Our day in Angkor Wat began early at about 6:45 AM. We had to get up, dress, breakfast, and get on the bus by 7:45 AM. I may have mentioned in earlier posts that it has been hot and humid in several of the places we have visited so far, but Siem Reap and Angkor Wat beat them all. By 8:00 AM, the temperature was hovering around 90°.

When approaching Angkor Wat, it is easy to think that you are in some remote part of an even remoter part of the world. However, it is only about 20 Km from Siem Reap. As we left the bus and began walking toward the access bridge across the moat, we began to realize that “Yes, we really are here!”

Our first look at Angkor Wat

The welcoming committee - a local macaque monkey. They are wild, but they know the humans will not harm them and are bold enough to come up and beg.

As we entered, our Guide/interpreter, Sam, told us that we would be able to take a picture at the famous reflecting pool that seems to show up on all the Angkor Wat postcards. Exciting…

 

The famous reflecting pool. It is little more than a mud puddle, but it makes a beautiful reflection.

Here we are mucking up the beautiful view...

It took us about an hour to make our way into the center of the complex and the location of the highest tower in the temple. The steps were very steep and Bonnie decided it would be more fun to watch me work my way up - and down. Once at the top, the view was spectacular!

The view from the top.

I made it up and down, but it was harder down than up...

After leaving Angkor Wat, we made a stop at the Siem Reap Museum; however, Bonnie and I opted to wait in the cool of the lobby area, have a soft drink, and get ready for the afternoon’s assault on Angkor Thom. 

Ahhhh...a fan and some cooling air in the museum. The only air conditioning was in the museum shop and that took about three minutes to look through.

Angkor Thom is the other famous temple complex in Siem Reap that is many times larger than Angkor Wat, but not as well-known or visited. Angkor Thom is still mostly jungle and there are ongoing rebuilding/reconstruction projects at several of the larger sites. Actually, Angkor Thom is the home of the Ta Thoem Temple, the site of Angelina Jolie’s filming of “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”. Many of the locals have just about deified her for her additions to the local economy, her adoption of a local orphan, and her support of local charitable activities.

Our lunch at the Tara Angkor Hotel was another sumptuous buffet that was even tastier than that at the Sokha Angkor the evening before.

After lunch we made it to Angkor Thom and visited two of its three main temple complexes, all under reconstruction. The first was the Bayon Temple, the Temple of the Smiling Faces.

I finally got to kiss a Buddha!

The second temple was the Ta Thoem Temple, mentioned above. Seeing the trees seeming to suck the walls right into their “ground mouths” was so different than what we had seen at Angkor Wat.

The access to the Angkor Thom temples was along paths through the jungle. Although the areas immediately adjacent to the pathways had obviously been subject to human interaction, it was easy to imagine that much of this primeval forest land had never been trod by two-footed creatures. Frankly, we thought the afternoon visit was even more exciting and interesting than the morning visit. Even though it was hot and humid, we didn’t have to do the climbing that we had to do at Angkor Wat. What little climbing we did was only few steps at a time.

The bucolic entrance to Ta Theom temple at Angkor Thom.

The famous "Lara Croft:Tomb Raider" tree...I suppose we should have seen the movie in anticipation of viewing this historic site.

That evening, we were treated to a local show of dancing and music, along with yet another buffet that would have fed three times the number of people there. We hoped that the leftover food was distributed to the staff or some other worthy endeavor. We would not like to think that it was just discarded.

The cap on the evening was the local show provided by the hotel. It was exclusively for our group (only 18 of us)! 

The next morning we boarded a bus for the short trip to the airport and our flight to Saigon. The flight was uneventful, except that it was on a prop-jet. We haven’t flown on one of those for decades!

The next post will be on our stay in Saigon. Stay tuned…

Da Nang, Vietnam; Siem Reap, Cambodia; Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam…a whirlwind four days. We docked at Chan May, Vietnam as a drop-off point for our brief tour of Da Nang and a place to pick up a plane to Siem Reap. Chan May is not much more than a large commercial pier lying about halfway between Hue and Hoi An. Hue is the ancient Vietnamese capital and Hoi An is a medium-sized city that is one of Vietnam’s cultural centers. Da Nang gained fame during the Vietnamese War (known in Vietnam as the American War) as a major US airbase and R&R center – think: China Beach.

