Just
back from our longest trip since retirement – 21 days (including travel) in
Southeast Asia. Our group of 10 flew to
Singapore to board the Celebrity Century for the 2015 President’s Cruise on
March 8. The cruise was 14 nights with
stops in Saigon and Danang in Vietnam, Hong Kong, Manila and Boracay in the
Philippines, Kota Kinabalu in the Malaysian part of Borneo, and finishing with an
overnight on the ship in Singapore.
No
one looked forward to our nearly 24 hours of flight time from Dulles Airport to
Singapore. Dulles to Tokyo was 13.5
hours, a short layover, and then about 7.5 hours from Tokyo to Singapore, where
we arrived at about 1:00 AM local time.
Our group consensus was that the flights weren’t as bad as we feared,
and most of us watched at least 5 to 7 movies between the two flights.
 |
| On board after long flights - Singapore skyline in the background. |
 |
| Pool deck on the Celebrity Century |
 |
| At the pool bar getting ready to sail |
We
boarded the ship around noon on Sunday.
The Celebrity Century is one of the older ships in the fleet at 19 years
of age, and was last refurbished in 2006.
Despite its age, the ship was well-maintained
and elegantly decorated. The ship holds
about 1,800 passengers, and has 860 crew members, for a passenger-to-crew ratio
of 2.1:1, which was refreshing after our recent Carnival Breeze cruise with a
ratio of greater than 3:1. As has always
been our experience on Celebrity, the staff was outstanding; warm and friendly,
willing to go the extra mile to please, and always smiling. After our first visit to the bar in the
Rendezvous Lounge, the bartenders would greet us simply with “The usual?”
John
Grantham, the Cruise Director, was one of the best we have ever had on a
ship. He comes from a background as a
stunt man and actor, and gave an entertaining and interesting talk one
afternoon in the theater about his Hollywood career. John was everywhere on the ship, always
friendly and accessible, and like everyone else, always smiling, even in the
face of the disastrous President’s Evening at the Imperial Citadel in Hue. What was intended to be an enchanting
evening in a magical setting with the best in Vietnamese cultural
entertainment, turned into a total washout when the rain began and never
stopped. Tables for almost 1,000 people
had been set up in the courtyard with absolutely no cover, and by the time we
reached our table with our umbrellas, our wine glasses had an inch of water in
them, and chairs and tablecloths were soaked.
Even with umbrellas, we were all soon soaked as well, and finally made
our way back to the buses to return to the ship. Not really anyone’s fault, although we
questioned why there had been no contingency plan for rain.
Food
and entertainment on the ship were good, not great. Because it was the President’s Cruise, and
Esther and I have Elite status on Celebrity, we went to several cocktail
parties and receptions. Almost
unbelievably, Esther and I (mostly her) actually won money in the casino! Don’t waste time on the slot machines – they
paid nothing the whole cruise, but we had a good run at the blackjack tables.
One
of the most fun activities was the private martini tasting for our group of 10
in the Martini Bar, where we got to sample 6 different martini flavors. By the end of the tasting, we were all
feeling no pain, and I think the other patrons in the bar were happy to see us
stagger out of there. It was so much
fun, we did another one later in the trip!
I highly recommend this if you are traveling in a small group.
 |
| Talented bartender pouring 10 martinis at one time |
 |
| The family that tastes martinis together....... |
 |
| Everything is funnier after a lot of martinis |
 |
| Rick doesn't even mind that Pat has poured martini all over him |
This
was the first cruise on which Esther and I had the beverage package, which included
unlimited spirits, wine, beer, soft drinks, water and specialty coffees. The normal cost of a beverage package is
about $50/per person per day, so on a 14-night cruise, its value is about $700
per person. Normally, Esther and I may
not spend $50 each per day on drinks, but with the package in hand, we got our
money’s worth. Even bottled water, which
is usually extra, was included, so we always took one or two ashore with
us. We became regulars at the Cova Café,
the coffee bar on the ship, typically stopping there at least twice a day for a
cappuccino or latte. At dinner, we were
able to have our wine glasses kept full all through the meal without having to
sign another receipt for every glass. The
package included gratuities so we never had to actually sign anything for our
drinks, which was a nice bonus.
 |
| The Cova Cafe, our daily stop for specialty coffees |
We
loved the itinerary, not only for the ports of call, but also because almost
every port day was followed up by a sea day.
