Hong Kong to Danang

Ready For Sea

AZAMARA QUEST timed its departure from Hong Kong perfectly.  We pulled away from Ocean Terminal at 8:00 PM on Wednesday, 30 March.  The key was we left at 8:00 o’clock at night.   Within a few minutes of getting to the middle of the channel that separates the Star Ferry Terminal on the Kowloon side with the other end of the ferry ride on the Hong Kong side the evening light show started.  With the bow pointed east toward North Point and the South China Sea hundreds of buildings from 2 story warehouses to 100+ story office towers cranked up their lasers, neons, lighting effects and flashing signs to give us a brilliant salute on departure.

What a show.  What a city.  Hong Kong, from the first time I saw you as a brand new Ensign USN on USS JARVIS (DD799) I knew that you would be an enduring part of my life.  As we steamed out last night I knew that the half century old bond I felt then was still as strong as ever.

The morning at sea was taken up by presenting my first talk, Vietnam Today, to a theater full of remarkably attentive passengers.  Even taking time for last minute editing and post talk chats with some of the spectators, there was still plenty of time to put down my  thoughts on the ship and its voyage for you, faithful readers.

The first thing that struck me and my seasoned mate and cruising companion Grace was the fact that instead of there being maybe 40 or 50 new passengers joining 500 or so passengers  who had been riding the ship since Japan and China we learned that there was an almost complete turnover of berths.  600 got off in Hong Kong and 580 got on.  With a new shipload of passengers we expected that there was going to be the usual 3 or 4 day period when the newbies were reluctant to open up, say hello and generally start being shipmates and not wary strangers.  That “getting to know you” dance is what we have seen on just about every ship we have ridden over the past years.

QUEST was different.  It may be the size of the ship, it may be the sample of the passengers who were drawn to the ship, it may be the crew that broke down the reserve that we normally see on new passengers.  Whatever it is, it is magic.  Right from the git go folks smiled, said hello, were happy to have a stranger join them at a table or couch and generally be pals.

This has to be the most friendly and comfortable ship I have ridden over the past couple of years of giving over 170 talks on ships that belong to a variety of companies.  I don’t know what you are doing Azamara, but I suggest you keep it up because you are making friends out of customers.

Last night there was the standard Captain’s Meet and Greet which is always well attended, every ship and every time.  The secret?  Free Champagne.  QUEST’S say hello to the officers was different from so many others we have attended.  The theme, motif, central organizing element or whatever fancy way you like to use to describe the heart of the event was pride.  Pride shone from the Captain.  He was proud of his ship, his crew , his company, the company’s mission and simply being able to stand up in front of his passengers.  One of the most important things I learned when I was a Naval Officer serving aboard ships was that it all starts at the top.  When a ship I served on had a sharp skipper who was proud of the ship and its men it was a sharp, proud ship.  The term for what every sailor hoped for in his afloat home away from home was A Happy Ship.  Everyone wanted to serve on a Happy Ship.  QUEST is a Happy Ship and it shows.  You don’t have to be an Old Salt to feel it.

The Sign Says It All

We go ashore today in Danang and will decide whether we will spend our day seeing what’s going on in Hue or Hoi An or just doing walkies in Danang.  Whichever we do I get the feeling that shore time is going to be as much fun as ship time on the QUEST.   At the very least, I will take a batch of pictures, mooch around picking up vibes and update my understanding and knowledge of what is going on in Vietnam Today.  Will check in again in a day or so.

Ships That We Hope Pass In the Light

The Journey Begins-- Hong Kong

Azamara Quest Arriving HKG

We are underway today on AZAMARA QUEST on a voyage that will take us through the South China Sea from Hong Kong down to Singapore with stops in Vietnam and Thailand. That sounds pretty straightforward, right?  It is but maybe I am assuming that the reader knows about QUEST and AZAMARA and what a treat this assignment is.

QUEST and its sister ship, AZAMARA JOURNEY are the two ships that make up Azamara Club Cruises.  Azamara Club Cruises is a part of the Royal Caribbean Lines Group which includes the well known Celebrity Lines among other operating units.  It has been around since 2007, first as Azamara Lines.  More recently it has changed its name to Azamara Club Cruises to correspond with the overall place that the company occupies in the Cruising Community.  That niche is providing a premium experience to seasoned passengers who want the time to enjoy both the days they spend onboard and ashore in the ports of call.

