We were docked in Sihanoukville when we woke up on March 11.  We were up early because our private tour guides wanted to beat the heat of the day so we were treated to a sunrise over the dock.  During the trip from Phu My we had sailed near many small fishing boats.

     Our exit from the ship was delayed some before the local officials gave us clearance.  Our tour group walked out on the deck, but our tour leaders were nowhere to be seen.  It turns out that most people are barred from entering the port, so we walked to the gate of the port about a quarter of a mile away & found our tour guides there.

     During the late 1970’s Cambodia was ruled by the Khmer Rouge, a group that called itself Communist but appears in fact to have been pretty much insane.  They emptied the cities of people and killed millions of them – men, women & children – for no apparent reason.  After they were overthrown there was a baby boom, so that today the population is very young & we saw few older people.

     Originally an unimportant out-of-the-way town called Kampong Som, Sihanoukville was mostly built in the 1950’s as Cambodia’s only deep water port.  It is primarily a beach resort area, with miles of nice beaches.  It is named for King Norodom Sihanouk, who became king in 1941, was removed in a coup in 1955, then brought back to rule from 1993 to 2004.

     Sihanoukville has five Buddhist temples and our first visit was to one of them.  Wat Krom (Lower Pagoda) is the largest & most important temple in the province. It was really a complex of several buildings with a large number of gilded statues, shrines & family crypts, in addition to the white temple building with its gilded roof.

     Inside the temple walls & ceiling were covered with paintings, presumably of scenes from the Buddha’s life.  We had to remove our shoes to enter the temple.  There were a number of children hanging out at the temple & when we emerged a young girl had taken firm custody of Rick’s shoes.  She insisted on putting his shoes back on, to his embarrassment.  The shoes were too tight for her (they are slip-ons), so in the end Rick had to finish the job himself.

     We drove out along a long & rocky unpaved road to reach K’Bal Chhay waterfall. This is reputedly a popular place for locals to visit & there were a number of buildings fitted with hammocks for them.  The falls are said to be impressive during the wet season, but this was the dry season so it really wasn’t worth the long trip.  There was a long walk from the car park to the falls that included scrambling over rocks, which was a little much for some of our tour group.  One woman, who made the unfortunate choice to wear flip-flops, fell on the rocks & scraped her arm.

     In Cambodia, as in Vietnam & Indonesia, there seemed to be small shrines with trays for offerings in front of most houses and other buildings.  These seemed more elaborate than we had seen before, many with gilding or golden paint, & they were even here next to the waterfall & the hammock buildings.

     We visited a pepper farm, where the spice that was once so valuable that it lured many explorers was growing in abundance on plants supported by bamboo (and sometimes brick) poles.  It takes several years for a pepper plant to begin producing usable pepper & after a few years it has to be replaced.  They told us that the peppers that turn red before harvesting are the best quality.  After picking the pepper is dried in the sun for some days on large tarps.

     This farm also grows durian, the really foul smelling fruit.  Some say that if you can get past the smell the fruit is quite sweet tasting, but others say it is decidedly an acquired taste.  We made no effort to acquire it.

     We took a long drive to Ream National Park, then drove down another rocky unpaved road to visit a fishing village.  The overwhelming impression was of poverty, but the people there were friendly, especially the children.  I’m pretty sure they are used to visits from tourists, but it still felt a little strange to go traipsing through their village taking pictures.

There were some lush flowers in the fishing village.

     We had a Cambodian lunch at a roadside spot, complete with hammocks for resting in the shade during the hottest part of the day.  Nearby were signs advertising the two top Cambodian beers (we had an Angkor).  The script here is quite beautiful, but completely indecipherable for a Westerner.

     After lunch we had two more temples to visit.  First was Wat Ream.  We didn’t actually go into this temple, but there were a number of shrines & sculptures on the grounds.  I should add that none of the temples we visited here are very old, all were built in the second half of the 20th century (I think), after the development of Sihanoukville’s port.

     The last temple we visited was Wat Leu (the upper pagoda).  It sits on top of the largest hill in the area & commands a panoramic view.

