanghai, about a half-mile away. That half-mile was a maze of construction as the city prepares to host next year’s world’s fair, Expo 2010. So I negotiated through the traffic and over fences until I finally turned north onto Nanjing Rd.
I spent the next 3 hours walking down Nanjing. The street and stores that line the street could have been in any large city in the US. Except, of course, that the signs were written in large Mandarin characters. But the store windows were full of mannequins dressed in the latest Paris fashions, furniture and appliances of the latest designs, and brand names one can see on store fronts along 5th Avenue in New York or Boul Mich in Chicago: Gucci, Tiffany, Prada, Rolex . . . they’re all in China.
About an hour after leaving the ship, I was getting hungry, so I walked into a restaurant that looked inexpensive and inviting. I walked down to the main dining area, a MacDonald’s-looking place with many plastic tables and chairs and several walk-up counters. I stood in line and, when I got to the front, pointed to a couple of dishes on the menu that looked pretty good: noodle soup and a plate of dumplings. The woman taking my order was very helpful and escorted me to a table, where she apparently told a young waitress what I had ordered. After a few minutes, the waitress delivered my meal, including a Tsing Tao beer, and it was every bit as delicious as it had looked in the pictures. It is possible to get a good meal anywhere, I’ve learned, as long as you can smile, point, and look just a little hapless. I’m good at all three.
After lunch, I continued walking up Nanjing Road, which now had become a pedestrian mall, packed with people out doing their Sunday shopping. I learned that stores are open in China every day, Monday thru Sunday. And the Nanjing mall was as crowded as a US shopping mall in the weeks before Christmas.
I walked through a pedestrian underpass and came up into People’s Park, a green, grassy, tree-lined stretch that began where the pedestrian mall ended and continued 3 blocks or so to the ultra modern J.W. Marriott hotel and condos. Across the street from the hotel was a Starbucks, where I stopped and ordered a latte, the first latte I’ve ever had. True. Not bad, though I prefer just plain coffee. I walked back to the Radisson Hotel to finish the coffee, and, as I sat down on a wall lining the sidewalk, out of the hotel walked Jim and Shamim. They had checked in that morning and planned to stay there until ship time Monday evening.
Seeing them was a nice surprise, and the three of us walked back down Nanjing toward the river until they had to peal off to visit a museum. I continued back to the ship.
Jesse said he’d pick me up for dinner around 5:30, and, by the time I got back to the ship, it was already close to 5. So I quickly showered and changed clothes. Jesse pulled up at 5:30, and we headed to the French containment area for dinner.
From the mid 19th century to the mid 20th, various European countries had occupied China under the pretense of controlling the opium trade. During those years, each country claimed various sections of Shanghai and, in fact, all of China. And the colonial powers had left their marks. The old French area contains elegant old buildings and tree-lined streets that reminded me more of Newport Beach than Paris, and, of course, excellent restaurants.
Jesse took me to a Chinese-cuisine restaurant, where he ordered an assortment of very tasty dishes, including spicy beef, a deep-fried-and-spicy sea bass, tiny spring rolls, hot and sour soup, rice, and some prune-type fruit desserts. We sat on a balcony in the restaurant looking down on a wedding reception being celebrated on the main floor. The bride was beautiful; the food was delicious.
I returned to the ship about 10pm after Jesse drove me around the breathtakingly beautiful sights of Shanghai at night. It certainly rivals Hong Kong. In fact, Shanghai prides itself in fast overtaking Hong Kong as an economic powerhouse in China. I believe it.
On Monday, twelve of my students joined me on the faculty-directed practicum (FDP) visiting the mall where Anderson Hardwood Floors and Power Dekor maintain their joint-venture Shanghai showroom. Anderson and Power Dekor had invited the press to cover our visit, so we were treated like visiting dignitaries as we entered the huge mall that looked like a cross between Chicago’s Merchandise Mart and Orange County’s Fashion Island, the very upscale mall in Newport Beach, California, where we used to take 2-year-old Haley for a relatively inexpensive meal in their food court.
Jesse and Mr. Gore, a VP from Power Dekor, were wonderful hosts, having first treated all of us to lunch at the largest buffet restaurant I’ve ever seen, then making us feel like a part of Obama’s contingent—the President happened to be in Shanghai at the same time—with television and magazine reporters covering the event, banners welcoming “our dear American friends” outside and inside the mall, and even an “honored guest” boutonniere for me as the “distinguished professor from University of Virginia.” I was interviewed by the Chinese Financial Times broadcasting network and by a reporter from a local home décor magazine, who was very interested in how I decorated my house. I promised to send her pictures, particularly of the Anderson flooring in my kitchen and family room.
The presentations by Jesse and Mr. Gore were excellent, reinforcing much of what we had been talking about recently in class about the Chinese culture and way of doing business. But the mall itself was the star of the day. It’s one of several like it in the Shanghai area. And its 5 to 7 stories house individual stores displaying every conceivable home product, from bathroom fixtures to kitchen appliances, to dining room, living room, and bedroom sets. All of it top-of-the-line stuff. We didn’t see many patrons in the mall, but it was a Monday afternoon. Jesse told me that the mall is packed on weekends with Chinese families who are now gaining enough income to furnish their apartments and decorate them with the latest, most expensive styles. I took many pictures and videos. Again, only pictures can tell the tale.
We returned to the ship by 5pm—an hour before ship time—and found out that our departure from Shanghai would be delayed 18 hours because of bad weather in the East China Sea. It was already raining and cold in Shanghai, with winds blowing strongly out of the north. So as faculty and staff bundled up for a restful night on board the MV Explorer, many of the students headed out into the cold and rain for their bonus night in China.
The next day at noon, we untied from the Shanghai pier and headed down the Hunagpu River to the Yangzi and out into the sea for the short voyage to Japan.
As I think I said earlier, anyone who doubts that the 21st Century will be the century of Asia and, especially, China, should visit Hong Kong and Shanghai. The human rights record of China is poor. But what they’ve accomplished in the past 30 years is incredible. An example: 10 years ago, Shanghai had no rapid transit system. In the next 5 years (completed in 2004), they built an ultra modern, 15-line subway system on 3 levels that runs throughout the city. Meanwhile, it took the city of Los Angeles at least 10 years to build a single 10-mile, above-ground people mover from downtown LA to Long Beach. And the Big Dig in Boston still isn’t completed after . . . what? . . . almost 20 years.
Of course, China has the advantage of a very low-paid, huge workforce, and a centralized government that says “jump,” and the people reply, “of course.” At least they do today. Still, while the U.S. is debating over a watered-down national health plan (the Chinese abandoned their plan in the late ‘70s and are now reinstating it for all 1.3 billion citizens) and whether to spend stimulus money to rebuild crumbling bridges and roads or to cut taxes for people already earning more per capita than 99% of the rest of the world, the Chinese are building the new century. We may not like their political system. But that system is unlikely to change as long as the Chinese people continue seeing their living standard rise nearly every day. The people on the streets in Shanghai look very well fed.
Read Thomas Friedman’s “Advice from Grandma” op-ed in the Sunday(?) NYTimes.
More on the Japan stop when we’re enroute to Hawaii.
21 November 2009
Day 91-- Enroute to Kobe, Japan
21 November. Yokohama, Japan.
What a beautiful city! I had expected Yokohama to be like so many of the other port cities we’ve seen: heavy industry, lots of cranes and cargo ships, trucks, containers, dust, dirt. But this is Japan. Yokohama gleams. The port terminal is an architectural work of art, with wooden platforms, grassy lawns, lots of glass and shiny aluminum. And the city is Asia’s Evanston: long parks and parkways along the bay, tree-lined streets, wonderful shops and restaurants, everything sparkling. Best of all, I’ve found fall. I was sure I’d miss it, passing from mid summer in Hong Kong directly into early winter in Shanghai. But fall is in Japan, with cool, crisp temperatures, crystal-clear blue skies, yellow leaves on the ginko trees, everything except apple cider and crowds streaming toward the stadium. I hate to leave, as we’re about to do this evening. Maybe Kobe will be more of the same.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Hong Kong
I’ve spent time in Hong Kong several times over the past 40 years, first during the ’67 world tour, then several times while at Hewitt. Each time I’m more convinced that it has to be the most exciting, if not the most beautiful, city in the world. It’s certainly one of the fastest growing. The first time I saw it, Kowloon was a low-rise, old Chinese city just emerging from the rickshaw era. And Hong Kong (Victoria) Island had developed only a small way beyond the slopes of Victoria Peak. I described Hong Kong then as looking like a giant had flung white building blocks against the side of the peak.
Today, those old buildings are completely obscured by huge skyscrapers, all looking very new and filling the shoreline across from Kowloon from as far east as one can see to as far west. Kowloon, too, is a city of tall office buildings and hotels. And Nathan Rd, the once seedy street of knock-off vendors is becoming a little like 5th Avenue with Times Square’s neon. It’s all still a fascinating, exciting city. But I can’t call it “charming” anymore.
The first thing I did after the ship cleared customs was look for a store that sold electronics. I needed a new camera now that my JVC camcorder is completely useless (memo to self: do not buy a JVC anything if sort-term plans include travel outside the US. The camcorder is now a boat anchor, and JVC refuses to provide any warrantee coverage since the “malfunction” occurred outside the US. This for a camera built in Malaysia by a Japanese company.) So, accompanied by Anne, I left the ship and headed for a nearby Fortress store, which the hospitality desk had recommended as a reliable place to purchase electronic gear. There we looked at several cameras, including the latest model of the Canon that had been stolen. I settled on a Sony camera that takes both stills and HD video, so it can do double duty. I was delighted at the $220 price because I thought it was comparable to a $500 camera I had just looked at. I’ve since discovered that the same camera sells for the same price on Amazon. So I guess it’s true that Hong Kong is no longer the place to get great deals on electronics. That probably reflects the weak US dollar as well.
By the time we finished the purchase and had taken the camera back to the ship, it was almost lunch time. Anne had heard some recommendations for good dim sum restaurants, including one in the IFC shopping center just across from where the ship was docked, adjacent to the Star Ferry landing on the island. So we left the ship, went to the Kowloon ferry landing, scurried around for a few minutes looking for a place to break down our large-bill Hong Kong dollars, fed the necessary HK$2 (about 30 cents) into the machines, and took the Star Ferry across to Hong Kong.
The restaurant that Anne had heard about was fully booked by the time we got there around 1:30pm. So we started a search through the endless aisles and floors of the IFC mall until we finally found a restaurant that a mall guide recommended as an alternative to dim sum. I can’t remember the name—Anne certainly will—but the good sign was the 15 to 20 business people waiting outside the restaurant for a table. They knew what they were doing. After a few-minutes’ wait, we were seated at a table with two professionally dressed women. We ordered a couple of Chinese dishes that I had never heard of before—and can’t remember now—and were treated to one of the most delicious lunches I’ve ever enjoyed. We were the only Westerners in the restaurant.
After lunch, we took a taxi to the base of the Victoria Peak tram—Hong Kong’s answer to the Manitou Springs cog railway that runs up Pike’s Peak—and took the 30-minute train ride up Victoria Peak. The last time I was to the top of the peak, the observation deck was a small, open-air platform. And the nearest buildings were the white-brick buildings halfway down from the top. Today at the top is a 5-story shopping mall surrounded by multi-million-dollar homes, including what is reputed to be the most expensive home in the world, recently priced at just under US1 billion. But the view from the top is still magnificent, down at the city of Hong Kong and across at Kowloon which, today, stretches almost all the way to the New Territories at the border with the PRC.
We spent about 30 minutes walking around the outside viewing deck of the mall. Then we headed back down the tram, and got a taxi for a ride across the island to the town of Stanley and its market. I had been to Stanley several times in the past because it had always been a place to buy “brand name” goods at truly fractions of their US prices. I put “brand name” in quotes because there’s no telling how many were truly Nikes, Izods, Polos, Burberrys, and other well-know names, and how many were either clever knock offs or goods that had, as they say, “fallen off the back of a truck”—i.e., been lifted by sticky-handed entrepreneurs. I was looking especially for a rugby shirt to replace the one I had bought in Stanley 10 years ago during my last Hong Kong visit. That shirt is still in my drawer, showing little wear except for some fading.
I found my shirt—two of them, in fact, though for twice what I had paid in ’99—and Anne bought a few silk scarves—beautiful and inexpensive—as gifts. We then grabbed a taxi and traveled around the island (the cross-island tunnel was blocked with traffic) to the Star Ferry terminal.
That night, Anne and I joined 12 other faculty members at a banquet Maria Chapel arranged at a local restaurant. Maria used to spend many days in Hong Kong when she was a fashion designer and buyer in the 80s. One of her favorite memories of those times were the banquets her hosts would sponsor for visiting buyers, and Maria wanted to share the experience with friends. The dinner was tasty: soup, Peking duck, a noodle dish, rice, wine. And the show—slicing the duck, making the noodles by hand—was interesting. I don’t know that the food was quite worth the price, but the group was fun, and the view across the harbor was excellent.
The next day, I first helped Anne find a hotel room for her last night in Hong Kong. The MV Explorer was sailing at 2300 (11pm), and Anne was flying back to Chicago and on to Baltimore the following morning. We first checked the Kowloon Sheraton, where Bob and Maria were planning to spend the night before heading on their own to Shanghai. But the cost was prohibitive. Instead, we checked with a local tourist help desk, who put Anne in touch with the Hong Kong hotel bureau. They found a hotel for her—the Kowloon Empress, or something like that—that turned out to be brand new and very inexpensive for the city.
After finding a room for Anne, the two of us took the ferry to Hong Kong then moved over to the hydrofoil to Lantau Island. Andi Mitnik, my fellow communication professor, had gone to Lantau the first day in Hong Kong and recommended the trip as a great way to spend Anne’s final day of vacation. The recommendation was spot on. Lantau is a beautiful, mountainous island just a 30-minute boat ride from the teeming masses of Hong Kong and Kowloon. I had never visited before, so the trip to the island and the bus ride from the small port to the island’s most notable landmark, the Giant Buddha, was a brand new experience for both of us.