Shopping the Streets

Aboard, in addition to excellent cuisine, passengers are treated to select boutique vintages at lunch and dinner.  By treated, I am being literal; the wines, soft drinks and speciality coffees and teas are complementary. Concierge service and a full pallet of shipboard and shoreside activities make sure that the passengers enjoy their time on board.  I am glad to say that they still have an array of speakers to enhance the time on the ship and acquaint their clients with the culture and give insights into the countries visited. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to enjoy the Azamara Club Cruise experience.

Ashore, the size of the Azamara Club Cruises vessels allow them to go alongside at ports the array of ever larger ships can not enter.  By tying up in the middle of the action and stretching many of the scheduled  stays to overnights or two nights increases the opportunities to see much more not only of the ports visited but attractions farther away or even in adjacent countries.

I had the good fortune to speak on the 2nd voyage of JOURNEY in 2007 when she was making the voyage from the NYC area to both of  Bermuda’s major ports.  I was asked back later to travel with her on a repositioning trip to the Caribbean and a quick nip into the Panama Canal.  Those two voyages were Grace and my first experience cruising on the well known “R” ships, a group of eight ships that have made a name for themselves as moderately sized ships that have all of the amenities and services that any discriminating passenger could want.

The eight R ships were operated as a fleet by a well known Norwegian firm that had to change their focus and put their ships on the market.  They now deliver luxury and full service cruising experiences to a maximum of 650 to 700 passengers on select itineraries.  OCEANIA has three R ships that are now named Insignia, Regatta and Nautica.  PRINCESS Lines also operates  three, named Pacific Princess, Ocean Princess (formerly Tahitian Princess) and Royal Princess on which Grace and I spent a great 24 day back to back Florida, Canal, South America assignment.  AZAMARA is proud to have two R vessels, QUEST  and JOURNEY to serve its demanding clientele.

Hong Kong is a hard port for me to leave.  We lived there for years and it has been part of my life for decades, first as a Naval Officer on tin cans and later as a Yankee Peddlar working up and down the China coast.  One of our sons lived there twice as a child and has just moved back again as a business manager for his fifth time to live there.  We had a few days to check out his house out in Stanley Village before boarding QUEST.

As much as we would like to stay a while longer in Hong Kong the allure of Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore, all places where we lived or worked for years beckon.  There is nothing like steaming through and visiting the countries of the South China Sea. I plan to share some of the trip in future blog postings.  Stay tuned.

Just Before Casting Off for Points South

Jardines & The Noon Gun

Hong Kong, Old & New

I am sure that most of vast audience that reads these posts know that what we call Hong Kong is really made up of three major parts, Victoria Island (which is what most of us call Hong Kong), Kowloon and the New Territories.  Each of these different areas have their own history and story but let's save that for some future post.  For today let's just say that we happen to be on the Hong Kong side near the uber crowded shopping magnet called Causeway Bay.  Let's also say that it is mid day.  Depending where we are the chaotic noise of diesel taxis, gear grinding trucks and high decibel Cantonese shouts and curses is suddenly overwhelmed by what can only be the sound of a cannon.  This is not the result of too many San Miguels last night, it really is a cannon's roar.  And not only that, it happens every day.

How Come?  Well, what we are hearing is the sounding of the Noon Gun.  Made famous by an old Noel Coward song and by yarns spun by Old China Hands there is something that is either the world's most drawn out punishment or a habit that has become a tradition.

It Must Be Noon

On the waterfront, right next to the venerable Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, a group of two or three smartly uniformed fellows bustle around an antique but well polished and maintained British deck gun.  I think it is a 6 pounder for the old salts in the audience.  They pull off the canvas cover that protects the gun from the elements, open the breech, slam a round filled with high explosive powder into the chamber and close the breech.  They then stand back, the Officer in Charge consults a trusty pocket watch and begins to count off seconds to go to the gunner's mate holding the firing lanyard.  At precisely 12:00 noon the order to fire is given and the Old British Hong, Jardine Matheson & Co. once again fulfills the penalty laid upon it over a hundred years ago.

