Oh yes. An absolute highlight of our trip. We went to Disneyland. And surprisingly Disney gives old people (senior citizens) a real break in price. It cost $12.50 each for a full day in the park. Top that in Florida!

We took a taxis from our ship. As we entered the park I took a photo. What a place. It felt like home.

The start of the park is virtually identical to either Florida or California Magic Kingdom. But then there are many differences. Hong Kong took ideas from most of the parks in Disneyworld. There is Toy Story from Hollywood Studios. Of course most is from Magic Kingdom.

The first show we saw was very different from the states. It was a story including most of the famous Disney stories. It seemed like it was meant to introduce the Disney stories for people not familiar with Disney. It was a musical and a movie and everything else Disney could figure out. And it was in air-conditioning and lasted 40 minutes. We needed that.

The Jungle cruise was very different from Florida. They actually said it could be scary. There was lots of fire and water unlike in Florida. There were still terrible jokes. But it was different.

Toy Story was fun. There was a new ride called RS Ride I think. It made me almost sick to watch. There was also a Slinky Dog roller coaster. Many more stories but they will come later.

Our excursion started with a ride on a Sampan through the marina. Lots of beautiful boats and lots of house boats that looked horrible. But we had fun. It does bob up and down a bit.

We did go by what we were told was the biggest floating restaurant in the world. It looked big to me but we never ate there.

Then we went to the Stanley Market. Lots of fun. We bought a few things so come over to our house and look around. That is after we get home in June.

It isn’t just the market that was fun. This Banyan tree was pretty special so it was used to sell things. We then went to Victoria Park at the top of the hill for great views of the city. NOT!. It was cloudy and foggy. We saw nothing.

We got back to our ship at 2 PM. So we went to lunch in the Café. At about 2:30 this was the view of the city. It rained for an hour with lots of thunder and lightning. We were told the next day that 9 people died from the lightning. The view actually got worse than this but why take a photo of pure black.

The city of Hong Kong is very interesting. Supposedly there are over 1000 skyscrapers in this city. More than even New York City. The best story involves these buildings. The tall building with mostly triangles was designed by IM Pei the same guy who did the entry to the Louvre in Paris. But the Chinese don’t like the building because it doesn’t conform. It is called a dagger. So the bank building three buildings to the right ( the one with sort of a ladder up the side) has two cannons at the top. Our cannons are much stronger than your simple dagger! Funny. And Disney uses this building in there displays in Hong Kong Disneyland. Keep reading the blogs.

With so many tall buildings travel can be difficult. So if you can afford it another way to travel to work efficiently is by helicopter. This one is just landing at the top of an apartment building. Pretty cool.

At 8 every night there is a light show. Compared to Disney in Florida it is very lame. But the buildings are all lite and the harbor is very pretty. We had a good day once the rain quit.

I know. We have no blog for several days. I have had a very weak internet connection in our room. And then for 3 days in Hong Kong we were quite busy. So lets get caught up.

I have been asking the kitchen staff for more lamb. The assistant chef, Kenneth, heard me many times. So today he went and found some lamb chops he could cook just for me. And he brought them directly to our table.

They were beautiful and delicious. And then for dessert…. Bob look at this.

Just a bite of Tiramisu. Yum!

But now I have internet so I will add a new blog for Hong Kong.

Geologists have a great story about the formation of the islands over roughly a 500,000,000 year period. They were formed under the water from lots of sediment and animal remains and eventually pushed up above the sea. There are almost 2,000 such islands. But the locals have a much better version of the story. This area was settled thousands of years ago as can be proven by the archeological remains. And since isand was a great harbor it needed to be protected from invading armies. So they asked a dragon to drop jewels into the sea to make it very difficult for ships to enter the harbor and attack. I like that story much better.

So our excursion was getting on a junk right alongside our ship as in the photo and travelling through the islands. I will only include a few photos. I took many. Too bad the sky wasn’t blue!

The last photo is the kissing islands. These are the most famous. Every boat went by them.

We could get off the ship without a long ride into the city so we went for a walk on our free time in port. There is a large amusement park called Sunworld. It had rollercoaster, a wave pool called Typhoon and all sort of fun things. We didn’t go in.

But the most amzing part of the park was the gondola across the bay to a large Ferris wheel high on the hill. The bridge is lite and the colors change frequently. But the tall tower is part of the gondola that leads directly to the Ferris Wheel.

As in all of Southeast Asia, motor bikes are the norm. And they are not meant for one. Notice this one with 5. And they aren’t kids. We saw many families of mom, dad and two small ones. This was a bit unusual. Sorry about the kid in the way of the photo.

US soldiers typically had a 2 week RNR in Da Nang before leaving Vietnam when their tour of duty was ending. Da Nang was one of the biggest Army bases and had two airports. Plus of course it had China Beach. This beach has been voted as one of the most beautiful in all of the world. I am not much of a beach person but it was very pretty. And HOT!

With the big hotels being built everywhere it looks more like Miami Beach now. Bet it didn’t during the war.