The day was alternately cloudy, sunny, misty, and rainy, and as we rode the bus higher into the mountains of Lantau, we started going in and out of the low-hanging clouds. By the time we reached the village at the base of the mountaintop where the Buddha sits, the air was heavy with mist. And the statue—truly giant in scale, sitting at the top of a 252-step stairway—alternately moved in and out of the mist as the low-hanging clouds drifted by. It was an other-worldly sight.
We climbed the 252 steps then walked slowly around the massive Buddha, sitting placidly on his bed of lotus leaves and surrounded by statues of devoted attendants. We then walked down the stairs and over to the nearby monastery, where a lone monk was lighting candles and tidying up around a spectacular shrine of gold statues, hanging lamps, and magnificent red-and-gold chandeliers. I took many pictures; only they can show the beauty of the place, and even they don’t come close.
We left the monastery, passing many followers lighting incense to honor their ancestors, and walked through the tourist village to the bus stop. The only route to the bus stop is, of course, past the souvenir shops of the village. All religions rely for a good part of their financing on the sale of tchatchies. Buddhists are no different than Catholics in that regard.
Anne and I took the 40-minute bus ride back to the Lantau port, arriving just in time to hop onto the hydrofoil back to Hong Kong Island. It had been a great way to spend her last day as a voyageur, and it was an opportunity to see a part of Hong Kong that I didn’t know exists. Lantau is where the new Hong Kong airport is located, sitting on landfill on the north bank of the island. That’s all that most people passing through Hong Kong see of Lantau, missing the beautiful beaches and lush, green mountains of the island’s interior. Next time, I want to go back and see some of the small villages on the far west end that, according got the guide books, are the last remnants of a quiet rural life now almost disappeared—similar to the junks and sanpans of Aberdeen.
Anne and I had dinner together at a restaurant in the mall adjoining the Kowloon dock where the MV Explorer was parked. We took one more walk around the deck of the ship to admire the incredible Hong Kong skyline at night. Then Anne left the ship at 9pm, and we sailed at 11pm. I stayed up until 12:30 to watch the lights go by and disappear as we left the harbor. Hard to imagine that the city could grow even more before I see it again. But the growth doesn’t seem to stop. I’m looking forward to going back.
The 3-day trip to Shanghai was rough, and the weather turned increasingly cold and windy the closer we came to the mouth of the Yangtze River. I spent most of the time grading the formal reports of my business comm. students and enjoying the quiet of the ship. Of the almost 700 students, faculty, staff, and lifelong learners, only 100 sailed from Hong Kong to Shanghai. The rest were “overlanders” (as Chinese immigration referred to them), folks who traveled by land between the two cities, most of them stopping to see sights like the terracotta warriors, the Forbidden City, the countryside of rural China, and, of course, the Great Wall. Despite the near-record cold and snow that hit China during our visit, many of the students even camped atop the wall—literally on the snow and ice—near the same villages where I had hiked in ’99: Simitai and Jingshanling. When they rejoined us in Shanghai, they all agreed that it had been an incredibly exhilarating but incredibly cold, once-in-lifetime experience. I liked hiking in the warmth of summer.
As usual, we arrived in Shanghai exactly on time at 0800, the morning of 15 November.
More to come.
What a beautiful city! I had expected Yokohama to be like so many of the other port cities we’ve seen: heavy industry, lots of cranes and cargo ships, trucks, containers, dust, dirt. But this is Japan. Yokohama gleams. The port terminal is an architectural work of art, with wooden platforms, grassy lawns, lots of glass and shiny aluminum. And the city is Asia’s Evanston: long parks and parkways along the bay, tree-lined streets, wonderful shops and restaurants, everything sparkling. Best of all, I’ve found fall. I was sure I’d miss it, passing from mid summer in Hong Kong directly into early winter in Shanghai. But fall is in Japan, with cool, crisp temperatures, crystal-clear blue skies, yellow leaves on the ginko trees, everything except apple cider and crowds streaming toward the stadium. I hate to leave, as we’re about to do this evening. Maybe Kobe will be more of the same.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Hong Kong
I’ve spent time in Hong Kong several times over the past 40 years, first during the ’67 world tour, then several times while at Hewitt. Each time I’m more convinced that it has to be the most exciting, if not the most beautiful, city in the world. It’s certainly one of the fastest growing. The first time I saw it, Kowloon was a low-rise, old Chinese city just emerging from the rickshaw era. And Hong Kong (Victoria) Island had developed only a small way beyond the slopes of Victoria Peak. I described Hong Kong then as looking like a giant had flung white building blocks against the side of the peak.
Today, those old buildings are completely obscured by huge skyscrapers, all looking very new and filling the shoreline across from Kowloon from as far east as one can see to as far west. Kowloon, too, is a city of tall office buildings and hotels. And Nathan Rd, the once seedy street of knock-off vendors is becoming a little like 5th Avenue with Times Square’s neon. It’s all still a fascinating, exciting city. But I can’t call it “charming” anymore.
The first thing I did after the ship cleared customs was look for a store that sold electronics. I needed a new camera now that my JVC camcorder is completely useless (memo to self: do not buy a JVC anything if sort-term plans include travel outside the US. The camcorder is now a boat anchor, and JVC refuses to provide any warrantee coverage since the “malfunction” occurred outside the US. This for a camera built in Malaysia by a Japanese company.) So, accompanied by Anne, I left the ship and headed for a nearby Fortress store, which the hospitality desk had recommended as a reliable place to purchase electronic gear. There we looked at several cameras, including the latest model of the Canon that had been stolen. I settled on a Sony camera that takes both stills and HD video, so it can do double duty. I was delighted at the $220 price because I thought it was comparable to a $500 camera I had just looked at. I’ve since discovered that the same camera sells for the same price on Amazon. So I guess it’s true that Hong Kong is no longer the place to get great deals on electronics. That probably reflects the weak US dollar as well.
By the time we finished the purchase and had taken the camera back to the ship, it was almost lunch time. Anne had heard some recommendations for good dim sum restaurants, including one in the IFC shopping center just across from where the ship was docked, adjacent to the Star Ferry landing on the island. So we left the ship, went to the Kowloon ferry landing, scurried around for a few minutes looking for a place to break down our large-bill Hong Kong dollars, fed the necessary HK$2 (about 30 cents) into the machines, and took the Star Ferry across to Hong Kong.
The restaurant that Anne had heard about was fully booked by the time we got there around 1:30pm. So we started a search through the endless aisles and floors of the IFC mall until we finally found a restaurant that a mall guide recommended as an alternative to dim sum. I can’t remember the name—Anne certainly will—but the good sign was the 15 to 20 business people waiting outside the restaurant for a table. They knew what they were doing. After a few-minutes’ wait, we were seated at a table with two professionally dressed women. We ordered a couple of Chinese dishes that I had never heard of before—and can’t remember now—and were treated to one of the most delicious lunches I’ve ever enjoyed. We were the only Westerners in the restaurant.
After lunch, we took a taxi to the base of the Victoria Peak tram—Hong Kong’s answer to the Manitou Springs cog railway that runs up Pike’s Peak—and took the 30-minute train ride up Victoria Peak. The last time I was to the top of the peak, the observation deck was a small, open-air platform. And the nearest buildings were the white-brick buildings halfway down from the top. Today at the top is a 5-story shopping mall surrounded by multi-million-dollar homes, including what is reputed to be the most expensive home in the world, recently priced at just under US1 billion. But the view from the top is still magnificent, down at the city of Hong Kong and across at Kowloon which, today, stretches almost all the way to the New Territories at the border with the PRC.
We spent about 30 minutes walking around the outside viewing deck of the mall. Then we headed back down the tram, and got a taxi for a ride across the island to the town of Stanley and its market. I had been to Stanley several times in the past because it had always been a place to buy “brand name” goods at truly fractions of their US prices. I put “brand name” in quotes because there’s no telling how many were truly Nikes, Izods, Polos, Burberrys, and other well-know names, and how many were either clever knock offs or goods that had, as they say, “fallen off the back of a truck”—i.e., been lifted by sticky-handed entrepreneurs. I was looking especially for a rugby shirt to replace the one I had bought in Stanley 10 years ago during my last Hong Kong visit. That shirt is still in my drawer, showing little wear except for some fading.
I found my shirt—two of them, in fact, though for twice what I had paid in ’99—and Anne bought a few silk scarves—beautiful and inexpensive—as gifts. We then grabbed a taxi and traveled around the island (the cross-island tunnel was blocked with traffic) to the Star Ferry terminal.
That night, Anne and I joined 12 other faculty members at a banquet Maria Chapel arranged at a local restaurant. Maria used to spend many days in Hong Kong when she was a fashion designer and buyer in the 80s. One of her favorite memories of those times were the banquets her hosts would sponsor for visiting buyers, and Maria wanted to share the experience with friends. The dinner was tasty: soup, Peking duck, a noodle dish, rice, wine. And the show—slicing the duck, making the noodles by hand—was interesting. I don’t know that the food was quite worth the price, but the group was fun, and the view across the harbor was excellent.
The next day, I first helped Anne find a hotel room for her last night in Hong Kong. The MV Explorer was sailing at 2300 (11pm), and Anne was flying back to Chicago and on to Baltimore the following morning. We first checked the Kowloon Sheraton, where Bob and Maria were planning to spend the night before heading on their own to Shanghai. But the cost was prohibitive. Instead, we checked with a local tourist help desk, who put Anne in touch with the Hong Kong hotel bureau. They found a hotel for her—the Kowloon Empress, or something like that—that turned out to be brand new and very inexpensive for the city.
After finding a room for Anne, the two of us took the ferry to Hong Kong then moved over to the hydrofoil to Lantau Island. Andi Mitnik, my fellow communication professor, had gone to Lantau the first day in Hong Kong and recommended the trip as a great way to spend Anne’s final day of vacation. The recommendation was spot on. Lantau is a beautiful, mountainous island just a 30-minute boat ride from the teeming masses of Hong Kong and Kowloon. I had never visited before, so the trip to the island and the bus ride from the small port to the island’s most notable landmark, the Giant Buddha, was a brand new experience for both of us.
The day was alternately cloudy, sunny, misty, and rainy, and as we rode the bus higher into the mountains of Lantau, we started going in and out of the low-hanging clouds. By the time we reached the village at the base of the mountaintop where the Buddha sits, the air was heavy with mist. And the statue—truly giant in scale, sitting at the top of a 252-step stairway—alternately moved in and out of the mist as the low-hanging clouds drifted by. It was an other-worldly sight.
We climbed the 252 steps then walked slowly around the massive Buddha, sitting placidly on his bed of lotus leaves and surrounded by statues of devoted attendants. We then walked down the stairs and over to the nearby monastery, where a lone monk was lighting candles and tidying up around a spectacular shrine of gold statues, hanging lamps, and magnificent red-and-gold chandeliers. I took many pictures; only they can show the beauty of the place, and even they don’t come close.
We left the monastery, passing many followers lighting incense to honor their ancestors, and walked through the tourist village to the bus stop. The only route to the bus stop is, of course, past the souvenir shops of the village. All religions rely for a good part of their financing on the sale of tchatchies. Buddhists are no different than Catholics in that regard.
Anne and I took the 40-minute bus ride back to the Lantau port, arriving just in time to hop onto the hydrofoil back to Hong Kong Island. It had been a great way to spend her last day as a voyageur, and it was an opportunity to see a part of Hong Kong that I didn’t know exists. Lantau is where the new Hong Kong airport is located, sitting on landfill on the north bank of the island. That’s all that most people passing through Hong Kong see of Lantau, missing the beautiful beaches and lush, green mountains of the island’s interior. Next time, I want to go back and see some of the small villages on the far west end that, according got the guide books, are the last remnants of a quiet rural life now almost disappeared—similar to the junks and sanpans of Aberdeen.
Anne and I had dinner together at a restaurant in the mall adjoining the Kowloon dock where the MV Explorer was parked. We took one more walk around the deck of the ship to admire the incredible Hong Kong skyline at night. Then Anne left the ship at 9pm, and we sailed at 11pm. I stayed up until 12:30 to watch the lights go by and disappear as we left the harbor. Hard to imagine that the city could grow even more before I see it again. But the growth doesn’t seem to stop. I’m looking forward to going back.
The 3-day trip to Shanghai was rough, and the weather turned increasingly cold and windy the closer we came to the mouth of the Yangtze River. I spent most of the time grading the formal reports of my business comm. students and enjoying the quiet of the ship. Of the almost 700 students, faculty, staff, and lifelong learners, only 100 sailed from Hong Kong to Shanghai. The rest were “overlanders” (as Chinese immigration referred to them), folks who traveled by land between the two cities, most of them stopping to see sights like the terracotta warriors, the Forbidden City, the countryside of rural China, and, of course, the Great Wall. Despite the near-record cold and snow that hit China during our visit, many of the students even camped atop the wall—literally on the snow and ice—near the same villages where I had hiked in ’99: Simitai and Jingshanling. When they rejoined us in Shanghai, they all agreed that it had been an incredibly exhilarating but incredibly cold, once-in-lifetime experience. I liked hiking in the warmth of summer.
As usual, we arrived in Shanghai exactly on time at 0800, the morning of 15 November.
More to come.
17 November 2009
Day 86--enroute to Yokohama
17 November. 31°20’N, 121°33’E. Speed: 5.1 knots. Course: generally north
We’re slowly plying our way down the Huangpu River enroute to the mouth of the Yangzi and, eventually, into the East China Sea. We delayed our departure from Shanghai for 20 hours because of forecast rough weather once we leave the Yangzi. Captain Jeremy feels we’d be better off going at close-to-top speed through the rough waters because the stabilizers work more efficiently when they’re moving quickly through the water. We’ll see. Meanwhile, we’re battening down the hatches, lashing the books into the library shelves, putting the wine into cabinets, and preparing for what could be a restless night.
