July, 2002
Volume 4, Issue 6

Yes, it's been a year since the last RRR - too much Rousing and not enough time for Reporting. We did make our trip to Alaska in August - frankly, disappointing, and despite the qualms of others, we headed for Egypt in mid-October for three weeks. And it was wonderful! For those of you with email, I did send out an interim report just on Egypt, so I won't try to go into detail here. However, if you didn't get it then, or don't have email and you'd like a printed copy, please drop me a note and I'll send it along. We did have a great time and only felt in danger when we had to cross the streets through the Cairo traffic! Fascinating place, Egypt.

The BIG trip was, of course, the world cruise on the Seabourn Sun. It started with the black tie ball at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco, also our hotel for the night. On the next day, January 9th, we boarded the ship and sailed out under the Golden Gate on a beautiful and warm evening (warm for San Francisco). Just as we were getting into warmer weather I managed to come down with flu like symptoms and spent 5 days sick - BUT the good news! I lost 5 pounds, always a good thing to do at the start of a long cruise.

Between Kritimati Island (See Helen's Corner) and Sydney, we had a series of South Pacific ports. Apia in Samoa, Lautoka in Fiji, Vanuatu, and two stops in New Caledonia - all new except for Fiji. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate in Fiji and Vanuatu eliminating the snorkeling there so it was on to New Caledonia. The first stop in New Caledonia was the capital of Noumea (no u me a) and on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 high), it was a zero. But, the following day we had an anchorage at the Isle of Pines. One of those beautiful surprises - a tropical paradise. Soft white sand beaches, water so clear you could hardly see it, lots of little but colorful and friendly fish to watch as they ducked in and out of the coral, a beach bar-be-que and dancing by the friendly natives - just as a welcome for us, no charge. A truly lovely day.

Years ago, Helen had been told by a friend that Bali is the most beautiful island in the world, so she was eagerly looking forward to her first visit. She was not disappointed. Bali was green and lovely as always. Bali is a mountainous island with several volcanoes, at least one of which is still active. The rather narrow roads wind up and around through a jungle of banana and coconut trees. From the very edge of the road, the family compounds - compounds housing three generations - blend back into the trees, each with their family temples on the "honored side" of the property. Only the chickens scurry; The dogs merely relax in the heat. When you break into the open, the verdant rice paddies are terraced like stair steps, up and up. A team of two water buffalo pulls a plow through one of the lower paddies. Egrets searching for insects make white polka dots on this sea of green. A post card in every way.

Although Bali is part of Indonesia - Indonesia with the largest Muslim population in the world, Bali itself is predominantly Hindu with temples in the family compounds, temples in the village, and then the major temples. Ladies take offerings of food to the temple on special days. Of course, if the Gods don't eat the food, she takes it back home for the family. (I suspect she is depending on the Gods not being hungry!) For the special days, the temples are adorned with brightly colored cloth and garlands of flowers and greenery. Soft beauty is Bali.

The traffic on the narrow roads is bad, the street vendors near the port are ferocious, and it tends to be hot and humid, but Bali is still one of the lovely spots in the world with kind and gentle people, breath taking-beauty, wonderful beaches and, I understand, great snorkeling. Two weeks here would be a good start.

Where Bali was new to Helen at least, Hong Kong is now a familiar city. But I never tire of the bustle, the legendary Star Ferry, or riding the ancient double decker trams (street cars). And this visit to Hong Kong was wonderful - maybe the best ever. It started as we joined the captain very early in the morning to sail in on the navigational bridge. Our presence was by invitation from the captain himself! (Of course, I had asked, but "invitation from the captain himself" sounds better.) It was very interesting - even worth getting up at 5:15 AM. We were used to the "PR" captain we saw around the ship, a jovial, joking type. But during the sail in, he was 125% business. There was no talking except consultations with the pilot and the issuance of commands. Maneuvering a sizable ship through the narrow channel in the dark, searching for small marker lights hidden in the lights of the city, terse communication with the escorting tugs about small boats that had to be cleared from our path, all gave us an appreciation for the skills that go into a safe cruise.

After the usual (maybe mandatory?) visit to my Hong Kong tailor, it was time for a must, a trip to "Toby", maybe the best Chinese restaurant in the world for plain old Cantonese food. It's a small, "dump looking" place on the edge of the Stanley Market that I found in 1997. Atmosphere is strictly "small hole in the wall with slanted eyes". (This year we had twice as many "round eyes" as last year - four of us with the other two being the ship's doctors.) Don't look for a fork at Toby's, but they do have menus in English and one or two people who speak a little English. You go there strictly for the food. This year, we had probably the best fried rice I've ever eaten - and the sweet and sour pork!!! Mmm mmm Good!

