Asia, Australia,South Pacific

My wife and I took a 75 day cruise, a Grand Voyage to Asia, Australia and the South Pacific, on Holland America's ms Amsterdam in the fall of 2012. We departed the US from Seattle on September 21 and returned to San Diego and flew home on December 5. During the trip I wrote a number of blogs about the places we visited. I decided to turn the blog material plus some other thoughts into a long form article for www.thepurplemuse.com.

First Look at the New China

After sailing across the North Pacific Ocean we visited Hokodate, Tokyo/Yokohama and Kobe/Osaka/Kyoto in Japan and Jeju, South Korea. All of these places were very interesting and we learned a lot everywhere we went. However, these stops were the warm-up for the main attraction of our trip, three stops in China, Xingang (port serving Beijing), Shanghai and Hong Kong. This is my first visit to any place in China in over a dozen years and the first time I will have an opportunity to spend time visiting many historic sites. Our first stop delivered in every way possible.

After arriving at the port of Xingang we took a two hour bus ride to Beijing, visited a number of historic sites including the Temple of Heaven, Forbidden City, and Tiananmen Square. After spending the night we got up the next morning and went to the Great Wall of China and the Ming Tomb complex before taking a three hour bus ride back to the port. All of the historic sites were interesting and very educational. However, they were just part of the education we received on our trip.

During our travels by bus we had an opportunity to see up close the incredible construction program and economic development that has made China the second largest economy in the world and likely the largest economy before the end of this decade.   Imagine driving down the road and seeing a complex of 5 to 15 high rise (20 to 25 stories) apartment buildings under construction all at once. Then image seeing several dozen of these complexes within an hour driving time. One complex had around 20 building going up simultaneously. There are an incredible number of massive construction cranes in this small area of China. The scope of the construction we witnessed was unbelievable. It is very hard for a western person to conceptualize how fast China is growing unless you can see the huge scope of the construction program with your own eyes. The group of people we were sitting with on the bus talked about China’s economic development far more than the historical sites or wonderful Chinese meals we enjoyed.

Since we returned to the ship I have had an opportunity to talk to some fellow cruisers that visited the city of Tianjin which is closer to the cruise port than Beijing. Tianjin is one of the largest cities in China with a population of over 10 million people. I had never heard of Tianjin before we arrived. Beijing’s population is 14 million. Our fellow cruisers reported that they had also seen the same type of construction and large scale development in Tianjin.

The port of Xingang is on the Yellow Sea. China is reclaiming a vast amount of land from the Yellow Sea for some type of future development. We saw the reclamation work in progress as we drove by. A ship’s officer confirmed to me last night that a large amount of land we saw this year was water last year.   The economic development that is taking place here is beyond anything I have ever seen. It is moving forward a very rapid pace. And this isn’t the area of China that is known for its manufacturing prowess, which is in southern China.

As impressed as we were by what we saw, not everything is great here. The smog/air pollution we encountered on our trip from Xingang to Beijing was incredibly bad. Everyone was stunned at how bad the pollution was. Our visibility was greatly diminished by the dirty air. Downtown Beijing was smothered with dirty air and everything felt like it was covered with a fine layer of grime. Overnight it became very windy and the next morning most of the smog was gone in downtown Beijing. We didn’t encounter any more bad smog on our trip.    However, as we approached the port we could see patches of fairly bad smog from time to time. I don’t see how the Chinese in this region can live and be productive indefinitely with the poor air quality they are experiencing on a day to day basis. We don’t know if the really bad air of our first day was typical or not but it was really, really bad.

We also don’t know how productive all the construction projects that we marveled at will be in the long term. I have read articles about huge “ghost cities” in many parts of China. Projects similar to the ones we saw sit empty because the people can’t afford to live in them. They are dead weight on a bank or government balance sheet.   Who knows what will happen to all the projects we saw during the past two days.

The ongoing discussion among US politicians concerning economic and fiscal policies looks like a kindergarten class compared to the big long term decisions being made in China. The Chinese are setting new standards for scale and scope of economic development far beyond anything the US has ever done. The time has come for the US government and its citizens to get their act together and start dealing with our fiscal and economic issues. The Chinese aren’t waiting around for us. They are moving ahead big time.

Shanghai From Multiple Perspectives

We arrived in Shanghai in the very early morning hours while we slept in our stateroom. When we woke up the ship was docked in downtown Shanghai on a river that splits the city between its eastern and western sections. As we surveyed the city from the ship's decks it appeared that we had been transported into downtown New York, or the financial district of London, or downtown Tokyo except that the city we observed was newer and grander than any city we had ever seen. The architecture was breathtaking.

We spent two full days touring Shanghai, a city of 22 million people, and its neighboring city to the west, Suzhou, a city of 6 million. We had the opportunity to visit classic Chinese gardens and temples but most of our time was spent riding a bus and walking around observing an extremely large metropolitan area. Shanghai is a city that has evolved rapidly over the past seventeen years. The city has some of the tallest, most modern, most beautiful buildings in the world. A building that will become the tallest in China is currently under construction. There are many massive high rise apartment blocks (multiple identical buildings) that appear from the outside to be as modern as any in the world. We saw a number of large buildings under construction and a number of large high rise building cranes were clearly visible but not an extraordinary number for a prosperous growing large city.