We docked at Chan May, the access to Da Nanag, then flew to Siem Reap for the Angkor Wat visit. Then we flew from Siem Reap to Saigon.

Our day began early with a bus ride into Da Nang and a visit to the local market. This visit was quite different from our Indonesian and Malaysian market visits. This market teemed with people and was many, many times larger. They also sold everything from food and staples to clothing, religious objects, and art work, to local crafts. After the market we made a too brief stop at the XQ Embroidery Factory. This three-story building houses a retail store on the first floor, an embroidery factory where young women produce extraordinary works of embroidered artwork on the second floor, and an embroidery school on the third floor. If we had had a little more time, I am confident we would have walked away with a true keepsake piece of embroidered artwork. As it was, this was merely a short stop to showcase one of the finer gifts of Vietnamese culture.

We them stopped at the Cham Museum and a marble “factory.” The Cham Museum was probably quite interesting, but Bonnie and I were too tired from the market walk and the embroidery factory to even take the tour. We made camp in the coffee shop, had Cokes, visited the Museum Shop, and relaxed. The marble factory was a joke. It seemed to us to be just another shot at buying local craftsmanship. While the work was indeed beautiful and many pieces were quite intricate, we just couldn’t see buying a four-foot tall carved marble animal (or small person) and having to wither tote it home or ship it. Besides, it was just not to our taste. We would have preferred to have had more time at the embroidery factory.

Our final stop before lunch was at a cave that had become a Buddhist shrine. The most interesting thing about this cave is that during the Vietnam War it housed a Viet Cong hospital. We were told that the US troops stationed near the base of the mountain holding the cave had no idea what was underfoot.

I had to add this picture of the Da Nanag "Dragon Bridge." It really is an embellishment along the center of the bridge in the form of a huge dragon...

Lunch was at the Sandy Beach Resort Hotel located right in the middle of the area famous as “China Beach.” It was a very good lunch of Vietnamese food and we had a short time to explore the beach. Just like home…

Finally, Silk Air (a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines) commuter jet to Siem Reap and the start of our Angkor Wat Cambodian adventure. This was the real reason for the trip and has been one of our “bucket list” items for a long time. The flight was an uneventful hour and a half. Cambodia was, however, as different from Vietnam as a lion is from a lamb. For instance, in Vietnam the immigration process was well-ordered and vey quick. We were in and out of the security lines at a fast pace and all of the various government functionaries knew exactly what he or she was to do. They did it and everyone moved on. Siem Reap was, however, more of a Cambodian fire drill. We were stopped at the entry to the terminal because we did not have our “health paper.” Where was the health paper? Why, of course, it was on a table next to the official, but it was not his job to hand it out, that was for someone else and apparently, the two of them were not speaking… Then we were told to surrender our passports to another official who would take care of our visas. IF you have ever traveled out of the US, then you know that the first rule is “Do not EVER voluntarily give up your passport – even to a seemingly-official government agent.” After many reassurances from our guide/interpreter and the ship’s escort, we did give up the passports. This was not going to be a good night’s sleep… We were told that we would get them back the next day with the visa attached.

Siem Reap is a small city by Asian standards with about 1.5 million people. It became obvious very quickly that as knowledge and renown attached to the Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom complexes, the city became exceedingly tourist-friendly, while still trying to sustain the hordes of people flocking to take advantage of the new-found notoriety. One thing I couldn’t help but notice was how the traffic in both Vietnam and Cambodia seems to flow like some sort of divinely-orchestrated ballet. The mix consists of pedestrians, bicyclers, motor scooters, motorcycles, “Tuk-Tuks” (motorcycles with a two-wheeled cart attached), the relatively few cars, and buses in three sizes (small electric eight to ten passenger, medium sized similar to those you see at airport rental car terminals, and large city bus types). These disparate vehicles and humans seem to weave in and about one another with little or no direction. The traffic signs (what there are of them) and the two traffic signals we saw in Siem Reap appear to be more suggestions than directions. Although I am told that all vehicles are equipped with turn signals, there was little evidence that anyone knew of their existence (sort of like being home in season…). Bikes, cycles, mopeds, and buses crossed, turned, started and stopped while dodging each other. We were in a large bus and I cannot imagine what it must be like at ground level in a Tuk-Tuk or on a bike.