Shanghai is an amazingly modern, vast, fast-paced, incredible place of tall buildings, upscale cars, and well-dressed people. I had a sense, walking through the streets of Shanghai, of what visitors to the U.S. must have felt 40 and 50 years ago: “what a place!” I’ve seen the future, and, no doubt, the future is China.
But, back to Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh (Saigon)
After what the Vietnamese refer to as the “reunification” of 1975, Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City to honor “Uncle Ho,” who is still revered as a near-god in the country. The central region of the city is called Saigon, and most Vietnamese still refer to the entire city—at least privately—as Saigon. We all kept going back and forth while we were in Vietnam, but “Saigon” was certainly the default.
We arrived at Tan Son Nhat airport on time, then waited about 30 minutes for a van large enough to carry the 5 of us plus bags and golf clubs back to the ship. The trip to the port took another hour because of heavy traffic and several wrong turns by our driver, who kept wanting to take us to a dock from where local river-cruise boats departed. Finally, we made it back to the ship by 10:30 or so, and were back off the ship and taxiing into the city by 11:15.
Bob stayed onboard to wait for Maria to return from her trip to Cambodia and Angkor Wat. Jim and Shamim wanted to stay onboard for a while to settle in from the previous days’ travels, so Anne and I headed into the city alone, armed with maps and guidebooks.
Our first stop was the Rex Hotel, where we asked for a detailed map and directions to the closest store that sells eyeglasses. While in Dalat, I had lost my clear glasses at the Royal Palace Golf Club. I had gone into the bathroom to wash my face after our round of golf, placing my glasses on the shelf above the sink. I walked out without putting them back on, and when, 5 minutes later, I went back to get them, they were gone. I figured some employee of the club had picked up the glasses and turned them in to the front desk. But no such luck. I checked with other golfers, and no one claimed to have seen them. Finally, I reconciled to the fact that they were probably on their way to a used-glasses-frame shop somewhere on the streets of Dalat. An expensive, careless loss.
I brought along a spare pair of glasses, but Anne convinced me that I should have another pair of reading glasses made as back-up, so that was a priority for the day. We also asked at the Rex for a recommendation of a good pho restaurant. Pho (pronounced “fuh”) is a Vietnamese soup/stew, served as a very hot broth with meat, fresh vegetables, and lots of noodles. It’s the Vietnamese equivalent of ramen, but much tastier and richer.
The concierge at the Rex recommended “Pho 24,” a chain of restaurants in Vietnam, with a store only a couple of blocks away. Anne had set a goal of “eating pho by 11,” and we were in the restaurant with bowls of pho in front of us by 11:30. The recommendation had been spot-on: the pho was wonderful, filling, and, accompanied by a bottle of Tiger beer, a perfect lunch.
After lunch, we headed down Huynh Thuc Khang, looking for the Temple restaurant, which looked like a promising place for our final dinner in Vietnam. I misspoke when I said we had my birthday dinner at The Temple restaurant in Hanoi. That restaurant was called the Tiger Lily, or something like that. The Temple was highly rated by Frommer’s and, indeed, looked attractive, and the menu was reasonable. So we made the reservation.
Anne and I then headed to Than Ton Le street, where the Rex concierge had told us we could find several shops that would make glasses quickly. I found one, the proprietor scanned my sunglasses for a correct prescription, we negotiated a price—US$30 for the pair—and paid a deposit, saying we’d return in a couple of hours to pick up the finished pair.
Our next stop was Ben Thanh market, an enclosed area the size of a large city block that holds hundreds of stalls selling everything from fresh fish to men’s tailored suits. Each shop is staffed by 2 or 3 entrepreneurs who glom onto anyone who pauses for just a moment to admire a scarf or tie or small toy. But the Vietnamese merchants are very different from the ones we encountered in Ghana, Morocco, and India, where “no thanks” is an unacceptable answer. The Vietnamese will pursue after the first “no,” but the second, stronger-yet-polite “no thanks” gets a smile and small bow response, then release. They don’t cling and follow you down the row of stalls.
We spent about an hour buying gifts and chatchkies for very little money, then left the market and headed toward the War Remnants Museum a few blocks to the north.
The streets of Saigon are very clean. I could see the old, 3-story, French-style buildings that had been so common in the pictures from Saigon during the war. Many had been freshly painted. And many had been replaced by modern buildings and storefronts selling the same kinds of consumer goods one can find along the streets of Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles: fine watches, the latest fashions, modern home appliances, and, of course, electronic gadgets. The communists may be in charge of the Vietnam government, but the capitalists are clearly in charge of the streets.
The War Remnants Museum is located in the old US Information Agency headquarters. The grounds of the museum house what we’re supposed to believe is captured US equipment. In fact, the Huey helicopter, the M1A armored personnel carrier, the 50-caliber machine gun, the many-millimeter cannon, and other jetsam from the war were left behind by the Army when it went home in 1973-’74. But the two aircraft—an F5 fighter and an A-37 attack aircraft—had actually been part of the South Vietnamese Air Force. Not wanting to acknowledge the fact that the war, ultimately, was Vietnamese vs. Vietnamese, the museum had repainted the two aircraft and applied some homemade US Air Force decals. But the decals weren’t in quite the right places, and a few misspellings (“open lach for rescue”) should have been clues that this “captured US warmaking equipment” was, in fact, just abandoned Vietnamese equipment. The other visitors didn’t seem to notice the difference.
The inside of the museum displayed photos from the war, emphasizing especially the “war crimes” committed against the Vietnamese people. The iconic photos—the little girl running naked from her napalmed village; the captured VC being assassinated on a Saigon street by the chief of police—were all there, of course. Likewise were photos and detailed descriptions of My Lai and the incident confessed to by Bob Kerry several years ago. Of course, the museum didn’t include pictures of North Vietnamese or VC atrocities. I kept thinking as we walked through the museum, “the victors get to write the history.” And this is the Vietnamese version of the war’s history.
The museum also contained some beautiful, moving photography taken by various photojournalists during the war, many of them killed in action. These had no particular political slant, only a clear documentation of the violence and destruction of those years.
We left the War Remnants Museum and walked back south toward the Rex, stopping for a walk-through of the old Presidential Palace, now know as Reunification Hall. It’s maintained very much the way it was in April, 1975, when the North army’s tanks rammed through the gates and then-President Thieu and his family escaped via US helicopter, landing eventually in Orange County, California, where I think he opened a 7-11. The museum curators claim that the furniture in the museum is the original presidential furniture, though the Frommer’s guide says the palace was ransacked in ’75, and everything there now is faux Thieu. Whatever the case, the place is very much a throw-back to the ‘60s and ‘70s. And it’s very well maintained. In fact, they were renovating the basement war room, so we weren’t able to visit what would surely have been the most interesting part of the museum. The additional time in the museum might also have prevented what happened after we left the palace.
By now, it was about 4pm, and we decided to head back to the eyeglasses shop to pick up my new glasses then to go to the rooftop bar atop the Rex Hotel for a beer before dinner. We left Reconciliation Hall and turned onto a tree-lined street that, on the map, looked like a shortcut to the glasses shop. In the middle of the block, we noticed a long fence across the street guarding a construction site. On the fence was a picture of the building under construction—what looked like a combination office and condo complex—and the words “Building Happiness.” I said to Anne, “we need a picture of that.”
Anne was carrying my Canon camera because hers had run out of storage space, so we were using mine to take pictures for both our “albums.” She had attached the camera to a purse strap by a carabineer and kept it in the purse tucked under her left arm. The purse strap, in turn, was over her head, resting on her right shoulder, crossing her front and back like a bandolier. So the purse and camera were securely tucked in, just as they tell you to do in the travel guides. Anne took the camera out and, after waiting for some traffic to pass, took a couple pictures of the sign. Then we both turned, and continued walking down the sidewalk, with Anne on the outside, and me on her right.
Almost immediately as I started walking, about a step ahead of Anne, I saw out of the corner of my eye a rider on a motor scooter approaching on the sidewalk between the two of us and the street. We had seen other scooters steering on and off the sidewalk to avoid traffic, so I thought nothing of it. As the rider passed, I heard the squeal of tires and Anne’s high-pitched scream: “Ah!!” I turned to see the rider speeding away, with Anne running behind and gaining on the scooter. Really! She gaining on him! They were both already halfway back down the block.
I knew immediately what had happened: the rider had reached over, grabbed the strap of the purse, and ripped the strap, including purse and camera, off Anne’s shoulder. Then he sped away.
A couple at the end of the block in front of us had seen what happened, and the man yelled in Vietnamese to the other end of the block what I imagine was something like “stop him!” I started running after Anne—though not nearly as fast—yelling to people standing at the far corner, “stop him!” Meanwhile, the rider turned to notice that Anne was actually gaining on him. Then I heard the engine rev, his tires squeal once more, and the scooter and raider raced to the end of the block, turned the corner around 3 or 4 pedestrians, and disappeared down the cross street. Anne ran to the end of the block, looked briefly down the cross street, then turned and walked back to where I had stopped.
We were both stunned, Anne particularly, of course. Fortunately, she hadn’t been hurt, though later some bruises appeared on her arm and shoulder from where the purse strap had been snapped away. Other than the camera, the purse contained only a few dollars in Vietnamese dong, a copy of Anne’s passport (the original was safely aboard the ship), a credit card, and her i.d. card for getting back onboard the ship and into her cabin. All but the camera could be replaced. And I had downloaded to my computer many pictures during the flight to Saigon that morning. So we lost only some of the first pictures in Hanoi—including the Long Bien Bridge—and all the pictures we had taken that day in Saigon. Of course, the most severe damage was to Anne’s emotional state, and it took her a good day or two to recover from the trauma.
We continued walking to the glasses shop, where I picked up the new reading glasses. Then we went immediately to the Rex, where Anne was able to cajole the desk clerk into letting her call her credit card company to report the stolen card. That important responsibility taken care of, we immediately headed for the rooftop bar.
The bar looked like the MV Explorer annex. When we arrived, several tables were occupied by fellow passengers. And as I looked around, I saw Jim and Shamim sitting at a table overlooking Le Loi Street. We walked over to join them and had just ordered drinks when Bob and Maria Chapel showed up. So the 6 of us spent the next hour or so commiserating over stolen cameras and glasses while dousing the trauma with a few Tiger beers.
We talked the other 4 into joining us for dinner at The Temple, and that evening the six of us had a very nice final meal in Saigon talking about the terrific time and adventures we’d all had in Vietnam—and drowning some of the emotional scars.
We left Saigon Sunday morning, November 8th, sailed back down the Saigon River, and headed out into the South China Sea for the trip to Hong Kong.
Vietnam was the port I had been most looking forward to, and it exceeded my expectations . . . by a very long shot. It’s incredible to me that this little country has been able to come so far with so very little help from the outside. Unlike Germany and Japan after WWII, Vietnam had no Marshall Plan to draw on. And what help they were able to receive first from Russia then from China was minimal because of the economic changes those two countries have gone through over the past 30 years.
Instead, the Vietnamese are today a still-developing-but-thriving economy largely through hard work and pluck. Someone going back to Saigon today would probably recognize a few familiar places. But those places would be in the shadows of new hotels, office buildings, and shiny apartment buildings: “building happiness.” The streets are full of motorscooters—a few sidewalks as well—but they’re also crowded with Camrys, Passats, BMWs, and Lexuses.
This is still a communist country, as the hammer and sickle on buildings and flagposts reminded us. But it’s communism on steroids; 21st century communism, which looks an awful lot like capitalism. It will be interesting to see what kind of political movements arise with the rising middle class of Vietnam. But right now it seems as if the people are saying, “I’m doing just fine, thanks. No sense rocking the boat.”
The 3-day crossing to Hong Kong was full of lesson-prep, teaching, and a few student conferences. The seas were exceptionally smooth, the weather perfect. We pulled into the spectacular Hong Kong harbor right on time, docking in Kowloon adjacent to the Star Ferry terminal at precisely 8am on November 11th, Veterans Day. But that’s all for now. Hong Kong and Shanghai blogging sometime over the next two days, between more grading, lesson prep, and teaching.
We’re slowly plying our way down the Huangpu River enroute to the mouth of the Yangzi and, eventually, into the East China Sea. We delayed our departure from Shanghai for 20 hours because of forecast rough weather once we leave the Yangzi. Captain Jeremy feels we’d be better off going at close-to-top speed through the rough waters because the stabilizers work more efficiently when they’re moving quickly through the water. We’ll see. Meanwhile, we’re battening down the hatches, lashing the books into the library shelves, putting the wine into cabinets, and preparing for what could be a restless night.
Shanghai is an amazingly modern, vast, fast-paced, incredible place of tall buildings, upscale cars, and well-dressed people. I had a sense, walking through the streets of Shanghai, of what visitors to the U.S. must have felt 40 and 50 years ago: “what a place!” I’ve seen the future, and, no doubt, the future is China.
But, back to Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh (Saigon)
After what the Vietnamese refer to as the “reunification” of 1975, Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City to honor “Uncle Ho,” who is still revered as a near-god in the country. The central region of the city is called Saigon, and most Vietnamese still refer to the entire city—at least privately—as Saigon. We all kept going back and forth while we were in Vietnam, but “Saigon” was certainly the default.
We arrived at Tan Son Nhat airport on time, then waited about 30 minutes for a van large enough to carry the 5 of us plus bags and golf clubs back to the ship. The trip to the port took another hour because of heavy traffic and several wrong turns by our driver, who kept wanting to take us to a dock from where local river-cruise boats departed. Finally, we made it back to the ship by 10:30 or so, and were back off the ship and taxiing into the city by 11:15.
Bob stayed onboard to wait for Maria to return from her trip to Cambodia and Angkor Wat. Jim and Shamim wanted to stay onboard for a while to settle in from the previous days’ travels, so Anne and I headed into the city alone, armed with maps and guidebooks.