There are a significant number of smaller apartment blocks that appear to be 30 to 40 years old. We saw a few buildings that date back to the colonial period that are of French design with very distinctive European style balconies. Tucked away in small sections in a number of areas we saw the slums of the Shanghai of the past. Surrounded by massive new buildings just one or two blocks away we walked by some of the most awful housing one could imagine. The people were living in squalor. We were advised that some of the housing units had multiple families per apartment without a kitchen, which was shared on the lower level of a two story building. As we looked down alleys from modern streets we saw scenes that looked like they belonged in a 1930's movie about Shanghai or a documentary about the difficulties in living in China after World War II. These parts of Shanghai are far removed from the glitz and glamor of the gigantic new buildings they are so captivating on first glance.

We were advised by our guide that the slums are being systematically destroyed and replaced by new buildings. She told us that the people that currently live in the slums will be moved out of the central city into low cost housing in the suburbs. We saw the buildings in several areas being demolished as the workers prepare the land for redevelopment.

The Washington Post recently reported "The port of Shanghai, the world's largest, handles more containers than the eight largest U.S. ports combined".

On the second day we took a bus from Shanghai to Suzhou and returned on the same freeway. As we left the downtown area of Shanghai we were able to see the massive development and expansion of the city with dozens of large communities of buildings of the same basic design. The road to Suzhou was filled with construction projects and large fields of building cranes. The view was very similar to what we observed between Beijing and Xingang, our port on the Yellow Sea. The amount of construction in progress was unlike anything I have ever seen, other than our Beijing trips a few days ago. The level of investment being made in the Shanghai/Suzhou area was mind boggling.

Upon arriving home I read an article in the October 1-7, 2012 Bloomberg Business Week on "The Cracks in China's Shiny Towers". It appears that many of the buildings China is constructing have a life of 25 to 30 years on average. US commercial buildings are expected to last for 70 to 75 years. There have been a number of recent high profile infrastructure failures in China including collapsed buildings and bridges. There is no doubt China is creating infrastructure at an unprecedented rate, but it is unclear if they are making wise very long term infrastructure construction decisions. The article suggests that the Chinese government is trying to employ as many workers as possible in infrastructure construction and is compromising the quality of its new infrastructure in the process.

During both of our tours our guides gave us some interesting information that let us know that China is not one unified, homogeneous culture. One of today's biggest issues between the people and the central government is language. The national government has decreed that the Mandarin dialect will be the standard language for all of the Chinese people. However, Shanghai has its own dialect and Suzhou has its own dialect that is different from Shanghai. All of these dialects are different from the Cantonese dialect spoken in the far south of the country. I don't know how many different dialects China has but it was made clear to us that it is routine for people speaking one dialect to not be able to communicate verbally with a person speaking another dialect. Due to cultural differences in different areas of China the preservation of regional dialects has become a major issue. One of the reasons this is the case is that many Chinese regard Mandarin as an inferior language when compared to other dialects.

At 9:00 pm on our second day in Shanghai our ship cast off its lines holding us to the dock and we began to make our way back to the East China Sea. The lights of huge modern buildings lit up the sky creating an incredible array of color and designs. It was a magnificent show. In the river more than 10 modern party/dinner boats, mostly filled with business groups, sailed by us with their own light show. Shanghai was dazzling, enticing and magnificent at night. I have never seen anything like it. It was amazing.

Hong Kong – 12 Years Later

The last time I was in Hong Kong was about 12 years ago. I flew in to the new (at that time) airport and took a taxi to my hotel next to the new convention center. I spent two days participating in a trade show and related corporate meetings and then flew home. I didn’t spend any time walking around Hong Kong or learning about Hong Kong.   I could have been in any large city in the world and it wouldn’t have made much difference in my work during those two days.

We spent two days in Hong Kong seeing as much as we could see. We took two full day tours and a night cruise in the harbor so we could see as much as possible and learn about the new and old Hong Kong. We had two excellent tour guides; one of them was probably the best we have ever encountered in any of our travels. I will attempt to provide some of the information we learned and impressions we got from our visit.

Hong Kong is much larger than I thought. Hong Kong Island is a small part of the total land mass and total population of 7 million people that live in Hong Kong. Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, includes Hong Kong island, Kowloon, the New Territories and more than two hundred small islands in the South China sea that are nearby. It includes some of the most dense population areas in the world and a great deal of completely undeveloped land that consists mostly of small mountains. Our first and last impression of Hong Kong is that it is an extremely prosperous nation. Modern high rise buildings are stacked one on top of the other. There is very little of the original Chinese fishing village type housing left in Hong Kong.

However, the regular people, not the very wealthy, live in apartments and condos that range in size from about 240 to 450 square feet. These apartments are the homes of families of two to four people and maybe more. If you are a citizen of Hong Kong you don’t get a lot of personal living space. This is a huge difference between the Hong Kong lifestyle and a western city. However, one can buy just about anything available in the world in Hong Kong. We saw huge numbers of shoppers in all kinds of stores buying a range of goods from basic necessities to high end retail during our travels during the past weekend.

