Ship Contest

There was a ship building contest this afternoon. The ships had to float and to float with a cargo of 6 cans of beer. There were five entries, all of which passed the floating and cargo tests.

The top photo is of one of the teams with their ship. The second photo is of the mast head on their ship.

Duplicate Bridge

Kathleen and I played duplicate bridge together yesterday. This was the first-ever time that Kathleen played duplicate, and only the 5th time that I play it. Kathleen had significant anxiety. At one point she opened one diamond, and I responded two hearts (this is a detail for only you bridge players). Kathleen’s reaction was to turn pink-faced and to say “oh crap.” One of the opponents said the typical response would be to suppress jumping up and down and yelling “yippee.”

Regardless, it went fine. We came in second out of 4 tables, with the pair that finished ahead of us being ones that regularly play duplicate.

New Eating Choice

They just opened up a new choice for breakfast for passengers who have full suites: breakfast in the specialty Italian restaurant. That’s only 20 out of the 650 passengers, but includes us. (This is just what we need after 2-1/2 months of cruising…more options to consume food!)

The fresh fruit platter looked especially attractive.

Entertainment Tonight

Tonight the show was a musical and dance. It was the first such show since Hong Kong. Stef Woods was obviously the best. (Hi Mom Ruth!)

[The lighting (mostly pink) was tough, so this is not the best photo.]

Preparation for Taj Mahal

We land Wednesday in Mumbai. We have booked ona tour called “Taj Mahal in a day” that takes 14 hours, with a 2-hour flight from Mumbai to Agra, a visit to the Taj and a return flight of the same 2 hours. Here is the crazy part: we only get 1-1/2 hours at the Taj. But, we have a 50 minute lunch. What are they thinking!!? Give us the option to skip lunch and have 140 minutes instead of 90 minutes at the Taj (or 20 minute lunch and 120 minutes at the Taj).

Kathleen and I are likely to start a grass-roots uprising on this point. (We can eat enough on the ship when we get back!)

Sometimes the excursion planners seem to be clueless.

Additional Thought About Port Blair

This is a picture of “downtown” Port Blair. It is crude. I have a thought about what I would do if I had this visit to do over.

I would not plan any excursion. I would have bought 20 or 40 Glad garbage bags….the 30-gallon ones with hand ties.

I would have bought some Rupees. The exchange rate is about 50 Rupees to the dollar, but 200 Rupees (ie $4.00) are enough to pay for laundry service to an entire month.

I’d have recruited young kids at about 10 Rupees per bag to clean up the litter in downtown. I’d fill bags myself. Then, if I had no other choice, I would hire Tuk Tuks (motorcycle tricycles for two passengers) to haul the filled bags back to port. If the ship would not take them, I’d pill them up and leave. I’d have someone video record all this (so if some official got crappy about this, I have film).

This could be a totally pointless effort, as the city would likely be littered again within one week. However, I would have enjoyed the effort. For $20 or so, I could have shown them what a litter-free downtown would look like.

One passenger to whom I mentioned this idea said that they saw a poster that said “no plastic film over x-mils thick permitted to be brought into Port Blair.” So this idea might have had a problem. (What misguided legislation exists…don’t allow someone to pick up the town!!?)

Anyway, this is a thought. If someone planning to come later think this is neat, let me know if you do it. It truth, the sights (jail, temple, market) are not that special, so I think this alternative plan could be a fun idea to try.

Cute Port Blair Story

A passenger approached Kathleen today on the ship about their visit to Port Blair. They knew Kathleen’s name, and had found it interesting and unusual that they had met a group of young girls who were writing the name “Kathleen” on post-it notes yesterday when they were in town.

Well, Kathleen had earlier in the day given out some pencils and pens and post-it notes to a group of boys and girls 5-11 years old. The kids had shown Kathleen their names in cursive and had asked her to show them how her name was written. So, what the other passengers had witnessed was these young kids practicing writing her name after she had left.

NCAA Basketball Tournament

The good news is that we get the NCAA basketball games here…and we get them live via the ESPN transmission. That means we do not have to worry about seeing a score on the internet or on TV prior to the broadcast.

