Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon

Boiling Saigon down to a word would result in Motorcycle. They are everywhere. Motorbikes, motorcycles, motorcycle trucks, mopeds, any kind of two wheeled conveyance is apt to be packed to capacity and zipping around the streets of Ho Chi Minh City day or night.  Our guide said there are about 6 million motor bikes and scooters in this land of 9.4 million people. He said that the very young and the very old ride along and everyone else owns and drives a motorcycleish vehicle.

     The city is a mix of beautiful faces, street trash, noise and sunshine. We were told that for a time the only acceptable name was Ho Chi Minh City but now it is accepted to use either name for that densely populated, urban area.

The Catholic Cathedral - closed for renovation now.

The post office, built during French Colonialism.

The line up gathers numbers at red lights.

Here is my favorite story. We walked around for a while and returned to get back on the bus so sat on the edge of a fountain in the shade (blessed shade). A gorgeous little girl begged me for my water bottle so I gave it to her. She shook it and it sprinkled water on her hand.

     Well, you might think I had caused her enormous harm. The nerve of me. She made it clear through foot stomping and hundreds of words hat she was deeply offended by my carelessness. I took the bottle back, put the lid on straight and shook it to demonstrate that it would hold. She grabbed the bottle, danced around a bit and then threw it in the fountain after which she begged me to give her money or to buy a packet of tissues. After another scolding, she left me taking off with the shirt and scarf sellers on the corner.

Hong Kong, 2017

To boil Hong Kong down to 2 words, they would be High End. Maybe Top Shelf. Conspicuous Wealth would also fit and so would Easy Travel.

It seems that Hong Kong recognizes that an economy grows when there is a decently paid middle class spending money day in and day out. They are out to make getting around in the shopping district an easy thing to do.

This is a walk from the ferry to the shopping district. It was raining so everyone was in the covered walkways this day.

Covered walkways connect shopping mall to store to shopping mall to hotel to government office building to shopping mall to gardens to restaurants and on and on. Some walkways were underground but most of them were bridges over streets. 

Window displays were full of expensive clothing and jewelry with some prices sporting 6 or 7 digits and others so expensive that they were Price On Request.

I would wear this. Well, if it wasn't quite so expensive.

I was taken with the shoes.

I didn't take many other notes that day.

  This is just a walk down a sidewalk in the shopping district at about 5 pm.

Naha, Okinawa, Japan 2017

The port city of Naha welcomes visitors and commerce to the area near Okinawa Japan. We walked off the ship and headed toward downtown. At the port area is a sculpture of children at play.

Just about a block away a pair of huge dragons welcome visitors to the city. The dragons were a gift from Okinawa's sister city in China, Fuzhou City. They are 15 meters tall..


The dragons are granite from China and are placed in an appropriate spot to invite good wishes into the Shurijo Castle. Another pair of dragons is at the entry to the Castle. In each there is one open mouth dragon and one closed mouth dragon.

  

We walked about 25 minutes to get to the monorail station passing a truck-sized lobster on the side of a building while being reminded of South East Asia's heat and humidity. Do you think it might have been a restaurant at some time? 

The U S Military members stationed there have  had an influence on the food. One item we saw was Jerk Chicken and another was Taco Rice.  There's an A&W restaurant in the city and Rick had a strong urge for a rootbeer float but it came in a plastic cup with ice instead of the frosty mug he always found in Malaysia. Then, the ice kinda ruined it too. Close but not what was expected.

Some sidewalks had inserts or painted panels but I saw only one example of street art.

The monorail was clean, quiet and super smooth. Tickets had printed QR codes telling the turnstiles what payment had been made. The price of rides was based on the distance traveled. We paid 260 to go to Shuri Castle, a series of buildings built  hundreds of years ago, rebuilt after WWII and again after an earthquake in the 1990s.  film inside showed the process of rebuilding the stone walls. Of course, the rebuildings must have been the easiest since the were done at a time that included power tools and plastic templates for cutting and fitting the rocks. They reminded us of the stone walls at the Great Zimbabwe and even the walls of the Inca buildings in Peru.

The traffic here was louder than in China because all the vehicles had gasoline engines. There were also fewer bikes. This is a video of the monorail.