    The primary attraction here was the troop of monkeys living here.  They were not afraid of humans (who like to feed them) & several had babies hanging on to their undersides.  A very interesting flower was growing on a vine (I think) on a tree.  Interesting flora & fauna, who could ask for more?

     Last and, yes, least was a visit to the downtown market called Psar Leu. It seemed like just a huge warehouse with lots of little kiosks where people were selling food (raw & prepared), jewelry & clothes.  Nothing looked very interesting.  It also had a number of beggars.  We spent a long half hour there.  Driving through town, it seemed very pedestrian with little in the way of style.  I guess that’s because the town is so new & many of the people so poor.  We saw again a thick tangle of electrical wires like in Vietnam, just asking for a nasty fire. Outside the market were “tuk-tuks,” motorbikes with small carriages that serve as the local taxis.  After this we returned to the ship, a little early thankfully since it was hot and we had seen enough of this part of Cambodia, which would not be near the top of our list for a return visit.

      We had a day at sea before reaching Phu My (pronounced like “Phu My once, shame on you. . . “) on March 9.  During the sea day we went to the special Vietnamese dinner in the Pinnacle Grill.  It was very good & this makes the 3rd day in a row we had Vietnamese food (which we would have again in Ho Chi Minh City).

     Phu My is really just an industrial port.  We were here to visit Ho Chi Minh City, since 1976 the official name of Saigon. Most people still call it Saigon; our guide said you have to use Ho Chi Minh City when you write it, but when speaking most people use Saigon.  A thousand years ago this was a Khmer (the Cambodian ethnic group) fishing village called Prei Nokor but by the 18th century the area was part of the Vietnamese Nguyen empire. The Vietnamese called it Saigon.  The French seized this area in 1861 and in 1862 it was declared the capital of French Cochinchina.  After ejecting the Japanese from the area in 1945 the British handed it back to the French, and the long independence war against the French & Americans began.  In 1975 the Americans evacuated & the city fell to the Vietnamese, who renamed it Ho Chi Minh City a year later.

     After a long drive from Phu My we reached Saigon (as I will call it because it is shorter), crossing the Saigon river.  The city now has a population of about 9 million & many very tall buildings, as you would expect in a city of that size.

    Our first stop was at the Presidential Palace.  This has long been called the Reunification Palace but we didn’t see any indication of this while we were there.  This is where the Vietnamese tanks broke through the front gate to seize power from the old U.S. supported regime.  In fact, long-time President Thieu had helicoptered out a day or two before & turned his office over to a general known as Big Minh.  When the tanks arrived Minh announced “I have been waiting since this morning to transfer power to you,” and the general responded, “Your power is gone. You cannot give up what you do not have.”  So ended the Vietnam-American war.

     The Presidential Palace was completed in 1966.  An older palace here was badly damaged by bombs when his own air force tried unsuccessfully to assassinate President Diem in 1962.  Diem was successfully assassinated (with American support) in 1963 so he never got to live here. Inside they have preserved most of the ornate rooms used by the president.

   We next visited Notre Dame Cathedral and the General Post Office, which are across the street from each other.  The cathedral was built by the French in 1880.  It is the largest church ever built in the French empire & when it was completed it was the tallest building in Saigon (not any more, by a long shot).  Inside it is rather plain; most of its stained glass windows were destroyed in World War II & replaced with clear ones. In front is a statue of Mary, installed in 1959.

     The General Post Office across the street was designed by Gustave Eiffel & completed in the 1880’s.  It is a huge open space where postal activities are still busily carried on.  In the back is a large picture of Ho Chi Minh and near the front are two huge maps, one showing the Saigon area in 1892.

     Nearby is the old CIA headquarters, which our guide said was where the last American helicopters left Saigon in 1975, rather than the U.S. Embassy, as most sources say.  Actually, there were a number of helicopter departure points around the city, so both of these could have been among the last.  Not far away  is a socialist realism style sculpture.

     Lam Son Square is the site of the Municipal Theater, called the Opera House when it was built in 1899.  It looks French, with fanciful stone carvings at the top and by the entrance. When it opened in 1959 the Caravelle hotel was the tallest building in the city at 10 stories.  It was a central gathering place for diplomats & journalists during the war.  Today the old Caravelle is attached to a much taller addition.