Helen also has her favorite place and twice we had "tea time" at Café d'Or with coffees and a shared creme brulee that rated a perfect 10 on an Olympic grading scale. We rode the buses, the trams, the Star ferry, and even the escalators that go half way up the hill in "Central" Hong Kong. These escalators go down in the AM and then up the rest of the day to carry the people who live on the mountain to and from work. We rode up and walked down. I counted the steps or equivalent - about 450. We were up where the people lived - in some cases looking in their windows as we rode by on the escalator. (On the Star Ferry we even rode first class - why not? For seniors it is free in either class! Public transport in Hong Kong is excellent and very cheap by our standards.)

Maybe the highlight, though, was our visit to Shaukeiwan. Now I had never heard of Shaukeiwan and am still not sure where it is, but we wanted a ride on the old double deckers to "see the world", something I do at least once on every trip. We took the first tram that came along and off we went. We went and went and went (quite a ride for about 13 cents each) to the end of the line. We didn't know where we were but we found a bank and read the English sign that said "Shaukeiwan Branch". We had arrived - wherever Shaukeiwan was. Down the street a short block we found a local open market. It was early evening and the market place was full of people buying the food for their dinner, fresh food to cook tonight. Mountains of vegetables so fresh and green (and some very strange looking to our eyes), brightly colored meat hung in the open with the pig's feet next to the beef hearts, very little prepackaged, everything looking fresh and delicious. And if you wanted fresh fish, this was your place. We stood fascinated as a lady becrusted in jewels stuck her hand in the tub of water to select just the live crabs she wanted for dinner. And there were tubs of shrimp, three kinds of clams, and many varieties of smallish fish all alive and awaiting the table. When a customer selected a fish (I like the eyes on that one?), the vendor pulled it out of the water, put it into a plastic bag and handed it to the fish cleaner. He hit it in the head with the side of his cleaver-shaped, razor sharp "knife", pulled it out of the bag, removed the scales with a stiff brush, and then gutted it, put it back into the bag and handed it to the customer - all in under 30 seconds, and off the customer went with "fresh" fish for dinner. The whole market place was for locals; no English spoken here. There were open vegetable stalls in the street, meat markets, fish markets, tiny bakeries, clothing vendors, hardware stores, drug stores (Chinese and regular), mini grocery stores, everything you might need all intermixed and no store more than 15 feet wide! In one spot the sequence was meat, lingerie, meat, fish, hardware! We even bought a bib for Elizabeth Grace. The lady spoke no English so we asked for what we wanted by my pretending to tie a bib on Helen while she pretended to be eating with her fingers - well, it worked!! Truly another world, so fascinating to watch and, in a very small way, to join. Gee, it is fun to travel and get away from the tourists.

A dramatic contrast to Hong Kong is Yangon, Myanmar - Rangoon, Burma in the British days.

Myanmar is a country with wonderful, friendly people and troubles that make you wonder how anyone could be happy or friendly. It is one of the poorer countries in an area where poor, compared to American or European standards, is normal. One good measure vis-a-vis the other countries is the transportation available. For example, in Vietnam in 1999, there were a few mini bikes (small motorcycles) and lots and lots of bicycles including the pedicabs. By last year, the Vietnamese cities had far fewer bicycles but had mini bikes everywhere you turned - a sure sign of a booming and growing economy. In Yangon today, even bicycles are scarce except for the "sidecars", taxi bicycles with a side car having one seat pointed to the front and one to the back to handle two (sometimes more) passengers or one passenger plus cargo. There are cars and trucks but few taxis. The main mode of transportation for the populace is old, dilapidated buses packed so full inside that I don't see how anyone can get off but with even more people hanging on the outside trying to get in.

In the "new" port where we docked, we watched them unloading an Iranian ship with slings from the cranes - an archaic method that takes days instead of hours. They do have two container cranes and a few containers in this very new port facility, but the old prevails from what I can see. Even worse, it is 20 miles to Yangon and they have only one, two lane road to handle all the heavy goods trucks from the port along with the normal traffic and the local people walking in the roadway - there are, of course, no sidewalks. They built a rail line to the port to assist in the construction and then abandoned it.

