Just got back from a Southeast Asia Cruise and China. I actually took this cruise because I was going to a wedding in Los Angeles and I figured…since I was already on the West Coast….

The only cruise that coincided with the dates I needed was this cruise on the Diamond Princess, leaving from Bangkok and going to Singapore, Phu My for Saigon & Nha Trang in Vietnam, Keelung for Okinawa, Nagasaki, Taipei , Hong Kong, Shanghai and ending in Beijing.

My first inkling that this trip was not going to be what I expected was that a few weeks before leaving I was notified that we were not going to be stopping at Nagasaki. Instead we would have two days in Hong Kong. This was not happy news because I had already been to all the ports except, Phu My ( for Ho Chi Min City), Taipei, Okinawa and Nagasaki.

Recently cruise ships are being built that are not cruise ships but floating towns. I think if there are 3,000 people on one ship there should be elections! So I learned that I need to pay attention to how many people will be accompanying me on my voyage. I have decided that the optimum number is between 800 and 1200. Otherwise when you meet an interesting person you are not likely to encounter them again on a ship the size of the Diamond Princess.

I also learned your experience of a place depends on many things.
1-The weather: It's hard to love a place when you're soaking wet.
2- The temperature: Ditto for places where it is so hot that water is flowing not only from your brow but from the top of your arms!
3-And the place where you first arrive: The port, the street, the neighborhood.

Singapore was our first stop. I can't say I changed my opinion from the first time I was there about 8 years ago. It is clean. It is super-modern. It has every designer store you can think of and haute couture in abundance. For me it is just one giant, manicured shopping mall. It is indeed the shopping center of Asia.

I found very little of interest other than the Raffles Hotel (I had the famous Singapore Sling the last time I was there, which is their claim to fame (and not very well made at that!), Chinatown , the India and Muslim areas.

Next was supposed to be Ho Chi Min City ( Saigon). However the port we landed at (Phu My), was three hours away from Ho Chi Min city and unless you were on one of the ship's official tours ( which I don't usually take because I prefer to do my own exploring) there was no way to get into Saigon and back again on your own without missing the ship when it sailed.

So what did I learn? Ask how far each port is from the city they advertise they're going to. I never had to do that before because usually we were never more than an hour or so away. My bad.

Phu My was a little town with what seemed to be nothing but hardware ,
tire stores and restaurants. However, to get to Phu My, which was also about 20 minutes from the port, we traveled through the countryside where we saw the dichotomy which is modern Vietnam. Thatched huts, shacks made out of metal sheets, rice paddies, and huge new apartment high rises.

Practically attached to some of the businesses, which were in huts or shacks, were private homes. Obviously the homes of the owners of what must have been prosperous businesses .. The houses were well built, two or three stories high, with fancy entrances, windows and balconies. These fancy houses were surrounded by very poor houses unpaved roads and shops. But what struck me is that although there were windows in the front of the house and I'm assuming at the back of the house, there were NO windows on the sides of the houses! I never could find out why. So the ride into that little town was worth the time.

Nha Trang, a beach town in Vietnam was one of the great surprises of my first trip. I remember taking a rickshaw and telling the driver, " I don't want to go to the Temple or the Market I want you to take to your house. I want to see where you live." And he did, It is one of my treasured travel experiences. He took me to a small fishing village. The unpaved, muddy streets, full of small rocks and stones, were no wider than a card table. The houses were of metal sheets and very small so that most of the people were outside on the streets. I had my video camera and was taking pictures of the children and then showing it to them. Before long I had about 15 kids following me. The kids ran and got their parents and grandparents and they all came out to see me. The first questions they asked were: "How old are you? And, " How many children do you have?" I said I would sing a song to them in English if they would sing a song to me in Vietnamese. I did and they did! That's what I call a travel experience.

But this time there was no rickshaw in the cards for me. It was pouring rain. You could barely see what I knew to be a beautiful beach area. We were let off at the big Market, which I had been to before and since I'm not a shopper it was not a great travel experience that day. But at least I wasn't hot because I was soaked through to my underwear!

