Category: Travel

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Wednesday/ a few souvenirs 🐘

These little souvenirs out of my suitcase are doing duty on in the kitchen window for a week or two.
They will join the many others I already have, in the display cabinet.

From left to right:
Glass ‘Merlion’ from Chinatown, Singapore;
Encased postage stamp from Singapore General Post Office;
Miniature pyramid depicting Independence Palace, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, from the museum store there;
Gilded elephant from gift store at Ream Boutique Hotel, Cambodia;
Miniature Year of The Horse wood carving from a pop-up store inside Takashimaya department store, Tokyo;
Miniature paper weight of Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur, bought at Port Klang Cruise Terminal, Malaysia.
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Tuesday/ east west home best 🛬

There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night.

-Limerick published in London humor magazine “Punch” in 1923.

I set out on Tuesday night at 10 and arrived at Tuesday afternoon at 1.
There was no relativity and no speed of light involved, though.

The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner twin jet that brought us to Seattle traveled at a speed of 563 mph (per flightaware.com).

Wall panel at Haneda airport.
Travel time across the northern Pacific came to 8 h 27 min.
Here comes a Delta plane.
I’m looking to the south from inside the long pedestrian overpass that connects the Main Terminal (International Arrivals Facility) to the South terminal at Seattle-Tacoma airport.
There goes the Delta airplane, now looking to the north from inside the long pedestrian overpass.
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Tuesday/ at the airport ✈️

My time in Tokyo was up on Tuesday, and that’s OK.
It is time for me to go home.

I made one last run, on the Yamanote Line to Shibuya station and Shibuya crossing (picture), just three stops down from Shinjuku.
I checked in on Tower Records and ended up buying a music CD.
(Yes— I still like to buy music now and then. I do rent my music nowadays as well, on Youtube Music).

Late afternoon I took an airport limousine bus runs from Kabukicho Tower to Haneda airport— super convenient and for all of ¥1,400 (US$8.93).
I took the picture of the control tower at Haneda airport just before I hopped off the bus. That might just be Mt Fuji in the distance, in the bottom right corner of the picture.

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Monday/ Kabukicho Tower and Ginza 🌇

On Monday I went up to the 17th-floor observation deck of the Kabukicho Tower. It offers a nice view of the trains running into and out of Shinjuku station.

The other photos are from Ginza shopping district around sunset.
Everything in Ginza is art— the buildings, the lamp posts, the manhole covers in the pavement, all the way down to the metro stations below ground.
The clocks are from inside the Wako Building, owned by Seiko watch corporation.

I took the Marounochi Line back to Shinjuku just before the onset of rush hour (rush hour starts at around 5.30 pm).

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Sunday 🌞

Sunday was bright and mild (57 °F/ 14 °C) here in Shinjuku.
The streets around Shinjuku station were closed for traffic all day.

A little parade of sorts came by, featuring bands and groups for firefighter and disaster support, and little league baseball teams. Elsewhere there was a protest for the war in Ukraine (offering support for Ukraine).

There are a Teslas on the streets, but not many. In the picture with the black Tesla, the hotel is on the left.
The beautiful building with the wavy top is Tokyu Kabukicho Towerー 48-story skyscraper completed in 2023. It was designed by Yuko Nagayama & Associates and developed by Shimizu Corporation. [Wikipedia]

At Shinjuku Station’s East Exit, the giant 3D cat is still there, entertaining crowds near the crosswalk for Studio Alta.

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Saturday/ hotel in Shinjuku 🏨

My hotel room in the Prince Hotel Shinjuku (brown brick building in second from last pic) is barely bigger than my stateroom on the Diamond Princess had been, but that’s OK. I knew that when I made the reservation.

I can see the Yamanote Line out of my hotel room window (the train with the green trim).
I made the obligatory run out to Yodobashi Camera, taking the Marounochi Line (red train) and the Chūō Line (yellow train) out to Akihabara station.

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Friday/ arrival in Tokyo 🗼

There’s a thundering (digital) waterfall in the check-in and departures area at Singapore’s Changi airport.
And watch out for the 3-D jaguar inside the secure area that will pounce on you!

Changi airport’s layout feels different than the standard airport floor layout.
There are no check-in counters, and I had to look around to find out where to take my tagged luggage for check-in.
(It is handled by fully automated stations with conveyor belts that swallow your bags.)