Our base in Siem Reap was the Sokha Angkor Hotel and Spa. This was a slightly older hotel, with four-star amenities and service, and was less glitzy than several of the newer hotels that lined the strip in from the airport. Also lining that strip were wall-to-wall shops, restaurants, tourist “boutiques,” and every type of establishment designed to separate a tourist from his $$$. OK, it was not Las Vegas, but it was a jarring reminder that every place that invites tourism is prone to inviting the ancillary businesses as well. The Sokha Hotel has a lot of local artwork and crafts as décor and is decorated to look more local than western. Our dinner that evening was a very good buffet of both Asian and western dishes. Of course, Bonnie and I concentrated on the Asian food.

The next morning we began our Angkor Wat adventure for real. I will follow up with another post on that part of the trip.

We spent the second day in HK outside of HK proper. We took a tour to Lantau Island just to the west of HK Island.

On the way out we stopped at the Tsing Ma Bridge. This is the world’s longest double-deck suspension bridge and is the centerpiece of the new bridge/causeway structure linking HK Island with Lantau Island and the new HK International Airport. For Bonnie, it was “interesting” stop and for me it was a “thrill” stop. I still get a kick out of unique and massive structures, even though I don’t participate actively in the design or construction anymore.

You-know-who and bridge.

After our bridge stop, we continued to new town of Tung Chung and a different bus. It seems that in China there are some rather byzantine rules and regulations governing just about everything. One of these sets of rules dictates that on Lantau Island, one must have a very specific permit to use the roads. SO …on to a different bus. Our next stop was the small fishing village of Tai O. Our guide/interpreter, Ryan, was from that village and we had a real treat since he knew just about everybody and could take us on a very special tour of an authentic country village that seemed far removed from bustling HK, although only about 25 road miles away. This village dated back to the 15th century and it was interesting to see that the people lived, while taking advantage of modernity like electricity and running water, still clinging to the old village ways. We saw one woman fishmonger hacking up a large fish and weighing it in a hand-held balance scale that would have been right at home with Marco Polo. The street vendors and homes were just as they had been for hundreds of years. We went to a Taoist temple that dated back to the Ming Dynasty.

We were on the tiny drawbridge separating the halves of the town.

A few views of this old village. All the vendors sell either dried or fresh goods. Dried means just what it implies, but fresh means live!

More of the old village. That is the Ming Dynasty Taoist Temple in the middle and a street vendor at work on the right.

It was a great way to see how a lot of China lives that is not within a city or near a tourist attraction. After about a half-hour of exploring, we were back on the bus and on our way to the main attraction of Lantau Island – at least for us: the Po Lin Monastery. The monastery houses the Tian Tan Buddha, the largest Bronze Buddha in China, and the monastery itself which dates back to the mid-20^th century.  The Buddha statue was constructed in 1992 at a cost of HK$68 million (~US$10 million). Most of the money was gathered by donations over several decades, but the largest single “donation” came from the Chinese government in 1998, after the HK turnover from the British. The Monastery was originally constructed in the 1920s and expanded in 1970. The most recent addition, the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas, was only opened a few months ago, in October 2014.

I got to stand on the sacred spot at the base of the Buddha. This is a circular stone and marble enclosure situated at the foot of the hill upon which the Buddha statue sits. It is considered sacred because the acoustics of the enclosure are such that even if one speaks in a normal voice, it can’t be heard unless you are standing directly in front of the speaker. The worshipful believe that this gives them a direct conduit to the Buddha. Actually, it was a little spooky…

Communing with the Buddha. It was so still in the enclosure that you could hear a pin drop.