     A couple of blocks away is the Rex Hotel.  Built in the 1950’s, it did not begin operating as a hotel until after the war in the 1970’s.  Its Rooftop Garden bar was the venue for the regular briefings by the U.S. military that came to be known as the “Five O’Clock Follies” because no one believed the extravagant Viet Cong body counts that were routinely announced here.  We went up to the rooftop bar, fronted by the large crown that is the symbol of the hotel & is a local landmark when lit up at night.  There was a great view here of the People’s Committee Building, which was built by the French in 1908 as the Hotel de Ville (city hall). In 1945 thousands of people gathered here to establish the Provisional Administrative Committee of South Vietnam.  It is very French looking & there is a nice park in front with a lot of flowers & a statue of Ho Chi Minh.

     We went to lunch at a classy restaurant called Nam Phan.  We were seated on the top floor & there was no elevator, so this was not a great plan for the older folks with walking difficulties in our party.  But everybody made it & it was quite a good lunch.

     Our last stop was for a water puppet performance.  People stand in the water behind a screen and use long sticks under the water to manipulate puppets in front of the screen.  It was (way) less than thrilling.  We found it hard to imagine that even little kids would be enthralled by this tedious business in the age of movies & video games.

     We left Phu My after dark.  It is an industrial port located up a river from the coast, but there are woods & mountains & fishing boats in the area which we watched as the sun went down & we left Vietnam.

     On March 7 we visited Hoi An, an ancient city just south of Danang that escaped war damage & thus still displays its ancient heritage.  Driving south from Danang we passed the remains of the old American air base & Marble Mountain.  At the foot of Marble Mountain were several places producing & selling countless marble statues of all shapes & sizes, some 10 feet tall.  We stopped at one, but didn’t buy any.

     We drove south along the water.  Miles & miles of beaches line the ocean between Danang & Hoi An, and there is a lot of construction underway, mostly resort hotels & luxury apartment buildings.  The Chinese have built a large casino that is only open to non-Vietnamese.  Our guide said China is so big & Vietnam is so small that they cannot refuse anything China asks.  On the way we also saw some fish farms.  All you can see is the sticks that are part of the fences sticking out of the water in a pattern.

     We exited the bus & walked the rest of the day in Hoi An.  It is a lovely small city with streets covered in lanterns (a local craft specialty) in many colors.  One thing we have noticed elsewhere in Southeast Asia that was first pointed out here is the profusion of electrical & telephone wires lining the streets above ground & often obscuring the view.  It is amazing that these confusing wires don’t cause more fires.  One guide told us that there is so much confusion in the wiring that when something goes out they just string a new wire rather than trying to figure out which old wire is the problem.  It reminded us of Robert DeNiro’s character in the movie Brazil.  Many buildings display the red flags of Vietnam & the Communist Party.

     Originally called Fai Fo, Hoi An was an important port in the Asian maritime trade for more than a thousand years.  But its heyday was the 16th & 17th centuries when Chinese, Japanese & European ships regularly traded here.  Many Chinese & Japanese merchants actually settled here & developed strong ethnic communities, but most of the Japanese left in the mid 17th century when the Japanese government prohibited foreign travel.  After that the Chinese community became dominant & more Chinese immigrated here.  The town’s fortunes began to wane in the late 18th century when the Thu Bon River that runs through here began to silt up and stifle sea trade.  Danang became the dominant port & Fai Fo, renamed Hoi An in 1954, became enough of a backwater that the French & American wars of the mid 20th century passed it by, leaving its old architecture intact.

     Our first visit was to the assembly hall of the Chinese immigrants from Fujian province.  The Chinese immigrants were organized into communities based on their province of origin & each had an assembly hall.  The Phuoc Kien (another name for Fujian) Assembly Hall was first built in the 17th century.  They dedicated it to Thien Hau, goddess of the sea & protector of sailors, in thanks for arriving here safely over the sea. A 200 year old papier-mache figure of the goddess is flanked by her two assistants, who supposedly can detect any boat in distress for many miles.  There is also a large model of an old Chinese junk. There is a flamboyant red gate in front of the temple, which was added in the 1970’s.