The security check is done right at the gate with its dedicated waiting area.
So no bottled water or other large liquids can be carried onto the plane. There are no toilets right by the gate’s waiting area as you wait to board.
(So what happens if it turns out there is a 30 min or 1 hr delay with the boarding process? Can you go out and come back in through the security check?)

All went according to schedule, though, and off we were on the 6 hr 16 min flight to Tokyo’s Haneda airport.
We were northeast bound with a flight path that had Viet Nam to the west, and going between Taiwan to the north and the Philippines to the south.

It was still Friday night rush hour on Tokyo’s trains upon my arrival, and I would have had to navigate my way out of Shinjuku station with bags in tow, the busiest of them all. (A station that handles 3.6 million passengers every day).
So Go Taxi it was, and the US $55 fare that brought me right to the entrance of the hotel was totally worth it.

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Thursday/ out and about 🤗

Today was my last day here on the tip of the Malay peninsula. I will travel to Tokyo in the morning.

I ran out to the Singapore main post office and a Singapore Mint store— for a souvenir or two in the form of stamps and coins, of course.
(Will post what I got, later. I bought a lot of stamps! )

The lunar new year (the Year Of The Horse) is coming, so several Singapore Mint coins with horse motifs on were on offer.
I liked the shiny golden Merlion better— made of an one-ounce 999 (99.9%) fine silver proof ingot that is clad with pure gold.

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Wednesday/ Chinatown, Singapore 🏫

Singapore has one of the oldest Chinatowns in the world.
The area around Pagoda Street has been a hub for the Chinese immigrants in Singapore since 1330.
To this day it has traditional shophouses, but also modern stores and busy street markets.

I sipped my coffee outside the Starbucks on Smith Street, while listening to a beautiful song in a language I will never understand or learn 😢, as the smell of freshly cut durian from a nearby vendor wafted through the air.

The mosque is Masjid Jamae (built in 1820), and the Hindu temple is Sri Mariamman. These are the sources of strange sounds—very, very strange to the Western ear— the calls to prayer from the mosque, and clanging and chants from the inside the Hindu temple.

The last two pictures are is of the main plaza in Chinatown.
I love the public space with the old-timers that are there just to shoot the breeze, or to play a game of checkers.

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Tuesday/ back in Singapore 🛳️

The Diamond Princess was back at Singapore’s Marina Bay Cruise Center at 7 am this morning.

Right then, a choreographed process of getting some 3,000 passengers and their luggage off the ship, through passport control and customs, and on their way to the airport or elsewhere, started.

Grab is the Uber in Singapore* and we hopped into Grab cabs that we had reserved the night before to take us to the hotel. (My family heads out in the morning and I will stay in Singapore for a few days before making my way back to Seattle via Tokyo.)

*Grab acquired Uber’s Southeast Asian operations in 2018. Uber still has a 27.5% share as part of the deal.

The wall poster is from the metro’s new brown line, the Thomson-East Coast Line (TEL). The benches down on the platforms are benches, and works of art, as well.

What a nice find in the grocery store: Valencia oranges from South Africa, for only SGD 3.20 (US$2.50) for five. Sweet and seedless.
Right next to them were pairs of Amakusa oranges, ever so slightly larger, advertised as ‘Air Flown’ from Japan, for SGD 28.80 a pair, which comes to $11 for an orange. Eek 😱.

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Monday/ Port Klang, Malaysia 🇲🇾

The Diamond Princess made it into her final port of call for this voyage this morning, arriving at Port Klang at 8 am.

I was well enough to take the shuttle bus to the AEON Bukit Tinggi Mall, 20 minutes away. That was a consolation prize, since I had cancelled my excursion into Kuala Lumpur, and the Petronas Towers 😢, two days before (not sure I would be well enough to do the whole-day excursion).

That ship in the distance, all the way across from our own terminal, sails under her new name Star Voyager, operated by StarCruises.
From Wikipedia:
She was built in 1997 and previously known as Dawn Princess and Pacific Explorer, having previously been operated by Princess Cruises and P&O Cruises Australia. In 2001, while operating in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park, Dawn Princess struck and killed a humpback whale while travelling too fast through the protected waters. Princess Cruises was later charged and found guilty in United States federal court and paid a fine and restitution totalling US$750,000.

Looking at my mall pictures, I now regret I did not buy the little gold wafer with the Petronas Towers on.

Oppo is a Chinese tech company, known for its innovative Android smart phone designs, with strong camera features (often with Hasselblad tech), fast charging and competitive pricing.

