#32 Semarang, Java, Indonesia 10-29 Part 1 - The hits just keep on coming!

3350  These are the Semarang, Java welcome dancers.

3365  Our escort and ourselves are on the wrong side of the road and traffic’s coming fast.

3369  In the small towns the job gets more complicated. 

3397  This picture, taken from the train, shows a rice growing village.  All the tall sticks in the water in the distance are supporting fish pens

3414  Rice paddies with the volcanic mountains in the distance.  The craggy peak of the one on the right was formed when the mountain blew its top Mount Saint Helen’s style just a few years ago.

 

 

Oct 29 - Semarang, Java, Indonesia.  We have never been to the island of Java before so this will be a new experience.  The Javanese are a distinct people group with their own culture and traditions.  To be honest, some of the distinctions are very unclear to me but they’re there and it’s up to me to learn to see them.

 

Java is divided into three separate regions, East, West and Central.  The port of Semarang is on the north coast of the island, just about dead center.  It’s a bustling city of about a million and a half.  Its streets are even more clogged than Shanghai or any other place we’ve been mainly because the infrastructure has not kept up with development.  If Shanghai had these roads it would be a giant parking lot. 

 

Today we are heading to one of the triumvirate of sites in Southeast Asia that make other sights seem a little insignificant.  Along with Angor Wat in Cambodia and Bagan in Myanmar, Borobudur is so spectacular that you experience it as much as you see it.  This huge Buddhist structure has survived volcanic eruptions, terrorist’s bombs and earthquakes to become the penultimate destination for Buddhists in the Indonesia and can have over 90,000 visitors on holidays.  There are three Buddhist monasteries in the area and they are open to visitors and invite anyone to join in their services.

 

Borobudur was built in a 100-year period starting in 750 AD.  Very little is known about its construction but the workforce must have been huge.  60,000 cubic meters of stone had to be cut, transported and carved to build it.  Over 2,200,000 cubic feet of rock, much of it ornately carved, had to be fit together to build this colossal structure.  As Buddhism declined and East Java and Islam became prevalent the site was abandoned not long after it was finished and remained mostly forgotten and buried under layers of volcanic ashes until 1815 when Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles as governor of Java had the site cleared and the glory of the site was rediscovered. 

 

Essentially it’s a stupa (A stupa is a memorial to Buddha that often contains a small chamber with a relic of the Buddha inside.  As I mentioned before it usually looks like a bell and is topped with a spire or sometimes an umbrella.) atop a massive memorial to Buddha made up of over 2,000,000 individually cut pieces of volcanic stone.  Most of the pieces are just over a square foot in size.  The builders constructed it over the top of a hill so that the volume of stone needed to make it tall was reduced dramatically.  Monumental, pun definitely intended, efforts were needed to restore it as the hill had become water logged in the years prior to its discovery and it was sinking fairly rapidly.  A series of PVC pipes were installed under the structure to allow the hill to drain away the excess water and that effort has been successful.  Physical reconstruction of the stone has gone one for years and continues today. 

 

Originally it was 138 feet tall but the spire at the top of the stupa was continually hit by lightning and they got tired of replacing the stone so they put up a lightning rod and left the tip of the spire off.  Consequently it’s only 118 feet tall today.  It covers an area of 141,650,000 square feet.  That’s over three and a half acres.  It’s estimated that the whole thing weights about three and a half million tons.

 

The overall shape is a square with slightly rounded sides.  It has five levels including the top, each one a little smaller than the one below it, making a stack of ever smaller layers.  You can walk all the way around the four lower levels.  The walls on both sides of these balconies are ornately carved with scenes in and of the Buddhist tradition. 

 

But let’s start the beginning.  As our ship docked there were some dancers performing a traditional Javanese welcome dance.  Their costumes did not appear to be in the Hindu or Buddhist tradition but more like the traditional costumes of the native cultures of the Amazon rain forest or even Native American cultures.

 

Historical Note:  You may or may not be familiar with my distain for calling some of the residents of North America Native Americans.  They are no more native than my German ancestors that came over in the late 1600s.  The simple fact is that they migrated here and displaced whoever they found just like the Europeans did.  I was once told by a Taiwanese student attending UCI that the Pilgrims were just greedy entrepreneurs that came to the New World for the expressed purpose of subjugating the indigenous peoples and exploiting the land’s natural resources.  Is it any wonder I grow extremely weary of wrong-headed attempts to rewrite history in the name of political correctness.  What agenda driven, or worse sincerely misinformed, lecturer at one of our state universities put that idea in that poor kid’s head?  And even worse, was paid handsomely by the taxpayers of California to do it.

 

Their costumes had feathered headdresses and an ornate, fringed collar that was worn over the head and covered the chest and abdomen (the dancers wore a dark t-shirt under this collar but most likely the original was worn directly over the skin.  A wide fringed belt attached to a breechcloth like garment made from strips of black, red and yellow material about 1.5 inches wide extended from the belt to just above their knees and was open on the sides.  Again they were wearing black shorts under this garment, once more, not likely included in the original outfit.  They had wide leather coverings on their shins that had rows of bells attached as well as a 4 inch yellow fringe just below the first row of bells.  Of course, they wore tennis shoes, also not likely part of the original outfit.  I hope the humor is coming across in all this.  I’d hate to think someone holds the idea that I think it was possible that t-shirts and tennis shoes were worn by the ancient people groups of Java.  They danced in two lines with a dancer in a tiger/jaguar costume dancing in the center, accompanied by an assortment of percussion instruments, mostly drums of one size or another.  It was a nice greeting.

 

I’ve mentioned that the traffic here was bad; it’s not bad it’s impossible.  We have to cross the island about half way to the south to get to Borobudur.  In order to get us there and back in the time the ship has allotted we will have to have a police escort.  Shades of Dakar, Senegal.  As we left the port it was easy to see how useful the police escort was going to be.  He drove ahead, lights flashing, siren screeching with occasional taps on that very deep horn like fire trucks have in the US.

 

It was helpful on the highways but soon we were on two lane roads and going through small towns.  When traffic was stopped at a red light things were simple.  The police car and our bus just drove on the wrong side of the street until we got to the intersection and then switched back to the correct side without stopping.  When we were in the town with traffic stopped in both directions things got really interesting.  Somehow, as the Red Sea parted before Moses and the Israelites, the traffic parted in front of the police car and we kept moving, albeit sometimes fairly slowly.  I’d estimate that we spent more than half of the trip straddling the center line of the street and about 20% driving fully on the wrong side of the road. 

 

Some of the female, more seasoned, citizens seemed about to have the vapors and based on how I see them drive in and around Leisure World I understand why.  They won’t pull out from a stop sign if there’s another car on the road in the same county.  I have to admit that some of the misses were not by a large margin, but it was in no way actually scary. 

 

It took about an hour to reach the train station where we boarded some very old coaches pulled by an old fashioned, steam driven, coal burning locomotive.  The cars had no glass in the windows and that was just fine as it’s very warm and humid.  We are now about 2 degrees below the equator.  Soon the whistle sounded and the train chugged off pulling the two coach cars down the rusted rails.  This section of track is not used any more except for tourist rides.  The proceeds fund the train museum at the station where we will arrive.

