Muscat, Oman

April 17^th, Muscat, Oman

After sailing on the Arabian Sea we arrived around 07:30.  As Sandra and I will be returning to Oman when we start our second cruise out of Dubai we decided to wander around Muscat on our own as we have a tour booked on the return journey.

Muscat is very interesting it is a wealthy city, very clean and orderly but very religious.  The ruler is well respected even though he is a King with complete power. He however is very considerate of his people and spends a lot of money ensuring his people are happy.  No one
pays income tax and schooling, hospitals etc. are free to all.

Men wear traditional garb Arab garb, a long tunic that goes from shoulders to the ground
(it resembles a long nightie) they also wear either a small cap or a typical Arab scarf.

We returned to ship early afternoon and sailed for Dubai.

Sandra taking a picture of Muscat Oman

Mumbai India

April 15^th,
Mumbai, India

After departing Cochin we sailed for a day on the Arabian Sea.  We arrived in Mumbai early on the morning of April 15^th.  We had booked a tour that included a visit at a Jain temple. This religion is famous for a few different things, they will not kill anything living therefore they are strict vegetarians and many will not wear leather and even silk as the silk worm has to be killed to get the silk.  They are also famous for leaving their dead bodies out for the vultures to eat because they believe that digging in the soil will kill insects.  In Mumbai they
place their dead on a hill and let the bodies decompose and the birds eat them.

We also visited the Dhobi Ghat.  This is a large area where hundreds of people wash clothing for most of the local residents.  It uses water that flows through open sluices and the washermen beat the clothing on concrete pads and then hang them on lines to dry.  There
are hundreds of lines full of clothing. The cost to have your clothes washed is around a dollar a pound and this includes pickup and delivery.

 We were also supposed to see the famous lunch box men of Bombay but unfortunately they
were all away on a religious holiday. They are called the Dabbawallahs, every work day they leave downtown Bombay in the morning to pick up hot lunches from the wives of the Indian men that left the suburbs for work downtown around 7:00am.  The wives prepare the hot  meals and the Dabbawallahs pick them up and deliver them to the husbands at their offices
downtown by noon.  They then return for the boxes around 13:00 and return them to the wives for cleaning and refilling the next morning.  There are over 25,000 lunches delivered and they have an error rate of less than one in a million.  This has resulted in the system
they use, which is hundreds of years old, being given a Sigma 6 rating.  The system and procedures used have also been studied by Harvard Business School. 

Upon return to the ship we sailed for Muscat Oman scheduled to arrive April 18^th.

Cochin, India

April 13^th
Cochin, India

After three days of cruising on the Bay of Bengal we arrived in Cochin, India.  We have booked a tour of the backwaters of Cochin.  These canals are the life blood of the region as the people draw water from them for rice production as well as fish on the open wider areas. We saw some of the famous snake boats.  They are very narrow long boats normally pushed by two men with poles and they are used to transport everything from pigs to
mud for construction.  We also saw the famous Chinese fishing nets.  These are huge dipping nets that are balanced by rocks and about three or four men (depending on their weight) operate by dipping the nets into the water and then scooping up schools of fish that swim by. They are able sometimes to catch upwards of two hundred pounds of fish. 

That evening we sailed for Mumbai formerly know and still often called Bombay.

Snake Boat

House Boat wealthy Indians rent for holidays

Chinese Fishing Nets in Cochin India

Yangon Myanmar (Burma)

Yangon, Myanmar April 7^th – 9^th

On day one we had booked a tour through the ship called the Noviciation Ceremony.  This is a ceremony similar to a Catholic Confirmation of children into the church. However, there are some very striking differences.  As Myanmar is 88% Buddhist there are monks all over the place.  There are monks as young as 7 that study Buddhist doctrine and try and follow Buddha’s teachings.  To become a monk the boys must go through a Noviciation Ceremony, this is very important as many of the poor boys will not have an education except through the monastery.  They cannot become or start the process to be a monk without going through this ceremony.