And the book? I should have bought that as well, but Amazon may be able to help me mend my mistake.
Google AI:
Antanom (Ontoros bin Endoi) was a renowned Murut hero from Sabah, Malaysia, who led an uprising against the British in Rundum in the early 1900s due to taxation and oppression. He is known as a great hero for his charisma, spiritual power, and ability to unite the warring Murut tribes against the colonizers, and he died in battle. His story has been immortalized in books and documentaries, solidifying his title as a hero of the Murut people.

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Saturday/ Langkawi, Malaysia 🇲🇾

The Diamond Princess arrived at the Langkawi Cruise Terminal at 8.00 am on Saturday morning.

Lamgkawi— officially Langkawi, the Jewel of Kedah— is an archipelago of 99 islands. The islands are some 19 miles (30 km) off the coast of northwestern Malaysia and just a few kilometeres south of the island called Ko Tarutao that belongs to Thailand.

Unfortunately, the mascots and welcome-wishers on the docks of the Langkawi Cruise Terminal waited in vain for me to step off the ship.
I was not feeling well enough to run out on my scheduled excursion and retired to my stateroom for the day.   

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Friday/ Phuket, Thailand 🇹🇭

The Diamond Princess arrived at Phuket at 9 am this morning, as scheduled.

Phuket is Thailand’s largest island, and the cruise ship was anchored by the bustling Patong Beach*. The tender boat trip to the Patong Jetty was only 15 minutes: not bad at all.

*Patong Beach was hit particularly hard by the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. The waves reached heights of 3–6 m (9.8–19.7 ft) along the west coast of Phuket island.

Thaweewong Road runs at the back of Patong Beach. It is lined with anything a tourist might want, and might need: ATMs, markets, beach clubs with swimming pools, bars, pharmacies, restaurants, food stands, pot shops (legal but no smoking in public allowed), massage parlors, taxi stands and scooters.

Sarasin Bridge to the north connects the island to Phang Nga province, but we were a little deflated after a few hours in the hot sun and headed back to Patong Jetty to catch a tender boat to the Princess.

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Thursday/ in the Malacca Strait 🌊

The Diamond Princess is in the Malacca Strait tonight, across from the island Penang (part of Malaysia; I put an asterisk on the map that I found here on the ship).
She continues to make her way to Phuket.

This morning I spotted the LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) tanker vessel called IDD AL SHARGI.
She is brand new (delivered in 2025), and sails under the flag of Singapore.
Idd El Shargi is one of Qatar’s largest and most significant offshore oil fields, located about 85 km / 53 miles east of Doha in the Arabian Gulf. 

Her gross tonnage* is 115,513, length 299 m / 981 ft and beam 46 m / 151 ft.
These numbers are very similar to those of the Diamond Princess:  tonnage 115,875, length 288 m/ 945 ft and beam 37.5 m / 123 ft.

*Gross tonnage is a volume measurement, not a weight measurement, expressed as a numerical value derived from cubic meters. 

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Wednesday/ at sea 🌊

The Diamond Princess is making her way back to the Singapore Strait, to reach the island of Phuket on the west side of the Malay Peninsula by Friday morning.
I saw on the board today that we were moving at a good clip— 21 knots (about 24 mph).

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Tuesday/ เกาะสมุย Koh Samui, Thailand 🇹🇭

The Diamond Princess arrived at Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand on Tuesday morning. (Koh Samui is Thailand’s second largest island, after Phuket. )

There is no deepwater port at Koh Samui and we were taken ashore and back to the ship by tender boat. (The wooden boat is from a private tender operator.)
From the shore we went to the islands in Angthong Marine National Park by speedboat.

The first stop was for a little snorkeling.
I did not bring my underwater camera— I don’t have one, actually! 😩— but I looked up some of the tropical fish that I saw in the water, online.
The one in the picture (source: Shutterstock) is a sergeant major or píntano (Abudefduf saxatilis).

The stop at Ko Mae Ko Island was for a very steep staircase climb up to the island’s main attraction: Emerald Lake. The lake is surrounded by a tropical rainforest and limestone cliffs.

After lunch and a Singha beer on Paluai Island, we checked out Praying Monkey Rock and made one more stop at a beach nearby.

The Seatran ferry goes to Donsak on the Malay peninsula (about 90 mins, US$5 for foot passengers, US$15 for a car).

