Thursday, March 20, 2008

Good-Bye Vietnam





NOTE: We updated yesterdays post with one additional picture, which is the first one on yesterday post. It is a picture of the Post Office and Eiffel designed this building.

We posted a few pictures from today. One pictures shows the two of us in our Purim costumes with the Rabbis lovely wife.

Another picture features the Rabbi and the final picture features the Crystal Band playing at the Purim Event.

We awoke early this morning to start our day. Keith went directly to the Fitness Center and was the second person to arrive as Mary was already in the Center. Mary was on an early tour today so she wanted to get a portion of her workout done before the tour began. Keith enjoyed a wonderful workout on the Elliptical Machine. At the same time Anne Marie was doing the laundry and Keith met her in the laundry room with coffee in hand for her and to help her finish the laundry.

We enjoyed a wonderful breakfast in our room. We continue to have the same type of breakfast each morning with Keith having cereal and fruit and Anne Marie having either cereal or on occasion oatmeal and some fruit as well.

This morning some of our fellow passengers went on tours. These tours included a Journey to the Mekong Delta, Countryside Drive with the highlight being a visit to the famous Cu Chi Tunnels, The Highlights of Ho Chi Minh City, which we took yesterday, and a Vietnamese Cooking Demonstration.

At the same time, some passengers are leaving the ship to depart on one of two Crystal Overland Tours, One tour was an overland to Hanoi to provide time to see this city and the other tour was the very popular tour called The Wonders of Angkor Wat, which is located in Cambodia. We know that the latter tour has been sold-out for month. As a result, we know some passengers who have made private arrangements to visit Angkor Wat through a private tour company. These passengers will also leave the ship at various times today for their flight over to Cambodia. Most of these passengers will meet up wi the ship in a few days as we have an overnight in Bangkok, Thailand.

Speaking of Bangkok, Crystal offers a couple of excursions, which involve an overnight in Bangkok. One of the excursions is very structured with a lot of touring and the other one provides transportation from the ship into Bangkok which can take up to two hours due to traffic and also includes one night hotel accommodations and a breakfast the next morning before returning to the ship later that afternoon. We chose the latter program based on advice we received from Crystals Shore Excursion Team given our particular interests. We thought it made sense for us to stay downtown to avoid a four-hour drive for each of two days since the ship has an overnight in this area of Thailand. We will not be able to post while we are at the Hotel.

We are glad that we have had the opportunity to visit two areas of Vietnam on our World Cruise Adventure. Some people have asked us about our impressions of Vietnam. Overall, our impression is that for the majority of the people the way of live here is a big challenge. The first priority for most of the citizens is to earn enough money for necessities such as food, housing and clothing so that they can survive. Life is certainly not easy here because in the large cities such as Ho Chi Minh City there are stores upon stores that sell the same items, the city is extremely overcrowded, and sufficient infrastructure is not yet in place to support the vast number of people who live and visit this city. At the same time, life in the more rural countryside areas is very difficult and the standard of living in those areas is well below the average standard of living in more densely populated areas. With that said, many of the people seem full of hope with the majority believing that things will get better in-time and that is our sense as well. If we compare this area of the world with say Africa (with the exception of South Africa) there truly is hope in this Country and we believe that overtime that Vietnamese people will succeed and that progress will be made in each succeeding decade. We also realize that as tourists that we only see things from a certain perspective as our interaction with the locals comes primarily from those associated with the tour and those that we meet during the course of the tour.

We also want to point out that our tour guide on each of our two tours in Vietnam were wonderful. The tour guide we had yesterday was outstanding. He had an excellent command of the English language, provided lots of wonderful information throughout the tour, was very thorough in answering each and every question and also had a wonderful sense of humor. ☺

Another observation from yesterday is the fact that luckily many of the historical buildings in Ho Chi Minh City were not destroyed at the end of the war or as part of the Communist takeover of this part of Vietnam. These historical buildings with their various influences from the French and from other nearby areas in Southeast Asia add to the overall charm of this city.

We stayed on the ship today as we decided not to go into town. We enjoyed a wonderful day on the ship. We took a nice long walk on the promenade deck in the morning and took advantage of the extra time to get ourselves organized for our upcoming overnight stay in Bangkok. Keep in mind that the port that we were docked at is one of two ports serving this city and this one is a more remote port from the downtown city center and that travel to and from the downtown area can take anywhere from thirty to sixty minutes depending on traffic.

We enjoyed a wonderful lunch in the dining room. We each had a salad entrée and we sat at a table that our Senior Waiter in the evening is assigned to for lunch.

Our ship set sail at 3:00 PM for Bangkok, Thailand.

This afternoon at 4:30 PM there was a celebration for Purim. Purim is one of the most joyous holidays of the Jewish year. It commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in Persia were saved from extermination, as told in the Biblical Book of Esther. Some of the passenger’s wore various types of costumes to celebrate the holiday. We each wore a festive outfit as well.

As usual, the Rabbi and his wonderful wife did a terrific job hosting this event. It was well attended by passengers of many faiths and the entertainment, and food were wonderful

We ate dinner in the Main Dining Room. The food and the service was outstanding.

After dinner we attended an event for those on the Full World Cruise. The event was called Thai One On. The show featured lots of dancing and singing and was wonderful.

Keith & Anne Marie