Since we had private tours scheduled, we were up and off the ship as
early as possible in most ports. So it
was nice to be able to sleep in the next day.
Our
ports, in order, were:
Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
We
actually docked in Phu My, and met our tour guide, Zoom, who picked us up in an
air-conditioned mini-van and drove us about an hour and 15 minutes to Ho Chi
Minh city. Our first stop was the Rex
Hotel, famous during the Vietnam War as a hangout for foreign journalists and
US military staff. The “Five O’Clock
Follies,” daily press conferences about the war, were held here. We had Vietnamese coffee at the rooftop
bar.
 |
| The Rex Hotel Rooftop Garden Bar in Saigon |
 |
| Vietnamese coffee with milk and ice |
We saw the Heavenly Lady Temple, a lacquerware
factory and shop, the Chinatown market, the Independence Palace, the old Post
Office, and the war museum. Traffic in
Saigon was fascinating – more motor scooters than cars, with amazing loads
including at times as many as four people, not to mention large boxes, cases of
water, and even furniture! Lunch was at Pho 2000, made famous during a
visit by Bill Clinton, who ate there.
Yes, it was a very touristy thing to do, but the pho (Vietnamese noodle
soup) was good.
 |
| Scooters loaded with boxes and babies are commonplace. |
 |
| Inside the Heavenly Lady Temple |
 |
| The use scooters for everything! |
 |
| Puzzle table at the laquer factory |
The
war museum was fascinating – the exhibits and overall presentation were not
what you might consider an objective review of the Vietnam War. The United States is roundly portrayed as an
evil aggressor, guilty of countless atrocities and war crimes on the heroic and
innocent Vietnamese people, complete with photos of murdered women and children
and deformed babies resulting from Agent Orange. One whole room was devoted to anti-war
newspaper and magazine articles from around the world, with pictures of anti-war
demonstrations in the US. Interestingly, our group was not angered by
the spin as much as fascinated by the lack of balance in the portrayal of
history. Our guide was excellent, and
took great pains to assure us throughout the day that America and Vietnam now
have an excellent relationship.
 |
| The War Remnants Museum offers a different perspective of the Vietnam War |
Danang/Hue
The
ship next docked in Chan May, and our private tour was with Tommy, again in a
private min-van. We drove past My Khe
Beach, the former China Beach, and saw the White Lady Buddha perched on a hill
in the distance. On the beach, we got a
close-up look at the basket boats used extensively by fisherman.
 |
| The basket boat, popular for fishing. |
 |
| White Lady Buddha statue. |
Our next stop was the Marble Mountains, a
popular tourist attraction with numerous Buddhist sanctuaries located on the
peak and in caves. We took an elevator
up, and walked the steps down. The mountain
is surrounded by shops selling marble statues, furniture, jewelry, and
artifacts.
 |
| Elevator to the Marble Mountain |
 |
| Buddha statue in a cave in the Marble Mountain |
 |
| Group shot in a cave with light from above. |
 |
| Marble stores were everywhere. |
From there, we went to Hoi
An, a charming village with an Old Town area reported to be a well-preserved
example of a South-East Asian trading port dating from the 15th to the 19th
century, and a World Heritage site. Lots
of shopping opportunities during our walk around town, followed by Vietnamese
lunch in a pretty outdoor restaurant setting.
 |
| Pedicabs in Hoi An |
 |
| Had to visit the temple. |
 |
| Hoi An is also called the lantern city. |
 |
| The famous Japanese Bridge |
We
returned to the ship early in order to catch the buses for the President’s
Evening in Hue, at the Imperial City, which occupies a large, walled
area on the north side of the Perfume River.
