Saigon

South Vietnam, the Mekong delta, is the rice basket of the nation. In ancient times, this was part of Cambodia. Saigon was largely planned by the French, so it has wide boulevards, and since it wasn't destroyed by war, many modern buildings. Officially, called Ho Chi Minh City, since the civil war, many of its 10 million residents still refer to it as Saigon. The streets are filled with scooters and motor bikes, because prices are reasonable $300-1000 in a place where people make $500-600 per month. Cars have high taxes to discourage their use - $40,000 for a car, about the same price as a 2 bedroom apartment. We also saw lots of women with masks and long sleeves in the 90 degree weather because "white skin is beautiful".

Saigon Traffic

 

Our first stop was the former Presidential Palace, now called the Reunification Palace, where two tanks entered the grounds at 11 AM, April 30th, 1975 signifying the end of the war. Completed in 1966 this palace was built over the French palace, destroyed during an assasinantion attempt against President Diem. He was a Catholic in a Buddhist country, known for nepotism and the suppresion of Buddhists. The palace was fairly simple, especially the Presidential office and the numerous map rooms from which the war was conducted.

Presidential Office

 

Nearby was Notre Dame Cathedral designed by Eiffel and completed in 1891. Then onto the history museum depicting the stone age to the present day. Most interesting were the depictions of how the Vietnamese defeated the Chinese during the 10th century and the Monguls in the 13th century. They used iron tipped stakes in the mouth of the river. Then lured their enemies into the river at high tide, as the tide receded the boats were trapped and sunk by the stakes. Unique was the water puppet show, a Vietnamese art.

Our final stop was a Chinese temple from 1760. Here people wrote their wishes on rice paper and tied it to an incense coil, which would burn for 4 days.

Incense Coils

The Sacred Willow

In preparation for this trip, I've been reading "The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family". It helped to understand both the history of the Vietnamese people and their current viewpoints based on this history. The original Vietnamese started in what is now North Vietnam and while they were separate from the Chinese they were heavily influenced by them. The family story begins with the Great Grandfather, who is studying the ways of Confucius, in order to become a Mandarin. A mandarin is in the government official, who serves the king, and his studies help him understand the importance of serving the people. In those days, government jobs were often poor paying, but very prestigious. The Grandfather too, became a mandarin. He was one of the last to earn his degree from the Temple of Knowledge (which we will visit in Hanoi). But he graduated during the century of French occupation, which meant while he served the king, they were under the dictates of the French authorities. Of course, the Vietnamese people hated being ruled by the French and thus there was always the tension of serving the French or rebelling against them. Ho Chi Minh began his rebellion against the French in the 1930's. Members of the family, served under Ho Chi Minh, even during the time they had to remain hidden in the mountains of the country.
During World War II, the Japanese took over Vietnam, but upon their defeat, the Vietnamese hoped to take back their country, until the French with American backing retook the country. However, this didn't stop Ho Chi Minh, he began the war of independence against the French, which eventually led to his winning North Vietnam in 1954 and a supposed vote of the people in 2 years for the people of South Vietnam to choose their government. The family had members on both sides of this war. Her sister was married to a communist and followed where he led. Since the author's father had been a civil servant for the French, they fled North Vietnam for South Vietnam, fearful of what the communist government would do to former officials.

The leaders of South Vietnam never let that vote occur, leading to the Vietnamese civil war. The United States had been involved with Vietnam since the end of World War II, and we got sucked into their civil war in 1963 based on the "domino theory" that all of South East Asia would become communist if Vietnam became such. According to the book, we chose the wrong side, because the emotions of the people were for 'independence', not another puppet government supported by a foreign power. We signed the peace accords in 1973, leaving the South Vietnamese government to fight the civil war on their own (but with still plenty of military supplies). They made a fatal error by retreating from central Vietnam, which left the rest of S. Vietnam worried that they too would be abandoned. This eventually led to the Vietcong taking over Saigon in 1975. Most members of the author's family that were in South Vietnam managed to escape on one of the last helicopter flights out of the Saigon before the fall. Of those, who remained many were 're-educated' in the camps, somehow surviving on meager rations.

The 1975 to 1986 period was a period of shortages, ration coupons and long lines as Communism and communal farming were practiced. In 1986, a market economy was started economically, while still being ruled by the Communists politically. This has allowed the country to flourish. We observed that the roads were good, people have scooters and color TVs, food is plentiful. In fact, Vietnam is a major exporter of rice and coffee today.

This book really provided some excellent perspective as we began our trip through Vietnam.

Ayutthaya

The Divine Seat of Personal Freedom Pavillion

 Our port is about 2.5 hours outside of Bangkok, so we had a long trip for our tour. Our most interesting stop of the day was Bang Pa-in Palace, built in the the 19th century by Rava IV as his summer residence on the site of an old monastery, built in the 17th century. The palace was rebuilt after a 1938 fire and is used primarily as a reception area for dignitaries.
In the middle of a pond is the Aisawan-Dhipaya Pavilion, the Divine Seat of Personal Freedom, a classical Thai style building. Another ornate building, built in Chinese style is the Phra Thinang Wehart Chamrun, Heavenly Delight Royal Residence, all in black, gold, and red. This was used as a royal residence by Rama VI. (The current king is Rama IX.) The gardens were beautiful, especially the elephant and rabbit topiaries. Finally, the Ho Withun Thasana, Sages Lookout, had great views of the entire complex.

