China -- Where Octopus Is Welcome

Sydney's Chinese proverb

We arrived before dawn on a grey, smoggy morning, steaming upriver into Shanghai with high rises in either side of us. Hundreds of ships -- tankers, tugs, freighters, and fishing boats -- shared the waters with us. Navigating the traffic was a tremendous feat. 

We were told this is the busiest port in the world, and certainly the hardest for our captain to enter on our voyage. At one point, our ship played chicken with a barge that was anchored in the middle of the river. The barge won. After hours of maneuvering, we docked right across from the iconic, space-age Pearl. 

In order to understand what happened next, let me tell you a story.  Three years ago, we welcomed a beautiful Chinese girl into our home for Christmas.  She was a couchsurfer. Sun Yu quickly became part of the family as we celebrated the holiday together and spent several days exploring secondhand shops, volunteering with the homeless, and eating way too many desserts.  Sun Yu came back for Austin's birthday in February, then surprised us again in the summer with another lovely visit.

This past Tuesday when we pulled into Shanghai, Sun Yu was waiting in the port -- a vision in a red, full-length, faux-fur trimmed coat. She looked like a Chinese princess.  Sun Yu came all the way from Beijing to spend two days with us.  We were honored and overjoyed.

After dropping off our backpacks at the Mingtown Youth Hostel, we promptly made our way to Yang's Fried Dumplings.  The last time we were in China, Austin and I fell in love with these homemade little pillows of dough filled with pork and broth.  We couldn't wait to introduce the rest of the family to them.  Between the 6 of us, we ate almost 40 dumplings!

Imagine a slightly crispy, slightly doughy pastry with green onions and sesame seeds on top. When you bite into it, hot pork broth squirts out, usually on your clothes or the person next to you. You try not to drop it with your chopsticks. By the time we were done with lunch, every single one of us had broth on our pants, jackets, or hair. It was totally worth it! Charlie decided they would make excellent paint ball bullets.

Serendipitously, we discovered a man on the side of the street selling tiny turtles.  I asked in horror, "To eat?!" Sun Yu looked just as horrified and said, "No!" 

Now when given a chance to buy a turtle in Shanghai, of course you have to take it.  Charlie picked out a little grey one whom the kids named Penelope, and brought her back to the youth hostel.  Penelope loved the little fountain and fish pond in the courtyard.  Charlie put her in a Heineken ashtray for safekeeping while we went to get changed, but when we returned, Penelope was gone!  She is still on the lam today.

Next stop -- Yu Gardens, a most beautiful Chinese garden with rockeries, pools, and lovely arches and sculptures.  Even the kids were enthralled. We finished by walking to the Bund, the riverside part of Shanghai with incredibly modern buildings. Unfortunately, it was freezing cold and windy, so we caught a bus back downtown to a yellow-lantern-adorned Chinese restaurant, where we enjoyed eggplant in sauce, duck, fried yams, noodles in broth, and many more delights.

The next day after far too many delicious pastries for breakfast, we spent the day in the People's Park. This is a large, lovely park in the center of Shanghai, a true respite in a smoggy, urban city. With leisure time that only comes on vacation, we explored and played and had a ball.  We tried every piece of exercise equipment they had.  Charlie and Kerry played basketball with some Chinese guys.  We went on some carnival rides. The kids had a running race. We even saw a housing demonstration. 

After a while, it was time for what else?  More of Yang's Fried Dumplings!

Sadly, we said goodbye to Sun Yu as she headed back to Beijing.  She truly is like a sister/daughter to us, and we can't wait until our paths cross again. We've decided to formalize the adoption process.

Kerry was fighting a cold, so we opted to stay out of the wind that afternoon and watch "Unbroken." We all enjoyed it very much. The only funny thing was that the Japanese portions of the movie were subtitled in Mandarin, so we never knew what they were saying.