Without doubt, part of the problem is the government - a harsh and repressive, military dictatorship. Telephones and internet access is severely limited as one example. People simply do not have telephones and many may not even know what they are! Expressing contrary opinions can result in personal disaster and no one can be trusted. When asked a delicate question, our guide indicated he could not talk in front of the driver, and that even family members could not be trusted. Our guide, Santun, is a nice young man with excellent English and a recent graduate as a chemical engineer. He was out of school for 3˝ years because the schools were closed after students had held a strike. We asked Santun about the average income. He said that a couple years ago one of the government ministers had released GDP information - and was fired a few days later. A government of this type does not want to hear any ideas and, in my opinion, this shows in things like a modern port without anyone having thought about how to move goods to and from the port. If offering ideas that may not please can result in personal misfortune, who will offer ideas?

But despite the repression and the poverty, the people are friendly, courteous (except the drivers), and quick to smile when you acknowledge them with a nod or a smile. One of the highlights of our visit was when our private guide and driver, most reluctantly, agreed to take us to a suburban "village" for a "walk about". The main road - the one with the busses - bustled with the local market spread on the ground and with people walking on the road and stepping out of the way only when the buses, with horns constantly honking, were upon them. With electricity for only eight hours a day, temperatures in the 90s, and no refrigerators, they must buy their food just before cooking time each day. Most of the homes were little more than side by side shacks surrounded by stagnant water. The village "streets" were paths for walking and maybe bicycles only. Boys played a form of caroms in the middle of the path, mothers carried babies, men worked on creating beautiful teak snooker tables across from their home, the charcoal dealer and his wife sat with more of their product on them than it seemed they had for sale, and did we attract a crowd! We were like pied pipers as the kids followed us, foreigners! a sight I suspect that is rarely seen in the village.

One of the reasons, perhaps, why the people are as content as they are may be that the country is 85% Buddhist. In Buddhism, the level of your troubles and suffering in this world is related to the way you lived in your previous incarnation. So, if you are suffering a lot, it is the fault of your last incarnation and you should do your best to follow the tenants of Buddhism like good thoughts, good acts, etc., to try and be sure your next life is on a higher and more comfortable plane. Of course, if you can reach Nirvana in your life, then you will have no more pain ever. This Buddhism with its accepted offshoots of spirit worship and maybe even a touch of Hinduism can be seen everywhere from, I guess, the gentle smiles of the people to magnificent temples and stupas generally called pagodas here. These show up all around Yangon and, per the literature, all over Myanmar and date back well over 2,500 years.

We saw several pagodas and a massive reclining Buddha, but there is one temple complex called the Shwedagon Pagoda that is unforgettable. Its magnificence rivals the Grand Palace in Bangkok, but it is 2,500 years old, ten times the age of the Grand Palace. Built on a hilltop, the massive stupa towers up another 300 feet - 30 stories - from the center of the massive courtyard. Covered with 60 tons of gold that must be replaced every eight years or so, it has the traditional "umbrella" of precious stones at the top with the top stone being a diamond of some 86 carats! Surrounding the stupa is a very extensive courtyard with many small temples directly adjacent to the stupa, a wide marble walkway, and finally dozens of large temples around the outside with massive bells and more Buddhas than you can count. One with at least 20 large Buddhas. We arrived late in the day after the worst heat and stayed until it was quite dark. In the daylight, the central stupa was impressive but by dusk and night when fully lit, it was absolutely beautiful - gold with a silverish looking umbrella of jewels against the deep blue of a night sky! Truly unforgettable.

Due to some rescheduling, we won "second prize" and had two days in Mumbai, India. (First prize was one day in Mumbai - tells you my impression of Mumbai.) Since we had seen the sights on earlier visits, we concentrated on two things: some shopping and then beer and chips (crisps to you English) at the Taj Mahal Hotel. Helen ended up with 5 pair of shoes from the Metro (total cost of $40 or so) and I finally got my silk brocade dinner jacket. Beautifully tailored in less than 24 hours in black, red and gold! Resplendent is the word!

But despite the joys of the Taj Mahal Hotel, the horse carriage rides, and shopping for nice things at good prices, you tend to come away from Mumbai with less than high spirits. Mumbai with its over 15 million people is, like India itself, full of contrasts.