 

Soon we were in open country passing through miles and miles of rice paddies.  People were out working in them, some standing on the ground some working from small boats.  There are scarecrows and flags of all colors waving in the fields to keep the birds away.  In fields where they are growing sweet rice, that wonderful, sweet, sticky stuff that they use for deserts, they have densely packed flags, bandanas, scarecrows and long ropes with ribbons hung from them because the birds really love the sweet rice.

 

As we passed through small villages kids in uniform on their way to or from school waved at us and laughed.  Plenty of adults waved and smiled too.  Apparently the Indonesian crew members on the HAL ships come by their cheery warm attitude naturally.  Many times we were looking down into what essentially served as the back yard of their homes.  Whole families, sitting on their back porches waved and smiled at us.  It was great!

 

When we arrived at Meglang Station the end of the train ride, there were two young girls in Javanese traditional clothing that performed a welcome dance for us.  We had one of our fellow travelers take out picture with them.  All around the back of the station there are locomotive displays.  Some are so nicely maintained they look like they could be put into service without delay.

 

When we returned to our bus, out guide had gotten us some traditional Javanese candy.  It’s wedge shaped and about one inch wide and high with a one-half inch base, tapering to a line at the top.  I’m game to try this sort of thing and I was surprised to find that it tasted like the old Bit-O-Honey candy but less sweet.  A nice treat.

 

Back on the bus with our police escort we mainly drove on two lane roads that were clogged with traffic as we went through villages.  We passed two trucks about the size of a military 2.5 ton truck that were piled high with rolled, very colorful mattresses.

 

#31 Singapore 10-26 This place is for the birds!

3205  African Penguins, the one on the left is the baby.  The other two are probably a mating pair since they mate for life.

3216  Emperor Penguins.  The one on the left with the white spots on his lower back is the baby.  He’s half into his adult feathers so he’s not all that young.

3236  Diana with Big Bird.  He eventually had to be banished so we could collect a larger group.

3259  Diana with the Three Stooges.  They were very cooperative in sharing the nectar while standing on the rim of the cup three across.

3306  This is the hornbill flying over the audience at the bird show.  I have to admit that I enhanced him a little so he was easier to see.  I was sitting near the top so I had to wait for him to get high enough for a good picture.

3348  The unusual buildings on the waterfront as we sailed out of Singapore.  Not many straight lines on those structures.  They must have been a success because they’re building another set with almost the same design near the Cruise Ship Pier.

 

 

Oct 27 – Singapore.  Today we are taking it easy again.  We are going to the Jurong Bird Paradise.  It’s supposed to be a great place to see birds both native and from the rest of Southeast Asia and associated islands.  It’s right on the outskirts of the city so it’s not a long trek to get there.

 

Turns out it is a beautiful place.  The entrance is organized a lot like the entrance to what used to be called the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park, but is now called the Safari something or other.  That is to say, nicely designed and in this case beautifully landscaped.  The arches over the pathways leading from the ticket taker to the park, there are three different paths to take, look like large vines and are planted with various orchids and dangling plants that look a lot like the Spanish moss prevalent in the deep south of the US.

 

Directly inside is a display of South African penguins.  These are Magellanic penguins that can tolerate high temperatures and lots of sun so their enclosure is outdoors.  They are black footed birds that nest in the soil.  The only non-adults I saw were almost as large as the adults.  Their overall color is a blue-gray tone and their white areas are not well developed or defined.  Before the days of political correctness they were called Jackass Penguins because their call sounds exactly like a jackass braying.

 

Directly across the wide walkway is Penguin Coast, an enclosure for the other types of birds that need the cold and subdued light to remain healthy.  They control the lighting inside the enclosure to mimic Antarctica.  It’s usually pretty dark inside these types of habitats and using a flash is not a good idea for both photographic (there’s a thick sheet of glass between you and the penguins) and penguin considerations because the bright flashes are not good for either their health or emotional situation.  Of course, that doesn’t stop many people from flashing away.  You think, in this digital age, they would see the terrible results of this practice but I guess not.

 

In addition to Emperor and Adelie penguins they had Puffins (Atlantic I believe), Inca Terns and Black-legged Kittiwakes inside the enclosure.  The glass wall extended to about 6 feet below the surface of the water that ran the length of the display so you could see the acrobatics and speed of the penguins in the water.  Again almost all the penguins were adults, I only spotted one immature Emperor, easily spotted because of his black and white back feathers.  Even his were half molted to the adult solid ,shiny black.

 

They have a hop-on-off tram that circles the park and we hopped on to ride to the other side of the park with the plan of walking back through it to the entrance.  We passed one stop before arriving at the Lory Loft.  This large aviary is home to several species of Lorikeets.  These smallish and friendly members of the parrot family feed almost exclusively on the nectar of flowers.  Inside they sell little shallow cups of fruit juice with pulp that the birds recognize as food.  Diana loves feeding animals so I went to the counter to buy a cup.  As soon as the person handed it to me one of the larger species jumped onto my shoulder and started walking down my arm to the cup. 

 

As I headed for Diana he took up residence on my hand and started drinking.  When I started to hand the cup to Diana he hopped on the rim with both feet and rode it over to her.  He was not about to abandon his lunch.  She tolerated him until he started getting aggressive toward the smaller birds that wanted to share his snack and so to discourage this rude behavior we shooed him away and let others have a turn.  (I wish it were that simple to deal with the few rude and totally self-centered people on the ship.)

 

After Big Bird was banished, three smaller birds, all willing to share a perch on the rim of the cup, had a great time taking turns putting their heads into it to drink.  For some reason I started calling them the Three Stooges even though they got along much better than that trio of nitwits.

 

From there we walked back past the hornbill, royal pigeon, pelican, duck, flamingo, birds of prey and stork exhibits to see the Birds at Play show.  It was a fun show that started with a parade of flamingos doing laps around the stage, flapping theirThe                                           wings.  They had several different birds fly out over the audience and land on the arms of their assistants stationed at spots around the theater.  They let a pair of toucans land on the arms of a volunteer near the top of the arena.  She seemed very pleased to have them visit but was clearly shocked at how heavy they were.

 

Two Macaws came out and had a race to see which one could put 5 Ping-Pong balls into the hole in a tree stump first.  Then they found 3 volunteers to hold hoops about 30 inches in diameter at the center and two sides of the theater.  The birds flew in a circle through the hoops.  That brought them low over the audience and provided everyone with a good view of a large parrot in flight.  Then they had them fly the course each in the opposite direction.  They had to time the center hoop because there’s no way that the birds could pass each other in the hoop.  They did pass within 4 feet of the hoop so their timing was pretty good.  The last lap was only done by one of the birds.  For this lap they filled the center hoop in with thin paper except for about a 5 inch in diameter hole at the center.  The macaw flew right through the paper.  I’m pretty sure this unnatural behavior was a long time in the training.  For a finale, they had about a half dozen macaws fly in circles around the theater from different locations at the top of the seating area and land across the front of the stage.  All that color in the air at one time made for a great visual.

 

On the way back to the ship we had to pass through the Harborfront Center.  We took that opportunity to spend the last of our Singapore $.  I bought some more preserved plums; these were very small, about the size of a medium grape.  Diana got some post cards and dried mango strips and that was the last of our local money.

 

The sail away from Singapore was very nice.  This is a very busy port with 400-600 ships waiting to be offloaded at any given time.  In the middle 60s the port hired IBM to come over and computerize port operations and that gave them such a big advantage in turnaround time that the port grew to be the largest in Asia.  Shanghai has taken that title from them in recent years but they are still second and remain more efficient that any port in the area.