Inside the citadel was a forbidden city where only the emperors, concubines,
and those close enough to them were granted access. As
previously mentioned, this turned out to be a catastrophe; a two-hour bus ride,
a 45-minute drenching at the Imperial City, and a wet, two-hour bus ride back
to the ship.
 |
| Entering the Citadel at the Imperial City just as the rain begins. |
Hong Kong
The
Century docked at the newer cruise terminal at Kai Tak, which used to be the
site of the international airport. We
jumped into cabs and took them to the Star Ferry terminal on the Kowloon side
to meet our private tour guides for the day, Ski and Eugene. Hong Kong is an amazing city, and we began
by taking the Star Ferry to Hong Kong Island and taking taxis to Victoria’s
Peak. This was one of the advantages to
having a private guide – she quite correctly told us we shouldn’t take the Peak
Tram to the top, especially on a Saturday morning, when the lines could be more
than an hour. The view from the Peak is
unbelievable, even though it was a cloudy day when we were there. We took the Tram down from the Peak, and had
virtually no wait at all. At the
bottom, we saw the throngs waiting to board for the ride up.
 |
| The Star Ferry to cross from Kowloon to Hong Kong side. |
 |
| The view from Victoria's Peak is magnificent, even on a cloudy day. |
 |
| The Peak Tram |
 |
| Lines to board the Tram to ride up to the Peak - glad we rode down instead! |
This
was primarily a walking tour after we got off the Tram and we got to experience
Hong Kong in a close-up way. We went
into a hole in the wall restaurant to have local coffee and snacks, and were a
sight – 10 large Americans stuffed around two tiny tables and surrounded by a
packed house of Chinese.
 |
| Our guide Ski orders our morning snack for us. |
 |
| Traditional Chinese coffee and tea mixed together with milk. |
We walked
through the Central and Western districts, learned about how feng shui
influenced much of the architecture in the city, visited a temple, and rode the
world’s longest escalator.
 |
| The world's longest escalator. |
 |
| Esther ringing the gong in the temple for good luck. |
Our guides
took us to a restaurant for a traditional dim sum lunch, where again we were
the only foreigners in the joint. Ski
ordered everything, and we sat at a large round table with a lazy susan to
rotate all the dishes to everyone.
Almost everything was delicious!
The bill for the amount of food we had seemed very reasonable.
 |
| Ski passes out chopsticks. |
 |
| We managed to polish off just about everything - delicious! |
 |
| This wasn't exactly what we first thought. |
After
lunch, we walked back to the Star Ferry for our return to the Kowloon side and
then the ship. Ski and Eugene were
amazing, providing so much insight into the culture, customs, and politics of
Hong Kong. We found out that the one of
the highest-paying jobs in Hong Kong is private tutor, to give students that
extra competitive edge after finishing their regular school day. And we were entertained to learn that the
Minute Hotel was not actually what we thought the name implied – instead, young
married couples visit the hotel so they can have privacy since they typically
live with their extended families in small flats.
Ski Yeo, our
guide, owns Bigfoot Tours, and here is her contact information:
Mobile: (+852) 60752727
We
could not recommend her more highly! By
the end of the day, we felt like she and Eugene were our good friends.
Hong
Kong is also a wonderful port to sail in and out of on a cruise ship, with
amazing views of all the skyscrapers built on the side of the mountains,
extravagantly lit up at night.
Manila, Philippines
Our
next stop was Manila, where I grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s, from the age of
4 until I graduated from high school in 1974 (minus a couple of years in
Virginia and Thailand in 4th and 5th grade). So I was filled with anticipation as we
approached the port. Since 40 years had
passed since I was last there, I knew it would be very different, and it
was. Still, so much was as I remembered
it.
