Komodo Island: “There Be Dragons Here” Dispatch Seventeen from the Passage to the Far East

Imagine a string of jagged volcanic islands as a necklace of lushly green gems lying atop a deep blue sea with no blemish of human habitation. This is what greets us as we sail in to the stunning Komodo National Park in Indonesia.

We are in an area known as Wallacea, an isolated group of islands separated from both the Asian and the Australian spread of flora and fauna. Here evolved such unique spices as the clove and nutmeg—as well as the fierce Komodo dragon.

We’re about to set foot on Komodo Island to trek 90 minutes into the forest in quest of a dragon sighting. The government restricts island access and only guided tours are allowed. Over two thousand of the reptiles roam free to dine on local deer and wild boar.

We’re told strictly that we must stay closely grouped with the three rangers. They’re equipped with long forked sticks to ward off both Komodo dragons as well as the endemic hooded cobra and other venomous snakes. Naturally, two guests walk rapidly ahead and continually ignore that command.

Since dragons are highly attracted to the smell of blood, we’re also told no guests will be allowed ashore if they have open wounds or are menstruating. Next to us is an old woman in sandals sporting open, bloody blisters. “Oh, I thought of wearing a sock but my foot would get too hot.” Maybe we’ll see survival of the fittest at work.

Komodo dragons have a special way of killing. Their saliva is filled with an enormous variety of deadly bacteria. All it takes is one nip and the unlucky deer or boar slowly dies a week or two later from the infections. Then the body is scavenged by multiple lizards who smell putrefying flesh as well as they smell blood.

The jungle walk is hot and sticky. My shirt is soon drenched. The surrounding forest is filled with the sounds of strange birds, but we only occasionally catch the flitting image of wings flying overhead. We spot some deer in the distance, and note the signs of rutting pigs. But no giant lizards yet.

After about two kilometers up and down hills, in and out of shade, we approach a watering hole where lizards like to lay in wait for prey. We sight a group . . . about a half dozen . . . the biggest is about ten feet long and a couple hundred pounds. They eye us lazily (or maybe just the rangers with their sticks); their long forked tongues shoot in and out. We’re told these beasts can run fast, climb trees, and swim, but at the moment they seem as hot and indolent as we feel. They just plod in the sun. Not even the smell of a bloody foot seems to excite them.

But we find them fascinating. Even the always-talking Dutch have quieted down, and our wandering couple has drawn in closer to the group. We are in the presence of something primeval.

This will be our only encounter during our two-hour visit to the island. Other groups reported seeing some young dragons hanging out in a tree (where they hide from their cannibalistic parents), some near the beach (where they sometimes take a swim), and a few scuttling across the forested paths. But we’re happy with our group sighting. We have met and survived our encounter with the fierce dragon!

Robert is taking a breather today; stay tuned for his updates on the next post.

Next: One more stop in Indonesia before returning to Singapore and starting the route back to London.

To check out Dennis’s novels, visit www.amazon.com/author/dennisfrahmann

Bali, “Hi!” Dispatch Sixteen from the Passage to the Far East

Bali—the word carries with it so many connotations of tropical paradise, mystery, and beauty. So I’m sure everyone would expect me to fall in love with it.

I’m certain that the island has many charms that warrant flying halfway around the world for a visit. It’s just that  we didn’t experience any of it. Mostly we trundled through narrow jammed roads to visit small crowded temples in the ever-present tropical rains.

What stands out for me is an urban landscape that feels so foreign. It isn’t the narrow roads packed with scooters, or the signs in a language that I can’t decipher. It’s the buildings themselves. The entire city seems one gigantic Hindu temple.

I learned why. Over 85 per cent of Bali is Hindu (while Indonesia as a whole is mostly Muslim). Every part of the town has multiple kinds of temples: the large public temples, smaller village temples and family temples. But because Balinese families almost universally live in compounds with multiple related family members, the family temples are actually quite large and very visible from the road. All of the temples involve the elaborate carved finials and pillars as well as idols of various Hindu gods. Everywhere you look there is another blossoming festoon of stonework.

And it’s festival times. Every household has a tall bamboo pole decorated with leaves and weaving. On the sidewalks and corners are small plates with daily offerings.

Over the course of the day, we visit Pura Taman Ayang (a royal temple from the 17th century), the Alas Kedaton monkey forest (famed for its “cheeky” macaque monkeys), and the Tanah Lot temple built on a huge rock accessible from shore only during low tide. Supposedly poisonous sea snakes guard the temple from evil spirits.

We did see some water snakes a bit later when we had a late afternoon tea at the nearby Pan Pacific hotel where we stopped to watch the sun set behind the temple. Hopefully, they kept us free from picking up any malevolent beings.