 

On the way out we passed some very modern and unusual apartment buildings designed by the same person who designed the building at ground zero.

 

#30 Cont'd More Pictures

3152  Inside the Hall of Precepts.  Rocana Buddha presiding over the peaceful looking Bodhisattvas and the mean looking Vajrakumuras.  All is well in Nirvana.

3170  This is the reconstructed POW prison chapel from Chengi.  Harry’s cross is on the altar.

3171  Harry Stogden’s Cross.  I found that story very sad and yet uplifting.

3174  I forgot to mention that as we came back from our tour a very large ship was boarding next to ours, Star lines Virgo.  Miss Universe was aboard and was in the passageway greeting the passengers as they boarded.  Little did she know that we were Amsterdam imposters. 

3179  This is the new Sands Hotel.  What part of a boat is doing spanning their three buildings I don’t know.

3184  The downtown Singapore skyline.  The Merlion (Half Mermaid half Lion) is that white spot in the middle of the picture spouting water into the bay.

#30 Singapore 10-26 Rules, rules, rules. I love it!!

3055  Two stalls in the Tiong Bahru market.  Closest to us Hainese Chicken.  As you can see they only have 9 dishes.  One is Char Sieu (BBQ Pork), one is meat (here that means beef), one is vegetables in oyster sauce and the remaining 6 are chicken done in different ways.  The one farther away is a braised duck stand.  Sort of like Peking duck but in Singapore.

3093  This is Diana at the cross looking down on the Kranji War Cemetery.  You can see the headstones on the right.  The buildings in the distance are in Indonesia and the Straits of Johore start just beyond the trees.

3106  Peach Garden lunch.  If you look carefully at the right side of the plate, the item closest to the spoon’s handle is one large piece of dried red chili.

3112  This is the temple where the scene took place. 

3131  This is the gable with the pipa player and the peacock.  The carved and painted surfaces under the eaves are beautiful.

3140  This is a typical gable dragon at the Bright Hill Temple Complex.

 

 

 

 

Oct 26 – Singapore.  The tour we’ve taken today will get us outside the city of Singapore and around the rest of the island.  We’ve been here twice and have never see anything outside the city.

 

Our tour started at the Tiong Bahru market.  It’s a modern building with two floors.  The bottom floor is a ‘wet’ market where the locals can buy daily groceries, vegetables, fruit, etc.  The second floor is a ‘hawker center’.  Some years ago Singapore started to worry about the cleanliness of street hawkers that sold food so they outlawed them.  The developed hawker centers where the vendors could open a little shop and sell the same items they sold on the street.  Seems to have worked pretty well.  It’s pretty early in the morning and this one is already very busy.  Not all the vendors are open but those who are have customers.  It works like a mall’s food court.  There are community tables in the center and windowed vending spaces around the edges.  The individual shops are only about 6-7 feet across but this is probably luxurious to someone who used to have a cart to push around the city.  Each hawker seems to specialize in a certain kind of food, fish balls, hot & cold beverages, prawn mee, Hainaise chicken, soup, baked goods or chilled bean curd.  My personal favorite was ‘Koh Brothers Pig’s Organ Soup.’  Bet that’s got your mouth watering.  The food smelled delicious and for the most part looked good as well.  And the price was certainly right for $5Singapore you could get more food than you’d probably want to eat.

 

Our next destination was the northern part of the island and the Straits of Johore.  These straits separate Indonesia from Singapore.  They’re only about a mile wide here and this is where the Japanese Advance Boats crossed in 1942 to invade the island.  The Kranji War Memorial is on the banks of the strait up a gently sloping hill.  Like all WWII cemeteries the ranks of stark white headstones are in strict military formation.  More than 20,000 men and women are commemorated on the site but there are only graves for a fraction of that number.  Many of the bodies were never recovered because the Japanese were not interested in facilitating that task after the British surrendered.

 

Many of the soldiers were Australians and New Zealanders but I believe the majority were Indian, Malay Hong Kongese and other British subjects scattered throughout the region.  Names include Singh, Kan, Haidar, Chuin, Hwa, Seng, Yong, Tong and Wang.  They were vastly outnumbered and definitely out maneuvered. 

 

I spent some time at the memorial reading headstones and wondering what each man had left behind.  My own encounter with the past a couple of days ago still fresh in my mind.  I don’t know if I would view all this differently if I had not had my own experiences in the military.  I believe I would because my frame of reference would not be at all the same.  I guess someone said it pretty well when they commented, “You had to be there.”

 

Lunch was at a very busy restaurant, the Peach Garden.  It was Chinese cuisine and there were way more Chinese people there than tourists.  The food was good and I was lucky enough to sit with a bunch of picky eaters.  More of the good stuff for me.  One dish was sautéed shrimp and cuttlefish with celery.  The shrimp disappeared pretty quickly but I got plenty of calamari.  It was very good.  One other dish that was even better and not very popular was the Diced Chicken with Dried Red Chilies and Cashew nuts.  It was really only medium warm but everyone complained about how hot it was and I made that my main meal.  Diana ate it too but didn’t chew the dried chilies but rather pushed them aside. 

 

I like to call cooking with dried chilies ‘Kamikaze Stir Fry’.  The chilies give up some of their heat to the oil used to fry the food and that makes it pleasantly warm.  But if you chew the dried chilies as you eat the chicken you get a surprise.  Because they are dried you can chew the heck out of them and nothing happens…at first.  Once the chilies have a chance to reconstitute absorbing the liquids in your mouth they unleash a big burst of heat all over your mouth at exactly the same time.  Most restaurants in the US dice the dried chilies very small but here they had some very large chunks that could easily be avoided.  However, if you chewed one, it was way too late to do anything about it but eat a large quantity of plain white, steamed rice because it will absorb the chili oil and give you some relief.  Of course, the same people who passed on the squid and chewed the chilies were not about to eat that clumpy dumb Chinese rice.  I let them suffer in silence, their suffering, my silence.  Water and oil don’t mix so you can drink all the water you want and it won’t put a significant dent in the heat.  Since I like the extra heat I judiciously picked some small chunks to eat space widely apart. 

 

Right next to the Peach Garden was something called the Orchid Bowl.  Was it a restaurant that specialized in rice bowls with flowers?  NO!  It was a typical US style bowling alley.  It has a very high tech scoring system that even tells you the speed of the last ball you rolled in kilometers per hour.  What a crack up.  It wasn’t very busy at this time of day but there were two groups of lanes in action.  The one nearest too me was obviously family bowling time with an emphasis on the kids.  Very cool.

 

Next we invaded the Bright Hill Temple.  I say invaded because I’m on a bus with some of what could be called ugly Americans but they’re really just clueless and thoughtless tourists.  They’ll barge in anywhere, camera first, noisily disturbing everyone around them.  I try to keep ahead of them because once they set the tone at a site everyone else is suspect too.  So here we are at a temple site and the first building we see is a very large memorial temple dedicated to the past abbot.  We’ve been in the Orient since October 2 and made many stops but what to these idiots do.  They rush headlong into the temple talking to each other a mile a minute, snapping pictures right and left until one of the temple’s staff gave them a royal chewing out.  Which they richly deserved.  First of all they didn’t take their shoes off, and they should have known better and even if they didn’t know there were signs at every door.  I’ve seen these same people at other Buddhist sites.  Second, people were inside praying.  We may not ascribe to their theology, but it’s their place of worship and we should respect that.  I hadn’t even gone inside but had taken some pictures, no flash, from the rear doorway.  They lady who jumped the idiots had smiled at me earlier when I gave her a little bow.  She was in no mood to smile just a few minutes later and I couldn’t blame her.