As part of our tour some of the cost went to sponsor poor boys and as a result we were
considered VIPs, our bus was escorted from the ship by a Police Motorcycle
escort with lights and sirens going. Once we arrived at the monastery we were greeted by the head instructor and he explained what was going to happen. As we were considered VIPs we were told we could go anywhere and photograph anything we wanted.  The ceremony started with a procession where the group was led by family members followed by the prettiest girls in the village and then the young men being carried in highly decorated chairs.  The young men were dressed in elaborate costumes depicting what Buddha originally was - a Prince.  They also had lots of makeup on to illustrate he was very vain and materialistic.  During the ceremony the boys get the makeup washed off and they get their heads shaved and change from the fancy clothes into the red robes that the monks all wear. This is to signify Buddha’s enlightenment.  Part of the ceremony involved the giving of
gifts to the boys and as the ship had made donations a few of the people were asked to give the boys the gifts, Sandra was one of the women selected to give the gifts to one of the boys, she was thrilled. The boy’s parents were extremely proud and after we were invited to join them for tea.  All in all it was a very interesting and rewarding experience once again re-enforcing how fortunate we are to be born in Canada with all our benefits.

On day two Sandra had organized a private guided tour, we were met in the early morning by our guide and driver and were taken into the city for a 12 hour tour.  We went to numerous temples one of the biggest is a 150 foot temple covered in gold with a 76 karat diamond sitting on the top surround by hundreds of solid gold bells and over 5,000 precious
diamonds and other stones.  We ended the day at a dinner show where we saw local dancers and a puppet show.  The puppet shows are very popular in Asia.  We returned to ship at 9:00PM a very full and interesting day.

The next day we departed for Cochin, India and will be at sea for three days.  We are scheduled to arrive in India on April 13^th.

On the sea days there are many activities available but one that we have enjoyed the most
is beginner bridge lessons (watch out Ray and Gaye, we will come home
professional bridge playersJ)

Young monks just after receiving their gifts from the ship's passengers.  They were probably wondering who those white women were.

Bob with the budha that represents his birth day which happens to be a Thursday and this means I am a "RAT" the figure in the bottom of the pool.  You are suppose to pour a cup of water over the Budha and the animal that represents your birthday.  However we didn't have enough time as we are suppose to return to Canada in May 2012 so I did it in multiples of 10 and it still took awhile.

Main temple with the 76 Karat diamond on the top

A floating restaurant near the temple.  We had supper here and saw a local cultural show.

 

Singapore and Phuket Thailand

Singapore and Phuket, Thailand April 3^rd – 6^th

After sailing a day from Saigon we arrived in Singapore for a one day visit.  As the city state is very small, Sandra and I decided to visit the area on our own. Singapore is described as a Dictatorship but a Benevolent Dictatorship where the people have many freedoms. However there are incredibly strict laws.  Upon arrival you are informed that illegal drugs are not allowed and that the penalty for being caught with drugs even for personal use is death.  Singapore we were informed has the greatest per capita execution rate in the world. It is also illegal to sell gum in Singapore, you can bring it in with you and you can chew it but if you are caught spitting it out or even just spitting on the street you could be caned.  This involves being struck on your bare behind with a bamboo cane that has been split.  The cane hurts like the dickens but as it is split it also opens and pinches your flesh, they say it is very painful and foreigners are not exempt from this sort of punishment for any infractions even as minor as jaywalking.  Sandra and I were on our best behavior, most of our friends would not have recognized us J

After we re-boarded the ship we set sail for Phuket, Thailand.

We arrived in Phuket on April 5^th for the day. We had booked a tour that took us to a floating village and through the area of small islands made famous in the James Bond movie “The Man with the Golden Gun”.  It was a very relaxing day spent on a small boat that travelled in and out of the islands.

That night we boarded the ship to sail to Yangon (formerly known as Rangoon) Myanmar
(formerly known as Burma).

Dorr man at the famous Raffles Hotel Singapore.  This is the hotel that invented the drink "Singapore Sling"

James Bond Island

Da Nang and Saigon Vietnam March 29 - April 1st

Da Nang and
Saigon, Vietnam, March 29^th – April 1st

After one day a sea we arrived in Da Nang Vietnam. We had a pre-arranged tour of the old Imperial City of Hue which is about a one hour drive from the city centre. It was very interesting and we walked through buildings that dated back to 900BC.  Much of the site had been used in the movie the Last Samuri which featured Tom Cruise.  We also visited an incense factory and saw how they made incense sticks and followed this up with a demonstration on how they made the typical conical Vietnamese straw hats.   