What did Jardines do that was so wrong that they are still paying daily penance over a hundred years later?  What they did wrong in the early 1900's (even an Old China Hand like me is not sure of the exact date), as any old boy having a few at the Captain's Bar at the Mandarin will tell you, was to offend the powers that be.  It seems that an over eager Jardines employee saw the Towkay's vessel arriving in port and he immediately fired off a cannon salute.  Well, even if the Boss of one of the two most powerful British Trading Companies in the Far East was coming to town, cannon salutes were reserved for the Royal Navy.

Commodore Hong Kong (yes, even in the 60's & 70's you didn't have to use the name of the highest ranking royal Navy Officer, he was Commodore Hong Kong), promptly called the company to account and decreed that henceforth Jardines was obliged to fire a cannon every day at precisely 12:00 as punishment for such an egregious violation of protocol and decorum.  So there.

Ever since then if you are near Jardines Steps at noon you will be treated to what must be the world's best known, longest living, symbolic "I'm Sorry".

Now, don't let a spoiler tell you that the reason for sounding the Noon Gun had to do with letting all of the ships in the Fragrant Harbour know what time it was in the days before satellites, phones or radios.  That is too pedestrian for an old story teller like me.

Jardines' Steps Seen From Above

Getting a Handle on How Big Vietnam Really Is

The Skinny S

As I attempt to describe and understand the physical size and population of Vietnam I would like to apologize for appearing Americacentric.  I confess that, in order to get my thoughts across, I need to use the United States for comparison.  I simply do not know of a nation or region where I can slice and dice the statistics and geography to tell the story as well as it can be told using the USA as a model.

The long and skinny S shape of Vietnam gives it a 2135 mile long sea coast.  It is also around 130,000 square miles in size and has a population of 87.5 million or so.  Now, if you are like most people you read or hear numbers like that and you say, ”That’s nice” or something.  The numbers don’t mean a thing because there is no way to understand what a 2135 mile long sea coast means or looks like or do you even care.  Well, try this:  We Americans know that the West Coast is a pretty long strip of real estate.  Yep, It’s a long way from Seattle to San Diego.  True, but that stretch of prime beachfront property is only half as long as the 2135 miles of Vietnamese coast.  Vietnam has a coastline twice as long as the distance from San Diego to Seattle.

When it comes to a square mile, however big or small that may be, we don’t have a clue.  If figuring how big a square mile is a problem, how about getting your arms around Eighty Seven Million, Five Hundred Thousand People?  Starting to count "one" and ending up with 87,500,000 might give one a sense for how large a number that is but when it comes to 87,500,000 people, what does that mean?  Let’s put both of those numbers, size and population, together and try to get an idea of Vietnam in American terms.

Okay.  Vietnam’s 130,000 square miles is a bit larger than the US State of New Mexico which has around 121,600 square miles.  Now, New Mexico is not too heavily populated, only around 2 million folks so we ought to throw in a few more states to get up to that 87.5 million population figure for Vietnam.  California is America's most populous state according to the 2010 census. It has 37.25 million people.  Let’s add #2, the Lone Star State of Texas with 25.15 Million Good Ol Boys and Girls.  That only comes to 62.4 million so we need to throw a few more states to get up to the Vietnamese number.  All right.  Let’s add Mississippi, Arkansas, Kansas, Utah, Nevada, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.   Yep, It would take all of the population of our two states with the highest population and all of the states from the 31st largest in population right down to Wyoming at #50.

That  surely dazzles you, it does me.  What it means is that Vietnam, just a bit bigger than New Mexico, which none of us ever thought was overly large if we thought about it at all, has as many people as our two largest states and twenty more, 22 states all together.  Makes you wonder how they all get along without spending all of their time stepping on each others’ feet.  Great.  This kind of analysis forces us to think about what such a high population density of relatively poor, literate and driven people are like and what kind of momentum such a concentrated batch of humanity can achieve if they are all focused on a common goal.