The bad news is that it means that the Sat games are at 2:10am and 4:30am Sunday for us. The Sunday games are 11:30pm Sunday (not too bad) and 2:30am Monday. So for basketball fanatics (hi Denny Miller) you could choose to stay up all night to watch, but unless you have a suite, the TV will be on in the bedroom while your spouse wants to sleep.

Net of all this is I may see some selective games, but I’m going to see much less than in past years.

Videography

We have a professional videographer on board who is producing DVD’s of the cruise. He is preparing 3 DVD’s for each of the 4 segments. If you buy all 12, it costs $299.00, and you get an additional 3 DVD’s of individual locations.

They are well done, but I’m not sure whether or not we’ll buy them. It’s not just the cost, my other issue is whether we would actually view them much, or simply stuff them into some drawer.
However, the videographer gave a short lecture today. There are some very simple points that I took from his talk that could spruce up anyone’s amateur videos.

1) Use a tripod. This gives stability that you cannot get with handheld cameras. Even a baby 3-inch tripod can allow you to put a camera on the ground or on a chair, and it takes up only a tiny amount of space.

2) Don’t just shoot the same shot for many seconds. This looks like multiple identical still shots back-to-back. Instead start the sequence with a tight-in shot of a detail on the item (such as the decoration above a doorway) then zoom out at a constant rate as you film for 5-15 seconds to a view of the entire structure. This seems very simple, but when multiple images of this simple type are strung together, it looks quite professional and holds your interest.

3) If you are going to pan a panorama shot, do so from left to right, not right to left. This produces an image that is “read” the same as we read a book, so it is more comfortable for the viewer.

4) At places where there are lots of people or cars moving, place the camera at a fixed location and let it record for 5 to 10 minutes. When you later add this footage to your film, speed it up 5 times or so. It dramatizes the activity (such as pedestrians moving on the Great Wall, or downtown street traffic in Saigon, or a bustling marketplace).

5) If there is slight movement of something near you (such as gondola boats at dock in Venice), place the camera near the moving items, but with a good part of the frame showing the stable background. This makes a nice effect in real time or at some speed up frame rate.

6) Add local music to the background.

By doing these 6 things, I think you’d get about 90% of the benefit that this professional gets. He uses Adobe Final Cut software. He says that the “Express” (simplest version) of the software can be purchased for under $100. The full version with about 7 different specialty items (lighting, motion of text, extra sound track choices) can be $600 to $1,000.

The videographer shoots about 4 hours worth of film footage for each half hour of final DVD length.

I had some video editing software about 10 years ago that son Scott used quite a bit. It looks like the new software and the computer speeds and memory size have allowed for great improvements in what one can do.

One passenger said that you still need to buy a computer with the biggest memory and fastest processor if you want to be serious about video editing. Another passenger said that she prefers to stick to still photos, then use Pro Shop Gold to arrange them into a movie.

Cameras

Everyone on board has a camera. About 1/3rd have SLR’s (single lenses reflex cameras). These are obviously the best choice, but they take up a lot of space. There are husband and wife couples who each take their SLR’s on all the tours. (The SLR’s are great for action shots and for animal shots.)

But even these folks also carry a simple digital camera. That is all that we have. We bought a new camera for the trip, and we are happy with it. So far we have taken over 1300 shots. I’m sure others have taken 5x to 10x as many shots.

The suggestion that I have is to buy a simple pocket digital camera with the biggest zoom that you can find. We only have a 3x zoom. Another passenger had the same thing, and he bought a 7x zoom for about $350 in Hong Kong. Even if the camera is a little bigger or thicker, this is a nice feature to have. We have had lots of cases where we would have liked to zoom in or out more than our camera was capable of doing. At this point in the cruise I did not buy a new camera. I’m not sure whether that was the right choice, but if I were starting out fresh, I would buy a new camera with the greater zoom.