 

The Hong Choon Memorial Temple is beautiful on the outside and very plain for the most part on the inside.  The exceptions are the altars and Buddhas themselves.  The temples in this complex have golden roofs with very ornate gables.  Fanciful dragons run rampant on the ends of almost every gable.  Some are adorned with flowers or fish.  The columns are covered with carved and painted figures of dragons and clouds.  It’s hard to describe but the overall effect is beautiful. 

 

The Hall of Great Strength has the usual dragons on the gables of its highest roof but the lower room has a pipa player standing at the edge and a peacock further in.  As usual the eaves and columns are brightly painted and ornately carved.  The dragons are finely executed and are covered with hair or spines all down their lateral sides.

 

One interesting structure that was not a temple was the Hall of Precepts.  It’s called that because it’s here that the priests and nuns are given their ‘precepts’, the guidelines given by Buddha that are to guide the lives of those who wish to live a peaceful life while contributing to the happiness of society.  They’re important because it’s only through diligent application of these precepts that one develops a clear and peaceful mind, which together with mental development and wisdom is the only way to be delivered from Samsara (The unending cycle of birth and death). 

 

It’s presided over by Rocana Buddha, who represents the Bliss Body that is the reward of a Buddha.  It represents absolute truth.  (Did I mention that anyone can become a Buddha if you get the program right.)  He’s surrounded by four great Bodhisattvas who embody the four aspects of enlightened beings, great compassion (Lord Avalokiteshvara), great wisdom (Lord Manjushira), great vows (Lord Ksitigarbha) and great practice (Lord Samantabhadra).  Say that three times fast!  These are surrounded by eight Vajrakumuras.  These fierce looking guardians represent the Noble Eightfold Path that reminds Buddhists to walk with strength and diligence. 

 

After strolling around the temple grounds and viewing the stupa-topped Pagoda of 10,000 Buddhas, we headed for the bus.  A stupa looks sort of like a hand bell.  They’re often golden but can be white or made from colored stone. 

 

Our last stop of the day was the Changi Chapel and Museum.  It tells the story of the Changi Prisoner of War camp run by the Japanese to hold the people they captured when taking Singapore.  It’s a lot like any museum you’ll see of the Holocaust in Germany.  Prisoners just skin and bones, worked and starved to death.  It’s a sad place with an oddly uplifting feel.  In the midst of all that suffering the prisoners put on stage shows, had sing-alongs and worshiped in make shift chapels.  One poignant is a reconstruction of one of the little open ended chapels that is a reconstruction of Saint Paul’s Church.  On the altar of the reconstruction is a relic of the prison.  It’s a cross that one of the prisoners, Sergeant Harry Stogden, made it from the metal of spent artillery shells and small pieces of steel.  It was engraved by others and someone even added Harry’s name.  Unfortunately Sgt. Stogden was sent to work in the Japanese coal mines and the harsh conditions plus the Beri Beri he suffered took a toll on his health.  He died aboard a US hospital ship shortly after being rescued when the war ended. 

 

The pastor of these small churches, Rev. Eric Cordingley, carried Harry’s cross with him as he started new churches after being sent to work on the Thailand-Burma Railroad, think Bridge on the River Kwai.  At the end of the war he took the cross back to the UK.  Harry’s family knew little about his wartime experiences until his son read an article about the cross in 1997.  By that time Rev. Cordingley’s daughter had already sent the cross back to Singapore.  When this museum opened in 2001 Harry’s son came to the celebration and placed his dad’s cross on the altar of the reconstructed chapel where it stands today.  An amazing story.

 

After that it was back to the ship to get cleaned up and head out to dinner in Singapore.  We tried to go to a hawker center to eat but the one we wanted to go to was closed for renovation.  So we walked to the Esplanade and took in the view of Singapore and the Merlion from there.  There’s some sort of dance festival going on and two dance troupes were performing along the Esplanade.  The dances were very stylized in the Malay-Thai-Indonesian style.  Lots of fun to watch.

 

We had dinner at an excellent Thai restaurant in the Esplanade center.  Diana picked green curry seafood and I picked Thai noodles with chicken and peanuts.  We shared them and they were great.  For desert we had sticky rice with mango and coconut sauce.  Really yummy!!!  Then it was taxi back to the ship.  An easy going, thought provoking and enjoyable day.  I love Singapore.  People gripe about all the rules (You can’t even bring chewing gum off the ship and they don’t sell it in Singapore.  Possession of it is a crime.) but I like it because of the rules.  It’s a clean, safe, well organized place to enjoy yourself.  Only drawback is that since it’s only one degree off the Equator, it’s always hot and usually humid.

11

#29 Cont'd More Pictures

2969  Notre Dame Cathedral in downtown Ho Chi Minh City at the center of the government district

2975  The old Saigon Central Post Office.  The only post office where I ever had US$ accepted for payment of postage.

2990  Our lunch in the Winsor Hotel.  That split chestnut looking item is the pretzel dough bread.  Yummy!

3013  Ho Chi Minh City looking away from the City Hall down Nguyen Hue Plaza.  The tall building in the distance is the tallest building in Viet Nam.

3014  The City Hall.  This building would be totally at home in any midsized or larger city in France.

3024  Diana and I in front of the infamous Rex Hotel.

#29 Phu My-Ho Chi Minh City 10-24 & At Sea 10-25 Viet Nam flashback

2812  This lady's bike is so loaded she's walking it.

2823  This isn't the most heavily loaded motorbike I saw, it's just the one I caught in a picture.

2856  The fire-breathing dragon puppets.  The one to the left has run out of flames.

2869  The two fisherman boat trying to net a fish.

2886  The puppeteers and their stage.

 

 

Oct 24 - Phu My-Saigon, Vietnam.  Today we are docked in Phu My, on the Mekong Delta.  The Delta is a maze of small islands, many of them mangroves like the swamps in Louisiana.  We sailed through them for about an hour to arrive at our dock.  We are in an industrial area outside the main city and there's nothing here but a few factories of some sort.  We are headed to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) about 2 hours away.

 

During the drive in we passed through several sizeable cities without much trouble.  This far out traffic is not a problem.  We've been told that Saigon is a different story.  After Shanghai, I don't think we're going to see anything new.  The main sights you see in the cities are motorbike sales shops, motorbike repair shops, small restaurants (most of them Phở (noodle soup) shops, but Bún (cold noodles) is also very common.) and hardware stores.  Of course, fruit, vegetable and meat stores are mixed in with all the others.  I'd say the number one business by volume of outlets is motorbike repair.

 

Between the towns we passed by rice paddies, cashew orchards and fields with other unidentifiable crops.  Rice is the big winner by acreage.  Our guide says that they get three crops a year here, one every three months except in the wettest part of the monsoon season.

 

Motorbikes also serve as the light pickup truck of Viet Nam.  It's always amazing to see just how much stuff they can get on that little bike.  Sometimes it's too much for even the ingenious Vietnamese so they attach a little trailer to the bike.