Hong Kong is one of the top three container shipping ports in the world, Shanghai and Singapore being the others in the top three. Our tour bus drove by the container port on the highway and most of us gasped when we saw the number of large container ships in port being loaded/unloaded on a Sunday afternoon. We saw what must have been tens of thousands of containers stacked all over the port area and being loaded onto the ships.

China is building a high speed train system between Hong Kong and Beijing that will reduce the train travel time from about 24 hours to 9 hours when it is completed. We saw the construction site for the Hong Kong terminal being built. The high speed trains will be traveling at 300 kph (about 180 mph).

Hong Kong is making a huge investment in its local transportation infrastructure. New elevated highways and tunnels will make it easier for people to navigate around the city. Hong Kong has a very large public transportation system already and they are working to enhance and expand it.

There are major building projects all around Hong Kong but not close to the same scale as we saw in Shanghai or Beijing. All of the scaffolding we saw used in the construction projects was made of bamboo tied together with plastic ties. I couldn't believe it.

We were advised by one of our fellow cruisers, an Australian construction engineer that has worked in Hong Kong, that Hong Kong’s population is expected to double in the next 20 years.

We also learned more about the language issues in China. There are more than 80 dialects of the Chinese language spoken in different regions in China. One can make the case that the actual number is higher than 80 if you count very small regional language variances. Hong Kong people speak Cantonese as their first language and most cannot communicate verbally with their brothers and sisters in the north that speak Mandarin. They can all read the same written material but the verbal languages are so different they can’t understand one another.   The Hong Kong kids learn Cantonese, Mandarin and English in school. Hong Kong is a dynamic, exciting city. The leadership and people are making things happen.

During the cruise I read John Keay's excellent book, China - A History. China's history is an incredible story of an amazing culture that has existed for more than 4,000 years. At times China has been the world's wealthiest nation. At other times it has been one of the poorest. The boundaries of China have changed radically through expansion and contraction over the ages. China has conquered other cultures and been conquered by others. In order for Americans and other westerners to have any understanding of the Chinese we must have some understanding of their history and culture. I was surprised to learn how much the US and European nations were involved in China's history during the late 1800s and early 1900s Mr. Keay's book is a good place to start learning.

The citizens of the US need to wake up and take a look at what is happening in China. China is setting new world standards for how business is to be conducted in the future. If the US doesn’t restructure its approach to competing in the world market, it will lose and lose big time. Our government must tell the truth to the American people that the post-World War II economic/standard of living growth period is over in the US. We can no longer expect to live a relatively easy life and continually increase our standard of living. China and its huge population are rewriting the rules of international trade. The US must awaken from its slumber and learn the new rules of international competition. The same thing applies to Europe.

The old post World War II standards are gone, over, done. China is establishing the new standards. It is time for everybody to wake up to the new reality. All it takes is a trip to China to see it with your own eyes.

Good Morning Vietnam

“Good Morning Vietnam” my wife exclaimed as she pulled open our stateroom curtain to reveal the morning sun and we got our first looks at the port of Nha Trang, Vietnam. Nha Trang is a town located on the southern coast of Vietnam. This was the first of two days we spent touring in Vietnam. After spending a full day in Nha Trang we sailed overnight to Phu My, a new port further south on the coast which is a major Vietnam international shipping port which also provides cruisers access to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).

Our visit to Nha Trang was interesting. I felt like I was sent back in time to the 1960s or 1970s. There was very little visible reminder that the year was 2012. Nha Trang is a resort area. There are a number of small hotels on the waterfront, including a few that are relatively new, but the aura of the town reminded me of Vietnam War era movies. I didn’t feel like I was living in the present. The foreign tourists frequenting the area appear to be primarily Russian. We heard a few people speaking the language as we moved about during the day. We saw plenty of motor scooters, taxis and buses but very few private cars.

During the day our bus traveled around the area as we visited a variety of local sites. We drove by rice paddies, which reminded me of two years during my 1950s childhood when I lived in Taiwan. We drove through small villages where some homes and shops were made of steel sheets, again bringing back memories from my time in Taiwan. Periodically, we saw a nice new small home, surrounded by ramshackle houses on all sides. There was a lot of trash strewn about in sharp contrast to the cleanliness of Japan and small amounts of trash we saw in Chinese cities. The overall population is poor but we saw many people working in their small businesses. People were trying to sell us stuff everywhere we went.We don’t have a lot of experience traveling in second or third world countries. The Nha Trang area is a combination of both. Some of what we observed was a bit tough to take. We absorbed as much as we could during our day and looked forward to our visit to Ho Chi Minh City the next day.

The population of Vietnam is about 90 million according to our guide. The population of Ho Chi Minh City is about 9 million. Even though Vietnam is a developing country and its people generally have a low standard of living it produces a rice surplus and exports significant amounts of rice. Its people appear to eat well. It’s fishing fleet and farmers appear to keep the country well fed. This is a dramatic change from the end of the Vietnam War era when millions of people in Vietnam were starving.

