Segment 3 - And now for the truly different.
Sailing northwest from Darwin Australia, we arrived after two sea days (we could have paddled faster…I guess we are anxious to see something not like the US) in Bali, in the south of Indonesia. Up until now, our ports have been more or less like home; in the South Pacific Islands perhaps a bit tackier and decidedly poorer, in New Zealand and Australia much cleaner and healthier, but still and all, not all that different (ok, except for the fruit bats…and the marsupials). Now, however, we are in truly foreign lands...our pathetic grasp of geography is showing so we keep the atlas close at hand.
We anchored just off the eastern coast of Bali…a hot and steamy island in southern Indonesia; Java is to the west – just two miles of water between the western point of here… and there. As has been true everywhere we have been, the locals were doing quite nicely until the Europeans arrived – in this case, the Dutch under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company in the last years of the 1500’s. Unlike their success in other parts of Indonesia, the Dutch invasion some 250 yrs later did not go as planned; sadly, massacres occurred and while the Dutch won, their rule was not absolute. The 1930’s saw the first trickle of tourists to this paradise, following reports of visits by Margaret Mead, for one. Then the Japanese invaded – mostly because it rained too much in the airfields in the island of Borneo just to the north; with the end of WWII, the Dutch regained control but only after yet another massacre of the local resistance! In 1949, Indonesia finally got its independence. There was more disruption and death from a volcanic eruption of the main mountain in the early 60’s and from political strife in the mid-60’s; increasing tourism was further jarred by Islamic bombings in 2002 and 2005 but seems to be booming.
Beautiful arrival! Lots of mist…and the worshipped volcanic mt dominating the scene.
Put slightly askew by a written notice delivered before breakfast saying that the P&O cruise line didn’t want to alarm us…but they didn’t want to be held responsible in case there were any extremist events while we were on shore. Oh!
Last summer when we were splashing around the British Isles, we became very attached to one of the waitstaff on board – I Gede. We have kept in touch with him and when he learned that we would be in Bali during his 4-month contract break, he insisted on chauffeuring us around his island.
Last summer when we were splashing around the British Isles, we became very attached to one of the waitstaff on board – I Gede. We have kept in touch with him and when he learned that we would be in Bali during his 4-month contract break, he insisted on chauffeuring us around his island.
He picked us up at the cruise terminal, along with his wife and 13 y o daughter, and away we went – seeing the island thru the eyes of locals. We saw no McDonalds or Starbucks today – only small villages, endless rice paddies (in flat areas but also on cleverly stepped terraces on hills), and more shrines (with and without monkeys) than one would have thought possible…most of the shrines have small offerings (thus the monkeys).
Kermit would love it here – everything is green – and the jungle grows back almost overnight. The heat? 100 degrees and matching humidity!
Bali is a seriously religious place and one wonders what impact the increasing numbers of tourists will have (tho we saw few of them where I Gede took us), many due to the movie (as opposed to the book) Eat, Pray, Love…which I Gede and his family had seen several times and loved. (Leslie - he was impressed that we had heard the author speak in Pittsburgh.) All village streets are lined with bamboo poles, each decorated by the family living there as a sign of thankfulness to the gods and harmony with the natural world. These are replaced on New Year’s…on a day where nothing happens…no cruise ships, no planes, no radio, no TV…everyone stays indoors and is quiet.
We saw a fair number of roosters in woven upside down baskets…these are not future meals (well not immediately anyway) but rather fighting cocks.
One of the places we visited was a former royal water temple…the royal family still exists; tho not in power, it is much revered (stamps with the king’s picture cannot be licked – the post offices have small glue pots for adhering them).
I asked about the figure with the soles of his feet exposed (a major No No) – he was a demon. We had been told on the ship not to show the bottoms of our feet, not to use our (unclean) left hands, not to touch anyone on the head, not to dress immodestly…and these rules will serve us thru Asia.