Left top: the huge Buddha on the mountain top; right top: view from the top. The large building is the monastery. In the center is another view of the monastery. At bottom right is a detail of the monastery. At right is the hall of 10,000 Buddhas.

After communing with the Buddha, we had a very nice vegetarian lunch at the monastery. The first course was a not-to-appetizing soup (read: slimy and tepid). Not a sign of good things to come. We were, however, pleased to find that the next course was a family-style arrangement of several dishes  - all based on vegetables and tofu – that turned out to be surprisingly good. Well, except for the taro cake and the lotus root. The taro cake was a large lump of taro that had been pounded into a paste and deep-fried. The crust had that good deep fried taste (deep frying forgives many sins…), but the inside was pasty and tasteless. The lotus root was off-putting because of its purple color, hard-to-cut texture, and odd (read: slimy) dressing.

After leaving the monastery grounds, we walked through a Disneyesque row of shops, statues of cartoon characters, and restaurant stalls on our way to catch our ride back to the bus depot. Our ride was a 4.7 KM (~ 3 miles) aerial tramway! Several of the cars had glass bottoms and for an extra fee you could ride in one of those cars. Several of our group did so, but we wussed out. The aerial ride took us over a mountainous landscape at elevations of anywhere from 50’-60’ to over 500’ above the ground or water. The ride also paralleled the new airport and we could see the takeoffs and landings as well as the entire countryside spread out below us.

Some views from the aerial tram.

By the time we got back to the ship we were exhausted. Even though the ship would not sail until about 10:30 that evening, we opted for dinner aboard and early to be. Much as we wanted to sample the local cuisine, we just would not have been able to do it justice. Ah well, another excuse to return to HK.

Overall, our bottom line for HK was simple: we want to return! We fell that we could easily spend a week, or two, and still want more. OK, on the list for future trips.

HK has a very different vibe from most of the other large cities we have visited so far. For one thing, there is a different concept of personal space. Even though HK is the most densely populated city on earth, people seem to have a way of keeping their personal space, no matter how small, to themselves. There was not nearly as much pushing, shoving and jostling as we expected. It was tightly packed, but not body-to-body. The people we met, the shopkeepers, the service personnel, even the bus drivers, were not only courteous, but almost friendly. Of course, HK still considers itself apart from China rather than a part of China. Time will tell…

As we leave HK, we begin the next leg of our journey. Here’s a preview:

We have overnights in Saigon (HCM City), Bangkok, and Singapore.

We will only be a few minutes in Chan May. It is a drop-off point for Hoi An, Hue, and Da Nang. We will see little of those places on this trip as we are heading to Cambodia by air and temples at Angkor Wat. We are off the ship for two and a half days for this side trip, but I will be blogging about it as we go.

Stay tuned…

Hong Kong = Sensory Overload. Hong Kong (HK) is wonderful!

Above: Hong Kong by day as we sailed in about 8:00 AM. Very foggy exacerbated by the pollution from the mainland.
Below: Hong Kong by night. Still a little overcast, but the cacophony of light cuts through most of it.

Hong Kong (HK) consists of a small peninsula jutting into the South China Sea plus about 200 or more islands. It is about 400 sq. mi. in total land area and has about 8.5 million inhabitants. Most of them were out shopping during our visit. There are actually three parts to HK: HK Island; Kowloon Peninsula; and, the New Territories, a series of islands, peninsulas, and appendages of the mainland. 

HK was a part of the British Empire but is no longer a British Crown Colony. It was returned to China in 1997. Although it is now part of China, it remains as a Special Administrative Region (SAR). It will retain SAR status until 2047 at which time it will be under full Chinese control. Our guide/interpreter, Quin Dey (“Queen”) was sanguine about the eventual finality of the SAR. She said that she will be in her 70s at that time and realizes that the younger generation will have lived as Chinese citizens for most of their lives and will most likely be more easily assimilated.

As we pulled into the harbor we passed several other cruise ships docked farther out than we expected but as it turns out, we were docked right up in the middle of everything. Our dockage was at the Ocean Terminal, but more on that later.