Upon our return to the ship we set sail for Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City).  All the locals still call it Saigon because they say it is too long to say Ho Chi Minh. We sailed for a day and arrived in Saigon March 31^st.  As Sandra and I had already visited Saigon a
few weeks earlier we did not take any organized tours but just wandered the downtown core area.  We went to the Rex Hotel, for people old enough to remember the Vietnam War this is the Hotel that was used to broadcast all the reports from the war.  All the world’s journalists stayed there and it was also the site of the American Forces radio network featured in the movie “Good Morning Vietnam”.  We departed Saigon on April 2^nd and sailed for a day headed for Singapore.

Vendors outside Imperial Palace

One corner of Imperial Palace

Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia and Hong Kong, China

We arrived at our guest house early in the afternoon and were able to go out and visit the
city as the room was right downtown.  KL is a very busy city with a lot of modern new buildings, including the Petronias Towers.  This was at one time the world’s tallest building and is the building featured in the Sean Connery movie about a robbery where he ends up hanging of the bridge that joins the two towers about one hundred stories up.

The city is full of Police, it appeared every corner had 5 or 6 Police Officers and at
night that seemed to increase.  There were row upon row of shopping malls and as we progressed down the road each one seemed to be more exclusive, read expensive, than the previous.  The last mall we walked in was full of Cartier, Hugo Boss, Tag Heur watch shops as well as Rolex stores and all the top ladies shops like Versace. 

We departed KL for Hong Kong on March 25^th.

We arrived at the new Hong Kong airport which is huge.  Fortunately our sister–in-law Barbara was waiting for us and was able to guide us through the airport and take us to our hotel.  We dropped off our suitcases and went to Jeff (Sandra’s brother) and Barb’s apartment where their sons Matt and Daniel had prepared supper for us.  Their third son
Michael was away in the UK. 

The following day we wandered around Hong Kong prior to boarding our ship in the
afternoon.  Hong Kong was very busy as the World Sevens was taking place during the weekend.  This is an International Rugby tournament that involves thirty minute games between teams comprised of seven players.  Tens of thousands of people attend and the downtown area in the evening turns into one huge drunken party.  All the bars and streets are decorated with all the participating countries flags.  It is a lot of fun. 

The following day we met Jeff and Barb for a few hours after which we reboarded our ship and it sailed for Da Nang Vietnam.

The twin towers in Kuala Lompur

Rugby Seven sweaters Hong Kong. Canada is there second row.

Catch-Up

Catch Up

I have been remiss in keeping the blog up-to-date.  As we are going to be at sea for three days, sailing from Yangon, Myanmar (Burma),  I will post a few entries to bring it to the present date - April 10^th.  

We continued up the Mekong River on the Pandaw cruise finally arriving in Siem
Reap, Cambodian by bus as the Mekong River was very low and the ship could not
get completely all the way to Siem Reap. We were dropped off at the famous Raffles Hotel where we were picked up by a driver from our Guest House.  They used a vehicle called a Tuk-Tuk, it is a motor scooter with a trailer that has a cover and padded benches that sits four people, the driver was able to load all our bags and the two of us onto it and off we went to our Guest House.  The Guest House was run and owned by annAustralian who had planed our four day stay for us.

Our first two days we visited the Angkor Wat temples made famous in the Angelina Jolie
“Laura Croft” movies.  The temples are phenomenal with large trees growing through the rocks and massive buildings well over 2,500 years old. Our guide a young Cambodian lady was very knowledgeable and was able to describe the buildings and history of the area in
great detail.  On our last day we visited the National Museum, a relatively new shopping centre and some very nice local craft shops.  The shopping centre was interesting because it was the first public building in the city with an escalator, our guide Kimrea told us that when the shopping centre opened they had to restrict the number of people coming into the mall.  What was happening was that all the local people were coming into the mall and riding the escalators like an amusement ride.  Kim told us there were people lined up out the door to get on the escalator. They eventually started giving out timed tickets to let people in to see and ride the escalator.  

On our last day we were taken to the airport in the Tuk-Tuk and departed Siem Reap for Kuala Lumpur (KL) Malaysia.

Elephants at the temples They only work in the morning because of the heat.  Sandra however had me tour and walk all day.  HMMM??  Does the elphant have a better life than me?

One of the temples 2,500 yeats old