 

Our first destination is the Southeast Asia Museum.  It looks like a royal palace from the outside but has always been a public building.  Inside they have artifacts from all over Southeast Asia.  Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia are all represented but mostly it's Viet Nam.  Built in 1929, this facility houses an excellent collection of artifacts illustrating the evolution of the cultures of Viet Nam, from the Bronze Age Dong Son civilization to Cham, Khmer and modern-day Vietnam.  They had an interesting chart showing the Nguyen dynasties in the country.  The family was in power from 1802 to 1945.  In that time there were 13 emperors, 4 in 1883 alone.  Between 1883 and 1885 there were 6 emperors.  Must have been turbulent times in those years.

 

We were ushered into the Water Puppet Theater almost immediately.  The water puppet art was developed hundreds of years ago for the entertainment of rice farmers and their families.  The puppets are operated on long poles with wires attached to make the puppets move.  The poles and all the operational apparatus are underwater and the operators stand behind a screen that hangs just far enough into the water so they can't be seen.  In 1121 an emperor of the Ly dynasty saw it and loved it so much that he had a water stage built so he could have the shows in his palace for visiting royalty and dignitaries. 

 

The stage is a pond about 30 feet by 12 feet.  The backdrop is structured to look like a temple or pagoda.  It has a series of hanging slats, like a vertical blind, that go from the lintel of the temple's roof, a distance of about 28 feet, into the water about an inch.  The slats are about 2-3 feet wide and it's from behind these that the puppeteers work.

 

The first puppets to surface were a pair of red dragons that had the ability to squirt water from their mouths.  The performed a zigzag dance that covered a lot of the pool while squirting water into the audience.  It was a very small stream of water but quite refreshing on this hot and humid day.  After they submerged for the final time they were replaced by another pair of dragons, this version had a Roman candle type firework in their mouth that spit fire and smoke in a large volume.  After they made about two passes all you could see through the fog was the fire from their mouths.  The stream of fire and smoke continued even when the dragon put his head underwater.  Watching the glow in the water with smoke bubbling to the surface was interesting.  Admittedly this particular set of puppets was difficult to capture on film but I had to try.  On the, "I'd rather be lucky than good" I managed to get a pretty poor but interesting photo.

 

Next a fisherman, wading in the water casting his line in various directions was not having any luck.  In true slap-stick style, where ever he put his line in the water the fish came up behind him.  The fish would make a run directly toward him and then submerge just as he would turn to put his line in the water in that direction.  We've all see the Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello and others do this same shtick many time and yet it's funny every time.  At least it is to men.  Sometimes the ladies don't seem to appreciate it as much as we do.  He's followed by a fisherman in a small boat.  When he gets a strike the fish pulls him into the water but he's not deterred.  He proceeds to chase the fish back and forth across the pond using varying swimming strokes.  At this point everyone is laughing pretty hard.  Finally the fish jumps on his back and they swim under the curtain.

 

A four-fish chorus line of Koi, or carp if you prefer alphabetic alliteration, not just phonetic, danced various designs in the water.  A boat with a helmsman and fisherman started chasing them with a net.  Still more slap-stick, and still funny.  Soon the boat was replaced by two wading fishermen one with a basket and one with a net.  All they managed to catch was each other.  Of course, a large slapping battle broke out between them at that point.  This was truly Three Stooges comedy.  And still funny.  When the fish and fishermen disappeared they were replaced by four large men in G-strings that proceeded to perform what I could only classify as water ballet or synchronized swimming. 

 

The closing act was two very large and toothy koi jumping and snapping at the air.  After that the puppeteers came out from behind the curtain to take a bow.  They were standing in waist deep water.  Until then I could not figure out how deep the pool was.  It was a unique show and everyone seemed to enjoy it.  I know Diana and I did.

 

Then it was back to touring the museum's exhibits.  They had some excellent pottery and ceramics from the last 800 years or so and many stone carvings from ancient architecture.  Various tools, musical instruments and everyday utensils were also on display, baskets, etc.  It's a fairly small but representative collection.

 

Our next stop was at the Reunification Palace.  Completed in 1966, four years after his assassination, Diem's Presidential Palace was so excruciatingly 60s-modern that it looks more like a shopping mall building than the residence and offices of a head of state.  It's definitely like dropping into a time warp.  Many of the rooms open to the public still contain the original furniture and decorations.  The cabinet room and dining room are the original tables and chairs, as do the various reception and meeting rooms.  I remember the oval shaped table in the cabinet room from newsreels and photos.  Just like the oval office in Washington DC, decisions made in this room and that one affected the lives of a generation of Americans.  It was here that some of the emotions I had expected finally showed up.  I should probably put this in italics but I'm not going to because I hope everyone who's following my journal reads it and I'll just let the chips fall where they may.

 

Everyone now knows the Diem regime that was in charge in Viet Nam during the formative years of the war was corrupt beyond measure.  I certainly am losing no sleep over the fact that he was assassinated.  My personal view is that the people in charge of the executive branch of our government were no better.  Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara mismanaged, misused and abused our fighting men (sorry no women in combat at this time although the Air Force nurses I served with paid a heavy emotional toll) in a treasonous manner.  The restrictions and tactics the Air Force was mandated to use during the bombing of North Viet Nam, specifically Ha Noi and Hai Phong Harbor were tantamount to suicide.  And these restrictions and tactics were put in place by the two aforementioned numbskulls, neither of whom had the slightest clue or apparently the smallest amount of concern for the lives and families of the men whose lives they were so cavalierly throwing away.

 

These tactics were so outrageously bad that they were questioned up and down the Air Force chain-of-command and the answer was always the same, "Whitehouse orders, not to be altered."  The pilots that flew these missions, day after day, were among the bravest men I've ever encountered.  Despite the fact that they knew the missions were unnecessarily dangerous and had little chance of achieving their goals due to the way they were forced to conduct them, they nevertheless, strapped in and flew.  It is not my intention to downplay the courage and dedication of any other group in the military by this statement.  It's what I feel and I would not be at all surprised to find that my feelings are shared by many others regarding all types of units serving in Viet Nam.

 

I have stared at that last paragraph for a long time hoping I could change it in some way or just delete it, but I can't.  Instead, I'm going to quit writing for this evening and hope to pick it up tomorrow when I'm in a better frame of mind to talk about travel.  If anyone reading this is a Viet Nam Vet, "Welcome home, brother!"

 

Good morning, and welcome to a new day.  I'm in a much better mood but still unable to delete my last rant or even put it in italics.  Sorry!

 

Upstairs at the Reunification Palace there are two reception rooms, one on either side of a very wide hallway with a huge circular red and gold dragon rug at its center.  The room on the left is smaller and furnished with embroidered gold on gold fabric covered chairs and has a large wood carving with two tall elephant tusks extending upward in an almost closed circle.  This is the room in which top officials of foreign governments were received.  The larger room across the hall is furnished with carved wood chairs partly covered in gold on red material embroidered with the same designs as the gold.  Lower foreign and all domestic officials were received here.

 

Opening onto the second floor balcony, centered directly across the atrium from the wide hall is an even smaller and much more opulent yet warm room than either of the former in which foreign heads of state were received.  The room is furnished with two chairs facing each other at one end of the room  At that end of the room is a long, narrow table/desk with one chair.  The wall behind the desk is 90% covered with a beautiful inlaid wood mosaic showing various scenes from life in early Viet Nam as you would have seen them from a low flying airplane.  You can see people going to temple, farmers reaping rice, a procession of soldiers, gardens and a small town market interspersed woods and mountains.  On the other end of the room are two facing couches and coffee tables.  The fabric on the chairs is gold on cream in a zigzag design and almost all the wooden surfaces on the furniture are covered with wood inlay.  It's a very rich room but still can't completely escape the stark chill of the overall design.