The Morning Commute

How Rice is Grown Tells a Great Deal About the Farmer

Growing Rice and Its Cultural Implications

Rice Terraces

City dwellers, which is likely to mean most of us, might not think it but the way a society grows its crops and the foods it eats have a profound effect on culture.  It is easy to understand the economic effect of agriculture but it seems a stretch to talk about the cultural implications of the manner in which a crop is grown.

Let’s take a minute or two and talk about growing rice.  Cruise ships on exotic voyages often call on countries where rice is the stable food of the people and, in many cases, is a major export or import crop.  When we visit Indonesia, South East Asia, the Philippines Korea, China, Japan and the Indian subcontinent we are in rice country.  Australia and America also raise a great deal of rice but the cultivation there has been transformed to a highly mechanized process that uses helicopters, airplanes and huge machines that apply insecticides, fertilizers and plant and harvest the crop.  What we are talking about today is rice cultivation in a more labor intensive way where entire villages or societies are engaged in and depend on growing rice.

It Takes Gravity & Personal Care

The main way that rice is grown in most of the world is a wet method called water culture.  Water culture is ideal for places where there is a large, inexpensive supply of two major components: water and labor.  Cheap labor and lots of rain make growing rice a natural for places like the ones mentIoned above.  Since the first domesticated crops  were grown in the Yangtze River Valley in China rice has served as one of the staples of the Chinese diet.  Rice is second to corn as the most widely grown grain but because much corn is used for animal fed and as an ingredient in other foods or products, rice is the world’s most important food grain.

As rice entered the daily diet its importance to survival was clear.  The planting, harvesting, care of rice was critical and became the center of village life.  Festivals, ceremonies, prayers and other forms of pleading with whatever gods might be listening became part of the rice powered society.  Rice was not a menu choice, it was subsistence itself and was worshipped because the availability of rice meant life or death.

From the need to make rice fields into the equivalent to a holding pond to the stoop labor to plant and harvest the crop rice farming is the definition of labor intensive agriculture.  The social aspect of the transition from hunter gatherer to farmer is nowhere more complete than when the agriculture in question is rice farming.  This is because the gender roles associated with the traditional man goes out, kills beast, woman stays home, cooks beast roles is out the window.  Rice farming needs both man and woman to go out to the field, usually called padi or paddy, and work side by side.  Equality at last.  After a full day of stoop labor I am sure the average woman would rather sit by the fireside waiting for her favorite spear carrier to return with some furry delight.

The role of rice in religion and society was not the only part of how rice effected people.  Many areas did not have perfectly flat fields that could be transformed into paddy.  Many tribes or villages live on hill tops or hillsides.  Control of huge tracts of land has never been easy to obtain.  This meant that rice fields had to be made out of difficult pieces of land.  Terracing of fields began.  To build terraces all members of the tribe or village had to bear a hand and work together.  From self centered hunters man had to become a socialized member of the larger society.  That socialization was not over when the fields were built.  Now the village was faced with the problem of deciding who would get what parcel and how the water was going to be allocated.  If a farmer was at the bottom of the hill he wanted to make sure that the guys further up, closer to the water at the top of the hill, filled that field and opened the gate to drop the water down to the field just lower down the hill and that person did the same for the person below him and so on.  It took cooperation.

Each Plot Could Be Owned by a Different Farmer

In Bali today, for example, there are over 230 separate cooperatives that control the equitable flow of water for all of the  members of each coop.  Each cooperative might have a total of 1000 acres in its single scheme but there might be 1500 families who actually own the individual half acre, one acre field that makes up a part of the total acreage. This kind of system requires that the farmer develops a sense of fairness, equitable treatment and cooperation.  All excellent skills for any citizen.  Immense, complicated water systems create the need for high levels of cooperation and belonging to a community directed to common goals.

I just used cooperation in two consecutive sentences.  The grammar police and the ghosts of my English Professors will come and get me but there is no better word that I can use to underscore the idea that water culture rice farming requires men to give up some level of independence for the mutual good.