Our first stop was the Rex Hotel, where we asked for a detailed map and directions to the closest store that sells eyeglasses. While in Dalat, I had lost my clear glasses at the Royal Palace Golf Club. I had gone into the bathroom to wash my face after our round of golf, placing my glasses on the shelf above the sink. I walked out without putting them back on, and when, 5 minutes later, I went back to get them, they were gone. I figured some employee of the club had picked up the glasses and turned them in to the front desk. But no such luck. I checked with other golfers, and no one claimed to have seen them. Finally, I reconciled to the fact that they were probably on their way to a used-glasses-frame shop somewhere on the streets of Dalat. An expensive, careless loss.
I brought along a spare pair of glasses, but Anne convinced me that I should have another pair of reading glasses made as back-up, so that was a priority for the day. We also asked at the Rex for a recommendation of a good pho restaurant. Pho (pronounced “fuh”) is a Vietnamese soup/stew, served as a very hot broth with meat, fresh vegetables, and lots of noodles. It’s the Vietnamese equivalent of ramen, but much tastier and richer.
The concierge at the Rex recommended “Pho 24,” a chain of restaurants in Vietnam, with a store only a couple of blocks away. Anne had set a goal of “eating pho by 11,” and we were in the restaurant with bowls of pho in front of us by 11:30. The recommendation had been spot-on: the pho was wonderful, filling, and, accompanied by a bottle of Tiger beer, a perfect lunch.
After lunch, we headed down Huynh Thuc Khang, looking for the Temple restaurant, which looked like a promising place for our final dinner in Vietnam. I misspoke when I said we had my birthday dinner at The Temple restaurant in Hanoi. That restaurant was called the Tiger Lily, or something like that. The Temple was highly rated by Frommer’s and, indeed, looked attractive, and the menu was reasonable. So we made the reservation.
Anne and I then headed to Than Ton Le street, where the Rex concierge had told us we could find several shops that would make glasses quickly. I found one, the proprietor scanned my sunglasses for a correct prescription, we negotiated a price—US$30 for the pair—and paid a deposit, saying we’d return in a couple of hours to pick up the finished pair.
Our next stop was Ben Thanh market, an enclosed area the size of a large city block that holds hundreds of stalls selling everything from fresh fish to men’s tailored suits. Each shop is staffed by 2 or 3 entrepreneurs who glom onto anyone who pauses for just a moment to admire a scarf or tie or small toy. But the Vietnamese merchants are very different from the ones we encountered in Ghana, Morocco, and India, where “no thanks” is an unacceptable answer. The Vietnamese will pursue after the first “no,” but the second, stronger-yet-polite “no thanks” gets a smile and small bow response, then release. They don’t cling and follow you down the row of stalls.
We spent about an hour buying gifts and chatchkies for very little money, then left the market and headed toward the War Remnants Museum a few blocks to the north.
The streets of Saigon are very clean. I could see the old, 3-story, French-style buildings that had been so common in the pictures from Saigon during the war. Many had been freshly painted. And many had been replaced by modern buildings and storefronts selling the same kinds of consumer goods one can find along the streets of Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles: fine watches, the latest fashions, modern home appliances, and, of course, electronic gadgets. The communists may be in charge of the Vietnam government, but the capitalists are clearly in charge of the streets.
The War Remnants Museum is located in the old US Information Agency headquarters. The grounds of the museum house what we’re supposed to believe is captured US equipment. In fact, the Huey helicopter, the M1A armored personnel carrier, the 50-caliber machine gun, the many-millimeter cannon, and other jetsam from the war were left behind by the Army when it went home in 1973-’74. But the two aircraft—an F5 fighter and an A-37 attack aircraft—had actually been part of the South Vietnamese Air Force. Not wanting to acknowledge the fact that the war, ultimately, was Vietnamese vs. Vietnamese, the museum had repainted the two aircraft and applied some homemade US Air Force decals. But the decals weren’t in quite the right places, and a few misspellings (“open lach for rescue”) should have been clues that this “captured US warmaking equipment” was, in fact, just abandoned Vietnamese equipment. The other visitors didn’t seem to notice the difference.
The inside of the museum displayed photos from the war, emphasizing especially the “war crimes” committed against the Vietnamese people. The iconic photos—the little girl running naked from her napalmed village; the captured VC being assassinated on a Saigon street by the chief of police—were all there, of course. Likewise were photos and detailed descriptions of My Lai and the incident confessed to by Bob Kerry several years ago. Of course, the museum didn’t include pictures of North Vietnamese or VC atrocities. I kept thinking as we walked through the museum, “the victors get to write the history.” And this is the Vietnamese version of the war’s history.
The museum also contained some beautiful, moving photography taken by various photojournalists during the war, many of them killed in action. These had no particular political slant, only a clear documentation of the violence and destruction of those years.
We left the War Remnants Museum and walked back south toward the Rex, stopping for a walk-through of the old Presidential Palace, now know as Reunification Hall. It’s maintained very much the way it was in April, 1975, when the North army’s tanks rammed through the gates and then-President Thieu and his family escaped via US helicopter, landing eventually in Orange County, California, where I think he opened a 7-11. The museum curators claim that the furniture in the museum is the original presidential furniture, though the Frommer’s guide says the palace was ransacked in ’75, and everything there now is faux Thieu. Whatever the case, the place is very much a throw-back to the ‘60s and ‘70s. And it’s very well maintained. In fact, they were renovating the basement war room, so we weren’t able to visit what would surely have been the most interesting part of the museum. The additional time in the museum might also have prevented what happened after we left the palace.
By now, it was about 4pm, and we decided to head back to the eyeglasses shop to pick up my new glasses then to go to the rooftop bar atop the Rex Hotel for a beer before dinner. We left Reconciliation Hall and turned onto a tree-lined street that, on the map, looked like a shortcut to the glasses shop. In the middle of the block, we noticed a long fence across the street guarding a construction site. On the fence was a picture of the building under construction—what looked like a combination office and condo complex—and the words “Building Happiness.” I said to Anne, “we need a picture of that.”
Anne was carrying my Canon camera because hers had run out of storage space, so we were using mine to take pictures for both our “albums.” She had attached the camera to a purse strap by a carabineer and kept it in the purse tucked under her left arm. The purse strap, in turn, was over her head, resting on her right shoulder, crossing her front and back like a bandolier. So the purse and camera were securely tucked in, just as they tell you to do in the travel guides. Anne took the camera out and, after waiting for some traffic to pass, took a couple pictures of the sign. Then we both turned, and continued walking down the sidewalk, with Anne on the outside, and me on her right.
Almost immediately as I started walking, about a step ahead of Anne, I saw out of the corner of my eye a rider on a motor scooter approaching on the sidewalk between the two of us and the street. We had seen other scooters steering on and off the sidewalk to avoid traffic, so I thought nothing of it. As the rider passed, I heard the squeal of tires and Anne’s high-pitched scream: “Ah!!” I turned to see the rider speeding away, with Anne running behind and gaining on the scooter. Really! She gaining on him! They were both already halfway back down the block.
I knew immediately what had happened: the rider had reached over, grabbed the strap of the purse, and ripped the strap, including purse and camera, off Anne’s shoulder. Then he sped away.
A couple at the end of the block in front of us had seen what happened, and the man yelled in Vietnamese to the other end of the block what I imagine was something like “stop him!” I started running after Anne—though not nearly as fast—yelling to people standing at the far corner, “stop him!” Meanwhile, the rider turned to notice that Anne was actually gaining on him. Then I heard the engine rev, his tires squeal once more, and the scooter and raider raced to the end of the block, turned the corner around 3 or 4 pedestrians, and disappeared down the cross street. Anne ran to the end of the block, looked briefly down the cross street, then turned and walked back to where I had stopped.
We were both stunned, Anne particularly, of course. Fortunately, she hadn’t been hurt, though later some bruises appeared on her arm and shoulder from where the purse strap had been snapped away. Other than the camera, the purse contained only a few dollars in Vietnamese dong, a copy of Anne’s passport (the original was safely aboard the ship), a credit card, and her i.d. card for getting back onboard the ship and into her cabin. All but the camera could be replaced. And I had downloaded to my computer many pictures during the flight to Saigon that morning. So we lost only some of the first pictures in Hanoi—including the Long Bien Bridge—and all the pictures we had taken that day in Saigon. Of course, the most severe damage was to Anne’s emotional state, and it took her a good day or two to recover from the trauma.
We continued walking to the glasses shop, where I picked up the new reading glasses. Then we went immediately to the Rex, where Anne was able to cajole the desk clerk into letting her call her credit card company to report the stolen card. That important responsibility taken care of, we immediately headed for the rooftop bar.
The bar looked like the MV Explorer annex. When we arrived, several tables were occupied by fellow passengers. And as I looked around, I saw Jim and Shamim sitting at a table overlooking Le Loi Street. We walked over to join them and had just ordered drinks when Bob and Maria Chapel showed up. So the 6 of us spent the next hour or so commiserating over stolen cameras and glasses while dousing the trauma with a few Tiger beers.
We talked the other 4 into joining us for dinner at The Temple, and that evening the six of us had a very nice final meal in Saigon talking about the terrific time and adventures we’d all had in Vietnam—and drowning some of the emotional scars.
We left Saigon Sunday morning, November 8th, sailed back down the Saigon River, and headed out into the South China Sea for the trip to Hong Kong.
Vietnam was the port I had been most looking forward to, and it exceeded my expectations . . . by a very long shot. It’s incredible to me that this little country has been able to come so far with so very little help from the outside. Unlike Germany and Japan after WWII, Vietnam had no Marshall Plan to draw on. And what help they were able to receive first from Russia then from China was minimal because of the economic changes those two countries have gone through over the past 30 years.
Instead, the Vietnamese are today a still-developing-but-thriving economy largely through hard work and pluck. Someone going back to Saigon today would probably recognize a few familiar places. But those places would be in the shadows of new hotels, office buildings, and shiny apartment buildings: “building happiness.” The streets are full of motorscooters—a few sidewalks as well—but they’re also crowded with Camrys, Passats, BMWs, and Lexuses.
This is still a communist country, as the hammer and sickle on buildings and flagposts reminded us. But it’s communism on steroids; 21st century communism, which looks an awful lot like capitalism. It will be interesting to see what kind of political movements arise with the rising middle class of Vietnam. But right now it seems as if the people are saying, “I’m doing just fine, thanks. No sense rocking the boat.”
The 3-day crossing to Hong Kong was full of lesson-prep, teaching, and a few student conferences. The seas were exceptionally smooth, the weather perfect. We pulled into the spectacular Hong Kong harbor right on time, docking in Kowloon adjacent to the Star Ferry terminal at precisely 8am on November 11th, Veterans Day. But that’s all for now. Hong Kong and Shanghai blogging sometime over the next two days, between more grading, lesson prep, and teaching.
14 November 2009
Day 83--Off the coast of China en route to Shanghai
13 November. 30°39’ N, 123° 18’ E. Course: 343°. Speed 20 knots.
The seas have been rough and the skies very grey ever since we left Hong Kong. Last night, in particular, the ship was rocking from stem to stern in 20+-knot winds and rain. And the temperature has fallen considerably. It’s now in the mid 50s (F) outside, and water temperature has fallen to just 70°. I remember: it’s November.
But the 100 of us who didn’t travel into the interior of China but, instead, stayed aboard MV Explorer, are staying warm and having a fine time aboard what feels almost like a private yacht. The last two evenings we’ve had table-service dinner, a wonderful break from the cafeteria-style dorm food we’ve grown used to. And the days have been very quiet, allowing me to plow through 16 formal reports from my business comm. students. They require about 30 minutes each, so I’ve spent at least 8 hours over the last couple of days reading why a sandwich shop should or shouldn’t consider expanding into one of the countries we’ve visited. This is what I get paid to do.
But back to Vietnam.
Dalat
When we heard that our Vietnam Airlines flight had been cancelled, the 5 of us started considering options: trying an earlier flight (nothing available); renting a car and driver (way too far); flying through Ho Chi Minh (nothing available). Anne and I, as seasoned business travelers, started considering wider options, like flying to an alternate destination. I knew, for example, that Nha Trang was only a hundred miles or so, as the crow flies, from Dalat, so I suggested flying there and hiring a car to take us the rest of the way. But we found that the only flight to Nha Trang left at 0700 Thursday morning, and it was already too late to book seats on the next-morning’s flight.
Jim, Bob, and Shamim decided to bag an alternative and wait it out in Hanoi for the late flight. But Anne and I both wanted to get to Dalat with some time left in the day to see the place and the wonderful hotel we had all booked into. So I checked the Nha Trang flight’s load for Friday morning and, finding plenty of seats available, Anne and I decided to chance an early trip to the airport to stand by for the flight.
Thursday morning, Anne and I checked out of the hotel and hopped into a cab at 4:30am for the drive to Hanoi airport. The drive was easy, and getting on the flight was equally easy. At 7am, we took off for Nha Trang. We hadn’t made any arrangements for a driver in Nha Trang, but we had called the hotel from the airport, and the concierge there said that getting a ride to Dalat should be no problem and would likely cost us about $60. Fair price.
We arrived at Cam Rhan/Nha Trang airport about 8:30am Thursday morning. This was the same airstrip I had flown into in 1970 on my first day in Vietnam, as I was trying to work my way to my base at Tuy Hoa, about 50 miles north. The new airport hadn’t been there in 1970, of course. Instead, Cam Rhan airfield was adjacent to Cam Rhan Bay, the U.S. Navy’s principal port during the war. One building remained from the old US installation: what looked like an office building of some sort, close to the original ramp. Otherwise, Cam Rhan looked as I remembered it when, in February 1970, I sat on the sand dunes with my F4 hosts watching the movie “Gypsy Moths,” a story of the folks who specialize in putting out oil-rig fires. As I watched that movie on the beach, I’d glance over occasionally across the bay to the Army replacement center, where the Viet Cong were greeting the new soldiers with mortar fire. That was my introduction to the war.
Today, that same airstrip is connected to the resort town of Nha Trang by a 4-lane highway designed to take tourists from their airplanes to one of the several resorts that are already operating or, according to the many billboards lining the highway, soon will be operating on the beaches of Nha Trang.