Day 72 – 3/27 – Port Blair, India

Port Blair belongs to india, but it is a long way from Mumbai. We’ll have 4 sea days between Port Blair and Mumbai, so that’s about 1500 to 2000 miles. The port is in the Andaman Islands, and archipelago east of India and Northwest of Malaysia.

One of the points that our port lecturer made about India is while it is largely Hindu, they tolerate all religions…to the point that the government does not interfere in any activities that are rooted in a religion. The lecturer belonged to a religious group that disposed of their dead by putting them on top of a specific structure, where the bodies are devoured by vultures completely in about a half hour. (You have to admit this is probably the most environmental friendly system you’ve heard of yet…complete biological recycling.)

When India was a British Colony, the Andaman Islands were used as a prison colony. There are some 700 separate islands in the chain. Some are uninhabited and some have primitive people.

We did a tour on our own. This was adequate. We first went to the old prison. It was for political prisoners, and had 700 individual solitary cells…each only 7-1/2 by 13-1/2 feet. They fed prisoners out of rusty kettles to help them die sooner!

We went to a Hindu temple, but it was not particularly old, nor big. We went to the shopping area, which also was mostly ordinary.

I think we have been spoiled by the last 7 ports, all of which have been quite interesting.

The main task for the trip was to endure the heat and humidity.

Our cabin steward went on shore. He thought it was great. He bought some things, had some beers, and found a place to swim.

Some other guests went to beaches to swim. We only found one person who went into the water, even given the heat and humidity. One said they saw on a website that “it was not recommended” to go into the water. Another said their guide pointed out a nearby island that was well known for all of its snakes. She thought these snakes might swim. Others reacted to the high number of dogs and cows on the beach, and even though none were in the water at that time, she figured high tide to wash some unwanted items into the water.

Port Blair Photos

1) Old British Colonial Prison
2) Hindu Temple Statue
3) P&G has a distributor here!

“Hi Ruth” from Stephanie

Ruth is one of the followers on the blog. She commented that she enjoyed reading the blog because her daughter is an entertainer who recently joined our cruise, and this blog gives Ruth a chance to keep up on where her daughter is in her journey.

I asked one of the dancers if she knew any of the dancers who had a mother named Ruth. She answered that she thought Stephanie’s Mom is named Ruth.

I found Stephanie and took this picture with her. Ruth, Stephanie says: “Hi, Mom. I love you and miss you. Everything is fine. I’m having a great time.” When told how her mother found this blog and follows it, Stephanie also said, “That sounds like something that my Mom would do.”

So Ruth, all is fine. The only minor concern is that Stephanie has been photographed in the company of an older gentleman!

Time Zone Adjustments

Okay, we are traveling mostly westward around the world. Time zones change and we have to deal with that. So far we have “lost” a total day (there was no 2/10 for us) going across the date line…that makes sense, but is still weird. In addition we have set clocks backward 13 times, gaining an hour at about 2:00 in the morning. That too makes sense. In addition, we have set clocks FORWARD one hour once. That was strange since we are sailing westward, but even that is understandable given that countries can select their own time zone…and we certainly want to be on the same time as each country when we land there. (Net of all of this is we are 12 hours ahead of Eastern Time…where we started the trip.)

Now is where it gets really weird. We are going to set clocks back one hour tonight at 2:00 am. No problem here. And, we are going to again set clocks back one hour tomorrow night at 2:00 am. Again, no problem. However, in addition to this we are going to set clocks back an additional half hour at 2:30 pm tomorrow. Now that I find bizarre! Even if the next port is a half hour off, why in the world would we have to make that adjustment at 2:30 in the afternoon the previous day?

Okay, do I show up for afternoon bridge tomorrow at the first 2:00pm, or the second one a half hour later?

Given the age distribution on the ship, and the fact that I cannot understand this, I think the safest thing will be for me to take a nap tomorrow afternoon.

[If this does not succeed in totally discombobulating the passengers, I’m going to suggest that they try setting the clocks back 47 minutes the next day at 4:13 pm.]