• Mercedes with chauffeurs leaving the posh hotels with business men in western suits.
• Commuters - working people - hurriedly walking from or to Victoria Station (3 million each day through one station!). Walking because they cannot afford the 50 cent taxi fare.
• And a reported 63,000 taxi cabs with taxis sitting everywhere waiting for someone who can afford the 50 cents.
• Guides pointing with pride at classic buildings left by the British over a half century ago - but buildings slowly decaying due to lack of maintenance by the Indian inheritors.
• Large green parks and cricket fields in the center of the city.
• "Free for all" traffic with horns blaring and no one caring.
• Ancient busses and trucks belching pollution.
• Children's rides and hot corn on the cob on the waterfront promenade at dusk.
• Port police shaking down the taxi drivers to allow them to take you to the ship at the public terminal inside the port.
• "Shops" made up of one table and sideboards, jammed together, side by side on the walkway, each one trying to eke out a living from the passersby.
• Women in beautiful silk and chiffon saris walk on broken and trash laden sidewalks - and sometimes the streets themselves.
• Barefoot and tattered beggar children - probably "professional" - whose English is "madam, madam" and "dollah, dollah".
• Magnificent hotels with world class luxury in the lobby and shops.
• A man of the street people sleeping on top of a wall - narrow but a better bed than the street.
• People everywhere with seemingly little to do and no place to go.

There are the very rich, some in the middle, and most are poor. With population growth out of control, the future is questionable The sight that lingers in my mind - and hopefully will not be forgotten - were two children: a baby maybe two years old lying on the hot dirty asphalt of the street only a few feet from the traffic with his 5 year old sister sitting by him staring at nothing. Street people. Just two of the hundreds of thousands. Children with no hope and no future.

From Mumbai it was south through the Indian Ocean to the Seychelles. (The Seychelles are a group of islands on the equator in the Indian Ocean a 1,000 miles east of Africa.) Our stop was great! The big news was "Fish Bites Man (and Woman)"!!!! We had a great day snorkeling and had the little convict fish around us like flies at a picnic - and the little buggers were BITING US! Helen was trying to grab them with her hands - perhaps to bite them back? We found lots of fish and joined a turtle (per Helen, a HUGE turtle) as he (she?) swam just beneath us.

We had organized a small group for the snorkeling trip and it was wonderful. We ended up with a mini tour of the island to get to the beach and a tour by sea to get to the marine park. The scenery was spectacular and the snorkeling quite good from the beach and in the marine park. It has been 10 years since I was here and I had forgotten how beautiful the islands are. I wish we had had time to go to Praslin Island to snorkel as I did 10 years ago; it was the best I've ever had. However, this was good. Good enough so that, as usual, they had to come and fish me out of the water to get me to leave. On Praslin, they might not have gotten me out at all! I'd sure like to come back someday.

Of particular note, Helen has come of age as a snorkeler! She has now overcome her fear of the water. She was great. Her mask was leaking part of the time and there was no panic or "I can't do this". She just surfaced, followed instructions on how to clear her mask, and kept on going. I am very proud of her.

Another country that everyone knows is in turmoil is South Africa. The cities we visited - Durban, Port Elizabeth, and Capetown - told an interesting story. South Africa is a beautiful country and one with great natural resources. Capetown is more like an American city than any place I know. It would be a grand place to live, but they have one massive problem - an inheritance from the past. The history of South Africa is of one group or tribe pushing out and killing the old. The Bantu did it to the Sans, the Boers (Dutch farmers in the 16th century) did it to the Bantu and then the English did it to them. The Boers in turn in the "great trek" (and this is the source of the word trek) did it to the Bantu and the Zulu, and then when diamonds and gold were discovered in the Boer areas, the English and the fortune hunters did it to the Boers again. Finally the Boers (now called Afrikaners) gained control in the politics of South Africa and created apartheid which did it to the non-whites in a new way.

Ten years ago, President LeClerc and Nelson Mandela made the big move to accept the fact that the population was 90% black, and the world was not accepting the increasingly harsh repression of the blacks. It is a tribute to them - especially Nelson Mandela - that the streets were not awash with blood - again. However, the remaining problems boil just under the surface like a volcano awaiting eruption. The "minor" eruptions can be seen in the very high crime rate (25,000 murders per year), the electric fences on top of the walls around housing, and the special entrance to the casino in Port Elizabeth that you use when you need to check your guns - yes, your guns. People are very friendly, but you get the feeling they are trying to ignore that which they cannot change. The only answers will take two to three generations at least - and who knows when a major "eruption" could occur. Yes, from a white viewpoint, I think living in South Africa would be much like living on the side of a live volcano. Life must go on, children must play, and attempts must be made to achieve "normalcy", but you do what you can to protect yourself against the hot lava. If you are black, life is still very, very difficult, but maybe there is hope sometime in a nebulous future.