After Shanghai, we flew to Hong Kong where we stayed with dear friends on Discovery Bay, a lovely expat enclave a 20-minute ferry ride from downtown.  Kerry and Scott Hull were roommates in the mid-80s in DC. Scott now lives with his wife, Danielle, and adorable kids in Hong Kong. What a blessing to be in their beautiful home overlooking a resort-like beach and bay and to enjoy delicious food and friendship together.

The next day, Kerry and Sydney succumbed to the cold/cough combo while the boys and I headed off to visit Suen Douh camp, an hour north of the city. Our wonderful friend, John Bechtel, started the camp almost 50 years ago, and it is a very special, meaningful place! About 100 kids from around the area were playing games, picnicking outside, and eating Popsicles. My boys challenged them to ping pong and were thrilled to win a few games on Chinese soil. After doing the ropes course, they asked if they could attend the camp! When Charlie played karrom, a form of billiards, he came from behind to beat the camp director, a delightful man named Wingo Kong. 

Wingo and his colleague, Eric, took us to a fabulous dim sum lunch at a floating restaurant. Austin ate more than anyone, particularly any form of dumpling or pork bun they brought out. Dim sum means heart point, and they say you love it so much, it goes right to your heart. Austin's heart sure was bursting! He was our best eater in Japan and China!

Suen Douh Camp in Fanling

When we finally returned to the ship in Hong Kong, we discovered it was docked right next to the Star Ferry on the Kowloon side, an excellent and historic location in a fascinating  city. We were amazed at the money and the sheer humanity in Hong Kong. People queued up in long lines just to get into Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci. An entire floor of a mall was dedicated to designer baby clothes. (My favorite was the baby Versace store.) Three massive, gorgeous chandeliers illumined an otherwise dark black Abercrombie & Fitch. We jostled with thousands of people making our way through the streets, as neon flashed everywhere around us.

Our last day was Sunday, and we visited a wonderful English-speaking church that meets in the YMCA. 

Now we are back on board the ship for two days, then we hit 90 degrees in Vietnam and Cambodia!

P.S. We would sure appreciate your prayers for good health as we head out to sea again. We must learn to pace ourselves. We (and the rest of the ship) are fighting either the flu or a sinus infection. It's tough to travel when any of us is not 100%!  But God is able to strengthen us and restore us to health, and we are praying for that.

Singapore -- Two Days in a Beautiful, Tropical City

Singapore was a short, but surprisingly lovely stop on our trip around the world.  We arrived on Chinese New Year, during the national holiday.  I'm sure I didn't see the real Singapore because there were hardly any cars on the road, and many stores were closed.  But after the sweltering, throbbing insanity of Ho Chi Minh City, this was a welcome respite.  It felt very humane – well-manicured, well-organized, well-run.  In fact, it's so orderly, it sort of feels like a police state.  Not really.  But as you may know, they cane criminals, execute drug dealers, and fine you $500 for spitting or even chewing gum in public.  When Charlie swung like a monkey from the overhead handholds on the metro, I told him, "That's got to be illegal in Singapore.  You will surely be caned."

Speaking of swinging like a monkey, Singapore has a world-class zoo, and our favorite animals were definitely the orangutans.  Charlie agreed that if he had to be an animal, that's what he would pick.  "You have lots of friends to hang out with.  You get to play around, and you can swing from the trees," he remarked.  What's not to like?  Also at the zoo, we loved the majestic white tiger and a sleek, beautiful puma who paced back and forth in his enclosure like he was trying to figure out his escape plan.

Unlike most zoo snack bars, the Singapore one had food from five nationalities: Indian, Malay, Chinese, American, and another one I couldn't identify.  We all picked different foreign dishes and enjoyed some of the beauty of Singapore cuisine.  Everyone that is, except Austin, who stuck with a hot dog and french fries in staunch allegiance to his homeland.  What can I say?  He's a patriot.

After 5 hours of traipsing around with the animals in the heat and humidity, we headed downtown.  We visited the old Raffles hotel, an elegant vestige of the British colonial past.  Home to the famous Singapore Sling and favorite haunt of many authors including Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham, the hotel is as charming as ever and lends gravitas to an otherwise modern and flashy city.