     A second room in the back is dedicated to Van Thien & the “12 heavenly midwives,” who help her decide the gender & fates of children.  Couples & pregnant women come here for assistance.

     We visited a smaller Chinese temple or assembly hall (can’t remember exactly) where a couple seemed to be waiting to take wedding pictures.  Oddly, we saw them posing for pictures in several other parts of the town as well, so we aren’t sure what they were really about.

     One unusual practice in Vietnam is the wearing of face masks.  Most of the women & girls you see outside (& some of the men) wear long sleeves, hats, gloves, masks & scarves even when it is 95 degrees out.  This is not religious, it is because pale skin is considered attractive here & dark skin is not, so people go to extremes to avoid getting a suntan. 

     One of the features of Hoi An is a series of several houses that are a couple of centuries old, called (predictably) “Old Houses.”  We visited one, Quan Thang House.  It was built in the late 17th century by a ship captain from Fujian province in China.  Today it is occupied by a very old woman, deaf & almost blind, who is the seventh generation descendant of the ship captain.  It had a lot of finely carved wood & stone. In the kitchen two women were preparing a kind of dumpling that we were served later for lunch at our restaurant. Out back was a small cage filled with angry chickens.

     Our last visit before lunch was to a shop that manufactures & tailors silk fabrics & embroiders pictures.  They showed us silk worms at work & how they unwind the silk & spin it into thread.  Some women were weaving in one room & some young women were embroidering in another room. Upstairs was the tailor & the shelves of beautiful silk cloth.  Our tablemates, Bill & Robert, bought a silk shirt & robe, respectively.  It was about 11:30 AM & they were measured for the clothing.  Robert’s pure silk robe was only $50, & that included delivering it to our ship in Danang before the gangway went up at 4:00 PM.  It arrived on time & fit him perfectly.  Pretty impressive.

     We started off toward our luncheon restaurant.  First we came to the Japanese Bridge, originally erected in 1593 & renovated several times since, which is the symbol of Hoi An.  It was built by the Japanese community that lived on the other side of this bridge at that time.  It is quite small.

     We walked down to the Thu Bon River, still picturesque with fishing boats even though it is no longer the busy international trading center it was in the past.  We saw women carrying baskets hanging from sticks on their shoulder (most were not delivering anything, just looking for a few dollars from tourists who want to take their pictures) & others working on small boats.  This river floods every year during the rainy season, sometimes getting high enough to damage even the old houses above.

     We had a delicious Vietnamese lunch in a restaurant on the other side of the river.  They had a “weird food” counter that included such delectable items as jellyfish salad (we didn’t have any).  After lunch we had free time, which we spent walking around, shopping & looking at the many flowers around town.

     On the way back to Danang we stopped at what the U.S. soldiers called China Beach.  I’m sure it looks a lot different now.  There is a fairly new female Buddha on a hillside overlooking the beach & rows of chairs with umbrellas. 

     We drove further down the beach to a fishing boat mooring.  In addition to more conventional boats in the water, the locals here use tiny bowl shaped boats made of woven material or some kind of wicker.  We have no idea how a round boat is maneuvered in the water, but we could see some fishermen out in the water hunting fish.

     We returned to the ship and our two day stay in Danang came to an end.  It seemed like a very full two days & we felt we had seen & learned quite a lot.

     We docked in Danang very slowly on the morning of March 6 because it was engulfed in thick fog that made the dock invisible until the last minute.  The weather had been poor all the way from Hong Kong, & worse, Rick had a bad cold that started on our third day in Hong Kong.  It was not gone by the morning of March 6, but he was not about to miss Vietnam just because of a cold. 

     Those old enough to remember the Vietnam War (called, predictably, the American War in these parts) will recognize the name of this city.  This is where the U.S. marines landed & was the location of a large air base in addition to its harbor.  Some of the passengers who were Vietnam veterans did not go ashore here.