I first saw Hong Kong in 1995 and again in 1997 and again in 1999 when it was returned to China. It was, even then, a city in constant change. Each time I came, things were very different. New buildings ,new areas. But there was still the glamour and the intimation of intrigue and even danger. Then there was Kowloon still un-gentrified. Now it is more and more like Singapore. Clean, manicured and shopping- malled. True, there are still some authentic, non- Western- type areas where the "real" people live and shop in neighborhood stores and eat at street vendors, and sit in parks smoking cigarettes. That's where I had a taxi take me.

The second day I took a bus to Stanley Market, which is a about a 45 minute ride high above the city of Hong Kong. It wasn't the market that I wanted to see again. It was the great views of Hong Kong as we climbed up the mountain, passing Repulse Bay ( a beautiful and upscale neighborhood over looking the Bay) and Aberdeen where you can rent a sampan or water taxi to tour the marina and to check out the lifestyle of the boat dwellers. But you'd better be quick about it because this, like so many authentic areas, have almost disappeared.

Once again I was, not awestruck, but more like thunderstruck, at the proliferation of super high and super-super high apartment complexes. It's a wonder they all just don't topple over because they are so narrow and so tall.

Shanghai, which has been one of my favorites cities ever, was next. I'm so glad I'd been there before because if I had to judge it from this experience I would have relegated it to a travel disappointment. (See 3 above).

The ship's shuttle took us into a dreary neighborhood. It was a project to get a cab or a bus to go anywhere. I had just gotten over being floored by the Nanovirus, which swept through the ship and I guess I just wasn't in the mood to go the extra effort. I walked around the area I was in and just people watched. I saw a man selling live turtles on the street, lots of uniformed motorcycle police, people on bikes, motorscooters, buses and in cars, on the ever-present cell phones. There was a woman pushing a hot food cart and a man with a huge blue, plastic bag bundle on his back. There were people who dressed like they belonged in Southern California and other people who definitely looked like they were in China.

Traveling in and out of Shanghai I saw the incredibly huge apartment buildings that seem to represent the New Orient. Apartment buildings 60 and 70 stories high with 5,000 people living in these apartment complexes. And complex following complex till the view becomes like a surreal landscape. Imagine living on the 60th floor when the elevator goes out! And what about earthquakes?????

Beijing was the great surprise of this trip. Eight years ago Beijing was in the first "want to be a big modern city" phase and not quite getting it right. The buildings looked on the pedestrian side, architecturally. The city wanted to become something modern but it seemed to lack the talent needed to get there.

Not so now. It is hip, modern, well appointed and Happening! The look and feel is
Prosperous, vibrant, in control, ( It IS a Communist country) with just enough freedom so the people look positive about themselves.

It is neon -lighted but not in a garish way but in a self confident and exuberant way. A city comfortable in its skin. I'm sure hosting the Olympics had a lot to do with it. Lots of people on the streets living a big city life as in New York or Chicago. And yet certain old customs are still retained. How could they be ignored when you have history and edifices from 5000 years of history?

I stayed over an extra day in Beijing so I could visit the Hutongs before they disappeared into all this modernity. The word Hutong means narrow streets or alleys. The Hutongs are very old residential neighborhoods, which still form the heart of Old Beijing where the homes were built around courtyards, all of which are surrounded by a wall. The Hutongs generally house an entire family: grandparents, parents, children and grandchildren.

The Hutong I visited was inhabited by a man in whose family it had been for generations. He was an artist who did paper cuts. An amazing, intricate and exacting art, where a picture is formed by cutting out minute pieces of the paper to have an image emerge.
They also grew grapes and some vegetables for their own consumption.

In front of many Hutongs there are stone figures on either side of the door. They were from the original owner of the Hutong. Some look like a lion, which indicates a man powerful in the government. Some look like a drum, which indicates a man who was in the military. Others looked like stone "stamp." Which let you know that this person was a government clerk of some sort.

It was a satisfying sight after all the super high modern buildings and shopping malls. This was the Peking ( Oh! Excuse me!), the BEIJING that I dreamed of and read about in those Pearl S. Buck books.

Truth be told, I don't need to travel 10,000 miles to see skyscrapers and Shopping Malls. Perhaps the interior of China holds more authentic sights and sounds. But at the rate China is "modernizing" probably no part of that country is immune to what I call the "Mac Donalds Syndrome."

Homogenization in milk is a good thing. Homogenization of humanity, not so good I think. Viva la difference!