Singapore is better known for a much newer hotel, the iconic Marina Bay Sands.  It looks like a massive surfboard perched on top of 3 huge towers at the water's edge. Rooms can go for $1500 a night, and people pay it to stay there and swim from the roof-deck infinity pool, with commanding views of the entire city.  Hundreds of students from Semester at Sea managed to get in and swim or even stay the night.  One kid told me they had 12 students crammed into one room!

The best part of our experience was meeting Bang.  He is a Singaporean couchsurfer who, though he was already hosting a couple from Wales and Virginia (of all places) found time to meet us for dinner in Chinatown and show us around the city.  Bang is a 20-year-old who is currently serving in the military (it's compulsory for males) but loves the culinary arts and hopes to work in a French restaurant.  He is very engaging and interesting, and he welcomed us so warmly, we were blown away.  He took us to a Hawker Center, which is basically street food, but in typical Singapore fashion, it is arranged by the government in orderly stalls in a large building.  Most were closed for Chinese New Year, but we found one Thai place that was absolutely incredible!  One man and two women (I think one was his wife) managed to cook about 30 different dishes in a sweltering space about 8 feet by 12 feet.   Everything was delicious, but the Pad Thai was the best we ever tasted, and we had to go back not once but twice to order more.  The fact that it cost $4 a plate didn't hurt either!

After dinner, Bang treated us to a special Singapore dessert which is like Hawaiian shave ice served over beans and jellied squares and covered with flavored syrups and finally topped with a mango puree.  It's like the best snow cone you ever tasted.  

After dessert, Bang surprised us with an amazing experience.  We walked to the Gardens by the Bay under the Marina Bay Sands hotel, and came upon these “Super Trees” -- gigantic tree-like structures about 6 stories tall.  Many say they are like the trees in the movie Avatar.  They were covered with live plants, but they were actually made of metal and lights.  We thought they were magnificent, but we had no idea what we were in for!  Just moments later, we saw the most incredible light show I’ve ever seen. The trees pulsated, flashed, glowed, twinkled, and shined to hauntingly beautiful accompanying music.  It was like a fireworks show in trees.  We lay down on a perfectly manicured lawn (of course -- it’s Singapore) and got lost in the moment.  It was truly magical.  Bang was a great tour guide, and this was the icing on the cake after 15 hours of sightseeing that day!

Our last day in Singapore took us to Sentosa Island, a large amusement park of an island just 10 minutes’ walk from our ship.  As in much of Singapore, the island was lovely, entertaining and rather artificial.  You can choose between bungee jumping, water parks, cable car rides, indoor skydiving, luge rides, dolphin petting, and a Universal Studios theme park.  We chose the beach, which seemed quite pedestrian in comparison, but the price was right, and the beach was pretty, even though we saw a steady stream tankers just offshore in the busy shipping lane.

We are now steaming toward Myanmar, and the weather is rather steamy too.  We’ll catch you on the flipside.

Vietnam and Cambodia -- too short!

Our past 5 days have been intense and wonderful. We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) during the Tet, or New Year celebration, and I can't think of a better time to visit. The entire city was decorated with festive lights, flags, and yellow and orange flowers. Just as we buy Christmas trees, Vietnamese buy flowering or Mandarin orange trees in big pots to decorate their homes. I loved seeing people carrying large bushes and trees on their scooters through mind-blowing traffic.

Speaking of mind-blowing traffic, you have never lived until you've crossed the street in HCMC. It's like an extreme sport.  Imagine thousands of cars and scooters, with no traffic lights, and at each intersection, they are all barreling down on you as you try to reach the other side of the street.  The trick is never to stop moving.  As long as you are walking, the traffic will adjust and move around you in a fluid motion.  But if you panic and freeze, you're mincemeat.  It's like a choreographed dance that every Vietnamese knows, and somehow it works smoothly.  We drove about 8 hours in a two-day period throughout the country, and the driver stopped the car maybe 3 times. We only saw one accident where a motorcyclist was down.  Not surprisingly, Charlie adapted to the traffic the best, and he got so good at crossing streets, we all waited until he was ready, then followed him. 

