THE cruise ship pulled out of Hong Kong harbor before sundown. Destination: three ports of call in the China Sea, Sanya in Hainan, Danang and Hai-phong,Vietnam. On board were 1,700 passengers, including eight members of the family, braving the prospect of stormy weather for a six-day bonding at sea.
The sea was choppy the first night and we had to forgo buffet at the top deck in favor of the dining room (called “Romeo and Juliet”) in the fourth deck which swayed less, but some took seasick pills to be safe. Fine dining was not for three hyperactive grandchildren, so when the sea was calm, the Windjammer restaurant on the ninth deck was the favorite.
Billed as a holiday cruise for all ages, there was something for everybody. Our son, daughter and daughter in-law had their gym and brisk walks, the kids their pool and games. My wife and I were content to lounge on deck chairs, looking at the sea and distant shores and enjoying the fresh air. It was smooth sailing altogether. There was so much food, and one is tempted to gorge oneself, so that by the fourth day we lost our appetite. Left-over food, served or untouched (which could have fed the hungry of the world), were “fed to the fishes,” a neat way of rationalizing food waste.
I didn’t bring two books (for my review) for fear of overreaching our plane baggage allowance, thinking that the compact wheelchair (for one who had a couple of spine and one hipbone surgeries) would be included in the 30-kilo limit for both of us. It was not. Fortunately the ship’s library yielded two titles (biographies of favorite authors Graham Greene and Ford Madox Ford).
We suggested this cruise to our family who had forbidden us from going on a trip on our own, and they agreed. They enjoyed their first holiday cruise, and talked about future cruises.
By noon the second day, the ship docked in Sanya, Hainan. We took the excursion to the “tallest Buddhist statue in the world” on the other side of the island. Hainan is known here for its “Hainanese chicken.” We left Sanya that evening without tasting the local dish. The guide said it was just boiled chicken but what made the difference was the sauce. We like it with ginger and hoisin. Philippine restaurants have made it a novelty dish.
Next stop was Danang, recalling the Vietnam war. Arriving in early dawn heavy with mist, the ship was met by scores of small oval-shaped dinghies manned singly or by two with one child. I was expecting the children would dive for coins thrown their way as the Badjaos do in Zamboanga, but we didn’t see any diving. The dinghies were rocking gently alongside the docked ship, the natives staring up at us.
During the Vietnam war Danang was the port of entry for US troops, equipment and supplies but we didn’t see vestiges of US-built structures on land. What they left behind was the pier capable of handling big ships. Quonset or fabricated buildings they probably built must have been dismantled by the victorious Vietnamese.
We didn’t see much of Danang for we left for Imperial Hue, the ancient royal capital. Our guide said it was built with the Forbidden City in Beijing in mind. The Citadel was rebuilt after the furious battles fought there during the Tet offensive in 1967. That was a turning point of the Vietnam war, for not long after President Johnson said he would no longer run for reelection and gradually withdrew US troops from Vietnam. However, the next president, Nixon, advised by Kissinger, prolonged the war by bombing North Vietnam and Cambodia, and figured in the Watergate scandal of cover-ups and lies about the war—ultimately leading to his resignation. His successor Gerald Ford presided over the ignominy of defeat in 1975.
The last port of call before returning to Hong Kong was Haiphong where we arrived in early morning seeing the Halong Bay islets, tall vertical mounds protruding from the water, celebrated in Oriental art. We skipped an eight-hour excursion to Hanoi; we opted for a visit along Haiphong’s bay-walk with its markets and eateries. Haiphong has become a tourist destination. Again I couldn’t help recall what Johnson’s navy provoked in Tonking Gulf to prompt the US Congress in passing a resolution to formally intervene in the local war.
One can wax lyrical about the sea evoking John Masefield’s “Sea Fever” (“I must go down to the seas again. . .”) inscribed on a wall in the cruise ship called “Legend of the Seas.” However, Joseph Conrad, usually cited for his tales of the sea, having served as ordinary seaman to chief mate and skipper of sailing ships, remembered long periods of boredom. In “Youth” he did rhapsodize (with tongue in cheek) about the romance of the sea. But Polish-born Conrad read a lot in his berth or stateroom and mastered English as a mariner to be able to write, after 15 years of sea duty, classics in fiction like Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, and Nostromo.
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