We had a lunch of incredible papaya and fresh fish (and of course rice which I Gede says the family eats at all meals) served by beautiful yg women, all smiles and a lot of bowing. Any person whose eye we caught bowed with hands pressed together and raised toward the bowed head…these are extremely attractive and smallish people. There were dancers and musicians at the terminal for our arrival and departure…our prolonged departure.
The pontoon where we stepped off the tender broke loose from the jetty several hours after we came ashore; this meant that no passengers were able to leave the ship and those on shore couldn’t get back! It took hours to get the pontoon re-attached and while that was going on, P&O did very little in support of the hundreds of marooned passengers waiting to be tendered. Given the average age and the heat, I suggested to the fellow who seemed in charge that it would be a gd idea to get some fruit juices or cold drinks organized (there was nothing on offer at the terminal bldg)…zip occurred. I finally went out to a fruit vendor way outside the terminal and got some small bananas (getting incredibly drenched by a surprise downpour in the process). After two hours (I had gotten a chair for Bill earlier), I grabbed one of the distraught looking officers and said they had to get Bill on one of the first tenders…and they did. What a mess! It was six hours later that the last of the passengers were brought on board; not surprisingly, there had been several medical misadventures. I imagine the Captain rightly got and gave an earful…this is the kind of major nuisance that comes with travel but P&O did nothing to help.
Gorgeous sunset watched once we were back on the ship – from the AC comfort of our cabin – drinking all liquids on hand. Quite a day…we slept 11 hours that night. I fear this will bring back the cold/cough I was just getting over…and Bill is beyond exhausted.
And then three sea days as we sail north to Vietnam, through the Java Sea and into the South China Sea; this is a sea lane so we saw quite a few ships – mostly cargo containers. En route we went over the Equator again, were treated to some v gd piano and also opera concerts and some truly bizarre lectures. One of them was on a fairly esoteric topic: the stealing of tea plant seeds, seedlings and the knowledge of how to grow, harvest and process them into tea being a classic and early case of commercial espionage…by the British against the Chinese so that the former could turn India/Ceylon into a major tea producer…sanctioned by Queen Victoria…this was after the Brits forced more opium on China to help balance the trade deficit created by the British dependence on Chinese tea. I enjoyed this talk – by a really gd lecturer (Englishwoman who took her PHD in Chinese history from Cambridge) – as well as her later one on rubber plantations – the British also stole the stock for those but from Brazil (where plantations should have done well, but didn’t…as in Fordlandia). Rubber is BIG in these parts. Bill is suite-bound as he now has the dreaded cough/cold.
This also gave us time to learn something about Vietnam…and the next two ports of call (where US $ are accepted everywhere…a sad commentary on what in SE Asia is called the American war). So much of what I read seemed totally new to me – what was I reading in San Francisco in the 60’s (or, what was I on when I was reading) during all the protests? I remember none of this – just the songs and the LBJ chants – and it is fascinating stuff. Bill was as intrigued as I but does NOT want a biography of Ho Chi Minh (an alias of which he had many) for next Xmas.
China –to the north of the country – ran things for about a millenium, introducing Confucianism and feudalism. Marco Polo passed thru in the 13th C, the Portuguese – who came to stay – arrived in the early 1500’s, followed in the 1600’s by Catholic missionaries who made the Chinese uneasy as they questioned the need for loyalty to the Chinese emperor and the virtues of polygamy. The French, concerned by Britain’s apparent sewing up of trade with China, looked to Indochina as a way into the riches of southern China. So, on the pretext of responding to exaggerated claims of Catholic persecution, the French invaded…forming around the late 1800’s the Union of Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). Large coffee, tea and rubber plantations led to the forced labor of peasants often under brutal conditions. Sparks of unrest failed to ignite as revolutionaries tended to focus on the political rather than the economic and social, and thus failed to gain a foothold among the peasants.