My
sisters, Pat and JoAnne, and their husbands were part of our group. We were lucky that one of our best friends
from high school, Andy Butler, was in Manila visiting his sister at the same
time, and he arranged a mini-van and a tour for us for the day. We first drove out to the Manila American
Cemetery and Memorial, located in Ft. Bonifacio, Metro Manila.
With a total of 17,206 graves, it has the
largest number of graves of any cemetery for U.S. personnel killed during World War II and holds war dead from the Philippines and other allied nations. The cemetery looks very similar to the one we
visited in Luxembourg last year. And it
hasn’t changed a bit since I last saw it in the 1970’s. Well worth a visit, both for its overall
beauty and for the mosaics that display a history of World War II in the
Pacific on the walls of the circular memorial.
 |
| The American Cemetery - just as beautiful as 40 years ago. |
 |
| Beautiful mosaics on the memorial walls about the war. |
Next
we drove back downtown to see Intramuros, the historic walled city first built
by the Spanish. After a little time
shopping, we had a buffet lunch of traditional Filipino dishes and
desserts. Pat’s high school boyfriend,
still living in Manila, was able to meet us for lunch. After lunch, Andy had arranged for a
Filipino guide to take us through Intramuros, with stops at St. Augustine
Church, the oldest church in Manila, the Manila Cathedral, and the old city
walls.
 |
| The Manila Cathedral |
Manila
is not generally known as a tourist destination, and rightly so. It is a crowded, polluted, dirty city with
very visible poverty, and not a lot of beautiful attractions. Traffic is unbelievably bad, and it can take
hours to cover distances of only a few miles at times. Yet it is still the place where I grew up,
still holds some of my fondest memories, and still is home to a number of my
friends from high school. Also, the
Filipinos are the nicest, friendliest people on earth, and one of the multitude
of reasons I like cruising so much is that the ships are usually full of
Filipino staff. I never tire of talking
to them about my experiences in their country, trying out the limited Tagalog
words and phrases I still remember, and telling them a joke or two. So for the rest of the group, Manila was
probably not a highlight on this itinerary.
But for me, it was one of the main reasons to go.
Boracay, Philippines
I’m
not sure I’m buying it. Although we were
only in port for a short time, my impression was that Boracay has been
over-commercialized, with hundreds of hotels and bars lining White Beach, the
most famous beach on the island. We did
an “island-hopping” excursion by Celebrity, which consisted of riding along the
coast line of the island for a few hours, with three stops for snorkeling, and
a short stop on a different beach. The
white sand beaches are pretty, and the water and snorkeling were nice, but this
is not your exclusive, far from civilization kind of resort area. For a younger crowd, the nightlife and the
inexpensive costs are probably strong selling points, though.
 |
| The sky was crowded with parasails. |
As
we sat on our balcony on the ship just before sailing, I counted 11 parasails in
the air at one time. Even the skies at
this beach were crowded.
Kota Kinabalu
 |
| On our way to Manukan Island |
One
of the many things I learned on this trip was that Borneo is the third-largest
island in the world (after Greenland and New Guinea). Kota Kinabalu is located on the northwestern coast
in the part of the island belonging to Malaysia. Kota Kinabalu is the capital of the state of
Sabah, and gets its name from the nearby Mt. Kinabalu.
Some
of our group took a cultural tour excursion offered by Celebrity and went to a
cultural center for demonstrations of native dances, sampling local food, and
exposure to native culture. Esther and I
took a boat to a nearby marine park island called Manukan Island.
We did a little snorkeling off the beach and
walked around the island a bit. It was a
pretty, if unremarkable spot.
 |
| We never figured out why these shacks were built over the water. |
In
fairness, this was another short stop on the itinerary so there was little
opportunity to experience much. What we
did experience was not very unique compared to many of our ports. One odd thing we noticed was hundreds of small houses or shacks built on stilts over the water. We never found out why - maybe the water was considered public domain so no purchase of land was required.