Our bus trip from the port to the city took about two hours. Between the port and the center of city we traveled on very congested roads. For most of the two hours we drove past thousands of small businesses located on each side of the highway. Some of them looked clean and neat and others looked like piles of junk, but people were conducting business. We drove by a technology park which is being developed at the former site of a US military installation. We stopped at a rest area that was new and just as nice as any comparable place in the US.Downtown Ho Chi Minh City was vibrant. We must have seen a million motor scooters drive by us during the day. We saw several young Vietnamese bridal couples taking wedding pictures in front of French colonial period buildings in the center of the city. We saw modern hotels and shopping malls with the best brand names from all over the world. The local market areas were full of people buying and selling. We made our contribution to the local economy after some brief negotiations.

We saw new apartment buildings under construction and new highways being built. We also so many ramshackle buildings made of sheet metal filled with junk. Vietnam is making progress. Now that many decades of war are in the distant past and empowered with the capability to compete in the global marketplace, Vietnam is moving forward. However, they have a very long way to go before the general population reaches the standard of living of its Chinese or Korean neighbors. It is clear the Vietnamese are willing to work hard and are happy they have a chance to be successful.

The last stop on our tour was at a Vietnam War museum. I took more pictures in the museum that I have at any stop on our cruise to date. I was the last person to board our bus before we left to return to our ship (but I wasn’t late). I think the museum is extremely well done. If any American visits Ho Chi Minh City they should spend more time than the 45 minutes or so I was able to spend in the museum yesterday. I wrote an article on the history of the Vietnam War based on the material presented in the museum for www.thepurplemuse.com.

Singapore – Moving Forward

Singapore is an amazing city. The island city state has 5.2 million residents and 3.25 million are citizens according to our tour guide. The rest are permanent residents or foreign workers. Singapore has more jobs than people with an official unemployment rate on around 3 percent. Essentially, anyone that wants a job can get one. Unfortunately, Singapore has a very low birth rate around 1.4 per woman of child bearing age and the government is very concerned over the cities long term population trends. We were advised that the government will be announcing another incentive program for women to have more children. The previous government incentive programs haven't worked.

Approximately, 74 percent of the population is ethnic Chinese and the rest of the population consists of people with ethnic origins from Malaysia, India, Europe and other Southeast Asia countries. It was made clear to us that the loyalties of the people of Singapore are to Singapore and not the country of their ethnic background. The common language of the people is English, which made us very comfortable. The official language of Singapore is Malay, but children are not required to learn it. English is the required common language for all schools in Singapore.

Downtown Singapore is a fabulous. It is as modern as any city in the world. I believe we saw every upscale brand in the world as we traveled down Orchard Street, the main shopping and hotel street. Singapore celebrates its origins during British colonial times by preserving some of the important colonial period buildings. The word that I would use to describe Singapore is clean. There is virtually no trash in the streets, sidewalks or back alleys anywhere. We walked through the Arab section of town. We spent some time in the Indian section. We went to Chinatown. No matter what the economic level of the section of the city Singapore is very clean. We visited an area of the city where regular people live. It was very nice and clean. I have yet to see any US city as clean as Singapore.

Singapore has been developed by the combined efforts of its people, the companies doing business there and Singapore government. Everyone is moving forward together. The efforts of everyone are synergistic. The US government needs to send some of its leaders to Singapore to get some lessons on how to build an economy.

Singapore doesn't have a minimum wage for its workers. Everyone earns what their economic value is worth. Singapore has a very unique government housing program that has eradicated slums and helps the people build equity in their apartment homes. Singapore has reclaimed significant amounts of land from the sea and built some of the most fantastic high rise buildings in the world. Singapore is the third largest oil refining city in the world after Rotterdam and Houston. Singapore is the second largest container port in the world after Shanghai and larger than Hong Kong. Most of Singapore's electric power is generated from natural gas imported from Indonesia via pipeline. I didn't get a detailed tour of the industrial area. I could only see it from a long distance.

Singapore has the most beautiful riverbank nightlife area I have ever seen. It combines the ultramodern Las Vegas Sands casino hotel development, re-purposed small Chinese shops/homes, and an old warehouse district in addition to many modern buildings and public areas. It is magnificent.

I could go on and on about the positive aspects of Singapore. I should mention that Singapore is a very green city. It has beautiful park areas and gardens that any city in the world would be proud to have. As it has grown the amount of green space has increased as a percentage of total land mass.

It is no wonder that Americans and Europeans that are sick and tired of the stupidity of their governments are looking to move there to put their capital to work. More land is being reclaimed. More high-rise buildings are being constructed. Singapore is working hard to become an even larger player in the world economy. I wouldn't bet against them.

Did World War II End for Japan?

The first country we visited on our Asian tour was Japan. I had traveled to Tokyo several times during my business career and even visited the city once as a kid during the 1950s. However, I had never really traveled around or visited any historic sites. I decided not to write about our visit to Japan until after we had visited other nations on our cruise. After our stop in Singapore I decided the time was right for me to comment on what we have seen on our tours and how I felt about the overall situation in Japan.