     We did not see much of Danang, however, because we spent the day on a private excursion to Hue (pronounced “hway”), the Imperial capital of Vietnam from the beginning of the 19th century until the end of World War II.  It became the Imperial capital when the first Nguyen emperor moved the capital here from Hanoi in 1802 & its status came to an end when Bao Dai, the last Nguyen emperor, abdicated in 1945.  Hue is about an hour and a half drive northwest from Danang.  But our first stop was Hai Van Pass, located high in the mountains.  This is said to have a spectacular view, but it was completely fogged in the day we were there.  It would have made sense to skip it this day, but I imagine the tour company has an arrangement with the folks who run the tourist rest stop.  There were some structures a couple of hundred years old designed to control access to the mountain passes & also a couple of bunkers built by the Americans.  A Vietnamese couple was waiting for the fog to lift so they could have wedding pictures taken.

     As in Indonesia, the most popular mode of transportation here is the motorbike. One of our guides told us that until about 20 years ago it was mostly bicycles, but you see fewer of those today. Some carry improbably large loads on a motorbike. We saw one fellow on a motorbike dragging a 20 foot bamboo ladder behind him.  Some of these pictures are a little unfocused because taken from a moving van, but still worth seeing.

     On the road to Hue we passed a fishing village and what appeared to be a Christian cemetery.  The fishing village is probably Lang Co; if so, the large bridge in the background replaced one that was the first structure bombed by the Viet Minh in 1947. Many buildings in Vietnam had small shrines in front.

     Our first stop was for a ride on a “dragon boat” on the Perfume River, which runs through Hue.  We had read that this was very atmospheric, with lots of small fishing boats and locals transporting goods by boat, but almost the only boats we passed were other “dragon boats,” all of which said “Tourist” in large letters on the side.  The people operating our boat were busily trying to sell souvenirs to the passengers.  Maybe other parts of the river are more interesting, or maybe the river’s ambience has changed, but we found this a little disappointing.

     Our boat trip ended at the Thien Mu Pagoda, which is a monastery.  Built in 1601, this is the oldest pagoda in Hue. It features a 7 story octagonal tower visible from the river & a 2 ton bronze bell cast in 1710 which can be heard for miles.

     We were able to go inside the temple of the pagoda & in the back was a large patio filled with bonsai trees.  Thich Quang Duc, the Buddhist monk who immolated himself in Saigon in 1963 to protest the government’s repression of Buddhists, was a resident of this monastery & the car he drove to Saigon is on display here.

     We had a delicious Vietnamese lunch at a good restaurant (we did not eat the squid).  Outside a long tailed lizard stopped for a picture on his way down a tree.

     After lunch we went to the main attraction, the Imperial City.  This citadel was built at the beginning of the 19th century, & was the home of the emperor & his family for about 150 years (although beginning in 1885 the French were really in control).  It was all but destroyed during the French & American wars after World War II & although restoration activities are ongoing only a few of the hundreds of buildings that were here are now intact.  In particular, during the 1968 Tet Offensive, the Viet Cong occupied the citadel for almost a month & it was all but destroyed by American bombs & artillery.  The citadel is surrounded by a  wall more than 20 feet high & 60 feet thick, the front of which along the river is centered by Cot Co, a flag tower first built in 1807 that now sports the flag of Vietnam, a yellow star on a red background. There are gates through the wall near the end on either side of the flag tower.  [Note:  I (Rick) am finding it difficult to identify some of these pictures, so some of this may not be accurate]

     The Ngo Mon Gate, the inner gate to the compound, has on its top the Five Phoenix Watchtower, where the Emperor sat on state occasions. It has a bridge through a large pool that is full of large goldfish. There are five openings in the gate: the Emperor alone used the center one, the mandarins & the military used the openings flanking the Emperor’s, and the outer two openings were for elephants.

     Walking inward from the Ngo Mon gate you come to the Thai Hoa Palace, originally built in 1805 & reconstructed in 1833, which was the Emperor’s throne room.  His golden throne is on a fairly high platform, where he sat wearing a gold tunic & a crown with 9 dragons under a gilded canopy.  This was the only major building in the Imperial City that was not damaged by bombs.  Unfortunately, you cannot take photos inside, but it is nicely restored to its former glory.

     Behind a high inner wall is the Forbidden Purple City.  The Emperor was the only man allowed to enter this compound populated entirely by women; the death penalty awaited any other man who entered here.  It originally had some 60 buildings erected over the first third of the 19th century but almost all were destroyed by bombing during the Tet offensive in 1968.  Next to the wall to the Purple City are the two Halls of the Mandarins, where nobles & military officers would dress in ceremonial robes for official ceremonies.