Robert adds: The ship arrived in Bali at 7am, but because of low tide, there wasn’t enough water in the harbor channel for it to continue to the dock. We were tantalizingly close to many hotels on broad beaches, waterfront restaurants and shops, with parasailers surrounding us right and left. Down went the enormous anchor and the crew started the tendering process to get the eager beavers ashore. The tide would be high at noon, the ship would dock, and Dennis and I could have a leisurely morning on the ship since our excursion wasn’t scheduled until the afternoon. We avoided the crowded tenders and just walked down the gangway later.

Speaking of high tide – Indonesia is made up of some 17,000 islands. But during high tide, the number drops to 13,000-ish. I’m assuming that those 4,000 are uninhabited.

Balinese tidbits:

We’ve noticed that Indonesians drive on the left (like in England), but we were curious as to why since the country had been a Dutch colony, with driving on the right. It turns out that Indonesia was occupied by Japan during World War II. The Japanese drive on the left. Indonesians doing so is a remnant of that time.

And speaking of driving, the traffic throughout Indonesia is just horrible. Most people on the road are on motorbikes, usually in pairs (although we did see one whole family on one bike the other day—father steering, mother behind, one child behind mother, one child wedged in front of father…and mother holding an infant off to the side on her hip!). Our guide pointed out a large gas station during our drive, commenting on how there weren’t many stations on Bali. Since most people drive motorbikes, with small gas tanks, they just buy small quantities from the shops lining the streets. Sure enough, every so often we’d see a metal rack in front of a shop containing one-liter glass bottles of a vile looking yellowish liquid. Gasoline.

And speaking of motorbikes, when traffic stops at an intersection, where there’s room for one bike to squeeze between two cars, there’s room for three or four. Everyone seems to know what the person next to them is going to do, so “whatever works for them!” Also, with the frequent tropical rains, there’s a fascinating ritual we observed. The rain starts, the motorbikes pull over to the side of the road, the driver whips out a sturdy poncho, and off he goes. It’s a quick and seamless operation. Talk about adapting to one’s climate.

One last note: Throughout our various Indonesian stops, we keep seeing small Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. It turns out that the locals consider these “special occasion” places to go for a treat. Aside from that little bit of novelty, seeing them just makes me crave a couple of original recipe thighs with the mouth-watering skin. Oh yum! Unfortunately no fried chicken here on the ship.

Next: Coming up on the adventure channel: Dennis and Robert stalk the elusive Komodo dragon in its natural habitat.

To check out Dennis’s novels, visit www.amazon.com/author/dennisfrahmann

Our Indonesian Observations. Dispatch Fifteen from the Passage to the Far East

So far we’ve made two stops in Indonesia on this segment of our Voyage to the Far East: Jakarta and Semarang. In no particular order, here are some of my Indonesian thoughts to date.

It’s too bad there’s no magical way for one to step off the cruise ship at the port of Tanjung Priok [Tan-yung Pree-ock] and step into the heart of modern Jakarta, mere miles away. While the center of the city is filled with stately government buildings, tree-lined boulevards, high-rise hotels with names like Kempinski and Grand Hyatt, impressive museums, and the usual panoply of global brands from Chanel to Zara, the bus has to drive through some pretty sad looking slums to get there. Indonesia is the fourth-most populous country in the world (after China, India and the U.S.) and the ninth-largest economy, but there’s no way to see the glitz in the capital without the grit.

On the other hand, the next day as we drove out of Semarang in central Java on slick modern roads, we were soon entranced by stunning scenery of verdant hills, rice terraces, and distant misty mountains. Now that was a pretty sight.

On both excursions, as is the norm in Indonesia for tourist buses, we were grouped into police-escorted caravans. It was quite an image seeing a trundling line of seven moderns buses weaving along in a steady row from one side of the road to the other as the police forced normal traffic to the side to make room for our unimpeded progress. I felt like I was in a presidential motorcade. I’m sure the average commuter felt something quite different.

About two hours outside of Semarang, we visited Borobudur [Boeroe-buh-DOOR]—the world’s largest Buddhist temple, built in the first millennium, abandoned around 850 AD, and rediscovered by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1814. Elaborate friezes, over 70 stupas, and multiple levels, a video we watch called it a wonder of the world. Indeed it is—and until this cruise, I had never even heard of it.

It was at Borobudur, we discovered our group of tall and big American, Canadian and Dutch tourists were treated a little like rock stars, or maybe just aliens. Multiple groups of middle school students came up and asked to take their pictures with us. They seemed quite excited by the opportunity, and I am waiting to see Facebook facial recognition tag me on some Indonesian teenybopper post. On the other hand, maybe they saw our police escort earlier and thought we were someone important.