On our cruise the major Japanese cities we visited were Tokyo/Yokohama, Kobe/Osaka and Nagasaki. We saw a lot historic buildings and learned a bit about Japan's ancient culture. You would think that the Japanese are the most peaceful people on the planet. During our tours in all three ports we were told about the impact of the bombing of Japan by the US in 1945. It seemed like out Japanese guides were trying to make the Americans in the group feel guilty about the damage that was done to civilian areas or the civilians that were killed by American bombs.

In Tokyo the US firebombs destroyed a historic Buddhist Temple that has now been rebuilt. There was a small sign in English at the temple that explained how the temple was destroyed and rebuilt after the conclusion of the war. In Osaka we were advised about the impact of firebombing in that area. In Nagasaki we visited the Peace Park and the site where the second atomic bomb detonated (the bomb actually detonated in the air over the marker on the ground). We saw the statistics of the bomb impact including the numbers of people killed and those that died later of radiation poisoning. We saw the numbers of destroyed buildings and a diagram of the overall damage area caused by the atomic bomb. We didn't visit the museum in Nagasaki where they have some very gruesome photographs of the impact of the bomb. One of our fellow travelers did visit the museum and couldn't take the visual impact. She told us she left the building after a couple of minutes and was muttering that there was no excuse for dropping an atomic bomb on anyone.

I think we all know that if the US had attempted to defeat Japan by conventional weapons in 1945 it would have taken the largest amphibious assault in history to accomplish the objective. Experts have estimated that one million American servicemen would have died in the battles on Japan's homeland. Millions of Japanese would have died defending the homeland against a foreign invader, the United States and its allies. Some of us that are alive today may never have existed if the conventional warfare approach had been used. Our fathers may have been among those killed. This has been my thinking for many years. I believe that millions of lives were saved by using atomic weapons to end the war.

However, after visiting Korea, China, Vietnam and Singapore and obtaining a better understanding of the atrocities committed by Japan on the people in those nations, before and during World War II, it is absolutely clear to me that the United States government made the correct decision. The Japanese committed war crimes on these nations that are almost beyond comprehension. Huge numbers of lives were saved by the actions of the United States after unknown numbers were killed by the Japanese invaders through Southeast Asia.

Our last guide in Singapore said it best after we visited the World War II cemetery and the World War II museum. The US gave the Asian peoples the opportunity to grow and develop as nations as a result of our crushing defeat of Japan. It wasn't clean and easy. We all know that the fighting in the region didn't end with World War II.

I hope the Japanese people will look deep into their souls and ask why did their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents permit their leaders to militarize their nation and embark on a path of imperialism that could have ended up with Japan completely destroyed and its people vanquished from history. The United States is the hero of this story. We saved Japan from being totally destroyed and enabled it to create the third largest economy on earth and deliver one of the world's highest standards of living to its people.

It was unfortunate that Japanese civilians died as a result of the atomic bomb. The Japanese people should take full responsibility for the deaths of their countrymen. Japan's culture before and during the war created the problem. The United States of America ended the problem. Or did it? Do the other Asian nations truly trust Japan or like the Japanese people? I am not so sure. I think they tolerate the Japanese.

The birthrate in Japan is well below the 2.1 needed to sustain its population. The population is aging rapidly and not enough children are being born. Immigration is not encouraged. Some other ethnic peoples work in Japan but are not part of the Japanese culture. I believe that Japan's power by any measure has peaked and it is essentially a dying nation. Japan will be surpassed by many other nations in the decades ahead. Japan's time has come and gone. There is a fundamental problem with Japanese culture. I don't know exactly what it is but I am convinced it is there. Will the Japanese people ultimately save themselves? I don't know.

The rest of Asia hasn't forgotten World War II and won't for a very long time.

A Glimpse of Indonesia

We just completed three days of "visiting" Indonesia. We had a glimpse into the culture of the large island nation. It is extremely difficult to make any broad conclusions from the limited amount we observed but we did see some things that are worth reporting.

Our three days were spent on three of the Republic of Indonesia's 17,508 islands. We also saw many very small Islands in our travels in the seas, bays and straits that surround the islands. We spent the first day in central Java after docking at the port of Semarang on the north shore. We were a couple of degrees south of the equator. Our second stop was Lembar on Lombok, part of the chain of the Lesser Sunda Islands. Our third stop was in Slawi Bay so we could visit the Komodo dragons in Komodo National Park on Komodo Island.

We got our first glimpses of Indonesia a few minutes after we left the harbor in Singapore. It is a 45 minute ferry ride from our pier in Singapore to the nearest Indonesian islands. Indonesia exports natural gas to Singapore via underwater gas pipelines. We were told about 80 percent of Singapore's power is generated from power plants burning natural gas imported from Indonesia. We saw a number of natural gas production wells along the coast lines of Indonesia as we made our way from Singapore to Semarang. We also saw a small number of small LNG tankers waiting offshore. We didn't get any details on the scope of Indonesia's natural gas industry but it appears it is fairly robust.