We had tours for both days, but they were not full day tours. This gave us enough time to do a bit of wandering on our own. What a city to wander in!

Our first day’s tour was a highlights tour that took us from the top of Victoria Peak to a boat ride in the harbor to a visit to a street market. A full tour and yet we had time left to wander on our own for a while.

We began with a tram trip that was nearly vertical. The Victoria Tram was built in 1888 and has operated continuously since. Fortunately, they have updated the tram cars and the ride was fairly comfortable. Since we were ascending at a rather steep incline, gravity kept pulling us back into our seats as we strained to look around at the passing buildings and landscape on the way up. Unfortunately, a combination of weather factors rendered any long distance sightings null. The visibility was only a few hundred feet at first, but it gradually cleared to about a thousand feet. Still hard to see much on the ground, but still worth the trip.

Several shots of HK from Victoria Peak. Oops, the one on the left top is at harbor level.

Left: We pose in front of the impressive view from Victoria Peak. Squint a little and you'll see what we saw...not much.
Right: I was always a sucker for any form of transportation. This car was from the early 20th century and is now a tourist office.

At the top of Victoria Peak is a large shopping mall (Peak Galleria). Among the usual tourist schlock are high end shops, boutiques, and restaurants. By the way, that last sentence pretty much describes HK: tourist schlock, high-end shops and boutiques, and restaurants. We were then bussed down the mountain and headed toward the Aberdeen section of HK. Aberdeen is one of the oldest parts of HK and still has the remnants of the fishermen and boat people who have lived on the water for centuries. The locals call them the “water gypsies.”

Our river tour began at the shore side dock where the private ferries take people out to the world’s largest floating restaurant: the aptly named Jumbo Seafood Restaurant – five stories of food, drink, and kitschy opulence. We didn’t stop there, but it was a great photo op.

Some shots of HK harbor from our little sampan on the water tour. The upper right is a shot of the Jumbo Restaurant.

The harbor bustles with ferries, fishermen, families, merchants, and the ubiquitous tourists. Our twelve-passenger miniature sampan put-putted along driven by a large older lady who had several words of English: boat, fisher, houseboat, tip, thank you… IT took us about 20 minutes to make a small circle around the roughly two hundred or so small water gypsy boats, large fishing trawlers, pleasure boats, and other tourist sampans. After our return to shore, it was back in the bus for a trip to our last stop, Stanley Market.

Stanley Market is one of several sprawling street markets scattered throughout HK. Some of the markets specialize and Stanley is known for clothing, although one can find just about anything in any of the markets. We strolled among the “shops” and stalls and tabletop vendors more for the novelty than to buy anything. Most of the prices are fixed, although some bargaining is done. Since this was the Chinese New Year celebration weekend, we were told not to expect to bargain much at all. Although we did not intend to buy anything, the array of clothing ranging from simple shirts to quite fancy brocade evening coats was too much to resist and Bonnie would up with several items – some as possible gifts and some for herself.

This is the only really good shot in Stanley Market. The little girl saw us poking around the stalls and couldn't take her eyes off us. As soon as I got the shot, she turned and ran to her Father.

Then it was back on the bus and back to the ship. All in all a good introduction; however, we decided that HK is another one of those places that need much more time to fully savor and appreciate and it has gone on our must-return-to list for further exploration.

The pier where we are docked is adjacent to one of the world’s largest, possibly the largest, shopping malls: Harbor City. There are over 300 stores, 150 restaurants, parking for thousands of cars, and acres of people. We were struck by the numbers of young and youngish people who crowded the stores and mallways. It seemed like everyone had at least one or two shopping bags and they all looked eager to buy more of whatever.

The evening, we had a farewell dinner on deck with another couple we had met on the cruise who were leaving the ship in HK. HK at night is as exciting as it is during the day. The light shows on the sides of the tall buildings and the lasers shooting off the building tops seem to be right out of “Blade Runner” (if anyone else remembers that movie…). This show was not just a series of lights on the buildings, but pictures, Chinese writing and slogans, and one double set of buildings side-by-side that actually had an aquarium being depicted! All in a cacophony of color, motion, and throb that kept you looking from one to another to another to see what would come next.