In Vietnam rice is eaten at all three meals and 60 to 70% of the people today are still farmers.  Water rice production helps shape the attitude and socialization of a large part of the total population.  The Vietnamese society and culture come from or are tied to the land, The actual Vietnamese land, dat Viet in the local language, is part of every person.  The land of Vietnam is special to the Vietnamese and special land makes special people.  This organic relationship of the people with the fields, mountains and the environment is central to the ethos of the Vietnamese people.

What Sociologists call the Water Rice Culture has other effects beyond the obvious one having to do with Agriculture.  3000 years ago, when most historians think sizable groups of people first assembled in villages and communities in Vietnam’s Red River Valley, the change from hunter gatherer to farmer accelerated.  Rice became the major crop and water cultivation began to be the favored method of growing it.  The availability of enough food to thrive resulted in ever larger clans or tribes of the Vietnamese living in the Red River Valley.  Over time the easily farmed rice land was all taken and the Northerners began to travel South to find more land suitable for establishing settlements based on growing rice.  The huge delta of the Mekong River was a natural target and water culture rice growing of the people  from the North sparked the same kind of growth pattern there that was experienced in the North.  Not all of the people in the South welcomed the usurpers from the North.  Conflict between the North and South was a part of the development of Vietnam from the beginning.

Other less warlike effects of water on Viet culture included the development of the ability to weather the storms that brought abundant water to the countryside.  Typhoons and Monsoon storms were a fact of life.  Today an average of 5 typhoons come ashore in Vietnam every year.  Over their long history Vietnamese learned how to bend with the irresistible forces of nature and keep on keeping on.  Hunkering down, rebuilding, starting up again were the kind of life skills that make the Vietnamese who they are today.

It is no surprise that Water Puppets are part of Vietnamese local folk art and cultural expression.

Water Puppets at Hanoi's Puppet Theater

Some South East Asia Place Names You May Have Heard of

Former French Governor's Home In Hanoi

That same division between the North and South mentioned in another post permeated the country and to some extent still exists.  Until today, the South is sometimes considered by Northerners as too foreign and too open to outside influence.  The North is sometimes considered by the Southerners as too doctrinaire and kind of country, to use American lingo.  Even during what the local people, who have a history of centuries of warfare, call the American War, the famous Tet Offensive had a North vs South twist or two.  The ancient city of Hue was the capital for the Nguyen dynasty and it was the focus of the most intense and extended fighting and destruction of the entire event.  The North made its point in showing the South that the Nguyen-Trinh conflict is not completely forgotten.


The whole of South East Asia was invaded, fought over and occupied from time to time by local tribes or clans, neighboring states, countries in the area and foreigners from Europe and the Middle East. As is usual the foreigners were quick to put their own stamp on the new territories they were occupying or passing through.  Some of the names that the interlopers called the area have either remained or are referred to in history books or legends of the place.

Here are some names referring to the area that you may have heard or read about in your travels or study of the fascinating countries of the region.

Tonkin
Cochin
Cochinchina
Khmer
Cham
Annam
Yunnan
Han
Champa
Siam
Tai
French Indo-China

These names either refer to geographic areas or are names given to the peoples who inhabited the area.  Some were also used by Europeans to identify heads of state.  An example of that is Cham.  Cham is an ethnic tribe or group that lives in Vietnam and comes from the same background as people form Malaysia or Indonesia.  They were heavily influenced by people form the subcontinent of India and most Cham are Muslims, followers of Islam.  Centuries ago there was a Dynasty or ruling family called the Champa Dynasty in Vietnam.

MUSLIM CHAM; NEAR CAMBODIA

There are similar backstories on most of the names shown above and if you should run into those names in your reading or travel, look them up, you will be all the better for doing so.  Anything you can do to get under the carapace of another culture is a good thing because it lets you feel and be less of a complete outsider and more of a participant in the life of the place you visit in person or through the magic of the written word.

By the way, specific to Vietnam here are some of the major ethnic groups and a rough guide to where they live.

MONTENARD FROM CENTRAL HIGHLANDS

DAO; NEAR LAOS & CHINA

TAY; QUONG NINH PROVINCE, NEAR HALONG BAY

HMONG; NGHE AN PROVINCE NEAR LAOS

Get out there, see what there is to see and come away a better person for having experienced another people and another way of life.  How can we understand our fellow Earthlings if we never even see them or acknowledge that they are there?


