More beauty in Vietnam

Vietnam has problems, of course, but great beauty also. Tourism is up and they are awaiting even greater growth in the near future. More visitors are expected especially from China, which borders this country, but also from Europe and the U.S.

A mountain road

We went to the top of the mountain in a National Park here in Vietnam.If you look closely at the picture you will see a faint line weaving and turning. That is the road as it twists its way up the hill. Interestingly, to say the least, it is a one lane road with shear cliff drop offs, and traffic goes both ways. Fortunately, we didn’t meet more than a small number of other cars going down as we were going up, and we made it to the top to take this picture, Perhaps even more fortunately, we made it back down. Thus you can see the picture and some of the beauty of Vietnam.

Harvesting rice in Vietnam.

Among other interesting features of Vietnam is that they are the third largest exporter of rice in th world. We wonder what will happen when technology and their rice get together.

Prominence in HoiAn.

We flew north to DaNang and were transported to the charming seaside resort of HoiAn. Among its features is a female god. Feminism is obviously alive and well.

A street in Saigon

Saigon is likable with many charms. They told us that there are 8 million people in the city and 4 million bikes. We don't understand how they came up with that small figures for the bikes.

Sidelights of Cambodia

These are pictures that only hint at the interesting diversity of parts of Cambodia. People from both pictures have to leave for several months during the monsoon season. The ones who live on the houseboats are apparently among those who are well-to-do financially because they can sell the fish, which they harvest in abundance. There are sharp contrast in the country between rich and poor. In Siem Reap, expensive condos are being built (and sold.) We didn't get to the national capital, which those in the outskirts dismiss as just another big city.

Cambodia!

Cambodia is intriguing, fascinating, and different, different, and different - perhaps the most different place we have ever been. More photos of differences to follow tomorrow.

Angkor Wat. Cambodia

Angkor Wat is humungus and impressive, and it has been around for a thousand years. We assumed while looking at it that we'll all be around a thousand years from now to check on the buildings in Sarasota, and we wonder how they will be.

Orchids in Bangkok

No problem with the compouter this time. It was our miscalculation and we lost the picture. We'll try again tomorrow from Cambodia.

Bangkok

People in Bangkok assure us that our new friend standing behind us had a sweet, cherubic smile before he spotted the essentials of modern living in the other picture. Either he didn't like them, or he is upset that he can't enjoy them. Who knows which.

From Athens

Once again, our beloved computer has developed problems and problems. So no picture from Athens. Everybody has seen pictures of the Acropolis and the Parthenon where we spent the last two days, so no great loss. It's on to Bangkok tomorrow with a nine hour overnight flight. We will write (and maybe have a picture) from Bangkok.

The Island of Delos

The ruins on Delos are older than those of Pompeii. After reaching this point at the top, we felt older ourselves than either. Back to Athens tomorrow.

Mykonos

Mykonos is beautiful, but it is primarily a resort area, which is not quite our style. We are going to Delos tomorrow by boat to see the ruins. We have asked the cruise company to ship us back to Athens for the rest of the week, which ought to be interesting, assuming they will go along with the idea.

Cruise Ship

“The best laid plans of mice and men oft gang somewhere else.” We flew from Naples to Athens to catch our boat for the weeklong cruise. A traffic jam held us up on the way from the airport to the port. We eventually got there, but with less than two hours to spare before the boat left. However, we couldn’t find the dock for the boat. We asked numerous people, got many suggestions for finding the correct dock, but no boat. Finally, after an hour of searching, and getting perilously close to departure time, we went to the port authority. They had never heard of the boat! Oh, my gosh! We were in Athens, Greece, and had been scammed.

After the authorities searched through their records at greater length, they finally found the boat’s name but said it obviously wasn’t there. They searched further and managed to come up with a phone number. With pity upon two despairing, bedraggled and exhausted foreigners, they called the company and there was an English speaker who gave us another phone number of someone in Athens. After another call or two, we found the boat trip had been cancelled because of mechanical problems. They had tried to contact us, but we had already left on this trip. The boat company seemed apologetic and offered us a compromise: they would refund what we had paid for the cruise, would give us a free ticket for a future cruise, would pay the cost of our trip from Naples to Athens and would give us plane tickets to Mykanos and pay our hotel there for a week. So here we are.

Herculanium

At Herculaneum as seen in the picture, Marge made it plain she was of the same caliber as the guy up on the marble pedestal, and expected the same deference by others. Since that poses obvious problems for another member of the family, it is time to go elsewhere. We leave tomorrow for a boat out of Athens with no more Roman rulers who might inspire her.

Capri

We visited the Isle of Capri yesterday. If you love beautiful scenery, are enthralled by masses of tourists and enjoy looking out over sheer and petrifying cliffs, Capri is the place to be. We achieved 33% success on that agenda.

Pompeii

Pompeii is huge and it took us two full days to give it any kind of a look over. We were reminded of Joe Bflstk. For those of you who are to young to remember Joe Bflstk, he was the cartoon character who always had a black cloud hanging over him. Pompeii had a major earthquake in 62 AD and 17 years later it was finally recovering when Vesuvius erupted. Good old Joe Bflstk.

Sorrento from Above

A glorious view from our first hotel in Sorrento. The only difficulty was that we had to go up over hairpin curves with sheer drops and Italian drivers coming the other way. As a consequence, we decided that being down in the city without a view had certain consolations for our nervoius system.

Train To Sorrento

Naples is an intriguing city, a little rough around the edges, but with many charms. Marge has even discovered a potentially new spot for her art. We'll just need to find some railroad cars in Sarasota.

Mt. Vesuvius

We didn't get to Pompeii today as we had planned, but we did see the archeological museum which was great. Barring an unexpected explosion of Vesuvius or of Marge, we should (might) get to Pompeii tomorrow. However, we are also planning on moving to Sorrento tomorrow, so who knows?

Beach at Nice, France

We arrived today in Naples and found it to be a beautiful spot on Naples Bay.

We had forgotten one picture from Nice that you may find surprising.
Can you imagine? The sunbathers at the beach in the center of Nice bring their bicycles right with them on the beach!

On to Pompeii or Herculaneum tomorrow.