I will be doing a separate posting about our second day in HK soon.

Stay tuned…

Haikou, Hainan, China…a city of about 1.5 million, but only a small town in China terms.

We had a half-day stop here on our way to Hong Kong. When we docked, we found that the Chinese authorities required that we go through immigration and customs as we left the ship. We noticed that there were men in uniform with cameras everywhere taking pictures of us as we lined up. It would be easy to imagine that our picture is now on the wall in every post office in China… The young lady immigration officer who took our passports at her window looked them over very carefully, checked the photo against the person, clicked a few keys, read the video screen carefully, then handed back the passport all without a word – or a smile.

Haikou is a port city on the northern tip of the island of Hainan just off the south coast of China. It is a rather nondescript place with a lot of tall buildings, mostly government, and a lot of unfinished high-rises. The Chinese housing market is not is very good shape we are told. The real action on Hainan is on the south side of the island where all the beaches are. We are told that at the resort area of Sanbe, there are high-rises hotels, condos, and toney restaurants as Sanbe is the playground of China’s, Russia’s, and eastern Eurpoe’s wealthier class.

We took a half-day tour to one of the only real attractions in the area: the Volcanic Cluster National Geopark. Our guide/interpreter was Wen Yang (“Koko”). She was about 5’0” and 100 lbs. of pure energy.

She explained the significance of the Chinese New Year, including some of the symbology, and began referring to us as her “family” for the day. In fact, every time we would need to assemble, she would shout “Koko’s family needs to be HERE now!” She managed to herd cats with great efficiency… We are convinced that the trip could have been deadly boring if not for Koko. She even sang a few Chinese songs to us on the way back to the ship in a pure, high voice that was just delightful.

The Volcanic cluster Geopark is an area of about 20 extinct volcanos located about 20 miles outside of Haikou city proper. The tour description indicated that part of the tour route included walking up about 99 steps to get to the top of the crater and overlook. After we actually got there and made the climb, I had to wonder if Chinese math is any different from our western math. There were actually 342 steps – I counted every one. It started as a small joke and when I go to about 40 or 50, I said to Bonnie there has to be more than another 40 or 50 here. So I kept counting all the way to the top and reached 342. Good thing, because we didn’t have one more step in us at that point. The good news is that, unlike Borobudur where the steps were both high and low, uneven across, and made of stone, these steps were even and made of concrete or brick. Bonnie thought it might be because the Chinese have small feet and short legs…

Yours truly and better half at the entrance to the park. Notice from our smiles and sort of erect posture that this picture was before we began the climb to the top.

The view from the top of the crater looking back at Haikou.

Looking into the crater. Notice the people making their way along the rim toward the top. They are about halfway to where we were.

An example of the stairs we climbed.

The lookout from the top of the crater was spectacular, even though a sign at the top indicated the height was only about 650’ above sea level. The craters are so old that the rest of the island has receded and they are the highest point.

The best thing about this particular port stop is that yesterday and today is the Chinese New Year – “Gong Xi Fat Choi” to all our Chinese friends out there. Most everything except the small shops and restaurants shuts down for about a week so that families can get together and get out and enjoy the mild temperatures and celebrate by setting off fireworks and going to the temples to ask for good fortune in the coming year. By the way, this is the Year of the Goat.

We were fortunate enough to get to the Geopark early in the day before it really got crowded. You can see from the photos that even then you can’t get a picture without having someone in it. Speaking of pictures, many of the locals stopped to take our pictures and ask to have their picture taken with several of us. Seems to be a local or national custom. Charming!

Children of any nationality arte cute. Especially those under about the age of five or six. Chinese children seem especially so. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of children: children just standing there; children blowing bubbles; children posing unassumingly; children playing and flying kites. In all the time we were there and for all the children we saw, there was only one meltdown. A little boy apparently fell and skinned his knee and was inconsolable for about five minutes. The Chinese have a great emphasis on family and the families we saw were mostly multi-generational. Most families, however, had only one or two children and they are doted upon by all generations and relatives. This birth control policy is in keeping with recent Chinese policies regarding population control. More about government controls in a minute…

On the left, I think the Mom is as cute as the baby. She was so proud and happy that we wanted to take the baby's picture! The tyke on the right was so intent on blowing his bubbles that he paid no attention to us. In fact, I have a hole series of him walking down the sidewalk and just bubbling away.