I had never heard of Semarang before visiting the city on this trip. There was a good sized modern port built on reclaimed land. We docked in an area with a couple of container ships. The original Dutch colonial part of the port was estimated to be a couple of miles from our port location. The Indonesians made a significant investment in the development of the port to meet their need to support modern shipping.

We traveled from the north coast of central Java to the south central part of the island. We saw a few modern buildings and what appeared to be a couple of small areas of upper middle class houses. We saw slums in the city and small towns and very primitive housing in the villages. We saw many small shops of all kinds that ranged from reasonably nice to tin shacks that appeared not to be busy. We visited a historic Buddhist temple complex that was very well maintained. We saw lots and lots of agriculture throughout the day. There were rice fields everywhere and many fish farms. It certainly appeared that the people of Java would be well fed by their own agricultural production along with their fishing fleet.

The island of Lombok was another step down in terms of development. We had to use our cruise ships small boats to get to the pier using a tendering operation. There were no facilities in place to support our ship. The best thing I can say about Lombok is they appear to have a very productive agriculture industry. We saw huge amounts of rice paddies, corn fields, fish farms and many other agriculture production areas. It appears that the people can easily feed themselves.

We went to a historic temple complex that was in very bad shape. The one English language sign at the entrance was almost completely covered in rust. The complex was full of vendors and trash was everywhere. This place could have very nice if anyone cared enough about it to provide a reasonable level of maintenance.

We had lunch at a seaside "resort" restaurant. The Indonesian food was very good. The resort compound was surrounded by a wall. We ate on the lawn by the pool in the back of the resort. Vendors hawking all kinds local stuff peered over the wall and watched us have lunch and tried to get us to come over and buy some of their stuff. I have to give credit to the local people regarding their energy in trying to sell souvenirs to our tour groups throughout the day.

We got a few glimpses and a bit of information about the Dutch colonial period in Indonesia. But we didn't get enough information to draw any conclusions about any aspect of the colonial period.

We saw four Komodo dragons on Komodo Island. It was hot, humid, and dusty at the end of its dry season. I was very surprised. I thought the place would be very tropical. The climate was more like Southern California or the hottest parts of the Mediterranean. There were a little over a thousand villagers living near the National Park living a subsistence lifestyle. One of the tour groups visited the village today and a Komodo dragon decided to visit the village. The dragon turned around and left after the local kids threw rocks at it. There are no fences or pens at this national park. The entire island is open for the dragons and the other animals that live there to roam.

We did see a few new buildings under construction at our first two locations with bamboo scaffolding on every one. Everywhere we went in Indonesia we saw new or recently built Islam mosques. There isn't a lot of money to build many new buildings in the places we visited but every city, town and some villages have mosques rising above all other buildings in the town. Islam is alive and well in Indonesia. There are some Buddhists, Hindus and Christians in the places we visited but Islam is the dominant religion.

Indonesia is a large and complex nation. We got a few glimpses of it over three days. I am not sure if I want to see any more. But, many people believe the Indonesian island of Bali is the most beautiful place in the world. However, there are large numbers of Indonesians that have left their country to live and work in the Middle East, Malaysia and on cruise ships because living is so difficult in Indonesia.

From the Land Down Under

We just completed the final stop in our 5 port visit to Australia. We started in Darwin, a small city of about 110.000 people in northwest Australia. After visiting Darwin we sailed east along the north coast of Australia. Our second port of call was Hamilton Island, a resort off the northeast coast. After a short visit we sailed to the south to visit Brisbane, a city of over 2 million people, on the east coast. Our next stop was Sydney, further south from Brisbane on the east coast. We spent two full days in Australia’s largest city. Our final stop was the small town of Eden on the southeast coast. Each of our ports of call was interesting in its own way and gave us some of the unique flavor of the land down under.

Darwin was featured in the movie Australia a few years ago. After visiting the city and seeing some of the older buildings and World War II memorial, I understand the history of Darwin much better. Two major events have occurred in Darwin since its founding, the Japanese air raid a couple months after Pearl Harbor and Cyclone Tracy, which essentially destroyed the city a number of years ago. Darwin is essentially a new city. While we didn’t get a close look at its major harbor expansion construction activity, we were advised that billions of dollars are being spent to increase Darwin’s natural resource exports. For example the Japanese are making huge investments to increase Darwin’s liquefied natural gas export capacity. Northwest Australia has a very low population density. It was very hot and humid on a spring day. Darwin’s wet season was just about to begin.

Hamilton Island was a nice family resort. Our day in port occurred simultaneously with the US presidential election results. I wasn’t very interested in looking at Hamilton Island when the election was at stake. Our visit was brief. After the election results became clear it was time to get some sun on-board ship and just relax and begin preparing for four more years of Obama as President and the continuation of a divided government.

I really enjoyed Brisbane. I was asleep when we cruised up the Brisbane River to our dock. I woke to find a wonderful city all around us. Brisbane and the state of Queensland experienced horrible flooding in January 2011. There was no evidence of damage that I was able to see. We did see a couple of markers indicating the height of the flood waters. The damage had been all cleaned up. Brisbane appears to be a very wealthy city. The Brisbane City Council has made many major investments in public parks and building over the years and turned old dock areas into wonderful residential districts. The city was beautiful.