Kathy stuck her feet in the water. I didn’t. The water was warmer than the air temperature. And did I say the air was hot?

Our tour actually started at a museum of art from the 4th century. I probably should tell you something about the civilization living there at the time since our guide talked forever. But I got bored and walked away.

I even left the museum early to walk to a place that I could get a good photo of the Drago Bridge which is the symbol of Da Nang. That was much more interesting for me than hearing about each statue in the museum. Pretty cool bridge!

Then we went to the Linh Ung Pagoda. Yes, another Pagoda! But this one was better than most.

I loved the many bonsai trees all around the Pagoda. I have typically seen bonsai trees about a foot tall that sit in a planter on a table. These were all outside and perhaps 4 feet tall. But look at the detail. It is a real tree, just small. And I took a bunch of photos of different kinds.

But this Pagoda is best known for its very tall statue of the Lady Buddha. It stands looking out to the sea high up on a hill. Very imposing.

Then off to a place called the Marble Mountain. Actually it was just a factory where marble statues are carved. And they were beautiful and detailed. I suppose they thought rich Americans would buy some. I picked up a small marble dragon. It must have weighed 10 pounds. This amazing carving would probably weigh a ton. There were at least a thousand very large carvings (lots of Buddhas). no one on our bus bought any carving but took lots of photos.

Then as started to drive back to the port city of Chan May I took a photo of a wedding party.

Not everything in Vietnam looks great. There is a huge amount of poverty. Just we generally drove by at fairly fast speeds to get to the nice places.

And one more story about Vietnam and Da Nang from our young tour guide. He was about 30. Much too young to have been in the war. The American base in Da Nang was supplied from convoys that left the harbor in Chan May and went through the long tunnel to get to the city. early on the Viet Cong would hide in the trees on either side of the tunnel to ambush the trucks. So the Americans saturated the hillside on either side with agent orange to eliminate any hiding places in the plant growth. So all of these many years later there are no real trees growing but lots and lots of volunteer viney plants.

Although the detail of Kathy’s new clothes don’t really show I can try to explain. While at the Ben Thanh Market, Kathy bought elephant pants and a shirt. Yes there are small elephants all over her pants along with other decorations. And the shirt is even more unique. It has scribbles all over and the words Saigon Traffic. Driving in the city is crazy. Many laughed when they saw her shirt.

Then the Program Director organized a special musical event for those of us travelling for 93 days. It was a series of James Bond songs. It was really fun.

And then we went to dinner at one of the more upscale restaurants. That was because they had lamb shanks on the menu this night. I love lamb shanks. Kathy had fish and chips. and we shared a crème brulee for dessert.

We spent 3 days in Ho Chi Minh City. The first day was the excursion described before. But then we had two more days with additional excitement.

Joachim Scherz, the ship’s General Manager, organized a special event for the 93ers. Those are the 25 people like us traveling from Auckland to Vancouver which is 93 days. So we went to the Reverie Hotel for a tea. The city is an hours drive from the dock. This hotel is by far the most over the top hotel I have ever been at. And talk about tea!

The lobby. Do I need to say anything more?

Three photos of the buffet that was included in the tea. There were sweets, savory and traditional foods plus a lot more. And there was hot tea, cold Jasmine tea and peppermint tea. The tea lasted 2 hours. Plus we walked around the hotel looking at the artwork. Most of the large colorful panels were stained glass mosaics. Obviously I loved those and took many photos.

The restaurant even had decorations besides the food buffet. These are dragon fruits and some other tropical fruits that I can’t identify.

We sat with our new friends Vicki and Gene. I took a photo of Kathy and Vicki with our server next to one of the huge marble pillars.

From the swimming pool on floor 6 we could see much of the city around us. This building is a major financial center called the Sky Deck Tower in English. There is another name in Vietnamese that I can’t pronounce. Notice the funky part of the building near the top. It is a helicopter landing pad. There must be money in order to fly to work and land using a helicopter.

Don’t think the entire city is very modern and high tech. This is a photo of one of hundreds of side street. Two lanes with cars going both ways. And the motor bikes everywhere not paying any attention to sidewalks or lanes on the street. And the telecom wires! Notice there seems to be no logic how they are organized.

The last day in Ho Chi Minh City we took the shuttle Bus to city center which meant stopping at the Opera House. But we wanted to go to the Ben Thanh Market which is huge. We walked for perhaps an hour up and down the various lanes. And we bought a few souvenirs. But it was hot. I sweated a bunch. So one lady trying to sell a tee shirt called me Buddha because my stomach was completely wet. This market was great for tourists but is really mostly used by the locals. There is a huge food section which we basically avoided since we couldn’t buy anything to bring home. Obviously this photo shows an area mostly with fabric. But there was everything in this place. As I said it is huge!

Our excursion was a 5 hour bus ride from the port to the city with a few stops basically for photo shoots. So don’t take this blog as a definitive view of Ho Chi Minh City. But it was pretty eye opening.