This little girl was absolutely fascinated with the flowers. She smelled them, blew on them, talked to them, and tried to pick one before her Father called her away. I asked if I could take her picture and the Father stepped out of the way. The picture on the right was not one bit scripted. As soon as she saw that she was the focus of the camera. she struck that pose.

They start their gymnastics training early in China... The little girl on the right was trying very hard to get the ribbon off the ground and whirl, but it was about four times as long as she was tall. The two girls on the right were trying to see if they could make a game out of it and were oblivious to everyone around them.

We were fortunate to have made out scheduled tour in good time, even accounting for immigration control, traffic and crowds. The bus driver was going to get us back to the ship almost an hour early. Our guide/interpreter and the ship’s host accompanying us asked him to take us on a little scenic tour before returning to the ship. No go.

A shot of the incoming traffic at the Geopark. We were trying to get out!. It took us only about ten minutes on the entrance road coming in once we left the highway, but over half an hour on the way out. Traffic was three deep on one lane in and the bus towered over most everything else. By the way, the right side of the road just behind that blue sign is a sheer drop...

The tour route had been planned out and vetted by some anonymous government official and the bus driver could not (or would not) deviate from that route. We had noticed cameras along all the highways and our guide told us that all traffic is monitored and if the bus was not where it was supposed to be, the driver, the company, and the ship could get in trouble. After about a half-hour of phone calls and, I imagine, no little horse-trading, our guide got the driver to take us back to the ship by a different route through the city and we were able to stop at the Ever Green People’s Park (that’s not Evergreen, it is Ever Green, green being symbolic of prosperity and good luck we were told).

When we returned to the ship, we had to once again go through immigration and customs, the same passport routine – still no smiles.

We like China. China, at least as a tourist, is fascinating. Even a “small” city like Haikou gives one a flavor of things to come on the mainland. Although our next stop is Hong Kong which bears about as much resemblance to the rest of China as I do to Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise or [insert your favorite hunk of beefcake here…], we are planning to return to see more of China, perhaps as early as next year.

The people we met, immigration and customs aside, were quite warm and friendly. Granted we had little interaction with most of them, but Haikou is not one of the Far East’s great tourist destinations – at least not for westerners – and we were a novelty that was a treat for the locals.

Tomorrow we are in Hong Kong and we stay overnight. Stay tuned…

Just a short piece up the coast from Brunei is the Malaysian state of Sabah and the port of Kota Kinabalu, or “KK” as it is known locally and shall be known in this blog for efficiency. KK is the capital of Sabah and therein lies an interesting story… by the way, it was very hot in Indonesia and Malaysia. These are equatorial countries and you know it as soon as you step outside. Hot!

After World War II, the independent countries and sultanates of Malaya, Sarawak, Sabah, Brunei, Kalimantin, and Singapore were brought together to form Malaysia. However, Singapore and Brunei chose to remain as independent states, Kalimantan went with Indonesia and forms the southern two-third of Borneo, and Sarawak and Sabah joined Malaya to form Malaysia. What is interesting in this whole thing, is that both Sabah and Sarawak are still independent in that they each have their own government, but they still receive funding from Kuala Lumpur (KL), the capital of Malaysia, and report to KL administratively.

For our short stay, we took a bus tour to a local wildlife sanctuary, Lok Kawi Wildlife Park. This facility recovers and nurses abandoned and injured animals from the wild and, where possible, releases them back to the wild. However, to make ends meet, they have added some exhibits of non-indigenous species and the facility has become zoo-like in their presentation of the animals. This is necessary to generate sufficient funding to keep the mission going.