We’ve also learned a little about the history of these Spice Islands. Did you know that nutmeg originally just came from one small group of islands here, and that mace is the dried paper skin of the nutmeg nut? Also nutmeg in large quantities is poisonous, is chemically similar to Ecstasy, and is likely one of the original secret ingredients in Coca Cola? [Robert adds: no wonder the original Coca Cola was so popular – nutmeg ecstasy plus cocaine plus caffeine? Sheesh! LOL]

Finally, the Indonesian rupiah is valued at 13,400 rupiah to the dollar. I had earlier on this trip spent a million rupiah at a store featuring local crafts, so maybe the local kids mentioned above thought I was rich or extravagant. (But if you do the math, that was less than $75, and we bought a lot of cool stuff.)

Robert adds: First up – please do a Google image search for Borobudur. While we were there, the skies were really gray and it rained off and on, so our pictures do not really do it justice. It’s an incredible site.

We are enjoying some great food when we go on these longer shore excursions. They will typically include a buffet lunch, and the spread that gets put out is sumptuous. We had some really great curries while in India and Sri Lanka, and here in Indonesia, some satay skewers with authentic peanut sauce.

While we were driving on the bus, I had a very palpable sense of unease. I couldn’t shake it and I finally figured out why. Except for a very few borrowed English words, all the signs—street signs, building signs, billboards, etc.—are in Indonesian. Sri Lanka and Myanmar have their own curlicue script, which of course is indecipherable to me. But Indonesian uses the Roman alphabet so all these signs were, to my brain, nonsense collections of letters. Nothing familiar at all. Very disconcerting. [Don’t worry. I’ve gotten over it.] But it did prompt us to ask our guide if Indonesia had a ‘historic’ or other alphabet script that was non-Roman. We just happened to be next to a building that had some raised script on one side (but painted the same color as the building, so almost not noticeable). It was a different kind of curlicue, which he identified as, not Indonesian, but the local Javanese writing. It’s apparently not used very much.

Next: Bali in Indonesia.

To check out Dennis’s novels, visit www.amazon.com/author/dennisfrahmann

Swimming Atop Singapore Dispatch Fourteen from the Passage to the Far East

We’re on a ship filled with people able to afford this rather extravagant three-month trip, and yet Robert and I have managed to find the one thing that ignites their envy.

On our overnight stay in Singapore, we opt to leave the ship and rent a room at the Marina Bay Sands hotel, famed for its infinity pool on the 57th floor and its distinctive look of a surfboard atop three high-rise towers. Fellow cruisers are green-eyed with jealousy. We don’t quite understand why people think we’re being so extravagant since the hotel room rate is basically the same price as two people taking one of the shipboard daylong excursions.

But who cares? We have a blast at this beautiful, sleek, and stylish hotel. When we enter the room and turn on the lights, our keycard also automatically opens the drapery at the far end of the large room until we have a perfectly framed and amazing view of Singapore’s skyline. At night, we leave the drapes open to enjoy the city lights and by chance wake up at two a.m. to see a fantastic view of a crescent moon hanging low over those illuminated towers.

After check-in, we don’t wait long until we head to the Sky Park and pool at the top of the building. Although this is the area everyone wants to see, viewing and access is only available to hotel guests. Both of us actually must use our individual keys to open a turnstile to gain entry. (By the way, you also have to use the keycards to get out!) The pool isn’t that much wider than a big back yard pool, but its length is almost the entire span of the three towers and its eastern infinity edge disappears into the skyline, making you think you could just float off into the sky. (In reality, there are several safeguards just over the edge but out of optical range.)

You have never seen such a plethora of people using selfie sticks to take the mandatory headshots—European honeymooners, Asian businessmen, Chinese families, and suspicious Russian plutocrats. Okay, the Russians weren’t taking selfies. I was content to just float, my feet pointing toward the distant skyscrapers, my gaze disappearing into the blue sky above, and my body bobbing aimlessly across the small currents of the other guests.

But I’m saving the best for last. The Marina Bay Sands also has three rooftop restaurants overlooking this pool. We call for reservations, and each one is booked until late at night. But remembering friends who taught us that great restaurants often have bars where it’s easier to get seats and still order food, we take a chance. We go to Wolfgang Puck’s Spago restaurant at the top. No problem . . . we’re immediately ushered to two seats at the bar. From our elevated seats, we can look westward through huge open windows toward the Singapore Strait and its hundreds of anchored and sailing ships. Toward the east through the open view is the jagged skyline of the city. Just as we arrive, the sun is setting. As the night darkens, the towers in the distance begin to glow with lights and neon. The western sea is dotted with the floating lights of oil tankers, cargo ships and more until finally the sky and sea meld into a single inky darkness festooned with star points of light.