Our first day in Vietnam was inauspicious.  We arrived around noon, each carrying a heavy backpack with all our belongings for the next six days.  We wandered around in the heat of the day, visiting markets and generally getting sweaty and irritable.  In order to get out of the sun, we visited the Ho Chi Minh City Museum, located in an old French colonial building with art deco floors and large open windows.  It was hot inside, but cooler than outside.  This museum  could only be described as pathetic.  There were a few, poorly arranged exhibits which we dutifully visited.  After a half and hour, Charlie said, "Did we pay to see this?"  I said, "Yes, $1 per person."  Sydney paused and said, "They should pay us."  

That evening we flew to Cambodia arriving into Siem Reap around 10:00 p.m.  We made the dreaded mistake of getting out of line to fill out our visa-on-arrival forms, and by the time we finally had our visas, we were basically shutting down the airport.  Fortunately, our dear friend, Linly, had arranged for a driver to pick us up and take us to our hotel, a lovely oasis called Mother Home Boutique.  They greeted us with cold, moist, lemongrass and eucalyptus scented cloths, a refreshing welcome after a long travel day.

The next morning, after a delicious breakfast of fried rice, eggs, pancakes, fresh fruit, and mashed potatoes (who knew?), our trusty driver, Mr. Chat, came with his tuk tuk to pick us up.  A tuk tuk is a motorcycle or moped attached to a tiny, covered vehicle which seats 4-5 people. We loved being in the open air and zipping along on the tuk tuk.  We loved even more where Mr. Chat took us -- the ruins of Angkor Wat.

The Angkor Wat park is a mammoth complex of temples built over a 20 km square area approximately 1300 years ago.  I didn't expect to be so overwhelmed by their grandeur and beauty.  It truly is a sight to behold.  We visited several of the temples, but there are many, many more that we missed.  Our favorite was Ta Prohm, which was left in the original condition in which it was found.  With giant tree roots slowly taking over the stone structures, it looks like something out of a movie scene.  And, in fact, it was... in Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie.   We also saw many young Buddhist monks in their bright orange robes, walking through the temples.  My favorite sight was watching them take selfies with their cell phones.

Our friend, Linly, who works with a wonderful NGO called Food for the Hungry, took us to a fabulous restaurant with traditional Cambodian dancing.  We enjoyed sticky rice cakes, stir fried meat and vegetables, spring rolls, noodle dishes, and to the children's delight, chicken wings and french fries.  Best of all, we got to hear from Linly and about 10 of her friends about life in Cambodia. After dinner, we wandered around the Night Market in Siem Reap.  The kids each bought a hammock for $3.  We realized we needed underwear for Sydney, so we asked how much that was, and a woman said, "$3."  Sydney said, "$3! I could buy a hammock for that!"  We loved Siem Reap and wished we had more time in that quaint, pretty town.

At lunch the next day, we were approached by a man who had lost both his arms when he stepped on a landmine 20 years ago.  He showed us the scars on his torso.  We were reminded of Cambodia's recent, tragic past when the Khmer Rouge Communists attacked in 1975, forcing the people out of the cities and into the countryside, where they attempted to create an "agrarian utopia." Instead, they starved, tortured, and massacred one third of their own people and destroyed much of the country, leaving painful memories that linger today.  Our tuk tuk driver lost three family members.  "I cannot speak about it, or else the tears will come," he said, as he traced lines on his face with his index fingers.  My heart broke as I realized that almost all of the people in Cambodia today who are my age or older have endured unspeakable horrors.