Two More Bird Photos from KL Bird Park

1) Flamingos

2) Western Victoria Crowned Pigeon

Day 70 – 3/25 – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

This was one of those ports that is “industrial.” We had about a 1-1/4 hour bus ride into Kuala Lumpur. We booked the ship’s tour that was essentially a bus ride into the center city, then planed the day’s activities on our own.

The “destination lecturer” who covered the history said that Malaysia (and Singapore) are amazing for how little we hear about them. They are extremely culturally diverse. Malaysia has native Malaysians, Chinese, and Indian. The latter two groups were brought in by the British when Malaysia was a British colony. They were needed as workers to develop the mining and other businesses.

These 3 ethnic groups look different physically, speak different languages, and have different religions. Any one of these differences can and has caused racial problems in other countries, but these two have handled it well.

The other factor that this lecturer pointed out was how Malaysia and Singapore dealt with freedom from the British. Indonesia reacted by taking money from the wealthy in order to give to the poor. This destroyed economic incentive, so their economy languished. Malaysia and Singapore did not want to repeat this mistake, so they did not take money from the wealth, but instead focused on getting part of the economic growth to pull up the poor. They both have had strong economies.

When we got to town we spent a little time in the shopping district and attempting to get phone or phone-over-internet.

We next went to the KL (Kuala Lumpur) Bird Park. This is the largest free-flight walk-in aviary in the world. It has 21 acres under net. They had something like 3000 birds, including 200 species. We have several photos below.

Within this facility, we went into a parrot house. We seemed to be shooting a full-color remake of Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” They liked us a lot…of course, that was after we purchased the food for them. (Separate photos of this below.)

We then went to the Botanical Gardens. (This is for Kathleen’s Garden Club friends.) The special flowers were the hibiscus (their native flower) and orchids.

We ended the day back downtown. We had managed to get tickets to go up on the walkway to the Petronas twin towers. This walkway bridges two towers on the 44th floor of the 88 floor towers. It is the highest such walkway in the world.

Birds in KL Bird Park

1) Park Sign
2) Scarlet Ibis
3) Yellow Billed Stork
4) Hornbill

"World of Parrots" within KL Bird Park

Amazing that it only takes a little food to make you popular.

Flowers

1) Happy Kathleen with flowers: Hibiscus in each ear.
2) Orchid

Petronis Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur

We walked out on this bridge...44 stories up.

Day 69 -3/24 – Singapore

Singapore is a city that happens to also be a country. At 267 square miles, it is about 3-1/2 times the size of Washington DC, but with 4.8 million people. It became independent from Malaysia in 1965.

Singapore is extremely clean. This is summarized by a t-shirt we saw that said: “Singapore is a “fine” city…$500 fine for litter, $500 fine for chewing gum, $500 fine for not flushing a public toilet, $1,000 fine for smoking.”

It is also a prosperous city. One person said they heard that the average salary was $40,000 per year, which, I think is ahead of the US.

Another passenger heard that they give a special tax break to any college educated woman who has a child. When someone challenged the ruler whether this was discrimination to only give the break to the college educated women, he responded: “What, so you’d rather encourage a country of dummies?”

We docked close to the city center, so did an excursion on our own. The day got off to a slow start because we had a heavy rain that delayed the boat ride on the river that we had planned. However, it got off after a half hour delay, and the weather remained fine the rest of the day.

Our second stop was China town. Kathleen and the ladies did some shopping. We found the local Chinese –style pharmacist to be interesting to watch.

We had lunch in Chinatown: a Chinese meal including Peking duck.

Next we went to the Raffles hotel. This was the place where the Singapore sling drink was created. We had one even though the price was unreasonably high. The drinks there cost us more than the lunch.

Final stop for Kathleen and me was the Singapore Flyer. This is a huge Ferris Wheel that is 165 meters tall. That’s about 55 stories! Neither of us like heights, but we got some great photos.

I discovered that I had been wrong saying that the port in Thailand was so huge. Singapore claims to be the largest in the world, with (they claim) 1/4th of all of the cargo container traffic in the world coming through their harbor. There must have been 300 of the 20-story tall unloading cranes along the docks, and hundreds of ships resting in the harbor waiting for a dock slot.