Anne and I found a driver almost as soon as we stepped off the plane. He quoted us a price of 150,000 dong (about $75) for what he said would be a 3- to 4-hour drive on the new road that had just opened connecting Nha Trang to Dalat. The bags arrived quickly, and by 9:00am, we were in the car driving the short distance to Nha Trang.
During the war, Nha Trang was the site of a large Army post, as I recall. Today, it’s a resort village. It sits on a beautiful bay ringed by white-sand beaches. Unfortunately, those beaches were littered with refuse blown about by typhoon Mirinae, which had come ashore here just two days earlier and had caused considerable damage. Still, it was clear to see that Nha Trang is rapidly developing into a major beach resort. One large development—Diamond Bay—is already open, complete with golf course, hotel, and condominiums. Several other resorts are under development.
Forty years ago, I would think to myself how beautiful the Vietnamese beaches are and how fortunate some future developers would be to get first rights to beach-front property. It’s all happening now.
We stopped in Nha Trang to get some cash and water. As Anne and I returned to the car, our driver, who had been on his cellphone while we were working the ATM machine, stopped us and announced that the new highway to Dalat had been closed because of fallen trees left by Mirinae. The only route available was “the old road,” which was almost 100km and 90 minutes longer. What’s more, the extra distance would raise the cost of the ride to about US$100. Of course, we couldn’t argue, and we had no way to validate the story—given the damage we saw in Nha Trang, the story was probably true—so we agreed to the price. We transferred to a different car, this one an SUV with high clearance, and headed south on highway 1 for what turned out to be the 5-hour drive to Dalat.
The new road to Dalat cuts a swath through the jungle and up the mountains in almost a straight line from Nha Trang. If that route were the hypotenuse of a triangle, the old route forms the right angle. It starts with a 100km ride south along highway 1 through Cam Ranh to the town of Phan Rang. At Phan Rang, the route leaves highway 1 and heads west into the mountains for another 130km or so, up the mountains and into the resort in the Central Highlands.
The ride along highway 1 was smooth and fairly fast. The highway is the main north-south road in Vietnam, running along the coast from the Mekong Delta all the way to the Chinese border in the north. The stretch we were on was smooth, well paved, heavily traveled, but fast moving. We averaged 60 to 80 kph on this segment. We passed through the city of Cam Ranh and crossed over a narrow isthmus separating the mouth of a river from Cam Ranh Bay. There we could see remnants of the old Naval base along with the large cranes I’ve come to recognize as signs of major ports. Where destroyers and carriers might have been anchored 40 years ago, large freighters were tied up waiting for dock space to load or unload their containers. It’s clearly a bustling port.
From Cam Ranh, we continued down highway 1 to Phan Rang. Somewhere outside of Phan Rang was the air base where the 35th Tactical Fighter Wing—sister unit of the 31st wing at Tuy Hoa—had been located during the war. I spent one night at Phan Rang sometime during the summer of ’70 when my flight of 2 F-100s was diverted because of thunderstorms over Tuy Hoa. That was the night I watched a squadron commander being locked into an ice-making machine, had the Velcro patches eaten off my flight suit, had that same flight suit ripped almost entirely in half by a nameless fellow pilot, and spent a short night in a bunk bed before getting up early the next morning and, with far too little sleep and far too few hours ‘tween bottle and throttle, climbed back into my airplane for a brief but painful flight back to my home base.
Phan Rang is bustling today, and I didn’t see any remnants of the old air base. I took several pictures as we pulled through town, thinking that some former 35TFW folks—Roger?—might recognize a storefront or traffic circle . . . assuming they had ever gone into town during the war. What they wouldn’t recognize were the decorative banners on the light posts, alternately displaying the yellow star on red background of the Vietnamese flag, and the hammer and sickle of the communist party. It’s as if the government must constantly remind the Vietnamese people, going about their business of doing business and making money, that they still live in a communist country. Without the occasional reminders on street lamps and public buildings, it would be impossible to tell this is a communist country amidst the bustling shops, ever-present commercialism, and new construction in all directions.
The 3-hour ride up the bumpy, pot-holed, sometimes-dirt “old route” made it clear why they’d built a new highway. But the scenery was spectacular! We wound back and forth through villages, past rice fields, and up the mountainsides lined with the stair-step patterns of cultivated fields. It was like passing through the pages of a National Geographic pictorial on Southeast Asia. And, as we went higher and higher, the images I remember of Vietnam—lush jungles, small villages, the sharp peaks of karst jutting out of the mountainsides—came back. I was looking down on the same country that, 40 years ago, I had seen from almost the identical vantage point. The only thing missing—thankfully—were the occasional swaths of bombed-out jungle left over from earlier B-52 missions, and the burned scars from napalm and high-explosives. The jungle had reclaimed the land.
I was battling a bad head cold all day, so one of my memories will certainly be seeing all that we passed through weeping eyes and bunched up Kleenex. But Anne provided an excellent narrative and didn’t seem distracted by my constant sneezing and blowing.
We pulled into Dalat about 2:30pm, right around the time we would have arrived had our flight from Hanoi not been cancelled. So the early-morning get-up and the risk of standing by for a flight (the US$13 change fee was well worth it!) had paid off handsomely. Not only had we arrived as planned, but we had enjoyed what will certainly be one of the highlights of the entire voyage: the drive.
Dalat is a beautiful town surrounded by forest and mountains. It sits at almost 5,000’ elevation, about the same as Denver. And the flora resembles the trees of the Colorado mountains, minus the aspens: lots of pine and low scrub, but also lots of bright flowers because, of course, Dalat sits on a far more tropical latitude. The weather was cool and partly cloudy as we pulled up to the Dalat Palace Hotel, a 1920’s vintage French resort that Jim and Shamim had targeted. The place is sheer elegance in the old European sense: high ceilings, overstuffed furniture, oil paintings, claw-foot baths, and ever-present staff. It even has a 1930s-era Citroen limousine parked in front and available for chartered drives around town.
By the time we arrived, my cold was in full blossom. Anne and I took a short walk down to the large lake in the center of town and had a couple of beers at a gazebo-like café. Dalat is a honeymoon destination for Vietnamese, so, in addition to the classic French elements, it also contains a lot of Niagara-Falls-like kitsch. Anchored to the café dock were two-person pedal boats shaped like large swans. And we saw several couples on the lake pedaling their birds around the lake. Romantic.
I wasn’t going to be long for the world, feeling the way I was. So Anne and I decided on an early dinner at a restaurant just down the block from the hotel. After the dinner, a final glass of wine, and more drugs than my doctor would have advised, I was in bed by 9pm and asleep within seconds. That was probably the best night’s sleep I’d had since August.
Friday morning, I woke feeling drowsy and drugged. But we had a 9:30am tee time at the Royal Palace Golf Club. Through the haze, I got up, dressed, and went downstairs to the dining room, where Jim and Bob had already ordered breakfast. They and Shamim had arrived at the hotel around 10pm Thursday after a full day in Hanoi. They had some regrets they hadn’t joined Anne and me when they heard about the drive from Nha Trang. But those thoughts took second place to the upcoming round of golf.
I’ll say only that the golf was terrific. The course is old style: wide fairways, strategically placed yet natural trees, plenty of water lining and crossing fairways, beautifully maintained fairways and rough, and, without question, the finest greens I’ve seen: absolutely true with just enough undulation to make every putt a makeable challenge. Best of all were the female caddies, each wearing the traditional straw hat, each with expert eyes to read the greens and advise where to hit our shots, and each very supportive, even applauding good shots and feigning sadness when we missed. It was the most fun I’d had on the golf course since last summer, made even better by my playing a decent round and besting Bob by 9 strokes. Life is good.
That night, the 5 of us had a good dinner in the Dalat Palace dining room—not our best meal, but okay. The next morning, we were all up early again to catch an 8:05 flight back to Ho Chi Minh. The early flight was a little painful, but it would mean we’d have a full day to see the sights of Saigon before having to be back onboard by 9:00pm.
I’ll post this now and continue with the day in Saigon tomorrow.
The seas have been rough and the skies very grey ever since we left Hong Kong. Last night, in particular, the ship was rocking from stem to stern in 20+-knot winds and rain. And the temperature has fallen considerably. It’s now in the mid 50s (F) outside, and water temperature has fallen to just 70°. I remember: it’s November.
But the 100 of us who didn’t travel into the interior of China but, instead, stayed aboard MV Explorer, are staying warm and having a fine time aboard what feels almost like a private yacht. The last two evenings we’ve had table-service dinner, a wonderful break from the cafeteria-style dorm food we’ve grown used to. And the days have been very quiet, allowing me to plow through 16 formal reports from my business comm. students. They require about 30 minutes each, so I’ve spent at least 8 hours over the last couple of days reading why a sandwich shop should or shouldn’t consider expanding into one of the countries we’ve visited. This is what I get paid to do.
But back to Vietnam.
Dalat
When we heard that our Vietnam Airlines flight had been cancelled, the 5 of us started considering options: trying an earlier flight (nothing available); renting a car and driver (way too far); flying through Ho Chi Minh (nothing available). Anne and I, as seasoned business travelers, started considering wider options, like flying to an alternate destination. I knew, for example, that Nha Trang was only a hundred miles or so, as the crow flies, from Dalat, so I suggested flying there and hiring a car to take us the rest of the way. But we found that the only flight to Nha Trang left at 0700 Thursday morning, and it was already too late to book seats on the next-morning’s flight.
Jim, Bob, and Shamim decided to bag an alternative and wait it out in Hanoi for the late flight. But Anne and I both wanted to get to Dalat with some time left in the day to see the place and the wonderful hotel we had all booked into. So I checked the Nha Trang flight’s load for Friday morning and, finding plenty of seats available, Anne and I decided to chance an early trip to the airport to stand by for the flight.
Thursday morning, Anne and I checked out of the hotel and hopped into a cab at 4:30am for the drive to Hanoi airport. The drive was easy, and getting on the flight was equally easy. At 7am, we took off for Nha Trang. We hadn’t made any arrangements for a driver in Nha Trang, but we had called the hotel from the airport, and the concierge there said that getting a ride to Dalat should be no problem and would likely cost us about $60. Fair price.
We arrived at Cam Rhan/Nha Trang airport about 8:30am Thursday morning. This was the same airstrip I had flown into in 1970 on my first day in Vietnam, as I was trying to work my way to my base at Tuy Hoa, about 50 miles north. The new airport hadn’t been there in 1970, of course. Instead, Cam Rhan airfield was adjacent to Cam Rhan Bay, the U.S. Navy’s principal port during the war. One building remained from the old US installation: what looked like an office building of some sort, close to the original ramp. Otherwise, Cam Rhan looked as I remembered it when, in February 1970, I sat on the sand dunes with my F4 hosts watching the movie “Gypsy Moths,” a story of the folks who specialize in putting out oil-rig fires. As I watched that movie on the beach, I’d glance over occasionally across the bay to the Army replacement center, where the Viet Cong were greeting the new soldiers with mortar fire. That was my introduction to the war.
Today, that same airstrip is connected to the resort town of Nha Trang by a 4-lane highway designed to take tourists from their airplanes to one of the several resorts that are already operating or, according to the many billboards lining the highway, soon will be operating on the beaches of Nha Trang.
Anne and I found a driver almost as soon as we stepped off the plane. He quoted us a price of 150,000 dong (about $75) for what he said would be a 3- to 4-hour drive on the new road that had just opened connecting Nha Trang to Dalat. The bags arrived quickly, and by 9:00am, we were in the car driving the short distance to Nha Trang.
During the war, Nha Trang was the site of a large Army post, as I recall. Today, it’s a resort village. It sits on a beautiful bay ringed by white-sand beaches. Unfortunately, those beaches were littered with refuse blown about by typhoon Mirinae, which had come ashore here just two days earlier and had caused considerable damage. Still, it was clear to see that Nha Trang is rapidly developing into a major beach resort. One large development—Diamond Bay—is already open, complete with golf course, hotel, and condominiums. Several other resorts are under development.
Forty years ago, I would think to myself how beautiful the Vietnamese beaches are and how fortunate some future developers would be to get first rights to beach-front property. It’s all happening now.
We stopped in Nha Trang to get some cash and water. As Anne and I returned to the car, our driver, who had been on his cellphone while we were working the ATM machine, stopped us and announced that the new highway to Dalat had been closed because of fallen trees left by Mirinae. The only route available was “the old road,” which was almost 100km and 90 minutes longer. What’s more, the extra distance would raise the cost of the ride to about US$100. Of course, we couldn’t argue, and we had no way to validate the story—given the damage we saw in Nha Trang, the story was probably true—so we agreed to the price. We transferred to a different car, this one an SUV with high clearance, and headed south on highway 1 for what turned out to be the 5-hour drive to Dalat.
The new road to Dalat cuts a swath through the jungle and up the mountains in almost a straight line from Nha Trang. If that route were the hypotenuse of a triangle, the old route forms the right angle. It starts with a 100km ride south along highway 1 through Cam Ranh to the town of Phan Rang. At Phan Rang, the route leaves highway 1 and heads west into the mountains for another 130km or so, up the mountains and into the resort in the Central Highlands.
The ride along highway 1 was smooth and fairly fast. The highway is the main north-south road in Vietnam, running along the coast from the Mekong Delta all the way to the Chinese border in the north. The stretch we were on was smooth, well paved, heavily traveled, but fast moving. We averaged 60 to 80 kph on this segment. We passed through the city of Cam Ranh and crossed over a narrow isthmus separating the mouth of a river from Cam Ranh Bay. There we could see remnants of the old Naval base along with the large cranes I’ve come to recognize as signs of major ports. Where destroyers and carriers might have been anchored 40 years ago, large freighters were tied up waiting for dock space to load or unload their containers. It’s clearly a bustling port.