While eating lunch in Siem Reap, we sat next to a group of Americans who had just finished a cooking class and were enjoying the fruits of their labor.  During dessert, one guy held up his plate of sticky rice cake and announced, "I'm auctioning off my sticky rice cake, who wants it?"  Charlie perked up and said, "Mom, ask him if we can have his dessert."  I said, "Charlie, he's offering it to people at his table." He said, "I know, but they don't want it.  Just ask."  Well, you do weird things when you're on vacation, so I said, "Excuse me.  Do you have any of that sticky rice cake left over?  My son would love to try a bite."  They said, "Sure!" and began to send over plate after plate of sticky rice cake.  As we were all enjoying it, we began to talk, and they asked what we were doing in Cambodia. When I mentioned Semester at Sea, one girl said, "I went on SAS in 2006!" In fact, as she told us some stories from her time on the ship, she actually began to cry.  It was an incredible moment, and one that wouldn't have happened it I hadn't asked for their sticky rice cake.  I did tell them at the end though, "I just want you to know that this is the first time in my life that I have ever asked a stranger for food off their plate!"

After two days in Cambodia, we returned to Vietnam, where one of the most surprising events of the trip occurred.  Four years ago, we had a wonderful Vietnamese couchsurfer named Hien Vu visit us for about  three days in Arlington.  Today, Hien works for the United Nations in Nairobi, Kenya.  Well, about two weeks ago, when we were still in Hong Kong, Hien noticed on my blog that we were coming to Vietnam.  She too was flying to Vietnam to celebrate Tet with her family.  But she was going to Hanoi, a two-hour flight north of HCMC.  After a flurry of emails, Hien decided to come visit us in HCMC and spend two days seeing her country with us.  She ended up flying from Nairobi to Addis Ababa to Bangkok to Hanoi to HCMC in a two-day period!  When we reunited, it felt like a dream.  Hien is a delightful, warm, gracious person who is also incredibly smart and fascinating.  She was the best host we could ever hope for in Vietnam.

Hien's friend, Hung Vu, is an excellent tour guide who organized two days of experiences for us in Vietnam.  Hien also brought her 12-year-old nepherw, Minh, who became a great friend to my kids and introduced them to squid chips, among other things!  So, my family, Hien, Hung, and Minh set off in a cool, air-conditioned bus for the Mekong Delta -- a breezy, palm-tree laden region along the seven different branches of the Mekong River.  It felt like the Florida Keys to me.  We drove nearly four hours to get there, then took a boat on the river for about an hour at sunset to an island where we found our homestay.  Here, a family hosts people in open air, thatched roof longhouses built on stilts over large ponds, filled with jumping fish.  It was incredible.  That evening while under the palm trees, we helped the mother of the house, an elegant Vietnamese woman, roll and fry pork-filled spring rolls in rice paper.  Then she served us an incredible dinner on the porch -- fish from the Mekong River, soup with pumpkin slices in it, rice, sauteed baby kale, caramel pork in a clay pot, fresh fruit (I don't know what it was), and a light, crispy rice paper dessert.  

We were not alone.  While we ate, a large river rat scurried above our heads on the bamboo beam.  A lizard elicited screams from the kids, and the mother of the house came running.  After dinner, the boys discovered a good-sized spider which quickly darted under their mattress, giving them lots of think about when they went to bed!  We all retired early and tucked in our mosquito nets with great precision, then turned out the lights and listened to the night sounds all around us. Believe it or not, we all slept well, at least until the roosters started crowing around 2:30 a.m.!  Breakfast the next morning was fresh eggs sunny side up, French baguettes with homemade jam, and fresh apple milk fruit picked before our eyes.  The whole experience was breathtakingly unique, beautiful, and totally fun.

The Mekong Delta is famous for its floating markets.  Boats of all shapes and sizes navigate the grey, milky waters loaded with all manner of produce for sale -- watermelons, eggplants, pineapples, coconuts, cabbage -- you name it, it's sold on the river.  Old women pilot tiny wooden skiffs with fresh eggs from their homes. Whole families work and live on the boats, tossing watermelons from one boat to another. I loved watching the "passing of the melon."  And all this happens while cruising along the river -- a friendly, floating shopping mall. Truly this was one of our favorite sights.