 

The most interesting part was the basement.  The war room still has the maps of the war on the walls and the old communications gear is still in the various rooms, radios, teletypes and phones that should go directly to the Smithsonian's Museum of Ancient History, if they had such a place.  Down another flight of stairs is the bomb shelter, not open to the public.  Our last stop was the large kitchen in which the banquets and other meals were prepared.  Most of the equipment was of Chinese manufacture but looked like industrial strength gear everywhere.

 

There's a display of two Russian designed tanks on the lawn just to the right of the front façade.  These tanks commemorate the tanks that broke through the walls into the palace grounds in 1975, an event that has come to symbolize the end of the war.  Depending on whom you believe they are either the actual tanks or similar tanks, with the actual tanks being in a museum in Ha Noi.  The story goes that the North Vietnamese drivers had to stop and ask directions to the palace since they were totally unfamiliar with Saigon.

 

Next we stopped as a small square in the center of the government district..Notre Dame Cathedral, neo-Romanesque red brick structure built in 1877 stands on one side of the square and the Saigon Central Post Office is off to the right.  The bricks to build the cathedral came from Marseilles and the stained glass from Chartres, France.  Of course it was built during the French Colonial period so that makes sense.  It wasn't open so there's no way to see the inside which I've been told is very attractive.

 

We did cross the street to the old post office.  It looks much like a train station inside and out.  The design would be at home in the older part of any European city especially France.  It has a very large open space at its center and long counters on either side providing various services not usually available in post offices in the US.  I did manage to mail two post cards from here despite the fact that I had no dong.  Apparently even the government prefers the US$ to dong just like everyone else.  I did get some small dong bills in change for my $2US, about 7,500, about 32 cents US.  Cost to mail two postcards to the US, $1.68.  Very reasonable actually.

 

Many of the streets are very broad avenues, also very French.  The motorbike traffic downtown is very orderly for a large Asian city.  The bikes range from very small moped types, to scooters and small motorcycles.  Large motorcycles, bigger than 350cc, are very rare indeed.  One scooter caught my eye as we passed it.  The scooter was white with red trim and had been decorated with decals of strawberries, large and small; the larger ones were shown plopping into cream.  It was the best looking motor scooter I've seen so far.  Most are in darker colors and try to maintain their anonymity. 

 

It was time for lunch so we headed to the Winsor Hotel.  A very nice place and a good buffet lunch.  Unfortunately, not a genuine Vietnamese dish on the menu but the food was well prepared and very tasty.  The green beans sautéed with onion, tomato and sesame seeds were delicious.  Stir fried in a wok until just hot and infused with the spices in the oil, they were a crunchy delight.  There was a seafood stew in a tomato sauce, an obvious nod to bouillabaisse, one of my favorites from French cuisine.  The surprise of the meal was the small (about 1 2/3 inch in diameter) dark crusted rolls with the split top.  It looked a little like a roasted chestnut.  I found them on the desert table but assumed they were bread of some sort.  Early on I had picked up some cold cuts and cheese to I grabbed one to make a tiny sandwich.  After eating everything else on my plate I assembled by little sandwich and discovered on first bite that the roll was made from the same dough used to make pretzels.  Essentially it was a soft pretzel sandwich and it was good.  So good in fact I went and made another.

 

Diana had four deserts, most decidedly French, a light and tangy lemon roll, apple crumb cake, Tiramisu (the exception) and opera cake with a wonderful chocolaty flavor that took a while to develop but was worth the wait.  Like I said, lunch was very good.  The only disappointment for me was that it did not offer any truly Vietnamese dishes.

 

Our next stop was on Nguyen Hue Plaza directly in front of the Saigon City Hall.  It's a small plaza but very well decorated and home to a large statue of 'Uncle Ho' as Ho Chi Minh is called here.  If you look toward the city hall you could be in Colonial Viet Nam.  Built in 1902, it was originally a French hotel.  The exterior is richly decorated with plaster carvings and statues. 

 

To the left of the city hall is the infamous Rex Hotel.  During the Viet Nam war it was the headquarters of the CIA and home of the daily press briefings that became known as the 'Five o'clock Follies' by journalists, one of the clearest cases of all time of the pot calling the kettle black.  The only thing more distorted than the information given to the journalists was their use of it in reporting the war.  Diana and I posed for an impromptu shot of the Rex's front door.

 

If you turn your back on the city hall and look the other way down through the small plaza you could be in any fair sized city in the world.  There are modern buildings and skyscrapers including one very tall one that belongs to a bank.

 

KFC, Baskin-Robbins and Burger King have hit it big in Saigon but McDonalds apparently withdrew after being here a while.  Our guide did not explain why.  Might have been political.

 

Our last stop of the day was at the Minh Phuong lacquer ware factory.  They do the entire process here by hand and we walked in through the workshop.  I don't believe the area we toured is large enough to provide all the inventory but it did have all the operations needed to produce the finished product so I could be wrong.  More likely the main production facility is outside downtown where the occupancy costs are lower.  Most lacquer ware is black with painted subjects on the surfaces.  They produce a series of boxes here that are black on the bottom like the traditional style but the top is brilliant red with gold leaf applied in a bamboo design.  I usually have excellent sales resistance in places like this but the red and gold topped boxes were so attractive I purchased one that's about 4 inches square and about 1.5 inches high.  The dong price was 420,000 which is $20US and I couldn't resist.  I've seen lacquer products all over the world and have never seen work of this quality for so little money.  A box of this size and quality in Russia would be at least $100, if not more.

 

On the 2 hour drive back to the port of Phu My I was lost in thought about my experiences past and present.  The drive didn't seem nearly as long as the one going in.

 

I did go to the show, not really expecting to stay but the scheduled performer was under the weather and the barbershop quartet I didn't go see a few nights ago filled in for her.  They were both funny and entertaining and I wound up staying until the end.

 

Oct 25 – At Sea.  Nothing unusual about today.  Resting and writing.  We did have to turn the clocks ahead one hour at 2PM.  I guess Singapore doesn't do daylight savings time.

 

#28 Cont'd More Pictures

2700  That’s me of course standing by the Sandhaka Tower, the smallest of the four remaining towers.  He was a woodcutter and Po Nagar’s foster-father

2701  This is Po Nagar, aka Bharagari, Mother of the Cham People.  Lots of jewels on her.

2705  These are the pillars at the foot of the hill below the Cham Towers.

2706   The front two structures of  Po Nagar’s Tower.  The top of the one on the right is a smaller version of the top of the largest one off to the left but you can see it better because it’s closer.

2713  This is the Cham family that invited me to join them for lunch.  The woman in the lime green with the black scarf gave the invitation.  The little girl in the white shirt and embroidered jeans was keeping an eye on me.

2713  What gorgeous eyes you have my dear!  So cute.

2739  This is the girl on the elephant carved into the back of Ganeca’s Tower.

2743  Diana is walking behind the three north side towers, from closest to most distant, Sandhaka, Cri Cambhu and Po Nagar Towers.  Also happens to be smallest to largest.  You can see that although the Cri Cambhu Tower the second biggest of the four it has the simplest dome.