From Cam Ranh, we continued down highway 1 to Phan Rang. Somewhere outside of Phan Rang was the air base where the 35th Tactical Fighter Wing—sister unit of the 31st wing at Tuy Hoa—had been located during the war. I spent one night at Phan Rang sometime during the summer of ’70 when my flight of 2 F-100s was diverted because of thunderstorms over Tuy Hoa. That was the night I watched a squadron commander being locked into an ice-making machine, had the Velcro patches eaten off my flight suit, had that same flight suit ripped almost entirely in half by a nameless fellow pilot, and spent a short night in a bunk bed before getting up early the next morning and, with far too little sleep and far too few hours ‘tween bottle and throttle, climbed back into my airplane for a brief but painful flight back to my home base.
Phan Rang is bustling today, and I didn’t see any remnants of the old air base. I took several pictures as we pulled through town, thinking that some former 35TFW folks—Roger?—might recognize a storefront or traffic circle . . . assuming they had ever gone into town during the war. What they wouldn’t recognize were the decorative banners on the light posts, alternately displaying the yellow star on red background of the Vietnamese flag, and the hammer and sickle of the communist party. It’s as if the government must constantly remind the Vietnamese people, going about their business of doing business and making money, that they still live in a communist country. Without the occasional reminders on street lamps and public buildings, it would be impossible to tell this is a communist country amidst the bustling shops, ever-present commercialism, and new construction in all directions.
The 3-hour ride up the bumpy, pot-holed, sometimes-dirt “old route” made it clear why they’d built a new highway. But the scenery was spectacular! We wound back and forth through villages, past rice fields, and up the mountainsides lined with the stair-step patterns of cultivated fields. It was like passing through the pages of a National Geographic pictorial on Southeast Asia. And, as we went higher and higher, the images I remember of Vietnam—lush jungles, small villages, the sharp peaks of karst jutting out of the mountainsides—came back. I was looking down on the same country that, 40 years ago, I had seen from almost the identical vantage point. The only thing missing—thankfully—were the occasional swaths of bombed-out jungle left over from earlier B-52 missions, and the burned scars from napalm and high-explosives. The jungle had reclaimed the land.
I was battling a bad head cold all day, so one of my memories will certainly be seeing all that we passed through weeping eyes and bunched up Kleenex. But Anne provided an excellent narrative and didn’t seem distracted by my constant sneezing and blowing.
We pulled into Dalat about 2:30pm, right around the time we would have arrived had our flight from Hanoi not been cancelled. So the early-morning get-up and the risk of standing by for a flight (the US$13 change fee was well worth it!) had paid off handsomely. Not only had we arrived as planned, but we had enjoyed what will certainly be one of the highlights of the entire voyage: the drive.
Dalat is a beautiful town surrounded by forest and mountains. It sits at almost 5,000’ elevation, about the same as Denver. And the flora resembles the trees of the Colorado mountains, minus the aspens: lots of pine and low scrub, but also lots of bright flowers because, of course, Dalat sits on a far more tropical latitude. The weather was cool and partly cloudy as we pulled up to the Dalat Palace Hotel, a 1920’s vintage French resort that Jim and Shamim had targeted. The place is sheer elegance in the old European sense: high ceilings, overstuffed furniture, oil paintings, claw-foot baths, and ever-present staff. It even has a 1930s-era Citroen limousine parked in front and available for chartered drives around town.
By the time we arrived, my cold was in full blossom. Anne and I took a short walk down to the large lake in the center of town and had a couple of beers at a gazebo-like café. Dalat is a honeymoon destination for Vietnamese, so, in addition to the classic French elements, it also contains a lot of Niagara-Falls-like kitsch. Anchored to the café dock were two-person pedal boats shaped like large swans. And we saw several couples on the lake pedaling their birds around the lake. Romantic.
I wasn’t going to be long for the world, feeling the way I was. So Anne and I decided on an early dinner at a restaurant just down the block from the hotel. After the dinner, a final glass of wine, and more drugs than my doctor would have advised, I was in bed by 9pm and asleep within seconds. That was probably the best night’s sleep I’d had since August.
Friday morning, I woke feeling drowsy and drugged. But we had a 9:30am tee time at the Royal Palace Golf Club. Through the haze, I got up, dressed, and went downstairs to the dining room, where Jim and Bob had already ordered breakfast. They and Shamim had arrived at the hotel around 10pm Thursday after a full day in Hanoi. They had some regrets they hadn’t joined Anne and me when they heard about the drive from Nha Trang. But those thoughts took second place to the upcoming round of golf.
I’ll say only that the golf was terrific. The course is old style: wide fairways, strategically placed yet natural trees, plenty of water lining and crossing fairways, beautifully maintained fairways and rough, and, without question, the finest greens I’ve seen: absolutely true with just enough undulation to make every putt a makeable challenge. Best of all were the female caddies, each wearing the traditional straw hat, each with expert eyes to read the greens and advise where to hit our shots, and each very supportive, even applauding good shots and feigning sadness when we missed. It was the most fun I’d had on the golf course since last summer, made even better by my playing a decent round and besting Bob by 9 strokes. Life is good.
That night, the 5 of us had a good dinner in the Dalat Palace dining room—not our best meal, but okay. The next morning, we were all up early again to catch an 8:05 flight back to Ho Chi Minh. The early flight was a little painful, but it would mean we’d have a full day to see the sights of Saigon before having to be back onboard by 9:00pm.
I’ll post this now and continue with the day in Saigon tomorrow.
12 November 2009
Day 82--Off the coast of China, en route to Shanghai
13 November. 22° 38’N, 116° 38’ E. Course: 065°. Speed: 15 knots.
We’re now en route to Shanghai from Hong Kong, and I’m 2 ports behind on my blog. Today and tomorrow are catch-up days . . . for many things. The three days between Saigon and Hong Kong were full of lesson prep and teaching (I’m now at those lessons that I didn’t fully prep last summer). The 2 days in Hong Kong were full of Hong Kong. And I now have 26 formal reports from my business comm. students and 28 essays from my intercultural comm. students awaiting review and grading. These 2 days at sea will also be full.
But, first things first. To continue . . .
Hanoi
A car and driver were waiting for us inside the Hanoi airport. Baggage claim was very fast, and we were on the road into the city within 20 minutes of deplaning. The 45-minute ride into Hanoi was on a 4-lane divided highway that took us past the images of Vietnam I’d expect: miles of rice paddies, farmers in the broad-brimmed “coolie hats” working the fields behind lumbering water buffalo, lush green hills in the distance, a few palms. But the highway was also lined with distinct signs of flourishing capitalism: billboards advertising consumer electronics, food, upscale clothing, and much other stuff available to the rising middle class of Vietnam.
The 4-lane highway narrowed as we got closer to the city until finally we were surrounded by motorscooters, cars, and busses all heading into the heart of Hanoi. We arrived at our hotel—the Luxor—as the sun was starting to set.
The Luxor is on a narrow, busy street in the northeast section of what’s called “the old quarter”: a section of Hanoi probably 1½- to 2 square miles in area sitting along the Red River in the northern section of the city. The quarter consists of a ganglia of very busy streets, each lined with shops selling everything from fresh fish and vegetables to cameras and watches, a bustling area of commerce. The old buildings lining the streets look as if they’ve been standing for many decades, dating well back into the French colonial period. In fact, the Frommer’s guide we used to navigate the quarter pointed us to colonial and pre-colonial buildings on every street, including one house that was several hundred years old.
What’s remarkable about the age of buildings in the quarter is that the area is bounded on the north by the Long Bien bridge. This is the bridge that, during the war, was referred to as the Paul Doumer bridge, named after, I thought, an American fighter pilot shot down during one of the first raids. In fact, it was named after a French governor general and president. The Vietnamese changed the name to Long Bien after they drove the French out in ’54, but we still referred to it by the Doumer name. The fact that we dropped so many bombs onto that bridge—and lost many airplanes and pilots doing so—without damaging the adjacent buildings is a testimony either to the precision or imprecision of our bomb-dropping accuracy 40 years ago. I’d like to believe it’s the former. I do know that raid after raid it was damaged, and raid after raid it was repaired and operating again within days.
Our first night in Hanoi, the 5 of us—Jim, Shamim, Bob, Anne, and I—walked through the quarter to get the lay of the land and to find a good restaurant. Most of the shops lining the streets are open air. Outside the shops, on the sidewalks, the proprietors sit on small plastic stools surrounding a table where they cook, eat their meals, tend to family, socialize with friends, and conduct business. The activity is continuous. Walking along the sidewalks, in fact, is like walking through an endless communal kitchen, living room, dining room, salesroom, and parking lot, the latter because the families share the sidewalk with their motorscooters—scooter after scooter after scooter. The net effect for a pedestrian is that “walking down the street” means literally that: walking on the street.
Where two streets cross, the adventure intensifies, because Hanoi—in fact, all of Vietnam—has very few traffic lights and fewer still pedestrian crosswalks. The art of crossing a street without being hit by a car or scooter requires two traits: courage and predictability. What that means is waiting for a brief break in traffic then stepping into the street and, without stopping or slowing—the most important part!—continuing to the other side at a steady, quick pace. Trust is key: we have to trust that the drivers will accurately predict where we will be as they arrive at the point where we’re crossing, then maneuver left or right to miss us. If we stop or slow down, we change the aim point. The system works. By the time we all left Vietnam, we were adept at taking a deep breath, stepping out into the streets, walking briskly across while giving ourselves up to the skills of the Vietnamese drivers. We all survived unscratched.
After a few false starts and turns, the 5 of us found a small restaurant a few blocks from the hotel. We sat at a table overlooking a courtyard and had a wonderful Vietnamese meal—spring rolls, hot and sour soup, spicy chicken and beef with soft noodles—accompanied by a decent brew. The two local beers I tried—“333” and “Tiger”—were delicious light lagers.
After dinner, we walked back to the hotel through the crowded kitchen/ diningroom/ gameroom/ communal front porches/parking lots of the locals. It seemed the entire city was on the sidewalks and streets enjoying the very warm evening.
Wednesday was our day to explore Hanoi. We started with a walk to the Long Bien bridge, at my request, because I wanted a picture of myself standing on what had been such a high-interest target for the Air Force. The bridge looks just as it does in modern pictures and just as it did in the many reconnaissance photos taken by RF-4s before and after the raids of the ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s a combination railroad/ vehicle/ pedestrian crossing of the Red River, supported by a series of graceful metal arches that seem to flow with the bridge across the river. While Jim, Bob, and Shamim waited safely on one side of Tran Nhat Duat street, Anne and I crossed and walked up the ramp to the start of the pedestrian walkway. There we stopped and took several pictures down the long span across the river. Sadly, we lost all but one picture—including one of me standing on the bridge—when my camera was stolen in Saigon. But that’s another story. I have very vivid pictures of the bridge firmly sealed in my mental album.
After visiting the Doumer/ Long Bien bridge, we resumed our walk through the Old Quarter. The Frommer’s guide led us on a fascinating walking tour through the streets of old Hanoi, past colonial-era buildings, through markets, by temples and museums—most of which we didn’t enter—and finally to a busy intersection close by the north bank of Ho Hoan Kiem Lake, where we stopped for lunch at a restaurant with a second deck overlooking the lake and traffic circle.
After lunch, we grabbed a taxi for the 10-minute ride into the business (French) section of Hanoi and to the remnants of the Ho Loa prison: the “Hanoi Hilton,” where John McCain, Robbie Risner, and several hundred other US airmen were held as POWs for as long as 9 years. Most of the original prison has been torn down, replaced by an office and shopping complex. But the Vietnamese have retained a small section as a museum, undoubtedly because they know it’s an irresistible magnet for American tourists and US dollars.
Most of the museum is dedicated to the many years during the colonial period when the prison was used by the French to hold political prisoners. The colonial sections document with pictures and displays the brutality of the prison guards in their treatment of Vietnamese “patriots” who dared to defy the French. Many of those prisoners were, of course, members of the Viet Minh, the guerrilla force headed by Ho Chi Minh that overthrew the French in ’54. During what the Vietnamese call “the American War,” the Viet Minh became the Viet Cong, the guerrilla force in the South.
Two rooms of the prison hold displays documenting the period when “American criminals” who had been shot down and captured were held in the prison from 1964 to 1973. On a video screen in one of the rooms, a 5-minute black-and-white video runs on a continuous loop showing the results of American bombing raids on Hanoi and Haiphong. In the same room are display cases holding, among other things, a flight suit, helmet, and shreds of parachute claimed to be those worn and used by John McCain, and utensils used by Robbie Risner.
The second room contains photos and artifacts testifying to the “excellent treatment” of the Americans during their “temporary detention” in the prison they “sarcastically referred to as ‘the Hanoi Hilton.’” On display are photos showing Americans playing basketball in a courtyard, preparing what was labeled as “Christmas dinner,” standing in prayer during a “regular religious service,” and smiling broadly as they chatted with guards. One photo showed John McCain supposedly being treated by a Vietnamese doctor. Of course, McCain didn’t receive any medical treatment for several years after his capture, and was beaten often, which is why, despite many operations after his return to the US, he can’t raise his arms above shoulder level today. The photo in the “church” was especially interesting because two of the Americans, standing with arms crossed and two fingers extended across their left biceps, are clearly sending a message through photo interpreters to those back home.
In all, the visit to the “Hilton” was sobering. On the one hand, I thought about the propaganda vehicle that this place of horrors had become. But after seeing the tiny cells that were the homes of the POWs for so many years, and hearing from POW reports about the brutal treatment they received, we all were humbled by what they had survived. The propaganda is crude and obvious; the reality is sobering.
After leaving the prison, we all climbed into a taxi for the ride back to the hotel. Enroute, Anne noticed that the meter was clocking off kilometers at a rate 3 to 4 times faster than warranted by our progress. This is, apparently, a common ploy used by some taxi drivers to extract more money from unwary visitors who don’t know metric measures. We ordered the driver to stop, offered him a fraction of what the meter showed, he insisted on full payment, we refused and started to exit the cab, he grabbed the back of my shirt, and a tug-of-war ensued, with the driver yanking on my shirt, and Jim and Anne pulling me by the arms out of the taxi while Bob pried the driver’s hand off the shirt. The good guys won, the driver was stiffed, and my shirt will recover.