One other cool stop on the Mekong River was a rice noodle making place. I can't exactly call it a factory.  It consisted of people working outside, burning rice chaff to fuel a fire, to cook a paste of rice and water like a crepe.  Then they dried the "crepes" on woven reeds in the sun.  These created round sheets of rice paper which could either be cut into strips to make noodles or left whole to be used as wraps for spring rolls or other dishes.  At the noodle place, they also inexplicably had many caged animals including a mina bird, guinea pigs, geckos, and my personal favorite, a chipmunk that most certainly had lost its mind and did perpetual back flips the entire time we were there.

Before returning to HCMC, we drove to the Cu Chi tunnels.  These were a series of tunnels nearly 125 miles long, dug by Communist sympathizers (Viet Cong) who lived in the South.  As we drove there, I asked Hien's 12-year-old nephew if he had ever been there.  He said, "No.  But I know they're the place where you attacked us, and we fought back."  I realized then how differently our two sides view the war.  That was confirmed when I watched the Cu Chi tunnels movie, produced during the war, which asserted:  "The Americans came in like a band of fiery devils, intent on brutally killing our innocent women and babies."  Obviously, that was not our intent, but the winners write the history books, and that's how history is being written in Vietnam today.

I think I had never fully appreciated how much the Vietnamese resented and really hated the French, who occupied their country for so long.  Once Ho Chi Minh threw off the French and their colonial power, he became their revered hero.  That he was a Communist was probably irrelevant to most people; he was like a savior to them.  Once free, they had no intention of ever being colonized again.  Therefore, it seems they viewed America coming "to protect the South from Communism" as a thinly-veiled threat to their newfound independence and sovereignty.  Hence, the passion, resolve, and resulting ingenuity they brought to the battlefield. 

Contrast their fervor with ours.  Our soldiers were being drafted (many against their will) and sent by an increasingly ambivalent government and hostile populous, into punishing and terrifying conditions in the jungle.  The labyrinthine Cu Chi tunnels -- completely hidden under the leaf-covered forest floor and filled with macabre traps to kill and maim the Americans -- only added to the terror inflicted by the Vietnamese on the U.S. soldiers.  The Americans couldn't figure out where the enemy was coming from.  As one remarked, "We were being shot at by Viet Cong from everywhere, but we never saw them."  These Communist sympathizers were men, women, and children fighting without uniforms in the jungles. It's no wonder the American troops faced horrible choices in conducting the war.  

After spending time at Cu Chi and in the war museum in HCMC, I was overwhelmed and saddened.  The war --  which I believe was fought with good intentions by our government, and most certainly by the vast majority of our brave and faithful soldiers -- incurred great costs on both sides.  Our guide, Hung, lived in Hanoi during the war, and he told us of seeing U.S. planes flying overhead and running for cover.  He had to evacuate the city when he was nine years old, living away from his parents in the countryside for a year.  Sharing the American perspective, Kerry told how his uncle was shot and killed in Vietnam, leaving behind two boys and his widow.  Even our small group of Americans and Vietnamese had personal painful stories from the war.

Ultimately, we all know the Vietnam War failed to prevent Communism from spreading to the South.  The North took over the entire country; Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City; and today the hammer and sickle flag of the Communist Party flies everywhere.  Of course, the museums leave out any discussion of the brutal treatment the North Vietnamese inflicted on the South after the U.S. pulled out.  Many nationals tried to leave the country, but only a small percentage made it. Those who allied with the South during the war were punished, imprisoned, and many executed. 

Obviously we can debate forever whether it made sense to enter this war, but there is no denying the horrific human cost on both sides.  The pain is still there, but the country seems to be on the move now.  Kerry noted that Vietnam seems about 15 years behind China in its move to a market economy. 

Overall, I didn't get enough of Vietnam and Cambodia.  I already want to come back.  These are two beautiful countries, filled with warm people who welcomed us heartily.  We only needed more time to explore and enjoy such special places.  Next time!

PS. We are feeling better! Thank you for the prayers.