We were fortunate to have as our guide/interpreter one James Chew, a member of the Murut tribe and a headhunter! Actually, James is an extremely knowledgeable man in his mid-fifties, actually is a Murut tribesman, and is descended from that former headhunting tribe. It is only as recently as the 1960s that this practice was ended. James explained that the practice of headhunting was to assure that the men of the tribe could provide for their families and that they were brave warriors. Headhunting was not cannibalism. They also did not “shrink” the heads as was done by some Amazonian tribes. Once we got that out of the way, James provided a wealth of information on Borneo’s indigenous wildlife, plant life and customs. James also runs two-week “bush camps” for tween-agers and teen-agers. He told some interesting and funny stories about how these kids react to losing iPod, iPhone, and Internet while in the bush. This was probably one of our best tours to date.

Back to the sanctuary: Among the rare species we viewed and visited with were Sun Bears, Orangutans (“Orang Utan” in Malay since orang = man and utan = ape), and Proboscis Monkeys. We also had an up close and personal encounter with a three-year old baby Pygmy Elephant.

The Sun Bears are a unique species found only in Borneo and a few parts of nearby southern Asia. They only stand about four feet tall and look cute, but they have claws and teeth to rival a grizzly. We watched one open a coconut to drink the juice and eat the pulp. It took him (her?) about two minutes to take a fresh coconut and remove the husk, break open the “eye” end, drink the juice, and start scraping out the pulp.

The one on the left has just asked for a new coconut to tear apart. The one on the right is about two minutes later after he tore off the husk and cracked the "eye" end to get a drink.

We also met two “tribes” of Proboscis Monkeys. Each tribe consists of one male and up to about thirty females. The two tribes had be kept separated by fencing because the males will fight each other to the death to protect their harem if they feel that their territory is being invaded. It is really easy to tell the male from the females: the male has a HUGE nose, whereby they come to their name. The females also have large protruding noses, but they tend to be more pert-looking and upturned at the end. The males are also most definitely male (but this is a family-oriented blog and I can’t go into more detail here).

The male Proboscis Monkey is characterized by the "Jimmy Durante" nose. The females have a similar, but perkier looking appendage. The baby on the right is a female and is only about six months old.

The Orangutans are the stars of the show. The sanctuary has six in residence currently: one male; four females; and, one baby of currently indeterminate sex, but most probably female. They, too, are coconut eaters and are just as efficient, if not more so, as the Sun Bears. They knock the coconut against a post or tree to crack it and get to the juice and pulp.

The one on the left is a female. We couldn't get clear shots of the male as he kept to the back of the enclosure. The baby on the right is a bout a year old and is just discovering coconuts. He will carry this one around in his mouth for a while and then try to open it befort giving up.

Our elephant encounter was quite unexpected. We were moving from the main elephant exhibit to another when we came upon a trainer/keeper walking a baby elephant along one of the paths. He stopped and allowed us to feed her (carrots), pet her, and have our pictures taken with her. The Pygmy Elephant is actually a misnomer. The bulls stand about six to seven feet high at the shoulder when full-grown and can weigh about three tons and the females are slightly smaller. This baby was about three years old and as you can see from the pix, she was just as cute as any other three-year-old – possibly cuter…

We managed to get up close and personal with "Lola" a three-year old pygmy elephant. She will grow to about twice her current size by the time she is a teenager. The sanctuary hopes to be able to release her back to the wild.

After our animal encounters, we drove to a cultural center/museum and had a look at a number of indigenous tribal home styles. These were examples set in appropriate woodland and jungle settings. The museum also had an interesting exhibit on headhunting, but our time there was too short and we had to return to the ship before we could really see a lot. It was hot and we were ready to get back to the relative comfort of the ship and it’s A/C. It was hot, Hot, HOT and humid!

I had an opportunity to use a real blowgun and try for a balloon pop. On the left I received my instructions and on the right I saw the results - I popped a balloon on the first try! Unfortunately, they had no cheap plush animals to give as prizes. My prize was that I remembered to blow out rather than to inhale...

We are now on our way to Haikou, China. First we have a couple of sea days to recuperate and cool off as we head a little further north. Did I mention that it was HOTTTT!