We returned to the hotel at about 4pm. We had reservations at 7pm for a birthday-celebration dinner at “The Temple,” a Frommer-recommended restaurant in the Old Quarter. With 3 hours to spare, Jim, Anne, and I found a spa around the corner from the hotel, and we all went for 75-minute massages. Mine was shiatsu-style, which loosely translates into “find the most sensitive parts of every muscle and press hard.” My masseuse actually climbed onto my back at several points and bore her elbows into nooks and crannies that I never knew existed. To her credit, I suppose, she kept checking in to ask “you okay?” But my grunts didn’t deter her. The aftereffects were wonderful, though I’m not sure they were worth the pain. Next time I’ll probably stick with Swedish.
Wednesday night, the 5 of us had a wonderful Vietnamese-style dinner as I passed my 65-year milestone. As I’ve noted several times, becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security—the two grand socialist programs provided by our government—while sitting in a restaurant in Hanoi, capital of a country where we lost 58,000 Americans battling the scourge of socialism/communism, is an irony both funny and tragic.
When we returned to the hotel, we learned that our early-afternoon flight Thursday to Dalat had been cancelled, and we were all now booked on a flight that wouldn’t get us to the resort until after 10pm. That news led to what I’ll remember as one of the highlight days of the voyage. But I’ll stop this now and resume tomorrow. Time to grade papers.
We’re now en route to Shanghai from Hong Kong, and I’m 2 ports behind on my blog. Today and tomorrow are catch-up days . . . for many things. The three days between Saigon and Hong Kong were full of lesson prep and teaching (I’m now at those lessons that I didn’t fully prep last summer). The 2 days in Hong Kong were full of Hong Kong. And I now have 26 formal reports from my business comm. students and 28 essays from my intercultural comm. students awaiting review and grading. These 2 days at sea will also be full.
But, first things first. To continue . . .
Hanoi
A car and driver were waiting for us inside the Hanoi airport. Baggage claim was very fast, and we were on the road into the city within 20 minutes of deplaning. The 45-minute ride into Hanoi was on a 4-lane divided highway that took us past the images of Vietnam I’d expect: miles of rice paddies, farmers in the broad-brimmed “coolie hats” working the fields behind lumbering water buffalo, lush green hills in the distance, a few palms. But the highway was also lined with distinct signs of flourishing capitalism: billboards advertising consumer electronics, food, upscale clothing, and much other stuff available to the rising middle class of Vietnam.
The 4-lane highway narrowed as we got closer to the city until finally we were surrounded by motorscooters, cars, and busses all heading into the heart of Hanoi. We arrived at our hotel—the Luxor—as the sun was starting to set.
The Luxor is on a narrow, busy street in the northeast section of what’s called “the old quarter”: a section of Hanoi probably 1½- to 2 square miles in area sitting along the Red River in the northern section of the city. The quarter consists of a ganglia of very busy streets, each lined with shops selling everything from fresh fish and vegetables to cameras and watches, a bustling area of commerce. The old buildings lining the streets look as if they’ve been standing for many decades, dating well back into the French colonial period. In fact, the Frommer’s guide we used to navigate the quarter pointed us to colonial and pre-colonial buildings on every street, including one house that was several hundred years old.
What’s remarkable about the age of buildings in the quarter is that the area is bounded on the north by the Long Bien bridge. This is the bridge that, during the war, was referred to as the Paul Doumer bridge, named after, I thought, an American fighter pilot shot down during one of the first raids. In fact, it was named after a French governor general and president. The Vietnamese changed the name to Long Bien after they drove the French out in ’54, but we still referred to it by the Doumer name. The fact that we dropped so many bombs onto that bridge—and lost many airplanes and pilots doing so—without damaging the adjacent buildings is a testimony either to the precision or imprecision of our bomb-dropping accuracy 40 years ago. I’d like to believe it’s the former. I do know that raid after raid it was damaged, and raid after raid it was repaired and operating again within days.
Our first night in Hanoi, the 5 of us—Jim, Shamim, Bob, Anne, and I—walked through the quarter to get the lay of the land and to find a good restaurant. Most of the shops lining the streets are open air. Outside the shops, on the sidewalks, the proprietors sit on small plastic stools surrounding a table where they cook, eat their meals, tend to family, socialize with friends, and conduct business. The activity is continuous. Walking along the sidewalks, in fact, is like walking through an endless communal kitchen, living room, dining room, salesroom, and parking lot, the latter because the families share the sidewalk with their motorscooters—scooter after scooter after scooter. The net effect for a pedestrian is that “walking down the street” means literally that: walking on the street.
Where two streets cross, the adventure intensifies, because Hanoi—in fact, all of Vietnam—has very few traffic lights and fewer still pedestrian crosswalks. The art of crossing a street without being hit by a car or scooter requires two traits: courage and predictability. What that means is waiting for a brief break in traffic then stepping into the street and, without stopping or slowing—the most important part!—continuing to the other side at a steady, quick pace. Trust is key: we have to trust that the drivers will accurately predict where we will be as they arrive at the point where we’re crossing, then maneuver left or right to miss us. If we stop or slow down, we change the aim point. The system works. By the time we all left Vietnam, we were adept at taking a deep breath, stepping out into the streets, walking briskly across while giving ourselves up to the skills of the Vietnamese drivers. We all survived unscratched.
After a few false starts and turns, the 5 of us found a small restaurant a few blocks from the hotel. We sat at a table overlooking a courtyard and had a wonderful Vietnamese meal—spring rolls, hot and sour soup, spicy chicken and beef with soft noodles—accompanied by a decent brew. The two local beers I tried—“333” and “Tiger”—were delicious light lagers.
After dinner, we walked back to the hotel through the crowded kitchen/ diningroom/ gameroom/ communal front porches/parking lots of the locals. It seemed the entire city was on the sidewalks and streets enjoying the very warm evening.
Wednesday was our day to explore Hanoi. We started with a walk to the Long Bien bridge, at my request, because I wanted a picture of myself standing on what had been such a high-interest target for the Air Force. The bridge looks just as it does in modern pictures and just as it did in the many reconnaissance photos taken by RF-4s before and after the raids of the ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s a combination railroad/ vehicle/ pedestrian crossing of the Red River, supported by a series of graceful metal arches that seem to flow with the bridge across the river. While Jim, Bob, and Shamim waited safely on one side of Tran Nhat Duat street, Anne and I crossed and walked up the ramp to the start of the pedestrian walkway. There we stopped and took several pictures down the long span across the river. Sadly, we lost all but one picture—including one of me standing on the bridge—when my camera was stolen in Saigon. But that’s another story. I have very vivid pictures of the bridge firmly sealed in my mental album.
After visiting the Doumer/ Long Bien bridge, we resumed our walk through the Old Quarter. The Frommer’s guide led us on a fascinating walking tour through the streets of old Hanoi, past colonial-era buildings, through markets, by temples and museums—most of which we didn’t enter—and finally to a busy intersection close by the north bank of Ho Hoan Kiem Lake, where we stopped for lunch at a restaurant with a second deck overlooking the lake and traffic circle.
After lunch, we grabbed a taxi for the 10-minute ride into the business (French) section of Hanoi and to the remnants of the Ho Loa prison: the “Hanoi Hilton,” where John McCain, Robbie Risner, and several hundred other US airmen were held as POWs for as long as 9 years. Most of the original prison has been torn down, replaced by an office and shopping complex. But the Vietnamese have retained a small section as a museum, undoubtedly because they know it’s an irresistible magnet for American tourists and US dollars.
Most of the museum is dedicated to the many years during the colonial period when the prison was used by the French to hold political prisoners. The colonial sections document with pictures and displays the brutality of the prison guards in their treatment of Vietnamese “patriots” who dared to defy the French. Many of those prisoners were, of course, members of the Viet Minh, the guerrilla force headed by Ho Chi Minh that overthrew the French in ’54. During what the Vietnamese call “the American War,” the Viet Minh became the Viet Cong, the guerrilla force in the South.
Two rooms of the prison hold displays documenting the period when “American criminals” who had been shot down and captured were held in the prison from 1964 to 1973. On a video screen in one of the rooms, a 5-minute black-and-white video runs on a continuous loop showing the results of American bombing raids on Hanoi and Haiphong. In the same room are display cases holding, among other things, a flight suit, helmet, and shreds of parachute claimed to be those worn and used by John McCain, and utensils used by Robbie Risner.
The second room contains photos and artifacts testifying to the “excellent treatment” of the Americans during their “temporary detention” in the prison they “sarcastically referred to as ‘the Hanoi Hilton.’” On display are photos showing Americans playing basketball in a courtyard, preparing what was labeled as “Christmas dinner,” standing in prayer during a “regular religious service,” and smiling broadly as they chatted with guards. One photo showed John McCain supposedly being treated by a Vietnamese doctor. Of course, McCain didn’t receive any medical treatment for several years after his capture, and was beaten often, which is why, despite many operations after his return to the US, he can’t raise his arms above shoulder level today. The photo in the “church” was especially interesting because two of the Americans, standing with arms crossed and two fingers extended across their left biceps, are clearly sending a message through photo interpreters to those back home.
In all, the visit to the “Hilton” was sobering. On the one hand, I thought about the propaganda vehicle that this place of horrors had become. But after seeing the tiny cells that were the homes of the POWs for so many years, and hearing from POW reports about the brutal treatment they received, we all were humbled by what they had survived. The propaganda is crude and obvious; the reality is sobering.
After leaving the prison, we all climbed into a taxi for the ride back to the hotel. Enroute, Anne noticed that the meter was clocking off kilometers at a rate 3 to 4 times faster than warranted by our progress. This is, apparently, a common ploy used by some taxi drivers to extract more money from unwary visitors who don’t know metric measures. We ordered the driver to stop, offered him a fraction of what the meter showed, he insisted on full payment, we refused and started to exit the cab, he grabbed the back of my shirt, and a tug-of-war ensued, with the driver yanking on my shirt, and Jim and Anne pulling me by the arms out of the taxi while Bob pried the driver’s hand off the shirt. The good guys won, the driver was stiffed, and my shirt will recover.
We returned to the hotel at about 4pm. We had reservations at 7pm for a birthday-celebration dinner at “The Temple,” a Frommer-recommended restaurant in the Old Quarter. With 3 hours to spare, Jim, Anne, and I found a spa around the corner from the hotel, and we all went for 75-minute massages. Mine was shiatsu-style, which loosely translates into “find the most sensitive parts of every muscle and press hard.” My masseuse actually climbed onto my back at several points and bore her elbows into nooks and crannies that I never knew existed. To her credit, I suppose, she kept checking in to ask “you okay?” But my grunts didn’t deter her. The aftereffects were wonderful, though I’m not sure they were worth the pain. Next time I’ll probably stick with Swedish.
Wednesday night, the 5 of us had a wonderful Vietnamese-style dinner as I passed my 65-year milestone. As I’ve noted several times, becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security—the two grand socialist programs provided by our government—while sitting in a restaurant in Hanoi, capital of a country where we lost 58,000 Americans battling the scourge of socialism/communism, is an irony both funny and tragic.
When we returned to the hotel, we learned that our early-afternoon flight Thursday to Dalat had been cancelled, and we were all now booked on a flight that wouldn’t get us to the resort until after 10pm. That news led to what I’ll remember as one of the highlight days of the voyage. But I’ll stop this now and resume tomorrow. Time to grade papers.
08 November 2009
Day 77--Enroute to Hong Kong
8 November. 13 degress N, 110 degrees E. Course= 040. Speed= 15 knots.
I don’t know where to start in describing the stop in Vietnam. So I won’t start there. Instead, I’ll make fast work of the trip from Chennai to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).
Chennai to Ho Ch Minh (Saigon) (28 October-2 November)
The crossing from the east coast of India to the entrance to the straits of Mallaca was uneventful: smooth seas, very warm temperatures. The 28th was a “reading day,” meaning a day off to recover from India before starting in on the next 5 days of classes. It was also photo day, when we were summoned one-by-one up to the 7th deck for a windblown photo to dispatch back to hometown newspapers. This voyage is undersubscribed by almost 200 students, and the spring voyage is, I understand, even lower. SAS is even offering discounts to lifelong learners just to get people onboard and some revenue coming in during these tight economic times. Even the affluent are holding back. Perhaps that’s how they became affluent in the first place.
After running the straits—a very anticlimactic event at normal speed and not a sign of pirates—we anchored off Singapore to take on fuel. “Bunkering,” it’s called, after the bunker-type diesel they pour into our hull.
We were in Singapore harbor all day 31 October and didn’t pull out until the morning of the 1st, so many of us were concerned about making it to Vietnam by our scheduled Tuesday-morning arrival. But Captain Kingston put pedal to the metal, and we steamed at 22+ knots across the South China Sea toward the entrance to the Saigon River.
During those two days—1 and 2 November—I participated on a panel of faculty, staff, and students who have experienced Vietnam over the past 40 years. The panel was commissioned by Brian Winchester, course director for “Global Studies,” the one course all students are required to take. Dan Duran and Bob McGowan, both from the faculty, also participated, as did several students who, through their, fathers, had indirect connections to Vietnam. Dan, a student at UC Berkeley in 1970, told his draft board that he was a conscientious objector and was assigned alternative service in Richmond and Oakland CA—youth service projects. Bob, a business professor from University of Denver, talked about the economy of Vietnam today. And I, of course, was the voice of those who served in the military. Interesting that I’m the only faculty, staff, or lifelong learner who had feet on the ground during the war.