But, occurrences elsewhere had an impact – the surprise victory of the Japanese over the Russians in 1905 (perhaps the foreigners weren’t always superior) and Sun Yat Sen’s revolution in China in 1911. Ho Chi Minh, born here in 1890, and well into rabble rousing, popped up in Paris after WWI where he was a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920…apparently only the Communists were supporting anticolonial movements. In 1923, he was in Moscow where, along with training, he was given the task of bringing all the fractious factions in Indochina together; he accomplished that with the Indochina Communist Party. A number of factors favoring rebellion then converged: 100,000 Vietnamese soldiers returned from WWI, the Great Depression, and dwindling resources coming in from France. Still no successful revolt.
Then in 1940, France fell to the Germans and Vichy France said it was OK for the Japanese to move into Indochina. After a 30-yr exile, Ho Chi Minh returned home in 1941 and in 1945 launched the Vietnamese Liberation Army. He then turned to China but also to the other Allies for help by way of thanks for providing information on Japanese troops and rescuing downed Allied pilots. An American medical team even saved Uncle Ho’s life in 1945 but, in spite of his earlier assistance and his borrowing liberally from the American Bill of Rights in the documents for the new (1945) Republic of Vietnam, there was no aid from the US (too worried about communists)…tho the CIA gave some ltd arms (thereby really pissing off the Free French who planned to re-establish their colonial rights). Sadly the Potsdam Agreement ending the war did not recognize the new country and the French took over again! Ho decided to band with them, but after the French failed to keep their end of the bargain, Ho and his fighters disappeared into the mountains in the north. Did no one in the Kennedy or Nixon administrations read this stuff? Ho was not to be denied. Vietnam had managed to outlast the Chinese, Khmers, Chams, and Mongols and the French…they could certainly take the long view. (Michael Paul – I thought of you often here and told Bill of your visit in SF.)
Anyway, the US backed the French (providing 80% of the financing!!!) who finally gave up, and in 1954 Vietnam was split in half but the war to “liberate the south” heated up after 1959. In 1964, the Tomkin incident (it now is known that our two ships were in fact illegally in North Vietnamese waters so the attack on them was not unprovoked) led to massive US bombing…and the rest is sad history.
So, it is the 1st of March and Good Morning Vietnam! (And the movie is showing on the ship TV.)
Our first Vietnamese port was Nha Trang…up the east coast. Vietnam is a strangely shaped country – long and narrow (only 31 miles at the narrowest). It is really beginning to wake up to the tourist possibilities created by its beautiful coastline, esp now that it is market driven economy and business is thriving as the Vietnamese seem to be born entrepreneurs. Nha Trang is one of the more famous resorts…but fortunately has much else to see. The beaches – with v attractive landscaping to increase their appeal to tourists between the road and the beach – are in fact pristine and gorgeous.
We had to be tendered into the port because a brand new 6 star hotel (Sofitel chain) has built a superb resort on the far side of the harbor and stretched a cable from one side to the other on which it runs cable cars! A lovely idea but it keeps any ship our size from a berth. When I first looked out our front window (without my glasses on) all I could think of was Hueys…but no, they were cable cars gliding along in the sky. And lots of boats! I could not get a photo of the most unusual type…woven and circular and about 6 ft in diameter rather like what I imagine the boat looked like that held the owl and the pussycat when they went to sea, strange but a usable craft.
Bill is now fully in the grips of my cold/cough so stayed on the ship…and just as well. It was quite a day. First a local (not intended for tourists) market, complete with live and I guess edible small snakes, one making an attempted escape from a plastic bag full of his comrades, all manner of eels and fish (some still alive and flopping), ducklings L, many unknown varieties of fruit and veg.
Then to a grade school. It was stressed that this was a typical school but the kids looked way too healthy and well clothed (and with US brand backpacks) and this is way too poor a country for these munchkins to be average. While the “American War” is long over, it lives on in Vietnam…to these kids, all foreigners are Americans. They were a lively bunch, and sang and danced for us. (Hard to realize, but the war has been over for 27 years, so the “children of the dust” produced by our GIs would be adults/middle aged by now….the parents or grandparents of these school children.)