#28 Nha Trang, Viet Nam 10-23 The Cham People Were Here

2629  Courtyard of the Long Son Pagoda in Nha Trang.  You can see the wheel of life on the gable of the temple and the Buddhist swastika above it.  The carved stone lanterns and memorial stone as well as the carved granite fence are just behind the red pot.

2634  This is the dragon in ceramic tile that is just before the stairs leading to the temple entrance.

2658  This is the reclining Buddha surrounded by his disciples.  He’s 46 feet long.

2661  The 80-foot tall White Buddha at the top of the hill above Long Son Pagoda.

2688  The Xom Bong Bridge over the Cai River.  You can see the blue and white boats that are part of the fishing fleet here.  Nha Trang in in the background.

 

Oct 22 – At sea.  Another totally routine day at sea.  Our entertainer was Wu Man, a Chinese lady in her 30s that’s a world renowned pipa player.  The pipa is probably the forefather of most fretted stringed instruments.  According to Wu there are records of the pipa going back over 4,000 years.  The oldest pictures show it being played in a mostly horizontal position like a guitar or banjo.  Sometime in history it turned to a more vertical position like a cello but it’s played using all your fingers.  In fact they tape curved picks onto the ends of their fingers because the strings are not plucked in the normal manner by closing the fingers toward the palm of the hand but by moving the fingers to the extended position from a more closed beginning.  Very strange.  The music was unmistakably Chinese and she played traditional and modern tunes.  It was an enjoyable evening.  I did hear the tourists among us travelers whining about the fact that the music was strange and they were not happy about wasting time coming to the performance.  Ouch!! 

 

American Cultural Note:  Makes you a little sad to be an American.  Such constricted, narrow-mindedness is not really an attractive trait.  To be fair, it should be stated that the whiners are orders of magnitude better than the rude, thoughtless and socially stunted idiots that actually sat right up front and then walked out after the first number.  There are lots of not very noticeable seats at the rear of the theater and back of the balcony that you can sit in if you just can’t stand to spend 45 minutes listening to or watching something that displeases you.  I don’t really like jugglers or mimes although sometimes one will surprise me and have a worthwhile act.  I usually sit in the seats I’ve mentioned just in case but can honestly say that I have never left a performance until it is over.  I might daydream and not pay much attention but I’ve got enough empathy with the performer not to turn my back on him/her/them and walk out.

 

Oct 23 - Nha Trang, Viet Nam.  I have somewhat conflicted feelings about coming to Viet Nam.  Our first port of Nha Trang is very close to Da Nang.  We’re only here from 8am to 3pm or I might have tried to get a taxi to take me up there.  There was an Army base here in Nha Trang but I never visited it.  The country was beautiful back then and it still is now.  The rainy season is on and the humidity is really high.  It usually rains here every day, mostly in the afternoon during the wet season.  In the middle of the wet season it rains all day every day.  Viet Nam is an S shaped country that’s almost all coastline where we are in the central region.  Just south of the demilitarized zone, situated just north of Da Nang, the country’s only about 30 miles wide and most of the central section is not much wider.  The north and south are both much wider and larger but here in the middle it’s very narrow.

 

We are docked at the Nha Trang pier a little way from town and it’s obviously the home of a small fishing fleet.  The locals have set up a little market on the pier right next to the boat.  Prices here are a little shocking until you remember that you get almost 20,000 Dong for 1 US$.  Something priced at 1,000,000 Dong is just over $50US.  In fact, the locals here don’t really want Dong, it’s been devalued so often it’s not considered stable.  US dollars are the currency of choice.

 

Driving through town I couldn’t help but notice the trash containers in the public parks.  The container itself is a blue barrel with yellow trim around the top and bottom.  What makes them attractive is that each is being held from behind by a panda whose head extends above the opening for the trash.  The panda is hugging the barrel from behind and has a huge grin on his face.  I’ve seen more artistic attempts to enliven trash cans, but never anything more attractive.

 

Many of the motorbike and scooter riders are wearing large surgical masks that cover every part of the face but the eyes.  Our guide says that they wear them because of the dust and pollution; I suspect they just don’t want to be identifiable when they hit someone with their bike.  Full disclosure requires me to say that they are way more organized and easier to predict than Italians on scooters but they do buzz around like a swarm of angry hornets.

 

Our first visit was to the Long Son Pagoda.  It was founded in the 1800s and is currently the home to about 10 monks.  We did encounter several young students that are also living there.  The decoration in the entrance is quite remarkable, mosaic dragons made of both glass and ceramic tile.  One in particular was striking.  The dragon is looking directly out of the tile at the observer.  He’s done in red, white and blue and has the Buddhist swastika above his head.  Looks just like the German swastika except it’s exactly backward.  The German swastika is made up of 4 fours with their long horizontal strokes intersecting; the Buddhist swastika doesn’t form any fours.  It’s a little odd but this same design in found on ancient buildings and carvings in the American southwest.

 

When you enter the first courtyard you are facing the temple.  In front of the temple is a memorial stone flanked by 4 stone lanterns.  All five objects are finely carved as is the ornate granite fence that keeps you from approaching the memorial stone too closely.  You have to pass on either side of the area to approach the temple itself.

 

The temple is divided into three spaces by altars.  When you first enter there’s an altar about six feet inside upon which sets a figure with 11 heads and at least 36 arms.  There could be as many as 40.  Each of the arms is holding a Buddhist symbol, a lotus, the wheel of life, a sword, a temple, etc.  Many of them were unrecognizable to me.  Since the figure is sitting in a lotus blossom I’m assuming it’s a Buddha of some sort, I just don’t know which one.  I’m actually not very good at Hindu and Buddhist symbolism.  Give me a good ole cathedral and I do ok.  The statue is gilded and has a large gold disk behind it.  When you examine the disk closely it’s made up of hundreds, if not thousands, of hands.  The name of one Qi Gong form we’ve learned is ‘1,000 Hands Buddha’ and I’m wondering if this is its namesake.

 

After passing around this altar there’s a large open space with another Buddha.  This one is very Tibetan in styling with a robe wrapped over one shoulder and a head covered with closely cropped curly black hair.  On the altar are the usual flower, fruit and candle offerings as well as a small golden Buddha, also Tibetan style, but with his entire upper body wrapped in his robe.  In front of the altar is a large ceramic pot with sand in it to stand your incense stick in.

 

Behind this Buddha and on a raised platform is another Buddha, once again Hindu in style, but with an open chested robe that covers both shoulders.  He has the Buddhist swastika on his chest.  This altar is tiered and on each tier there are offerings of the typical types.  There are two other Buddhas on the tiers of the altar directly below him.  The one closest to him is the Happy Buddha, very Chinese in form, below Happy is the Reclining Buddha or Buddha in Nirvana, again very Tibetan. 

 

As we left the temple I noticed six paintings depicting the Jataka (birth of the Buddha, not the physical birth, the spiritual one), three above the entry and three on the back of the screen at the first altar.

 

Outside the temple there’s a set of stone stairs leading up the mountain.  About 50 stairs up you encounter a 46-foot reclining Buddha.  This one I know.  It commemorates the original Buddha reaching Nirvana.  The very contented smile on his face is testament to the fact that he’s feeling just fine.  He’s got the Wheel of Life and the Buddhist swastika carved in the instep of both feet. 