A light breeze blows through the open-air bar, we sample from a couple of platters of delicious Wolfgang Puck appetizers, and I sip a perfectly made Grey Goose martini up with a lemon twist. It doesn’t get much better than this.

Robert adds: It’s sort of become something of a trademark joke—that I want to be a benevolent dictator—but Singapore shows the world just how pleasant a country with such a leader can be. Zero graffiti. Zero trash in the streets, on the sidewalks, or in the waterways. Zero annoyances on the beautifully maintained (and air-conditioned) subway system, with clean floors, swift escalators and working automatic ticket machines. Perfectly manicured parks and roadsides. Genuinely friendly service workers at cafes, bistros, bars and shops. I could go on and on. Even the Disney theme parks aren’t this well organized and operated!

Fun fact on the subway system: as you pull into each station, a mellifluous female voice announces the station name followed by the platform location of the nearest “Happy Happy.” No, that’s not a drug that Singapore residents have to take to lull them into paradisiacal submission. “Happy Happy” is the nickname euphemism they use for public washrooms. (And yes, they are spotless.)

The city is serviced by a whole array of public transportation options. In addition to the subway, there are ferries, a short monorail-type system to an amusement park island, silently running above ground buses, and even two different overhead skyway cable cars. I remarked at one point, “You see? If I were benevolent dictator, all major US cities would have these.” And Dennis replied, “The only way all of this can happen at all is with a benevolent dictator.” I rest my case.

Next: Jakarta, Indonesia and the halfway point of our cruise.

To check out Dennis’s novels, visit www.amazon.com/author/dennisfrahmann

Phuket: Paddling in Paradise Dispatch Thirteen from the Passage to the Far East

First, let me say there is no way I am capable of capturing the beauty of the islands in Phuket’s Phang Nga Bay with my iPhone. Even with an expensive camera decked out with great lens, I’m sure I wouldn’t do the site justice. So, as I told our guide who wanted to know why I wasn’t snapping shot after shot, I’m capturing this sight with my eyes.

And what a sight it is. The islands are tall limestone karsts, towering over the sea like tree-covered skyscrapers, rising hundreds of feet. Near the water’s surface, the wave action has eroded the soft limestone into an intricate comb of rock formations.

Robert and I are resting on an inflatable sea canoe. A young Thai man in the back is paddling us across the serene water. We’re part of a ship’s tour of about a dozen such craft, and the small flotilla is headed toward an opening in the eroded rock—a cavern to the interior of the monolith. Once through, we’re in the hong, an interior lagoon open to the sky high above and surrounded by steep and lushly verdant cliffs. The guide’s paddle dips softly behind us. We circle the lagoon and enter another dark cave, then exit into an even larger lagoon. It’s all beautiful.

Too soon, it’s back to a larger boat, where we, the canoes, and guides are brought aboard to motor to another spot. Again we get in the canoes, two by two, and paddle toward another dark opening. This one is guarded by a trio of monkeys sitting on their respective rocks. The cave is long, very dark, and the guide’s head-mounted spotlight points out colonies of quite large bats roosting among the stalactites above. Then again we break through to another jungle lagoon, again completely encircled by the tall cliffs. There are many monkeys here, several with babies, some jumping into the water to swim. (Luckily, none try to board our canoe.) We stop by a mangrove where our guide spotted a walking fish. It had walked up the root to sit out of the water and seemed content to eye us as we eyed it. Then it jumped back into the water.

You’re probably seen pictures of these islands. They were a featured locale in a James Bond movie called The Man With the Golden Gun. Seeing it in person is a whole other matter, and we’d recommend it if you ever get a chance.

After a Thai lunch on board the larger ship, we motor to a third location where we go ashore for a quick swim and spend some time on the beach. The sand is extremely fine with small shells. The waters of the Indian Ocean are quite warm, but then you step into a deeper current and feel a refreshing chill. But all too soon, the boat sounds its call, and its time to head back across the bay for a long bus ride to the much, much larger MS Amsterdam. But a little bit of my imagination is staying among those lovely islands.

Robert adds: This lesson should actually have come before Dennis’ writing. It’s pronounced “poo-KETT.” And the place we visited – Phang Nga – is “pahng nya.” For some reason, in Thai, the ‘h’ is silent in words that start with ‘ph’ and ‘th.’