Asia, 2017, Starting in Shanghai

walking on the street at night

       36 hours after leaving home, we were in Shanghi, looking and feeling our best we took the Mag Lev Train to downtown and then got a Taxi and found our hotel ($28 per night bottled water included). The taxi ride cost more than the 2 nights we stayed in the hotel. Travel, gotta roll with it.
      If you are aware of the level of fatigue such a long journey creates, you'll expect that finding food and exploring the near neighborhood were about all we could manage. After eating, we collapsed in bed at about 8 pm and were asleep in seconds. I woke up refreshed what felt like hours later. It was 9:30. The whole night was like that with one or two hour naps stacked between listening to and forgetting 20 minutes or so of an audio book. Eventually the stack of intervals brought us to 6 am for showers and breakfast.
      There wasn't a lot of English to draw on in the hotel but with a bit of waving and pointing we paid the desk clerk 20 RMB for a pair of breakfast chits to present to the server who then invited us to pick our way through the breakfast buffet.
      Neither of us is a fan of congee, a sort of rice soup/oatmeal that one enhances with bits of fermented tofu and pickled vegetation but the congee seemed right in this case and we both had it. Rick misunderstood the fermented tofu thinking it was a food item and not a condiment. He may never try it again.
      We also had fried rice, cherry tomatoes, pot stickers, stir fry vegetables, various kinds of steamed buns, and eggs boiled in tea. There were pastries and cupcakes, breads, tea and juices.
      Rick's shoe had come apart at some point in that long journey. On our last trip, one suitcase wheel split in half at the airport in NY but he repaired it by tying pieces together with our extra shoelaces and getting some stout tape at a hardware store in England, where English was our friend. Now we were in China with a broken shoe.

we were number 11 at the bank

      We showed the hotel clerk the broken shoe but pretty much got shrugged shoulders and no help when asking for shoe repair or hardware store. Everyone has their own words and there didn't seem to be a match there.
      Eventually we walked past a hardware store and Rick showed his awkward shoe to a man who smiled, rummaged while balancing a lit cigarette on cardboard boxes and handed over a packet labeled "Shoe Glue", in English. 2 RMB. The problem was the need for a 24 drying period but by putting the glue on every night for a while, the shoe eventually did stay together. (Suitcase wheels, should you wonder, are the same size as a in line skate wheels. On this trip, both of our suitcases rolled on those. That internet has all kinds of information and ideas.)

gardens

     We had changed some money at the airport but the hotel and breakfast took nearly all of it so we went in search of a bank to make an exchange. Well, that was fun. I'll cut this short by eliminating the difficulty in finding the right bank and start with the flower arrangement inside the bank's revolving door. A concierge screens all customer needs and hands out tickets with numbers. Three rows of seats hold those waiting for a turn.
     While seated, we saw a woman come in with an ordinary, plastic shopping bag into which she placed stacks of $100 RMB notes and walkedout with about 10 pounds of paper money as if she purchased nothing more than a box of tissues.
     When it was our turn, we exchanged US dollars for RMB. It required our passports and gave us copies of 3 official documents, written in Chinese characters and duly signed by us. The bank gave us 336 RMB for $50 while the money changer had given us only 285. It was, in addition, a valued cultural experience including bowing.
     Had we used an ATM, we'd have gotten the same exchange rate in 20 seconds rather than 20 minutes and without the signatures or passport. Is it better to slip an ATM card in a machine or to sign documents one can't read?
     In Shanghi, many vehicles are electric making roads somewhat hazardous with their silence and it may not be that pedestrians have the right of way. The street signs are LEDs that give to the minute traffic information. The truck that waters public gardens plays a merry jingle rather like old ice cream trucks.
     We always walk into grocery stores. Here we found potato chips came in "Numb & Spice Hot Pot Flavor" or "Roasted Squid." There were also packets of 2 or 6 preserved chicken feet. We saw eggs packaged in familiar egg cartons but also in small baskets. Foods are always particular to an area.
     Travel always points out how difficult translations can be. What appeared to be a Christian Church was labeled "Beautiful Myth" and a chocolate cake in the grocery store had the name of "Beautiful  Trousers." No guess about the original Chinese name.
     There is a Japanese War Memorial where the sign labels war as waste. Well done that.

bike rentals

     Bike rentals were interesting. This is a mix of observation and speculation without benefit of translation. Bikes had QR codes on them. People would snap the QR on their phone and the bike would unlock so they would ride off. I saw one person stop a bike and using his phone something beeped and the lock clicked closed again. Likely the bikes had codes on them that reported where they were. I wondered if the bikes had little generators so that as the person pedaled, they charged batteries that would unlock and lock the bike as well as transmit a cheery little "Here I am" signal.
     During my 2003 trip to Shanghai, it was common to see people out in the streets in their pajamas. This time we weren't exactly in Shanghai but in the port city near by and only a few men and one woman on her bike were in pajamas. Maybe pajamas are still popular in downtown Shanghai. It wasn't possible to tell.
     We spent our 3 days walking and looking and eating and sweating and being amazed at the signs of wealth in Shanghai. Everyone was kind to us and all our food was good.