Of course one of the first buildings we drove by was explained in detail by our young guide was the Reunification Palace. It is pretty clear that having a unified Vietnam is desired by the people. At the time the US left in 1975 the Communist takeover was rough. Now according to our guide the country is run quite democratically except there is only one political party. Who knows!

The Post Office building is still the Post Office built by the French in the 1800’s. Inside the building is a functioning post office with a million little stands selling all sorts of trinkets. We could barely move through the building. Interesting tourist event.

On to the Jade Emperor Pagoda and a walk through. This temple is a Taoism Temple which has similarities to Buddhist Temple in our minds. But the guide tried to tell us the huge differences. I remember none of the differences.

What I do remember most about the city is the driving. There appear to be no traffic laws for anything. We were told there are roughly 14,000,000 residents. And about 7,000,000 motor bikes. I am convinced that we saw everyone of the motor bikes during our drive back to the ship. And you can see they are pointed in every direction. Actually they drive on the sidewalks everywhere. The guide said that is okay because it is too hot for anyone to just walk using the sidewalks. Pretty strange ideas.

The boats and the water are also different from other of our stops. The ocean water is very muddy. Supposedly that is because the Mekong Delta is extremely muddy (and fertile). It pours huge amounts of muddy water into the ocean. Of course this area is used for growing most of the food and for fishing with these boats. I don’t plan on eating any fresh fish.

Back on board there was a Vietnamese Music performance in the theater. So we have seen traditional Thai, Cambodian and now Vietnamese dancing and music. They are all very interesting and very very different. Viking did a great job of bringing on troupes to share their local customs.

The instruments were completely unique. The music was beautiful even though I have no musical knowledge.

There were also dance segments. It was an hour long program of Vietnamese traditions.

I will mostly let the photos tell the story. And what a story! Our excursion started with a bus ride to Wat Krom (Wat means a Buddhist Temple). This was the entry to the Pagoda, the entire Temple area is called a Pagoda with a Temple, living quarters and Buddhas inside.

This was the Temple. Inside the ceiling was painted with various religious scenes and there was a Buddha.

In the courtyard there were several Buddhas representing various important images. All were explained in great detail. I remember none of it. But they were pretty.

Then we went to the Independence Beach. It was a long sandy beach with a few huts. There were a few swimmers. Like maybe 10. The huts had nothing in them except a certain amount of places to sit in the shade. Most chairs were in the sun as in the photo.

There was a nice long pier which was fun to get a good view of the area. But it was very hot and humid. So we only stayed out on the pier for a few minutes. Again it was a beautiful beach with nothing to do but swim and sunbath (as in get burned in minutes). This beach was made somewhat famous because Jacqueline Kennedy walked the beach in 1967. Obviously the Khmer Rouge took charge of Cambodia in the 1970’s and made a real mess of things. I remember the news reports from then and our guide told many stories about how terrible those times were. Enough!

Our last stop during the excursion was at the small fishing village of Tumnob Rolok. Yes, this was the worst photo I took. But I had to show it. Everywhere the locals just throw their trash on the ground and in the water. There are a few “houses” on the right and the fishing boats are just past the clothes lines. Once they catch fish they filet them and dry them on large screens out in the sun before selling them. With flies everywhere. The entire area smells of trash and fish. Nothing ever seems to get repaired as the photo shows. And the electrical wires are just sort of hanging down on the left side. We touched nothing!

Back to the ship and shower.

After dinner we went to the Traditional Cambodian Dance Troupe show in the theater on board. It was so completely different from the traditional Thailand Dance from a couple nights earlier. This was very slow moving with very enhanced hand and foot gestures. The ladies heads never moved. And the musicians sat cross legged on the hard floor for the entire performance. We did enjoy it even though we didn’t really understand the story of the hand movements.

The second day in Cambodia we planned on taking the shuttle bus into the market in Sihanoukville. Until we went to breakfast and talked with several passengers and even crew who had done that on our first day in Cambodia. They all agreed it was horrible. So we stayed on the sip and walked the deck 2 walking path around the ship. We did just less than 3 miles.

Where in the world is Patayya? Well it is much closer to the harbor of Laem Chabang than is Bangkok. So the bus ride was only 45 minutes each way. We were getting tired of long bus rides. And we wanted to take a good long walk not on the ship.

Patayya is a famous beach resort city. There are many fancy hotels along the beach along with 2 very large shopping centers. We walked more than 3 miles in one shopping center. The beach was crowded with sunbathers, boats and soooo many parasails. I couldn’t believe it to be safe with so many close to each other. This city is known for it’s night life. Supposedly the bars along the beach get real crazy at about 6 PM and that lasts all night until the sun comes up. There were a few crew members who confessed to going out after they finished serving dinner. They came back to the ship at 3:30 and served breakfast at 6. Good to be young!

We had dinner at the World Café and were joined at the normal table by Bob and Rose-Marie, our new friends from Canada. Unfortunately they disembarked so they were only available as a photo on my computer. We did have wine poured for them but we had to drink it. The rest of the table included several other friends from the group doing the entire Grand Pacific Cruise.

After dinner we went to the theater and watched a presentation of Thai dancing from a local Thailand dance Company.