 

Up the hill 106 more stone steps is the white Buddha.  The last 15 steps are a very broad staircase with large, carved dragons serving as hand rails.  Sitting on his lotus blossom in the full sun the seated Buddha made an impressive sight.  He’s almost 80 feet tall from the lotus to the top of his head and pure white. 

 

There’s a door in the back of the Buddha’s base and inside are some very beautifully carved walls with 4-5 foot tall bronze reliefs of various Buddhas inlaid into the carvings.  I’d never been inside a large Buddha before.  It was pretty impressive.  Around the outside of the base they have the portraits of the nuns and monks who immolated themselves in the 60s in protest of the Diem regime’s corruption.  Each portrait is framed with flames

 

The peak also provides some nice views of Nha Trang.  Between the Buddha and the views, it was worth climbing the stairs on this hot and very humid day.  We drove a little more out of town across Cai River on the Xom Bong Bridge to an extremely interesting sight, the Po Nagar, Cham Towers. 

 

Not much is known about the Cham people and almost nothing directly from them.  Most of what we know is from Chinese history and the surviving religious structures and artwork the empire created.  (I don’t know about you but when one culture writes a history of another culture, I take it with a huge grain of salt.)  The Chan created their Hindu empire here in central Viet Nam in the 2^nd century AD, organized around Da Nang.  By the 10^th century internal struggles and external warfare started to erode their civilization.  The Cham Empire was completely gone by the early 1800s but they still exist as a distinct ethnic group in Viet Nam.  Despite years of pressure to assimilate they still have their own culture, traditions and language.  The written form is derived from Sanskrit and the spoken system in the Malayo-Polynesian family, like Hawaiian or the Maori of New Zealand.  (I hope I’ve got that straight because I know I have some linguists reading this mess.)  The customs of the current people group are a blend of Hindu and Islam, to which many have converted.

 

Originally there were 8 kalan (towers) but only 4 remain.  Actually I’d describe them more as mini-temples as you can enter them if you take your shoes off and each has an altar and at least one deity inside.  They were constructed between the 7^th and 12^th centuries and the architectural differences in the four make it likely that they were built in different periods. 

 

When you first arrive at the tower site you pass a hall of pillars that reminded me of the hypostyle hall in Luxor at the Temple of Karnack.  I’m not sure if these pillars ever had a roof but they are so close together it would not have been a difficult job to put one on.  There are 12 shorter pillars, one at the start of each of the two center rows and then five more in each of the outside rows.  In each of the two center rows there are five pillars of almost double the height following the initial shorter pillar.  If you’ve followed my somewhat wordy explanation you will arrive at a total of 22 pillars, 12 short, 10 tall, arranged with five short towers on the outside rows and one leading short tower followed by five taller towers on the two inside rows.

 

If you walk between the central tall towers you wind up at the base of a very steep set of stairs leading up to the tower site.  If this were a European cathedral I’d say these were penance stairs, made to be climbed on one’s knees as an act of repentance for one’s sins.  A very short way from the top of the stairs is the entrance to the largest tower on the sight.  This would be a rigorous and dangerous way to get to the top so a gently rising curved stairway has been put in at the left side of the site.

 

The largest and most ornate tower is dedicated to Po Nagar, aka Lady Thien Y-ana, aka Bharagari, who is revered as the mother of the Cham people.  It’s constructed like three buildings connected by doors through common walls, each building is successively wider, deeper and taller.  The first is a small entry way, the second contains some relics including some tablets listing various rulers and a rather large linga.  The third 75-foot tall section is the main temple room with the altar and likeness of Po Nagar.  She’s dressed in gold with a beautifully ornate, jeweled headdress and more pearl and jewel necklaces than a rap star.  She’s flanked by two of those weird Hindu parasols with tassels.  I guess I view them as weird because they’re usually taller than they are wide.  Not a very utilitarian design for a parasol.  The altar in front of her was brimming with offerings of flowers and fruit.  Only a few sticks of incense were stuck into the sand filled bowl.  She is joined by two other smaller side altars dedicated to ladies I could not identify.

 

There are three towers side by side on the north side of the plaza.  The first on the east is Po Nagar’s.  The central tower is dedicated to Cri Cambhu and is currently used as a fertility temple for childless couples.  It’s smaller, shorter and the dome on the main structure is much less ornate than Po Nagar’s.  It does have significant architectural detail on the lower part of the buildingEssentially it omits the entry structure and only has two rooms, both smaller than the ones in Po Nagar’s tower. 

 

The westernmost tower is dedicated to Sandhaka, a woodcutter and Po Nagar’s foster-father.  It is by far the smallest of the four towers that remain.  Only two steps up to get in and a much shorter, although more ornate, dome on the main tower.  I didn’t bother to take my shoes off again to go in because the altar and image could be easily seen from the entry room’s outer door.

 

The only tower on the south side of the area is a medium sized tower dedicated to Ganeca, daughter of Po Nagar.  While it is not large it is ornately done.  The main structure’s tower is ornate and complex and the outside of the building is decorated with a multitude of carvings.  The largest single carving is on the back of the tower.  It’s a girl riding an elephant.  It’s shown coming right at the viewer and has suffered over the ages but it’s still easily recognizable.  The elephant is clearly the small eared Indian type and is shown with its trunk curled up at the end like a fishhook.  The places where the tusks extended from the head can also be easily seen.  The upper body and head of the girl are in very good condition. 

 

A family of Chan people were sharing a picnic lunch at one of the tables around the edge of the site.  Clearly it was a festive occasion; the women were mostly in traditional Vietnamese long split dresses over white pajama style pants.  One little girl with beautiful almond shaped eyes was watching me with great interest.  She smiled and we exchanged greetings.  Overhearing the exchange, an older woman, probably the family matriarch, gestured that I should come over and get something to eat.  I returned her smile and politely, I hope, declined and pointed to my camera.  She didn’t seem put-off by my refusal and smiled again while she returned to her food prep duties.  I think she was high in the family structure because she and one other older lady were on one side of the long table and everyone else, all younger, were crowded around the other side and the ends.  She and the other older lady were the only ones wearing head scarves. 

 

This is easily the most intriguing place we’ve been so far on this trip.  I’m not sure exactly what the internal mechanism is but I am always fascinated by the remains of cultures that are somewhat mysterious.  Take, for example, the Moche and Chimu cultures, predecessors to the Inca in Peru.  Their lack of an alphabet and the fact that they were gone before Spanish historians came to South America left us with little information about them.  We have only their structures and the decorations to help us understand their values and traditions.

 

After visiting the towers we drove to an embroidery facility where you could watch women doing the ultrafine embroidery for which the orient is known. 

 

As a bit of a postscript to the day I should note that one additional ethnic group was well represented here in Nha Trang, Russians.  The area has great beaches and is relatively inexpensive.  There was a young Russian couple at the Cham towers trying to figure out how to get a good backdrop for taking a picture.  I stopped to point out an angle of the pillars I’d used earlier and asked if they wanted me to take a picture of the two of them.  All in hand gestures because I have very little Russian that’s not menu related and they had no English.  They seemed pleased to get a picture of the two of them together and I was rewarded with big smiles and a warm ‘spasibo (sp?), which if remember correctly is ‘thank you’.

 

Our entertainment for the evening was a song and dance show by the ship’s cast.  It was good and not a single Andy song.  Yippee!!  Maybe the reign of terror is almost over.