Then into the countryside to visit a communal house (basically the village hall), where political meetings and religious gatherings are held, overseen by a revered and altogether charming if toothless elder.
Rambling around, we also got to see water buffalo and women working in a rice field. I got close enough to the animals that my trousers were muddy but it was well worth it. The rice here is still harvested by hand.
The following day: Ho Chi Minh City – a 2-3 hour bus ride (ugh) from the port of Phu My, south of Nha Trang. The capital (still called Saigon by many) was not that far away but the roads were not great and the traffic was horrendous…not so much from cars but all manner of conveyances (a lot of three-wheeled tuk-tuks – pronounced took-tooks) and more mopeds than one could think possible (four abreast to a lane of traffic…and on the rare curbs when there were curbs). There are 7 million people in Saigon and they must all drive several mopeds at once, badly. And of course bicycles. The women are completely covered up – think Ninja Turtles. This is to protect them from suntans as light skin is much prized. The guys only add’l cover is a face mask as they too want to avoid the constant dust (dirt roads, litter beyond belief, construction). Saigon is the paradise of mopeds…our driver was ticketed for some moped related infraction, and we had one accident (amazingly only one). In any block of traffic there will be at least a hundred mopeds – more if there is a (horridly rare) traffic light!
To say that there is poverty here is misleading. There appears to be nothing but poverty from our perspective…and that was my main and overriding impression. We have seen the favelas in Rio but this squalor here simply looked endless – mile after mile. If there is nothing but poverty, is it really poverty? Bill said that what I saw was nothing compared to India and he is undoubtedly correct. The amount of trash looked as if garbage cans had simply been emptied everywhere; is this possibly because the culture hasn’t gotten used to garbage that is nonbiodegradable.
The stilt houses on the waterways looked esp grim…tho these are to be torn down soon (there is no sanitation for these, thus accounting for the sight of the water).
On the other hand, there were no visible street people and no begging and everyone appeared to be in reasonably good shape and spirits as they got on with gusto with whatever they were doing. There were some parts of the city we drove through that looked not as bad, predominantly the touristy bits such as the 5 star Hotel Majestic where we were fed a lovely lunch and entertained by Vietnamese musicians. The view from the terrace shows the city’s modern skyline and its busy river
front.
On the other hand, there were no visible street people and no begging and everyone appeared to be in reasonably good shape and spirits as they got on with gusto with whatever they were doing. There were some parts of the city we drove through that looked not as bad, predominantly the touristy bits such as the 5 star Hotel Majestic where we were fed a lovely lunch and entertained by Vietnamese musicians. The view from the terrace shows the city’s modern skyline and its busy river
front.
The block or two around City Hall (the old French Hotel de Ville) was without a blemish…and here sit Cartier and the like…and also Ho Chi Minh holding a child…in a charming small park.
There were lots of revolutionary posters but also the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange which struck us as particularly funny.
The Vietnamese Museum houses the history of the country (including info on its 54 cultural groups)…and something really odd but very authentic: a water puppet theatre (the puppeteers are in the pretty murky water behind the screen – and the puppets are also in the water…including a fire breathing dragon that moved too fast for a photo).
The unattractive Presidential Palace (now called Reunification Hall) is now a museum – kept exactly as it was inside when the Socialist Republic of Vietnam flag was hoisted in 1975.
We were also taken to Chinatown, why I am not sure other than there are many Chinese. A visit to a temple was de rigeur…insufficient narrative to grasp what we were viewing but the spirals hanging from the ceiling were incense for future use (the pink tags for prayers); the ceramic murals on the walls were well done and the altar intriguing. The amount of burning incense hampered breathing but added more mystery to what we were confusedly seeing.
We would have liked to see more of the country – esp the plateau area where the French used to retreat (and where a lot of the colonial architecture is still intact) to escape the heat…but that must wait for another trip. Mercifully a sea day tomorrow to rest up as we make our way around the southern jut of Vietnam and north to Cambodia. This is pretty exciting stuff!
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