Singapore River Tour

1) Wet start on the river tour.
2) Singapore’s tourism symbol…the Merlion: half lion and half fish.
3) Bronze statue of boys jumping into the Singapore River.

China Town

1) Pharmacist at work in Chinatown.
2) Clever street vendor sign.

Lunch and Raffles Hotel

1) Peking duck.
2&3) Singapore slings at the Raffles hotel

Singapore Flyer

1) Size of an individual pod.
2) Seen from far distance.

View from the Singapore Flyer

1) Ships waiting in harbor for a dock slot. This density of ships went on for a mile or more.
2) Sports field constructed on a pontoon on the river. Space is valuable.
3) Construction is everywhere. (Who said there is a global recession?)

“The Killing Fields” Movie

There are two passengers on the ship who have PhD’s in political science and law. Both got on the ship in Hong Kong. Neither knew about the other. We met each by chance: one at a lunch in Angkor Wat and one on a bus ride into Pattaya where the bus was overcrowded and we sat 3 in a double seat. (This is how random chance causes who you meet and who you do not.)

One of these bought the movie “The Killing Fields” DVD while in Cambodia. This is a movie about the Khmar Rouge era. The other of these passengers said that this movie was quite historically accurate. So, the first passenger let us borrow the DVD to watch. We watched it this evening. This was far from uplifting, but it was interesting in light of our recent visit.

Treadmill on the Ship

When I run on the treadmill, I have to have my hands free. It just feels too weird to hold on and run. When the sea is calm, this takes concentration, but it is doable. When the sea is rough, you have to hold on. I’ve discovered that walking at 4 miles per hour with a setting of 14% grade burns more calories per minute than running at 6 miles per hour on 0% grade. So, I’m walking, with the 14% grade. Its safer, and probably better on my knees.

Cash

There is “money” and there is “cash.” These are different. “Money” means what financial assets you have in various accounts. “Cash” means what currencies you have in your wallet or safe to buy things on a given day.

We’ve discovered that cash management is an important task on a world cruise. For each country that you visit, you have to decide how much cash you are going to convert into the local currency, and how you are going to convert it.

On the ship, the conversion rates are poor. It is not unusual for them to have a 20% spread between their bid and ask price…and they charge an additional $3.95 fee for the transaction. On shore, you find spreads closer to 2-5%, so you do not have to worry about converting too much.

But, you have to maintain an adequate pool of US cash. We brought $800 in cash. In hindsight, this was not enough. If I had it to do over, I’d bring $2,000.

Originally, Princess said that they’d cash personal checks. Once we were onboard, they said they would not. However, one passenger said they did it for her. I haggled for 3 weeks with them, then they admitted that if I let them photocopy a check, their head office would approve it. But, they wanted to call my bank to get them to confirm info on my account. Of course, my bank would not give out this info, so this approach did not work.

The ship’s casino will give cash that they charge to your ship’s account, but they charge a 3% fee on this. I tried to get around this by using ATM machines. In Cambodia, the ATM gave US dollars, so I thought that was a great approach. However, I now see that the local fee plus my bank’s fee was greater in total than the 3% I would have paid at the ship’s casino.

Net bring a lot of cash or travelers checks…or just decide that a 3% fee is okay.

Another dimension is small US bills. We brought $200 in one dollar bills. This is important in countries like Vietnam and Cambodia where they’ll take dollars, but you want to avoid using big bills because you then get change in local currency. Not only can’t you easily convert that back, but it could well be counterfeit.

Our Captain

Our captain leaves the ship tomorrow in Singapore. His contract runs through late 2010, but he and all crew are required to take a couple of months leave every year.

This captain has gone out of his way to give the passengers special experiences. For example, in Papua New Guinea he passed as closely as he could to the volcano so that we’d get the best view, even though he knew this would cause extra work by the crew to clean up the fallen ashes from the open decks. Similarly he has gone closer to many of the islands than a retired navy captain said he would have chosen to go.
One of the passengers bought a crystal plague as a thank you gift for the captain. The captain was touched by this and teared up a bit.