The first ‘hong’ we visited – ‘hong’ means ‘room,’ and these interior openings really are like large rooms – also reminded us of some of the scenery in “Avatar” with these giant, flat, sheer uprisings of rock dotted with “how did they even get rooted?” trees and grasses. Entering the second ‘hong’ was a little more dare-devilish. As we were exiting the bat cave, the low archway we had to pass through was very low indeed. So much so, that we all had to lean back completely prone in order to barely skim through without scraping our bodies on the rough oyster-shell ceiling. There’s an obvious reason why these places aren’t visited at high tide. Yikes.

Dennis adds: Over 500 passengers will leave the ship in our next stop of Singapore, having booked only the first leg of this voyage. But for the following 14-days when we transit the islands of Indonesia, we’re told the ship is sold out.

To check out Dennis’s novels, visit www.amazon.com/author/dennisfrahmann

Bye, Bye Bagan! Dispatch Twelve from the Passage to the Far East

We reached the heart of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) and the ancient capital area called Bagan. Nearly a thousand years ago, King Anawrahtain started a building craze here for Buddhist temples. Today over 2,200 pagodas, temples and monasteries remain from that era, many as archeological ruins, dotting about twenty square miles. Literally, you could barely throw a stick without hitting one.

We had an excellent guide who kept our energies high on this seventeen-hour-excursion (90 minutes by bus from ship to Yangon airport, 80 minute flight to Bagan, bus transfers and visits to multiple sites, fantastic Burmese lunch—well, you get the picture). However at end the day, I discovered I failed to ask some of the questions of greatest interest to me: How big was the city originally? When were the temples abandoned? How many buildings were there originally? Why hasn’t UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site?

I used some expensive shipboard Internet minutes to find the Wikipedia answers. Here goes: The city was once as large as 200,000. The site collapsed due to Mongol invasions in 1287. At the peak, there were more than 10,000 religious structures. UNESCO and others disapprove of the way the government has been restoring sites without paying proper attention to the original architectural style.

Maybe more important than the historical facts was the experience of seeing so many temples and ruins in one place. At one point, we took a pony cart ride for forty minutes or so through an area heavy with pagoda remains. I had the strangest sense of being in a supernatural place. A slight mist rose from the grassy plains. The temples, which long ago lost their smooth exterior, stood as eroded red brick structures, sometimes with grass or brush growing from their roofs. With their fanciful spires and turrets, they seemed the remains of some mad experiment in Victorian Gothic architecture. But serenaded by the quiet clomp of the pony hooves and warmed by the hot sun overhead, I felt in a peaceful and contemplative mood.

At the end of the tour, we had a chance to climb the only temple open for such activity. Its five levels of platforms gave increasingly good views of the ruins-dotted plain. But the steps were steep and narrow, and my general discomfort with heights combined with a turned ankle from earlier in the journey kept me from climbing higher than the third level. Robert scurried to the top for the full panoramic view.

In addition to the abandoned sites, a few of the temples remain active places of worship. Their spires are often covered in gold leaf, their hallways filled with locals, and the sense of bustle is punctuated by the occasional striking of a gong. These major temples were beautiful and interesting, but for some reason, I remain drawn to the lost past—so for me, the wonders of Bagan will always be the abandoned ruins stretching across the grasslands. It was sad to say good-bye. Maybe one day, I will get a chance for a return visit.

For now, it’s back to the ship as we set sail for Phuket, Thailand.

Robert adds: Dennis somehow neglected to say that our day started with a 3am wakeup call. So yes, it was a very long day indeed, but worth every minute of lost sleep.

Interesting thing about the flight: once you’ve checked in at the counter, in addition to your boarding pass, you’re also given a 2-inch diameter circular sticker to put onto your shirt front. It’s a different color and design for each airline and flight. The boarding pass is collected at the terminal exit door and you walk across the tarmac. You climb the short flight of stairs to the rear door of the plane and enter from the back only. As you board, the flight attendant can quickly glance at your sticker as a final check to make sure you’re boarding the right airplane. Kinda weird, but also pretty clever.

At the temples, shoes and socks had to be removed before entering the grounds. We knew this in advance, so it wasn’t an issue, and was just one more subtle way that we really felt like we were experiencing all the sites in an authentic way.

Dennis adds: Meanwhile back on the ship, we feel like we’re back in Cambria and dealing with a water shortage. The ship normally desalinates its water while at sea and connects to local water sources when in port. But apparently, the water supply is too iffy at the Yangon port, so we’re relying on stored desalinated water in our two-and-a-half days here. Each day, the captain reminds us to limit our water use.

To check out Dennis’s novels, visit www.amazon.com/author/dennisfrahmann

Hambantota – Hamban-totally Worth It! Dispatch Eleven from the Passage to the Far East

As we gaze across the lake filled with water lilies and hyacinths toward Elephant Rock in Yala National Park outside Hambantota, Sri Lanka, Robert and I feel good.