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Monday/ Ream National Park, Cambodia 🇰🇭

The Diamond Princess arrived at Preah Sihanouk (Sihanoukville) at 7 am this morning.

The tour bus that took us to Ream National Park and the beaches on the Gulf of Thailand first made its way through Sihanoukville, with a stop at the ‘love monument’.  The love monument is a a massive copper sculpture depicting the legendary Khmer couple Prince Preah Thong and Naga Princess Neang Neak, symbolizing the origin of Khmer civilization and culture, located at a major roundabout facing the sea. 

There were a lot of abandoned buildings lining the streets Sihanoukville: many of them projects by Chinese investors and entrepreneurs that were abandoned after the Covid pandemic had forced the stoppage of work on them.

The next stop was at a Buddhist compound with several temples, and Buddhas. (Theravada Buddhism is practiced by over 90% of the population).

After that it was off to the beaches of Sampounch Island, and the national park. We did a little motor boat cruise through the mangroves and walked on an elevated plank walkway through the forest. There was not a single bird in sight, but we ran into a few long-tailed macaques right at the end of the walk.

The other beach pictures and the crab, the gecko, the snake and the giant tree are near the beach at the Ream Boutique Hotel. We had lunch there, and a dip in the lukewarm waters of the Gulf of Thailand.

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Sunday/ at sea 🌊

The Diamond Princess is making her way to Sihanoukville on the Cambodian coast. We are due in at 7 am in the morning, there.

Last night we happened to spot a pilot ship from the port at Phú Mỹ as it was right against the Diamond Princess.
It probably came out to pick up the local maritime pilot that had guided the Diamond Princess out of the waterways and channels at Phú Mỹ— and that had just handed the navigation of the Diamond Princess back to the captain.

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Saturday/ Ho Chi Minh City 🇻🇳

The Diamond Princess arrived at the deep-water port of Phú Mỹ at 8 am on Saturday morning.

It’s almost a 2-hour drive from Phú Mỹ to the sprawling city of Ho Chi Minh.  Our tour bus ran alongside and across the rivers of the Mekong Delta*, and the route included a segment of National Route 1 with toll plazas. It is the beginning of the rice planting season. Rice is a staple food in Viet Nam.

*Home to the endangered Mekong giant catfish (Pangasianodon gigas), known for reaching nearly 10 feet and over 600 pounds.

As we approached the city, we saw tall apartment buildings (what we would call condominiums in the States). These go for a fortune in Vietnamese Dong— 5 billion, about US$200,000— and are strictly for rich people. The supertall skyscraper in the pictures is that of the 81-story Landmark 81 tower (completed 2018).

Our first stop in Saigon* was at an art studio and gallery with Vietnamese lacquer art, or Sơn Mài.  *The central part of Ho Chi Minh City still goes by the name of Saigon.

The next stop was at Ho Chi Minh City History Museum with its lovely water lily pond and displays of the forces that occupied the territory of what is known as Viet Nam today.

I asked Google AI Overview for a summary:
Vietnam’s history is marked by occupation and resistance, starting with over a millennium of Chinese rule (c. 111 BCE–938 CE), followed by internal dynasties and expansion south. French colonization from the 1880s led to French Indochina, briefly interrupted by Japanese occupation during WWII, sparking the Viet Minh independence movement. After WWII, France tried to reclaim control, leading to the First Indochina War (1946-1954), ending with French defeat and Vietnam’s division, ultimately leading to the Vietnam War (US involvement) and communist unification in 1975.

Next was the Saigon Central Post Office with a portrait of Ho Chi Minh inside. (Ho Chi Minh was the man that led a long and ultimately successful campaign to make Vietnam independent. He was president of North Vietnam from 1945 to 1969.)

Look for my picture of the Pittman Apartments building from which people were airlifted from during the Fall of Saigon in April 1975 (famously captured in Hubert van Es’s iconic photo). It’s painted yellow and light brown and has several antennas attached to it.

We made a quick stop at a Buddhist Temple, and then went to the swank Windsor Plaza Hotel for lunch. I loved the dragon on my little can of Bia Saigon Special beer.

The next stop was at the Independence Palace (also called Reunification Palace) , a building that played a central role in the Viet Nam war. It was designed by architect Ngô Viết Thụ. Construction started in 1962 and it was completed by 1966.  It was the home and workplace of the president of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam).

The final stop for the day was at Ben Thanh market.
It has some 1,500 booths inside and it was crowded, so I went outside and took a few pictures instead.