Swimsuit on Thailand Beach

Kathleen caught this swimsuit picture on the beach in Thailand. She thinks I’d look cute in such a suit, but we did not find one for me to buy. (Neither of us cared to see what the front of the suit looked like.)

[This photo gives a whole new meaning to the term “adjust exposure” within the photo editing program.]

Types of Sea Ports

There seem to be three types of ports where we have docked.

First are the docks that are especially designed for passenger ships. Hong Kong was a great example of this type, where the end of our gangplank emptied directly into a 3-story shopping mall with 100+ stores in it. Sydney, Australia, was another example, where we were minutes from downtown. There we asked the captain to consider staying overnight on a future cruise so that passengers could attend the Sydney opera house. He said that the Sydney port is booked solid through middle of the year 2012, so that is very difficult. (So much for the economic downturn.)

Second type is the “tender” ports. In these, you cannot get in against the land. Instead, you drop anchor offshore and have small boats ferry the people into shore. The most extreme example here was Rarotonga (Cooks Island), where the water was too deep for the anchor, we had to say offshore, and the current was significant enough that the captain had to keep the ship under propulsion for the full 8 hours or so that we were “docked.”

Third type is an industrial port. In this type, the main job is moving cargo. People are a side objective. These can still be nice, but they tend to have a bit of a factory-floor look to them. They also can be further from the tourist areas, so typically we have longer bus rides in this type of port.

The port in Thailand was the most dramatic example of this third type of port. I’ll post some pictures below. When our bus came back into port, we saw stored contains at least a mile away from the ship. There easily were 5,000 cars and small trucks lined up in lots, and 10,000 contains…each the size of a semi-trucks load.

Photos of Port in Thailand

Free Enterprise

China had its “cultural revolution” when they tried to destroy all of the historical items. They consider this to be a “lost decade” where their development stalled. Today the government has partial ownership in all businesses, so they get over half of their revenues from this “free enterprise.” They have no choice but to continue support for free enterprise or else they will not have sufficient money to support their social agenda.

Vietnam has a communist government. However, their economy is free enterprise. There are three reasons. First, the breakup of the Soviet Union in early 90’s stopped the external financial support. Second, China’s success with free enterprise showed a model that worked. (I’ve read that some China jobs are now being outsourced to Vietnam.) Third, TV and the internet shows what works. (Vietnamese children learn English for US cartoons!)

Cambodia is the most extreme. They are recovering from the Khmar Rouge period 30 years ago, and realize that free enterprise is the opposite of the extreme collectivism that was forced upon them. Like China, they see this as a “lost decade.”

South Korea sees the results of the 60 years experiment of North Korea communism vs South Korean free enterprise. East and West Germany also ran a 50+ year experiment with clear results.

Let’s hope that the US retains sufficient appreciation for these global learnings about the role of free enterprise. If we disincentivize free enterprise initiative enough, it is possible to produce our version of a “lost decade” in the US.

The Role of Dollars in SE Asia

We have had to convert dollars into local currency in every port so far until we hit Vietnam. Then in both Vietnam and Cambodia, dollars worked fine.

In Vietnam, the guide said that dollars are preferred by most merchants to the local currency, although they will give you Vietnamese change, so you want to have an ample supply of small bills so you will not need any change. The guide said that because such a high percentage of the transactions in Vietnam and handled in cash, whereas the US has so many transactions using credit cards, Vietnam actually uses a higher volume of US cash each day than does the US.

In Cambodia the situation is even more dramatic. They claim to use more dollars than Vietnam (or the US) or any other country in the world. One passenger tried to use Cambodian currency with a street vendor, and the vendor would have no part of it. She wanted dollars. She walked away in disgust when the passenger persisted in trying to get rid of his Cambodian money.

When Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were in power from 1975-1978 they abolished the use of all currency. Their plan was that everything you had was given to the government, and the government gave you what they said you needed. Even if you had a garden in your yard, you were expected to give all of the food to the government. If you did not, you were executed. You can imagine how that incentivized people to farm well.