Buddha Face at Wat Mahathat

Of course, no visit to Thailand is complete without an elephant ride. Since elephants are seldom used by logging anymore, tourist shows and rides have become the alternative employment for these domesticated elephants. We had a 15 minute ride near an ancient Wat in the city of Ayutthaya.
After lunch at a nearby hotel, we visited two temples in the afternoon. Ayutthaya was the capital of Thailand from the 1300's until 1767 when it was burned by the Burmese. At the time, there were 500 temples, but all were burned, many to melt and capture the gold sheaving. Wat Mahathat was built in 1347 and is best known today for it's Buddha face in the fig tree. It's a large complex with numerous stuppas, but all in rubble.
Wat Chai Watthanaram was built in 1632 near the river. It is being reconstructed because the buildings are quite unstable. The central prang is 35m tall with four smaller prangs surrounding it. These represent the Buddhist world view, Mount Muru, the central axis of the world, surrounded by the four continents. Our guide during this tour told us very little of what we were seeing, so I've had to rely on other sources to fill in the details.

Wat Chai Watthanaram

 

Thailand

Panda Garden at Nong Nooch Village

We left Singapore about 2 PM on Monday and crossed the Bay of Thailand over the next two days, landing at the port of Laem Chabang at 10 AM today. The port is just outside the beach resort town of Pattaya. We saw a lot of condominium towers and restaurants to serve the many who escape winter here. Our tour went to Nong Nooch Village, which was primarily a themed garden. First was a French garden, but after that each garden had statues to set a theme: penguins, mastodons, flamingos, tigers, and turtles. While the statues were different, the garden plants were not varied. They also featured a show with Thai dancing and Thai boxing (very staged). The best part of the show were the elephants who played basketball, rode bikes, bowled, and painted rural scenes.
We didn't get back to the ship until 7 PM, an hour past our 6 PM early seating. So we ate at the buffet, only to find out the next day that only 150 of the 1100 people showed up for dinner. They encouraged us to eat at our regular seating up to 7 each evening.
After dinner they had a local dance troop come in and entertain with dances from the various areas of Thailand. The costumes were fantastic.

Night Safari

Our shuttle to the ship was at 11:30 so we slept in and had a big breakfast. We still got to the ship before our rooms were ready, so we had a champagne and chatted. We managed to while away most of the day.
Our tour for the day was the Night Safari at the Singapore Zoo. This was quite unique - the natural areas were lit like the full moon was shining.
The animals were active and in many cases they were feeding. We started with a tram ride. The animals were often only ten to twenty yards away. Highlights included the Striped Hyena, Lions, Cape Buffalo, the Malayan Tapir, Sambar Deer, and the Asian Rhino. Then we took a short walk to see Mouse Deer, the Fishing Cat, the Himalayan Thar (goat) and the Asian Otter. We ended our evening with human torches in a Thumbuakar dancing performance. All in all an interesting evening.

Exploring Singapre

We made use of the hop on, hop off buses to explore Singapore. We passed by the Singapore Flyer observation wheel, the world's largest and the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, which is the hotel that looks like a surfboard on top of three towers. We spent most of the morning at the Botanical Gardens. Most of the gardens are free, but we paid the 80 cents (senior price) to see the orchid garden, world famous for the hybrids developed here.

Orchids at the National Orchid Garden

In the afternoon, we walk Little India, which did remind us of the marketplaces of India including the blaring music. The highlight of the walk was the ornate temple of Sri Veerama Kaliamman.

Temple of Sri Veerama Kaliamman

As we toured the city, we were amazed by the amount of new construction going on everywhere. Construction cranes seem to dominate, especially near the Singapore river. They are also re-purposing their City Hall and Supreme Court building, redoing the insides, while keeping the facade to create a visual arts museum.
Next stop was Arab street. We stopped for lunch and a beer to cool off. There were lost of Middle Eastern restaurants, the Masjid Sultan Mosque, and numerous shops selling silks and fabrics.

Masjid Sultan Mosque

By this time we were tired and it started to pour rain, so we stayed on the bus through colorful Chinatown, rather than exploring that area. At the end of the tour, we found we could cover most of the way back to our hotel if we went underground. Here the shops were plentiful and the crowds thick, no wonder the sidewalks on the surface were relatively quiet!

On the way to Singapore

Singapore from our hotel window

If you're more of a viewer, rather than a reader, there is a 17 minute video of this trip on youtube.

Our route to Singapore was through LA and Hong Kong. We started out somewhat nervously when the United Airlines agent struggled to produce luggage tags because we were flying two separate itineraries. The LA to Hong Kong leg was 15 hours leaving at 10:15 PM and arriving at 6:15 AM. Since it was dark the entire flight and Mary was taking a muscle relaxant, we both slept well. We arrived in Singapore after another 3 1/2  flight and were happy to see our bags. There were ships everywhere as we flew close to the island, since Singapore guards the Singapore straights, a key shipping channel.
   Our first impression of Singapore was how clean the city was, the amazing amount of construction going on, and how efficient everything seemed to be. We had one of the landmarks of the city visible from our hotel window - the surfing board style hotel on the waterfront.  Singapore is an island, just off the coast of Malaysia. It was a British colony, but has been an independent country since 1965. The island is a major financial hub for the world, it's downtown area is crowded with high rise banks and they are reclaiming more land to actually move the financial center there.

Bronze Drum

   We freshened up then proceed to walk with Connie and Enzo to the Asian Civilization museum. The most interesting portion of the museum was the artifacts from Southeast Asia: everything from bronze drums to textiles to Buddhist artifacts. The exhibit included items from many of the different cultures and tribes of SE Asia. The traveling exhibit featured Buddhist art from Thailand including items from Ayutthaya which we will visit in a few days. In addition, there were sections on China and Western Asia, filled with Islamic items.

Makana, sea creature from Hindu mythology