Our excursion to see the animals in this large nature preserve on the shores of the Indian Ocean has been exceptional. From the moment we boarded the 4x4s and headed out from port, we’ve had a great time. Although this part of Sri Lanka was heavily damaged by the 2004 tsunami, what we see is a brand new port and sleek, divided highways recently built with Chinese investments. The land is quite flat and this far out from the main town, largely undeveloped—although we drive by a massive hospital and a very modern convention center, both under construction. Often, verdant rice paddies border the road. A lot of cattle, always branded (in flowing Sri Lankan script), roam freely.

It takes a little over an hour to reach the borders of the national park. As we near the entry, our guide is already pointing out animals. Some curious peccaries venture out from the brush right up to the truck. Then an energetic group of monkeys put on a Cirque du Soleil acrobatic show in the tall trees to the side. They’re quite playful and bound on all fours in a way that just makes you smile.

With just six of us in the back of vehicle, we all have good vantage spots for whatever we see. The weather is warm, with just a hint of possible rain in the air. In short, it is quite pleasant. Once officially in the park, the guide starts pointing out one sighting after another: jackals, a herd of deer, a big group of water buffalo in the waters, a large land monitor lizard, the head of a crocodile lurking in the lilies.

Then there’s a real treat. A leopard is resting in the shade of a tree just off the dirt road. Somehow news spread among the various drivers and a bunch of vehicles try to edge into place to give each of their passengers a good view. The leopard continues to sleep. I guess it figures only mad Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

For us, the unexpected bonus is the great variety of birds. Our driver/guide is expert at spotting them and we see an enormous variety: brightly colored bee-eaters; various storks, ibises, egrets and spoonbills; orioles; wild peahens and peacocks, and many others. An ork eagle perches on a branch very near the road and engages in a stare down with the six of us before sounding a warning and flying off.

The tour’s highlight is near the end of our time in the park. We were beginning to fear that the only elephant we would see is the rock named for its resemblance to the beast. Then straight ahead is a mother and baby elephant making lunch out of tree branches. The young one seems to have some trouble getting its trunk to do exactly what it wants to. The mother just watches her baby and sticks her own trunk into her mouth, sucking on it as if in deep thought. Crashing sounds come from the woods, and the male breaks into view, just to the right of our vehicle. Asian elephants may be smaller than the African counterparts, but this one certainly looks big enough.

Time to go on our way.

Robert adds: The reason we titled this entry the way we did was (a) because we had a completely wonderful time and (2) [ha!] we had been warned beforehand by the “location specialist” that Hambantota was nothing to write home about. Obviously, we proved that wrong. Our time there, plus the incredible array of animals we saw, was – to borrow a favorite word from one of our galpals – AWESOME. [I hope you know who you are….]

I also hope that we got the names of some of the birds we saw spelled correctly. We’ll have to double check when we’re home and have speedier internet, but for now, the amazingly colorful and brilliant birds we saw are “bee-eaters.” That’s what it sounded like our driver guide said anyway. Meanwhile, here’s what we saw on signs leading up to the safari: “Animals are the true owners of the jungle.” Words to remember.

At Trivia, we had scrabbled our way to 4th place before the start of today’s quiz. I fear we will have slipped. For one thing, give yourself bonus points if you know—(without looking it up!)—the patron saint of music and musicians. Our team had zero idea.

Playing at gossip: we and our dinner tablemates have been trying to spread a rumor around the ship by casually dropping into conversation a juicy morsel in hopes that people nearby will overhear us and repeat it. We want to see how long it might take for the story to get back to us. We decided to let slip that we heard that the Owner’s Suite is being prepared for Barbra Streisand who will join the ship in Singapore. Not as a performer, but just as a vacation getaway. The effort has been completely unsuccessful, but …

Last week, an incredible female vocalist performed at the after-dinner show. I chatted her up at lunch the next day and complimented her. When I asked if she would be doing a second show, she told me that another one was scheduled (for tonight as I write this)…and that she would be singing…a lot of Barbra Streisand songs! Too funny. [I wonder if she says a silent prayer to Saint Cecilia.]

Our next stop: Yangon, Myanmar [aka Rangoon, Burma]

To check out Dennis’s novels, visit www.amazon.com/author/dennisfrahmann

A Taste of the India Mood: Dispatch Ten from the Passage to the Far East

Our introduction to India has been a pair of stops in southern India, visiting the port cities of Mangalore and Kochi (formerly Cochin). This India experience has been a study of contrasts—Mangalore at first bored me with its sense of muddled respectability; Cochin excited me with its air of exotic.