So when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1978 to oust the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodians started to use Vietnamese currency. So they never developed any fondness for their own currency, and the dollar is now king.

Eyeglasses in Cambodia

Kathleen noticed that nobody in Cambodia seemed to wear eyeglasses. She asked the tour guide whether this was due to a lack of eye care, or whether Cambodians just had good eye sight. The guide said it was just good eye sight.

Today we heard that this was another of the twisted logics from the Khmer Rouge. If someone wore eyeglasses during the killing field years, they were assumed to have been an intellectual. Therefore they were executed. Net result, nobody wears eyeglasses. (I’d imagine that is changing as the young people mature.)

Day 66 – 3/21 – Pattaya, Thailand

We had scheduled an excursion through the ship for Bangkok, but the ship docked in a different port from the one originally planned, so the bus ride would have been two hours each way. Given that we had just had a 4 hour bus ride back from Phnom Penh the other day, and that we had been off of the ship for 5 out of 8 nights on the Beijing and Angkor Wat trips, we decided to simply visit the local town of Pattaya.

Kathleen found an internet café where we could use Skype (phone over internet), so she made several calls back to the US…waking people up in the middle of the night. Some liked that less than others, but it made Kathleen happy.

There were lots of local shops and a beach, so we simply took a leisure day.

When we got back to the ship, Kathleen had a full body massage in the port building for $18 for an hour. When she came back to the ship she said that I must do one too. It was quite nice: I think every muscle fiber in my body must now be 10% or more longer than they were before. (Life can be tough!)

Cambodia-Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge

Cambodia was certainly interesting. The ancient history reminded me of Egypt: a mighty civilization thousands of years ago that somehow fell from power and competency. How did this happen?

In Cambodia’s case it had a city (Angkor complex) that was 20 times bigger than either Paris or London 1000 years ago. Now that is a ruin. Then more recently, a server hundred plus years it controlled 90% of the Indochina peninsula. That too passed.

Then in 1975-1978, after the Vietnam war ended, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (“Khmer” is the local race in Cambodia; “rouge” is “red” meaning communist) took over. They had a distorted view that they could create the perfect society by making everyone equal. They intended to do this by lopping off the upper classes…eliminating all upper and middle class people and obtaining “purity” by having everyone be a peasant farmer. The number killed and dying of starvation was somewhere between 1.7 and 3.5 million depending upon the source of the number.

Both of our tour guides, the one in Siem Reap and the one in Phnom Pehn, were born slightly prior to the Khmer Rouge period. The first one was taken from his parents and put into a children’s center run by the Khmer Rouge to “educate” him in the Khmer Rouge values and system. He did not know his exact age because if his parents had written that date down, they would have been considered “intellectuals” and therefore have been killed.

The guide in Phnom Pehn was also taken to this type of camp as a toddler. His mother was able to visit him to treat him for a skin infection, but had to hide that fact from the staff. His family also hid some gold chunks in their well because all wealth and food had to be given to the Khmer Rouge. If the Khmer Rouge had discovered that you withheld something, you would be killed.

[These were the stories from the guides. I repeat them as such…not that I can attest that they are true, or free from embellishment.]

Vietnam finally invaded and kicked out the Khmer Rouge about 3 years later. While I have heard of the “killing fields,” I was not aware of this at the time it happened. (I wonder if this is the same as the Dafur coverage today.)

Cambodia today is: 85% rural, 85% poor, and 85% uneducated. (I assume these 3 sets are mostly congruent, but that is only my assumption.)

The guides described some awful things that happened in the killing fields. Brutal killings of all…including woman and children in nasty ways. Thirty years later the first trial of the offenders has just now started.

I don’t mean this as a downer entry, but I just find this type of talk with locals to be mentally expanding. On the positive side, it is encouraging that the locals that we talked to are very positive about Cambodia being on the upswing for the past 10 years or so. I also find it interesting to see such a long, thousand year history of ups and downs, history to be affecting a country.