Late in the evening we sailed down the Brisbane River back to the ocean. I had the opportunity to see the massive port and petrochemical processing facilities that must be the economic engine of Brisbane. It was almost midnight and a bit chilly out on deck as we sailed by incredible numbers of what appeared to be petrochemical storage tanks. The industrial heart of Brisbane was physically separated from its residential and general business district. Brisbane is an example to the world of how to combine major industrial operations with a beautiful city.

I don’t know what to say about Sydney other than it might be the most beautiful city in the world. My wife and I were awestruck by Sydney’s unique blend of historic buildings, giant skyscrapers, gardens and parks. We spent most of our time in the downtown city area but we visited the Sydney Tower to get a good look at the entire metropolitan area. The entire harbor area is magnificent. I really enjoyed “The Rocks” area of Sydney. “The Rocks” is the original city area that has been repurposed into primarily a residential and shopping area. I loved the time we spent walking through and around “The Rocks”. We took a tour of the Sydney Opera House. We walked across the Sydney Harbor Bridge. I could go on and on about Sydney. If you like coastal cities, Sydney are a place you must visit. It is magnificent.

Eden is a small coastal town that was once a place where whalers hunted whales. It is very tranquil. The townspeople were very friendly. It was an unseasonably cool day. It is a place one should go if you just want to get away, relax and look at the ocean.I really enjoyed my first extended visit to Australia. Everyone we met was extremely friendly and helpful. I hope to return to Australia before too long and visit more of Australia’s great cities and the Outback.

Anti-US Protest in New Zealand

I didn’t think walking in front of the Citigroup Centre in Auckland, New Zealand on a rainy, spring Saturday would be particularly interesting today. My wife and I had concluded two uneventful days in Bay of Islands and Auckland on the north island of New Zealand at around 2:30 pm. The rain had stopped so I decided to go out for a walk to get some exercise before the all aboard time at 4:30 pm.

As I walked up Queen Street, the main street in Auckland, I saw a group of people marching a couple of blocks ahead. They turned to my left and began walking down one of the side streets. Since I had no particular agenda I decided to find out what the demonstration was all about. The group stopped in front of Citigroup Centre and began a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel, and anti-US protest. I watched for a bit and decided to cross the street so I could better see the signs being displayed and hear the speaker standing in the bed of pick-up truck that had stopped in the street in front of the building. I watched and listened as about 100 demonstrators and a half a dozen speakers participated in the demonstration. I have no idea what the name of the organization is that sponsored the event or the names of the people that spoke. What I can say is that they were pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel and anti-US. I assume that the march and demonstration was caused by the recent escalation of conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. What I didn’t understand is why they were protesting Citigroup! I looked inside the building through the glass doors and read the list of organizations occupying space in the building. It took a few seconds to figure out why this was the location of the protest. There was my answer; the Consulate General of the United States has space in the building. Somehow the group got access to the building and raised the Palestinian flag on the flag pole. The group in the street cheered wildly in support of the Palestinians.

Here are some to the highlights of the signs carried by demonstrators and the speeches by the people that spoke to the crowd from the pick-up truck. These are just a few of the many points the group made concerning the Gaza conflict. One sign declared that the Palestinians have been the victims of a Holocaust from 1948 to 2012. The Israelis and the US, by its support of Israel, are guilty of conducting genocide against the Palestinians. It was stated Israel is a terrorist state. One speaker called for the Egyptian Army to fully support and defend the Palestinians with its soldiers, tanks and other weapons to take on the Israeli Defense Force. The group called for a boycott of Israeli goods. Rocket attacks on Israel by the Palestinians are fully justified since the Palestinians are no match for the Israeli Defense Force war machine and its US armaments. Hamas was not mentioned by name. The speakers simply called them the elected government of the Palestinians, which they are. From the perspective of the demonstrators they rocket attacks on Israel are fully justified due to the actions of Israel’s government. According to the demonstrators the Palestinians are innocents in the conflict. The rally concluded with a number of participants throwing shoes at the building and landing many of them on top of the roof of the entry to the building.

I saw several people with video cameras recording the demonstration. Many people were taking photographs. There may be a video of the event or highlights on YouTube, but I have no idea who was taking the videos. I may have been the only American that witnessed the event live. It did not appear that other cruisers or tourists were watching. It appeared that everyone watching was local. The local police were watching the demonstration. It was peaceful so there was no reason for them to take any action. As I left the area to continue my walk the leaders of the protest appeared to be conducting interviews or having discussions with various people. New Zealand demonstrated it supports freedom of speech and assembly and the protest group took advantage of those freedoms to express their views.

I didn’t expect my report on New Zealand to focus on the events of less than one hour after my wife and I had spent two days enjoying the natural beauty of the north island and getting some understanding of New Zealand’s history and culture. What will stick in my mind was the very anti-US statements made by a small group of demonstrators in front of Auckland’s Citigroup Centre on a rainy November Saturday afternoon.