Enjoy and make sure that you leave the local people feeling glad you dropped by.



      

Chinese New Years---Tet---Lunar New Years---Spring Festival

Fireworks & Decorations for Lunar New Year

These are all the same holiday.  The different names are given by the area where the feast is celebrated.  All of the countries where this spring event is an important festivity are places that are Chinese or have significant Chinese influence.  Incidentally, the lunar new years term is not exactly correct.  Lunar refers to the Moon.  You know, lunatics are people who go nutso during the full moon and all of that folklore.  This holiday is celebrated by referring to a calendar that tracks both the sun and the moon.  Correctly it should be call a lunisolar or solalunar holiday.  (No one really uses solalunar but there are some people who insist on being one up intellectually who use lunisolar to describe the event.)

The holiday and its traditions differ based on the location and local custom.  In the USA there are some celebrations in cities with major Chinese, Korean or south Asian populations but the closest most Americans get to the holiday is when they receive a letter with a New Year’s stamp.  The stamps from the US Postal Service  bear the symbol of the animal whose new year is being celebrated.  The twelve animals that are honored by having a whole year named in their honor are the ones who took the challenge given by the Chinese Gods who promised to name the twelve years in the lunar cycle for the first twelve animals to swim across a river.  The order of the years were based on how the animals finished the swim. 

The rat figured that it was a very long way for such a small animal and he told the cat that they both could get across if they rode the ox’s back and help the ox with his notoriously bad vision find his way to the other side.  Both the cat and rat jumped on the ox’s broad back and with urging and guidance the trio was at the head of the pack.  When the ox and his passengers got close to the shore, the rat, being what Jimmy Cagney would call “A dirty rat”,  pushed the cat off the ox’s back and took a running jump off the ox’s back to be the first animal to finish.  The cat almost drowned and did not make the top twelve so from that moment on cats chase and kill rats.

North & South Vietnam is an Old, Old Story

South East Asia

The division of Viet Nam into the North and South was a fact of life long before the Post WWII era.  Well back in the history the Red River Valley of the North and the Delta region of the south were the de facto headquarters of the social, agricultural and economic structure of the areas.  Toward the latter part of the last millennium two large families or clans ruled the halves of what we now call Vietnam.  The Nguyen clan ruled the South and the Trinh family the North.  There was even a Nguyen-Trinh War in the country’s past.

For some years European nations tried to gain influence over the Vietnamese factions.  The Portuguese supported the Nguyen side and the Dutch the Trinh.  Both of these countries had been active in the region since the end of the 15th century but did not make a special effort to control Vietnam.  The possibility that China would push back was likely the reason they held off and concentrated in other areas where they had a better chance of taking advantage of the place with little likelihood of a strong, armed response from any major power.

Notre Dame Cathedral HCM City

Franciscan and Dominican priests from the Philippines went to Viet Nam in the 17th and 18th Centuries and began the struggle to introduce Catholicism into Vietnam.  They were, of course, from Spain but it was the clergy from France that played a major part in the history of the country.  In the 1800’s a Catholic Bishop got very involved in local politics and was responsible for French interests, private as well  as French government affiliated, to provide arms and fighting men in a struggle to shape the Vietnamese national political structure.

Most of the Church’s operations and strength were in the South of the country so it is no surprise that the Church helped a Southern General called Nguyen An capture Hanoi and eventually become the Emperor Gia Long, the first Nguyen Dynasty ruler.  Surely the reason the Church worked so hard at interfering with Vietnam’s internal affairs was to gain a preferred place in the country.  It didn’t work quite that way.  Over time Catholic priests and followers were harassed and attacked by the new rulers.  The inside track was bumpier than the Bishop expected.  Rather than wait for Heavenly intervention the French Government used the treatment of the priests as a justification to wage war on the Vietnamese Government and to send troops and administrators to the North.  The French began to turn Vietnam into a colony.  The French incorporated a number of separate geographical parcels that are now parts of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, China and Thailand into something they called French Indochina and held it as an overseas province  until they lost it after their defeat by the Vietnamese at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

More on this as we go along