It puts our country’s 233 year history into perspective. We have only begun, and could continue to succeed, or we could fall for some kind of known or unknown reason as did Cambodia.

Day 63 – 3/19 – Phnom Penh, Cambodia

We had to wake up early to catch a 6:30 am flight from Siemreap to Phnom Penh. It was only a 30 minute flight. We visited the Royal Palace, the Silver Pagoda, and the National Museum in Phnom Penh.

During the late 70’s, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge completely evacuated the entire city of Phnom Penh and moved about 1 million people to the country to become collective farmers. The city was a ghost town. Hard to believe. I’ll write more about the Khmer Rouge later.

After lunch, we had a 3-1/2 hour bus ride from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville to catch the ship. The ride was interesting because the bus would ride down the road’s centerline at 60 mph when there were only motor scooters going each way. The occasional cow or water buffalo also would intermittently decide to walk across the road.

Cambodian Viagra

“Cambodian Viagra”—A big snake and scorpion in a bottle of whiskey.

[I am having lots of trouble with the postings. When I use the application that allows me to refine the photo, it adds a photo that I do not want or disappears. So this is darker than I wanted, but I give up for now.]

For Kathleen’s Garden Club Friends

This is a flowering tree in the Cambodian Presidential Palace gardens. It is called “shorea robusta roxb.”

The top photo is the Presidential Palace. I did not want it here, but I found a faster way to load photos, and it throws up one that I did not want. If I tryto erase, it erases everything. So I leave it here until I figure this out.

Day 62 – 3/18 – Angkor Wat

We flew yesterday afternoon from Vietnam to Siem Reap, Cambodia. But, Siem Reap is a very small town of only about 80,000 people, so that label would not mean much.

The purpose of the visit was to see “Ancient Angkor”…the Angkor Temple complex. This is a huge complex that covers 150 sq miles. The most famous temple in the complex is Angkor Wat, a Hindu temple that is considered to be one of the seven wonders of the world. So that seemed to most appropriate heading.

I have to admit that I had not heard of Angkor Wat prior to booking our cruise. Kathleen had heard of it because to the travel magazines.

In 2000, Siem Reap had 35 hotels. Today it has 150. The combination of Cambodia’s “opening up” plus the publicity for Angkor Wat has caused an explosion of tourism. Tourism now is the second biggest business in Cambodia, behind agriculture. Cambodia had 2 million tourists last year, with Angkor Wat being the main draw.

The hotel we stayed in was top-notched. We had a bed that was bigger than any that I have ever seen. It was 7’-10” wide.

Most of the structures in the Angkor complex were built in the 12th and 13th centuries. During that period, the Angkor temples had a population of over 1,000,000 people. At the same time Paris and London had populations of only 40,000. One cannot help but wonder what happened to make them fall from such a position of power.

Right now we are feeling that this was the impressive single-day we have had on the cruise. I’ll post some photos and text of each of the following sites within the Angkor complex below:

1) Banteay Srey (“Fortress of the Women” Temple)
2) Preah Khan Temple (the Royal Sword)
3) Angkor Thom
4) Terraces of Elephants and Leper King (an “Olympic-type” stadium)
5) Baphuon (the temple of 216 smiling faces)
6) Angkor Wat
7) Taphrom (the temple with the huge Kapok trees encrusting everything. Our guide said this was where they shot parts of the movie “Tomb Raider,” but we suspect he meant the Indiana Jones movie instead.)

Bantray Srey

This means the “Fortress of the Women.” The guide said it was built by women for use by the women. (How do they know this?)

Preah Khan Temple

This was the Buddhist University.

Angkor Thom

This was a huge building…about 200 yards by 200 yards. There is a temple in the very center. Each successive door is lower so that you are forced to bow as you get closer to the center.

The area within the outer walls is 4 square miles and housed 100,000 people.

This was a huge building…about 200 yards by 200 yards. There is a temple in the very center. Each successive door is lower so that you are forced to bow as you get closer to the center.