In fairness to Mangalore, using it as an initial India experience is probably akin to someone judging the U.S. by first landing at docks in Duluth or Galveston. Mangalore is a relatively small, working port city known for its universities; it doesn’t exactly abound with major tourist spots.

But from the beginning, we are immersed in a different world. The streets are teeming with three-wheeled tuk-tuks and brightly decorated working trucks. Pedestrians are everywhere, dressed in a global runway of styles from jeans and t-shirts straight from the Gap to saris to burkas to the diaper-like shorts called dhotis. Car horns honk, a few cows wander by the roadside, and mold stains even the recently built buildings. We drive by Catholic churches, mosques, Hindu temples and schoolyards filled with children in uniform. So, it’s definitely not Duluth.

In both port cities, we also experience Indian bureaucracy. Our friends have previously heard the challenges involved in getting our Indian visas. The experience continues once actually in the country. In Mangalore, we line up in the morning to meet face to face with Indian immigration officials, hand over our landing card application, have the information checked among landing card, passport and visa and finally stamped as approved to enter. Then as we exit the ship, another officer and another check that we have the approved landing card. When we return, we are checked once more. One day later, we arrive in Kochi, a much larger city and in a different Indian state. The whole process is repeated, only this time with a different landing permit. Nothing even close to this has happened in any other port we’ve visited. I’m sure we’ll have a similar experience when we visit Mumbai on our way back.

But by Kochi, maybe we have mellowed more into experiencing India, or perhaps this city of canals and waterways (with its roots linking the East and the West dating back to the Romans) is just more picturesque. We take a traditional boat across one of the channels to an island with a living museum of earlier lifestyles. As the guide poles his skiff across the placid waters, we see egrets stalking fish below the water plants along the shore, point out black cormorants drying their wings in the sun as they sit atop stumps, marvel over the giant-like fishing nets along the shore, and listen to the myriad of bird calls mixed with the gentle slosh of the pilot’s bamboo pole. We are transported, not just across the water, but also into a different mood.

Throughout our tour describing how locals once made effective use of every part of the coconut and took full advantage of the sea, everyone is so friendly. It reminds me of our guide the day before in Mangalore. She was a product of the local Catholic schools and was extremely ebullient and outgoing in a way that I likened to a “Valley Girl-like” enthusiasm for life. Her favorite word was “amazing.” The smell of rain in the rainy season was “amazing,” her favorite ice cream shop which we drove by was “amazing,” and even the cow-dung adobe traditionally used to line the village wells was described as having an “amazing” odor.

Well, she helped to make our introduction to India fun and endearing—no, make that amazing.

Robert adds: Perhaps because of the itinerary (too close to “scary” parts of the world), or perhaps for other reasons, the ship is not full. And that’s fine with us since we have always preferred to sail on small- to midsized cruise ships. But we have heard from multiple sources that Holland America made a last-minute advertising blitz in Holland for super-cut-rate cabins and, from all appearances, it seems like they got at least some results—lots of Dutch people on board. They mostly seem to be clustered in what this ship calls “lanai cabins.” These are on the Promenade level and have exterior doors that lead immediately out onto the deck where we (and the earlier mentioned Upstream Salmon People) walk. Here’s what we have learned about the Dutch people—they have zero problem with having their exterior door open while they are lounging inside in their sleepwear, bathrobe or worse…all the while passersby have an unrestricted view. [Never mind the prominently displayed signs inside the cabin imploring passengers to keep their exterior doors closed because of the air conditioning.]

And another thing: they sure like to talk. Almost nonstop, it seems. They are all having a marvelous time, and so they should. But no offense to my cousin-in-law, to my ear rapidly spoken Dutch sounds like just a bunch of random vowel sounds strung together with the occasional ‘k’ or ‘sh’ or ‘sch’ sound. Then again, they are multilingual and most Americans can’t boast about that, so there.

But back to India: education and the literacy rate are very high. And pretty much everyone learns three languages in their early school years – their own local dialect (hundreds and hundreds nationwide), one more-or-less “national” language (typically Hindi), and also English, each one with their own different alphabets!

It was also in our two ports in India where we were introduced to a kite. Not the kind from the novel The Kite Runner, but an actual bird called a kite. They are very large, fish-eating birds that fly around ships and areas with water. As we sailed away from both ports, we got close-up views of their beautiful copper-brown-feathered bodies with black wing tips. They are a new favorite of mine.

Lastly, this afternoon at Trivia, the word “ethylene” mysteriously popped into my head at the last minute and ensured us a winning score for the day. Whew!