And now for a "can you believe this" story. I call it "Front teeth". While in Durban, the gentleman - well, the other gentleman - at our table fell and broke off his three front teeth. We thought Ed would have to leave the ship. But, no. Two of our fellow passengers were retired professors of dentistry from Holland and another was a retired dentist from Germany. And the German had a full set of dental tools with him! While we were bouncing on 40 foot swells between Durban and Port Elizabeth, they had Ed on a couch in his stateroom doing three root canals! (Better him than me.) The German also made him a temporary plate and Ed finished the trip. And the charge? No charge, courtesy to a fellow passenger. A retired dentist on board - sure. One with a full set of tools - maybe. Three root canals with no formal office on a very rough sea - unbelievable. No charge from a dentist - "can you believe this"?

Dakar, the capital of Senegal, was another new port for me. As we left Dakar after a 5 hour stop, the captain announced that it was good to have arrived in Dakar - but even better to leave! But Dakar does have one good point; it makes Mumbai look good. The city has a well earned reputation for street robbery and mugging and has no socially redeeming sights for tourists. However, on the plus side, they are multi-tribal like most of Africa, but unlike most, there are no civil wars. They do have a democratic form of government and the various religions (they are mostly Muslim) seem to get along in peace. There are isolated pockets that look promising as you drive around the town, and the French have left the common language. Most people do not look hungry despite the fair number of beggars. However, unemployment is staggering and the future is hard to see.

Geography gives Dakar its important place in history; it is located on the equator where Africa bulges into the Atlantic. This location and a good natural harbor made it a major port as early as the 15th century. The Europeans brought manufactured goods which were greatly desired by the tribal chiefs and took what the chiefs had to trade - slaves. Dakar became the primary "shipping" point for slaves going to Brazil, the Caribbean, and the US. This was a dirty business with the chiefs selling both captives and their own people to gain manufactured goods for themselves. (Maybe things haven't changed that much in sub-Saharan Africa?)

An interesting side note relates to the Canary Islands, our stop after Dakar. When the Europeans first came to the Canaries, they found them populated by the Guanches, a people thought to have come from the Berbers of North Africa. Because the Guanches had "king like" leaders, powers of reasoning, a language, and a social structure, the Europeans, after much debate, ruled that the Guanches were human - yes, human. This was important because, per the Europeans, God had given humans dominion over all the earth and the creatures thereof. (See Genesis 1:26) Later, in the West Indies when the Spaniards were enslaving the Indians, a priest protested based on the earlier Guanche ruling. Again, after much discussion, the Indians were also granted "human status" and could no longer be enslaved.

However, the blacks from Africa were not classed as humans so they were treated like cattle; families were divided with the men going one way, women another, and the children where they would fetch the most. Best estimates are that 20-25 million were "shipped" and 15 million survived the voyages. The key motivation for slavery was the "white gold" of sugar. Sugar growing and refining required a continuous re-supply of slaves. First, it was very labor intensive and, second, the slaves tended to have very short live spans due to the cruel labor and conditions. Work them to death and replace them was the plan of the day. A truly sad episode in the history of man - white and black.

The cruise had much more - wonderful opera in Sydney, jumping salt water crocodiles in Darwin (even sitting on a two story high dock, you could be a salty's dinner!), the night safari in Singapore, luncheon at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, a wild tuk-tuk ride in Colombo, Sri Lanka, snorkeling at Cairns, and more - but enough is enough! It was the last ever world cruise for the ship, the Seabourn Sun, and it definitely was the best ever - for me, at least.

So where do we go from here? Originally, the summer was held open for Paula's and David's (#2 son) wedding, a relaxed trip to Tyler to see Elizabeth Grace, and maybe a short trip to Romania to visit some elderly relatives of Helen's. But then we heard a seemingly reliable rumor that if we were to get our 2 week free cruise (free for having more than 140 days on Seabourn ships) on one of the "Luxury Yachts of Seabourn", we'd better get it before fall. Since the cruise we wanted was available, we decided we'd better not wait until next year as planned. So, in late July we are off to London to board the Seabourn Pride for a 14 day cruise to St. Petersburg and return to London. From reading the brochure, it should be a sybaritic event to remember! More in the fall newsletter.

We will be home - yes, we will - for most of the fall and early winter and would love to see you here. Hopefully, we will see some of you as we catch up with family visits from Atlanta to Texas and in Los Angeles in January. In the meantime, my usual but sincere prayer for all of you. May a kind and loving God walk with us and with each of you.