Fiji and Samoa – Somewhere in the South Pacific

After departing New Zealand our ship headed in the general direction of Hawaii. However, we made two stops at South Pacific island ports, Lautoka, Fiji, on the island of Viti Levu, and Apia, Samoa. This was my first trip ever to any of the Polynesian nations that have been pictured as glamorous and enchanting in movies and television.

Our first stop was Lautoka, Fiji. My wife and I walked from the ship into the town. We walked down the main street and headed back toward the ship. We walked along a sea wall that ran parallel to a small mostly industrial area near the port. My first impression was that Lautoka is a decaying town. The town seemed to be covered with a grimy film. It was hot and very humid. My impression was not very positive. We saw some interesting examples of third world industry. My favorites included a sugar cane processing factory, which included a small narrow gage private rail system that moves raw sugar cane to the processing plant, and a carton manufacturing plant that featured a wood fired boiler. They had wood stacked up in their central courtyard ready to toss into the boiler. We could see sugar cane being burned in the fields, which may account for the grimy feel of the town. I should also mention we saw a mountain of pine wood chips ready for export to some type of processing plant. The wood chip plant had its own conveyor belt and dock.

I talked to a number of my fellow cruisers about their impressions of Fiji. Most people had a different perspective than mine. Those that took a boat trip to a private island for an all you can eat and drink beach day had a great time. Some of those that took a longer walk and saw more of the town had a more favorable impression than mine. Some of my fellow travelers loved shopping in the local stores for very low priced goods. We were told that Fiji has some magnificent beach resorts on the other side of the island.

Today, we spent a few hours in and around Apia, Samoa. This is the country of Samoa, not American Samoa. I had the opportunity to see some beautiful coast line on a very hot and humid day. I learned a little bit about Samoa's village oriented culture. We did a drive by of Robert Louis Stevenson's former home, which is now a museum. There a number of western churches in Samoa, including the Mormons, Methodists, Catholics and others, that have spent the past 180 years or so trying to convert the natives. I saw US football goal posts on school yard sports fields, which was unexpected. I understand that the resort areas are on the other side of the island.

I just didn't see or feel the allure the South Pacific has for some people. I know many people dream about traveling to the South Pacific for its beautiful beaches and relaxed environment. I definitely understand the relaxed part of South Pacific life. I didn't see many people doing a lot of work. I wouldn't make a special trip back to this part of the world. Hawaii and some places in the Caribbean are far nicer places to visit. However, I am sure I didn't see the best that Fiji and Samoa had to offer. Maybe I will sail by this part of the world at some time in the future and get a second impression.

Hawaii

The final ports of call of our cruise were Honolulu (Oahu), Lahaina (Maui), and Hilo (on the big island of Hawaii). We had three beautiful days in three very nice but different places. It was great to be back in the USA after spending the past two plus months in foreign lands or sailing the Pacific Ocean and seas of the Far East.

I had not been in Honolulu for more than 12 years. Physically, Honolulu didn’t look much different from the last time I was there. In the tourists areas there appeared to be a far higher percentage of Asians that I remembered from past visits. We were advised that the Japanese are the largest group of tourists in the islands these days. It was very interesting seeing buses with Japanese language characters on them making it easier for those folks to get around town. Hawaii is truly a multicultural place. This is one of the features of Honolulu that makes the city so interesting. We climbed to the top observation point on Diamond Head. This was a significant physical challenge but we accomplished it. The view of Waikiki Beach area was breathtaking from Diamond Head. There is nothing quite like watching sunset from Waikiki Beach. It is one of the most beautiful views in the world even if it is shared with thousands of other tourists.

Our day on Maui was very different. All we did in Lahaina was walk around the small town and check out some of the history of the place. The former whaling town, missionary headquarters and sugar cane producer has an extremely interesting history that is worth checking out if you have a chance to visit Maui. Our goal for the day was to have lunch at an ocean side restaurant called Kimo’s. Our mission was accomplished. Lahaina is a wonderful, peaceful place. I have only been on Maui three times in my life and only twice in Lahina , but I doubt if there is any place in the world that is more beautiful and peaceful than Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii.

On Hilo we took a tour around the big island of Hawaii looking at lava flows from 1991-1996, 1980, and 1805 as well as checking out the beautiful views of the ocean. Only about 70,000 people live on the big island with about 45,000 of them living in Hilo. They don’t get a huge number of tourists. It was really cool walking on lava that was about 20 years old that expanded the size of the island when it poured into the ocean. We could see steam raising from an active volcano vent just a couple of miles from where we were standing. We saw some of the areas that had been destroyed by lava flow and other areas that had been destroyed by tsunamis a few decades ago. There is tremendous beauty in nature but nature can also be incredibly destructive. The big island has great examples of both.

I am very thankful to have had the opportunity to see many different aspects of life in Asia, Australia and the South Pacific on this trip. We must all remember that there are many different peoples living the world we share. It is inappropriate for anyone or any group of people to think that they know or should dictate how other people live their lives.