Singapore
Of
all our ports, Singapore may be the one I would most like to go back to, to
explore in more detail. Singapore is a
beautiful, modern city with an interesting mix of cultures and a rich history
as a strategic port in the region. We
had embarked on the cruise here two weeks earlier, but saw little except the
airport hotel and the cruise terminal.
The itinerary included an overnight here upon on return, so we arrived
in port at 2:00 PM on a Saturday, and would disembark Sunday morning for the
airport.
We
had our final private tour arranged from 3:00 to 10:00 PM. Unfortunately, the guide we booked had an
accident and had to send a substitute.
Walter picked us up in a mini-van and gave us a great tour of the city.
 |
| Esther in front of the Merlion |
We saw the Merlion statue, the icon of Singapore,
half lion, half mermaid. We walked through downtown areas with some of
the more historic buildings and visited the Singapore National Museum. No tour of an Asian city is complete without
a visit to a temple, so we did that.
Actually, the temple visits were all enlightening because you learn a
lot about the culture and customs. We did
not go in the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, which was the largest one we saw, a
whopping four stories high.
 |
| One of Buddha's teeth is in a box on the 4th floor. Really. |
So named
because on the fourth floor, they reportedly have a tooth of Buddha’s (the
original guy!) in a box. Wow.
 |
| Is this a common problem in Singapore? |
Although
not one of my major things, everyone seemed to enjoy the shopping in Chinatown. Next we went to the Gardens by the Bay, a
park built on reclaimed land with gardens and two domes, filled with vegetation
from all over the world. The Gardens by
the Bay are also home to the “Supertrees,” which are man-made structures up to
160 feet tall. A variety of plants are grown
on the structures, and they are strung with lights. At sunset, we watched a magnificent
computerized light show on the Supertrees coordinated with Star Wars music, which
would have made Walt Disney proud. Dinner was in the restaurant complex in the
park and consisted of traditional Singaporean dishes.
 |
The Supertrees in the daylight....
|
 |
| And at night during the music and light show! |
After
the light show, we boarded a bumboat at Clarke Quay, a vibrant waterfront
filled with restaurants and night spots, and cruised over the Marina Bay Sands,
one of the most recognizable buildings in Asia, if not the world. The building has three 55-story hotel towers,
with a sky terrace that spans all three towers.
The most famous feature of the sky terrace is the 478-foot-long infinity
pool, over 600 feet above the ground.
You can’t miss this building no matter where you are in Singapore. We watched the laser light and water show at
the Marina Bay Sands, which was not as impressive as the Supertree light
show. The building incorporates a huge
casino (Esther and I ran in quickly to get a chip for our collection), and a
multi-level shopping mall of high-end shops.
 |
| The Singapore skyline at night from our bumboat on the river. |
 |
| The Marina Bay Sands |
As
we returned to the ship, we noted to our guide Walter that we were surprised
how little traffic there was on a Saturday night. He explained that in order to own a car in
Singapore, you must first apply for and buy a Certificate of Entitlement, which
can cost $100,000. Then you can buy and
own a car for 10 years, until you need to get a new COE. Walter said a Toyota Prius could cost
$120,000. No wonder there aren’t that
many cars.
 |
| Our favorite bartender Thomas makes us "the usual" on our last night. |
We
returned to the ship at 10:00 PM, made our final visit to our favorite
bartender for “the usual,” and packed up to leave the next day.
Six
of our group got off the ship the next morning to catch a 6:00 AM flight
home. My sister Pat and her husband
Deke, and Esther and I went to the airport the next morning to fly back to
Manila for a 5-day visit. Too much to
include with this blog.
This
was a great trip to some wonderful destinations on one of our favorite cruise
lines, Celebrity. Please leave your
comments about your similar experiences or leave questions and I will try to
answer them.