    Our last visit was to the Royal Theater.  Originally built in 1826, this was a venue for opera.  It was remodeled in the mid-20th century and restored at the end of the century.  The Hue college of music was here from 1952 to 1990 and since its final restoration it has once again become a venue for traditional music performance.  As you can see, it is quite beautiful on the inside, though fairly plain outside.  After this visit we exited the Imperial City through another elaborate gate, which may be the Cua Hien Nhon (“Gate of Humanity”).

   Our last stop in Hue was the Dong Ba market.  As with most such markets there is a wide variety of goods for sale, mostly food but also clothing and other wares. There is also much bustle & confusion.  We could only walk through, no time to shop here.

     Leaving the market we began the long drive back to Hue.  The traffic in this area is pretty bad & our driver put a lot of effort into his horn.  Few usable pictures came from our trip in a moving van, so I will include here some of the flowers we saw this day.  It was a long and tiring day, so we went to bed early to renew our energy for another full port day tomorrow.

     We spent Friday, March 4, our last Hong Kong day exploring Kowloon, where we were docked. We exited, as we did every day, through the cruise terminal, located in a very large shopping mall.  The mall is filled with high-end fashion boutiques & its basement has endless numbers of them selling only fashion branded clothes for babies & children (really!).  This mall attracts some 200.000 shoppers every weekend.  Would you buy high priced designer clothes for a child who will grow out of them in 6 months?

     We walked over to the clock tower, located in an area called Tsim Sha Tsui, originally built in 1915 as part of the terminus of the new Kowloon-Canton Railway. The terminal building was demolished in 1975 but the clock tower was left standing alone.  We saw a photo of the harbor from around 1950 in which this tower, only about 135 feet tall, seemed to be the tallest building around. Near the tower was a museum complex, including the Art Museum (which was closed for renovation).

     Across the street is the venerable Peninsula Hotel, built in 1928 primarily for those arriving by train. Its interior is luxurious, but the most interesting thing is that it was about to undergo cleaning or renovation.  Workers were perched about 6 stories in the air on a bamboo scaffolding they were in the process of building.  There were no nets or cables or other safety devices that we could see.  This is a city with a lot of construction in progress & we wondered just how tall they would build a scaffolding out of bamboo, lashed together by rope or (as one person told us) by plastic ties.  Yikes. When we returned later in the day the scaffolding was completed & being covered in plastic sheeting.

     We walked up Nathan Road to the History Museum.  Nathan Road is one of the primo shopping streets in Hong Kong, a wide street about 2.5 miles long (although we didn’t walk that far).  It is lined on both sides with clothing boutiques, electronics stores, etc.  It seemed to us to have two kinds of shopping, expensive & very cheap.  On each block we would be approached 3 or 4 times by men offering cards for tailor shops or knock-off designer watches (Rolex, Cartier, etc).  We couldn’t understand why the guy who was 3rd or 4th on the block would think we might want his watches when we had already turned down 2 or 3 others within sight offering the same thing.  How do these guys make any money?

    The history museum was pretty interesting, although it was long on dioramas and reproductions & short on actual artifacts.  We learned a lot about the opium wars & the colonial years, as well as the brutal Japanese occupation & the days of housing shortages after the war, etc.  On the way back down Nathan Street we stopped in Kowloon Park.  To get there you had to climb a set of stairs that was interestingly painted only on the risers & not on the top, looking like a painting from below but just stairs from above.  Hong Kong’s largest mosque was on the left behind a wall of trees & there was a sculpture garden that also had a lot of nice flowers at the top.

     We crossed back from Nathan Street to Tsim Sha Tsui through an underground crossing that was filled with pictures & text about Hong Kong film stars.  We recognized some of the stars & some of the movies, but not others.  After some exploration in the waterfront area we found the Avenue of Stars, an elevated plaza with handprints of many Hong Kong film stars and statues of a few, including Bruce Lee, seen here with his least successful apprentice.  We returned to the nearby ship & prepared to depart for Vietnam.