I told the story of the events that took me to Vietnam in 1970. “I dodged the draft by joining the Air Force and entering pilot training. In 1968, I was sure the war would be over by the time I was ready to go. America always won and won quickly.” I then talked briefly about the nature of my role in the war. And, finally, I talked about the impact the war had on me. Thinking about my contribution gave me a chance to reflect on the war and how dramatically it affected the direction my life has taken. The decisions that led me to where I am today—sitting on a ship steaming toward Hong Kong—all stem from that war and that time. So the two days leading to our arrival at the port of Saigon were days of reflection. I said to the classes that, while my actual time in Vietnam was one of the most exciting, even exhilarating, of my life—“like a year of bungee jumping and shark-cage diving”—my cathartic moments were seeing the POWs step off the freedom birds in 1973 and walking for the first time through the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. No person who lived through those years can walk along that wall and not be moved . . . to tears, in most cases.
Ho Chi Minh City arrival.
I woke about 0700 (7am) Tuesday 3 November and opened the curtains of my room to see the slightly hazy shore of Vietnam. It was a cloudy morning, the remnants of typhoon Mirinae, which hit the Philippines hard late last week then sped across the South China Sea and ran aground in Vietnam passing almost directly overhead my old base on the coast in Tuy Hoa. In fact, we were concerned that Mirinae might delay our arrival, but the typhoon had already broken apart into small storms that were spreading out over Cambodia.
I was looking out my window trying to make out details as a small boat appeared a mile or so away coming toward the starboard (my) side of the ship. I recognized it as a typical pilot’s boat—small 25-footer or so, with a topside cabin and large back deck—like a large fishing boat or small tug. But this one was different. As it got closer, I saw flying from the mast a red flag with a bright yellow star in the middle. Today, it’s the flag of the Socialist People’s Republic of Vietnam. Forty years ago it would have been a battle trophy: the flag of North Vietnam. The winners were coming out to guide the vanquished into the former capital.
We entered the mouth of the Saigon River at about 0730 and began a 3+-hour cruise up the river, passing small villages, lines of fishing boats collectively stringing their long nets across the very muddy waters, miles of small jungle palms lining the banks, and occasional hydrofoils taking tourists from Saigon to the coastal resort of Vung Tau and back. The hydrofoils make the trip in 90 minutes. As I watched one pass, I remembered the pictures I’ve seen of the Navy patrol boats—like John Kerry’s swift boat—that cruised up and down this same river in the 60s and 70s, often running into ambushes by Viet Cong hidden on the banks. The only ambushes we ran into were vendors in small boats filled with bananas and coconuts.
After about 90 minutes in the river, we started passing more and more homes, warehouses, docks, and ships awaiting berths in the port. Finally, in the distance, we could see the buildings of Saigon, much larger and much newer than I had imagined. Several of the buildings were well over 10 to 15 stories tall and encased in shiny metal or glistening white stone. And the closer we came, the more crowded the banks, filled with newer homes and businesses. A couple miles south of the city, we crossed under a long suspension bridge, obviously very new and looking like the newest bridges that now span rivers in Europe—two tall towers with cables extending in either direction to support the highway spanning the river, making the bridge look like a massive ship crossing the water with only the skeletons of sails in the wind. I heard later it was built with help from Australia.
Finally, we rounded the last bend, and we saw the dock about a mile ahead. As we got closer, a bus pulled up, and out poured 30 to 40 very excited greeters: parents of students who had subscribed to the SAS-sponsored trip to join their sons and daughters during the 5-day stay in Vietnam. They stood on the dock holding greeting signs, jumping up and down, and squeeling with delight as they spotted a familiar face on one of the ship’s decks. The kids onboard were even more excited: “Good times ahead with mom and dad picking up the tab!”
Also on the dock was Anne Lloyd, who had decided a couple of weeks ago to take a well-deserved and long-delayed vacation by joining our shipmates and me for the stay in Vietnam and the 3-day voyage to Hong Kong. Anne was easy to spot: long black hair, white blouse, and trailing a black roll-aboard suitcase for the trip north with Bob, Jim, Shamim, and me.
The dock was portside. Ho Chi Minh City was around the bend on starboard. The city looked very clean and very bustling as the MV Explorer tied up to berth #1 at the Nha Rung docks. And on the street I could see the unbroken stream of motorscooters that has become a sort-of trademark of Vietnam, just as it was when we Americans were there in large numbers. Today, though, the scooters have to vey with Fords, Hyundais, Hondas, and Toyotas as well as BMWs and Mercedes. So the streets are crowded.
After a very quick briefing by a representative of the US consulate—saying watch for petty theft, among other things; a prescient warning, as it turned out—Bob, Jim, Shamim, and I lugged golf clubs and suitcases down the 5th-deck gangway and onto the Saigon dock, my first footing on Vietnamese soil in 39 years. Anne joined us after we passed through the Vietnamese immigration booth, and the 5 of us boarded a van for the ride to Tan Son Nhat airport for the flight to Hanoi.
Though I merely passed through Saigon 40 years ago on my way to Tuy Hoa AB-by-the-sea, I think I can say without much doubt that the city has changed considerably. Many of the 3- and 4-story buildings characteristic of the French colonial period have been replaced with modern office buildings and upscale storefronts. The wide boulevards, very clean and packed with scooters, cars, vans, and busses, go past landscaped parks and sparkling buildings. The streets are lined with signs advertising cars, soft drinks, clothing, every type of consumer good. And the sidewalks are jammed with well-dressed business people on their way to meetings, lunch, or maybe a cocktail on the roof of the Rex Hotel. This does not look like your father’s communist city.
After a 30-minute ride from the docks, we arrived at the airport, the same airport where I deplaned from the C-141 that had carried me there from Clark AB, Philippines, in February, 1970. We checked in with Vietnam Airlines—a very easy process—and went through a cursory security screening where even my full-metal knee didn’t trigger a wanding. The 90-minute flight to Hanoi was comfortable, smooth, and even included a box-lunch meal: fruit and a sandwich. Our capitalist airlines might take a lesson from their communist-run brethren, at least in the area of service.
We landed in Hanoi—“downtown” during the war—about 3:30pm on 3 November, the day before my 65th birthday.
(I’ll continue soon, but I need to post this and get back to my primary job: prepping for and teaching classes.)
I don’t know where to start in describing the stop in Vietnam. So I won’t start there. Instead, I’ll make fast work of the trip from Chennai to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).
Chennai to Ho Ch Minh (Saigon) (28 October-2 November)
The crossing from the east coast of India to the entrance to the straits of Mallaca was uneventful: smooth seas, very warm temperatures. The 28th was a “reading day,” meaning a day off to recover from India before starting in on the next 5 days of classes. It was also photo day, when we were summoned one-by-one up to the 7th deck for a windblown photo to dispatch back to hometown newspapers. This voyage is undersubscribed by almost 200 students, and the spring voyage is, I understand, even lower. SAS is even offering discounts to lifelong learners just to get people onboard and some revenue coming in during these tight economic times. Even the affluent are holding back. Perhaps that’s how they became affluent in the first place.
After running the straits—a very anticlimactic event at normal speed and not a sign of pirates—we anchored off Singapore to take on fuel. “Bunkering,” it’s called, after the bunker-type diesel they pour into our hull.
We were in Singapore harbor all day 31 October and didn’t pull out until the morning of the 1st, so many of us were concerned about making it to Vietnam by our scheduled Tuesday-morning arrival. But Captain Kingston put pedal to the metal, and we steamed at 22+ knots across the South China Sea toward the entrance to the Saigon River.
During those two days—1 and 2 November—I participated on a panel of faculty, staff, and students who have experienced Vietnam over the past 40 years. The panel was commissioned by Brian Winchester, course director for “Global Studies,” the one course all students are required to take. Dan Duran and Bob McGowan, both from the faculty, also participated, as did several students who, through their, fathers, had indirect connections to Vietnam. Dan, a student at UC Berkeley in 1970, told his draft board that he was a conscientious objector and was assigned alternative service in Richmond and Oakland CA—youth service projects. Bob, a business professor from University of Denver, talked about the economy of Vietnam today. And I, of course, was the voice of those who served in the military. Interesting that I’m the only faculty, staff, or lifelong learner who had feet on the ground during the war.
I told the story of the events that took me to Vietnam in 1970. “I dodged the draft by joining the Air Force and entering pilot training. In 1968, I was sure the war would be over by the time I was ready to go. America always won and won quickly.” I then talked briefly about the nature of my role in the war. And, finally, I talked about the impact the war had on me. Thinking about my contribution gave me a chance to reflect on the war and how dramatically it affected the direction my life has taken. The decisions that led me to where I am today—sitting on a ship steaming toward Hong Kong—all stem from that war and that time. So the two days leading to our arrival at the port of Saigon were days of reflection. I said to the classes that, while my actual time in Vietnam was one of the most exciting, even exhilarating, of my life—“like a year of bungee jumping and shark-cage diving”—my cathartic moments were seeing the POWs step off the freedom birds in 1973 and walking for the first time through the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. No person who lived through those years can walk along that wall and not be moved . . . to tears, in most cases.
Ho Chi Minh City arrival.
I woke about 0700 (7am) Tuesday 3 November and opened the curtains of my room to see the slightly hazy shore of Vietnam. It was a cloudy morning, the remnants of typhoon Mirinae, which hit the Philippines hard late last week then sped across the South China Sea and ran aground in Vietnam passing almost directly overhead my old base on the coast in Tuy Hoa. In fact, we were concerned that Mirinae might delay our arrival, but the typhoon had already broken apart into small storms that were spreading out over Cambodia.
I was looking out my window trying to make out details as a small boat appeared a mile or so away coming toward the starboard (my) side of the ship. I recognized it as a typical pilot’s boat—small 25-footer or so, with a topside cabin and large back deck—like a large fishing boat or small tug. But this one was different. As it got closer, I saw flying from the mast a red flag with a bright yellow star in the middle. Today, it’s the flag of the Socialist People’s Republic of Vietnam. Forty years ago it would have been a battle trophy: the flag of North Vietnam. The winners were coming out to guide the vanquished into the former capital.
We entered the mouth of the Saigon River at about 0730 and began a 3+-hour cruise up the river, passing small villages, lines of fishing boats collectively stringing their long nets across the very muddy waters, miles of small jungle palms lining the banks, and occasional hydrofoils taking tourists from Saigon to the coastal resort of Vung Tau and back. The hydrofoils make the trip in 90 minutes. As I watched one pass, I remembered the pictures I’ve seen of the Navy patrol boats—like John Kerry’s swift boat—that cruised up and down this same river in the 60s and 70s, often running into ambushes by Viet Cong hidden on the banks. The only ambushes we ran into were vendors in small boats filled with bananas and coconuts.
After about 90 minutes in the river, we started passing more and more homes, warehouses, docks, and ships awaiting berths in the port. Finally, in the distance, we could see the buildings of Saigon, much larger and much newer than I had imagined. Several of the buildings were well over 10 to 15 stories tall and encased in shiny metal or glistening white stone. And the closer we came, the more crowded the banks, filled with newer homes and businesses. A couple miles south of the city, we crossed under a long suspension bridge, obviously very new and looking like the newest bridges that now span rivers in Europe—two tall towers with cables extending in either direction to support the highway spanning the river, making the bridge look like a massive ship crossing the water with only the skeletons of sails in the wind. I heard later it was built with help from Australia.
Finally, we rounded the last bend, and we saw the dock about a mile ahead. As we got closer, a bus pulled up, and out poured 30 to 40 very excited greeters: parents of students who had subscribed to the SAS-sponsored trip to join their sons and daughters during the 5-day stay in Vietnam. They stood on the dock holding greeting signs, jumping up and down, and squeeling with delight as they spotted a familiar face on one of the ship’s decks. The kids onboard were even more excited: “Good times ahead with mom and dad picking up the tab!”
Also on the dock was Anne Lloyd, who had decided a couple of weeks ago to take a well-deserved and long-delayed vacation by joining our shipmates and me for the stay in Vietnam and the 3-day voyage to Hong Kong. Anne was easy to spot: long black hair, white blouse, and trailing a black roll-aboard suitcase for the trip north with Bob, Jim, Shamim, and me.
The dock was portside. Ho Chi Minh City was around the bend on starboard. The city looked very clean and very bustling as the MV Explorer tied up to berth #1 at the Nha Rung docks. And on the street I could see the unbroken stream of motorscooters that has become a sort-of trademark of Vietnam, just as it was when we Americans were there in large numbers. Today, though, the scooters have to vey with Fords, Hyundais, Hondas, and Toyotas as well as BMWs and Mercedes. So the streets are crowded.
After a very quick briefing by a representative of the US consulate—saying watch for petty theft, among other things; a prescient warning, as it turned out—Bob, Jim, Shamim, and I lugged golf clubs and suitcases down the 5th-deck gangway and onto the Saigon dock, my first footing on Vietnamese soil in 39 years. Anne joined us after we passed through the Vietnamese immigration booth, and the 5 of us boarded a van for the ride to Tan Son Nhat airport for the flight to Hanoi.
Though I merely passed through Saigon 40 years ago on my way to Tuy Hoa AB-by-the-sea, I think I can say without much doubt that the city has changed considerably. Many of the 3- and 4-story buildings characteristic of the French colonial period have been replaced with modern office buildings and upscale storefronts. The wide boulevards, very clean and packed with scooters, cars, vans, and busses, go past landscaped parks and sparkling buildings. The streets are lined with signs advertising cars, soft drinks, clothing, every type of consumer good. And the sidewalks are jammed with well-dressed business people on their way to meetings, lunch, or maybe a cocktail on the roof of the Rex Hotel. This does not look like your father’s communist city.
After a 30-minute ride from the docks, we arrived at the airport, the same airport where I deplaned from the C-141 that had carried me there from Clark AB, Philippines, in February, 1970. We checked in with Vietnam Airlines—a very easy process—and went through a cursory security screening where even my full-metal knee didn’t trigger a wanding. The 90-minute flight to Hanoi was comfortable, smooth, and even included a box-lunch meal: fruit and a sandwich. Our capitalist airlines might take a lesson from their communist-run brethren, at least in the area of service.
We landed in Hanoi—“downtown” during the war—about 3:30pm on 3 November, the day before my 65th birthday.
(I’ll continue soon, but I need to post this and get back to my primary job: prepping for and teaching classes.)
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