Our next stop: the port of Hambantota in Sri Lanka.

To check out Dennis’s novels, visit www.amazon.com/author/dennisfrahmann

If Today Is Tomorrow, It Must Be Dubai: Dispatch Nine from the Passage to the Far East

Remember those dioramas of the future from places like the GM Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair or the Carousel of Progress at Disneyland? Lots of tall skyscrapers, broad avenues, and elevated railways zipping people to and fro.

All it takes is a little oil money and a lot of drive and you can make the future come true. Driving around Dubai has that feel.

From the top of the world’s tallest building (the 2716-foot Burj Khalifa from whose observation deck the dozens of nearby mere 80-story buildings look puny) to the impressive aquarium wall in the world’s largest mall (the Mall of Dubai) to the enormous indoor ski dome attached to the Mall of the Emirates to the plethora of high-rise residential towers at the world’s largest manmade harbor (Dubai Marina) to the impressive subway and elevated tramway system . . . well, you get the picture. This is a town that proves the future can be anything we want it to be—as long as you add some air conditioning and desalinated water.

We arrived at this future by traveling slowly up the Persian Gulf. In Muscat, Oman, all the prosperous new development was firmly anchored in the forts and mountains of a site that felt historic. In Abu Dhabi, the little village from the 1960s was now overwhelmed by one that was completely modern and high-rise, but it still felt familiar as a city. But a trip to its Culture Island, where we saw plans for a new outpost of the Louvre (designed by Jean Nouvel) and the Guggenheim (designed by Frank Gehry), provided hints of aspirations to be something more. The quest to define the future only came to full bloom in the sprawling towers of Dubai.

Dubai was a little bit like Las Vegas on steroids, minus the neon and gambling. The main show here is architecture on a massive scale. But as one of our fellow guests said, “Where is the soul?” It’s true. There seems to be little street life or sense of community. One largely moves from one air-conditioned pod to another . . . although the beaches do look lovely and the water appears inviting.

And the city does feel prosperous. I suspect we will be in for a quite a shock in three days when we reach our next port: Mangalore, India.

(One last note prompted by the Iowa caucuses. On these trips, I often wonder how some of my fellow American travelers maintain their sense of American exceptionalism [the biggest, the best, wouldn’t have anything else] after on-going conversations with Europeans and Canadians happy with their ways of life; experiences with the exceptional modern infrastructure of places like Dubai, Singapore or Hong Kong; or the pleasures of up-to-date airports of almost every developed city outside the U.S. Do they sometimes think we might learn something from the rest of the world? But since it’s best to avoid politics with people that you will keep seeing for another 60 days, I don’t ask.)

Robert adds: I have previously reported on the cool temperatures we’ve experienced so far on this cruise, thus putting a lie to part of our packing list of shorts and t-shirts. [Never fear, though: we will soon enough be in 90-degree-90-humidity territory.] Our day in Abu Dhabi reached a high of 63 degrees F. Our guide said, “This is our coldest day so far this winter.” Wait. What? Then again, their summer days routinely get up near 125, so I guess “coldest day” is all relative.

A couple of interesting tidbits learned in Abu Dhabi: It is the largest of the seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates (the official name of the country since 1971). It’s also where most of the oil comes from, but that is also a recent development. Before the discovery of their oil deposits, the primary economy really blew my mind—pearl diving. I know. Who would’ve guessed? But further—what destroyed the Arabian pearl economy? The introduction in the 1930s of “cultured pearls” in Japan.

We have noticed in most of our recent desert ports a faint fog/haze in the distance. It turns out not to be fog, or haze, or even smog. It is ultra-fine dust particles from the sand dunes. Not noticeable to breathe, but cumulatively makes a haze. While I’m mentioning the landscape, we have just finished sailing back through the Strait of Hormuz (you may have heard about it in the news), accompanied by many oil tankers and cargo ships. But what I thought was sort of interesting was that the land we could see way off in the distance on one side was Iran. We can’t tick it off our list of places we’ve been, but we sure can say that we’ve seen it.

Camels are still a big part of the life here, including camel racing. Just as with jockeys on horses, the camel riders over the years got smaller and smaller, until nowadays where the camels are raced with robot jockeys. Yes, you read that right. Small lightweight robots sit atop the camels, with robotic riding crops, all controlled by joysticks. Talk about a hybrid between physical activity and video games! And speaking of camels, there is also a yearly camel beauty contest. Our guide described it as “almost” as important as Miss Universe to the locals, and said that one of the things judged most highly was the loveliness of the camel’s eyelashes. I swear you can’t make this stuff up.

To check out Dennis’s novels, visit www.amazon.com/author/dennisfrahmann