After 2 weeks of cruising around Siam Bay and the South China Sea, we have docked in Singapore and are going to be spending a few days around town to check out a few more sites before heading back to the US.
Last night we celebrated the adventures with a little champagne and also enjoyed the great bottle of Portteus cab reserve we found in the wine shop in Georgetown on Penang, Malaysia 😀
Lots of people like to visit all the sites in the James Bond and Leonardo DiCaprio movies…
But we snuck off and headed to Chalong Pier to join a dive team headed to Racha Yair.
This is a popular spot for sure. Hundreds of divers from around the world. We chose Steve from Phuket Dash Scuba Dot Com. One of the best dive boats we have ever been on!
We did a 2 tank dive and will be updating this post with videos when we get back home. Wreck dive, sting rays, bat fish, Moray eels, lion fish, dancing shrimp…
And then and awesome local lunch between the dives 😀
Here are some videos:
We stopped at the island of Penang today.
Of course, we went running along the seaside course recommended by the Penang Forward Sports Club.
It was interesting that we kept getting buzzed by Mig-29s from the Malaysian Air Force. First it was the Thai Navy and not it is Malaysia…they were a little hard to see from my Nexus 6P camera, but the app calculated their speed at Mach .92 which was cool below 2,000 feet…
It was a combination of beach running, trail running and city running…but unfortunately most of the expensive Seaside real estate is being excavated for some reason with miles of construction equipment and digging.
Lots of historical buildings along the way.
And fortunately there are frequent little shops that are known as gurneys for this historical drive.
You need at least a liter of water for this 12K run in this heat and humidity. I found a cool shop next to this parking lot with lots of Rolls-Royce hanging out at the Pot cafe.
A lot of people wondered, can you buy wine in Malaysia? Because we explored on our run, we found a hidden wine shop 😎
and yes, we found a bottle of Portteus! Stay tuned! We are taking a break at a local place with some good music.
Running around the world is always fun. Some of my other favorite spots:
We pulled into a port known as Kelang.
It is definitely warm and humid… And it is hard to tell if the haze is pollution or the extreme humidity.
We then headed to Kuala Lumpur of course!
The city is a Las Vegas zoo. With Bellagio style fountains and music.
And very inexpensive shopping with a very strong dollar. Many things are 30%+ discount.
The highlight for us was a visit to the KL tower.
You can get a great view of the city and the Petronas Twin Towers.
And spot the hot/popular lunch spots since you have such a view from 300 meters up.
Here is what we did the next day in another part of Malaysia in my Georgetown blog posting.
You have to love a long weekend run when you can run for marathon length distances in record time!
This was in the Gulf of Siam headed from Thailand to Vietnam.
Running around the world is always fun. Some of my other favorite spots:
Since we had a half day layover in the port of Singapore, we decided to check out the secret NSA Echelon site that is in the northern part of Singapore.
But since it was heavily guarded with no access, we decided to tour the nearby Singapore zoo instead.
It was a unique zoo with numerous species that are rare not only to Singapore, but also other zoos. Everything is open and most animals are free to roam.
I was tempted, but decided to not feed the crocodiles. HUGE!
Monkeys and orangutans were everywhere and very friendly. They are all free to roam the park. They like to hang out and dance with you when it is feeding hour…
I think this is the first time I have ever seen a Komodo Dragon in real life. Cool!
Since it was an open zoological park, his little brother wanted to hang out with me and hear the latest Cybersecurity news since they do not have free Internet in the park.
We had a fun day exploring Saigon from a different point of view today. Very thankful for the $8 2 GB data SIM card. 🤡
It was a delight to explore the city as a local and not as a tourist. We did not see a single tourist, westerner or cruise passenger for the entire day 😬
The only time we saw anyone from the west was when we were getting a fruit juice made on this street with some local Vietnamese cherries.
The only hassle today was dealing with the local port authorities… They kept trying to scam us and state that we had to take a taxi to go the 300 meters to the port/gate exit. Ummmm… No… We jumped on a tourist bus and convinced them to take us to the gate and from there we arranged our plans 🤣
Oh yes, the traffic is based on waves of motor scooters, but if you have a good local guide, you can walk to almost every place you need to go.
We took a stroll through the local market around lunch time.
The local market and not the tourist market 🤡
You can an get some great tastes here for less than 2 dollars.
And even have a local Vietnamese coffee in the neighborhood Starbucks 😬 Much stronger than Seattle!
Stay tuned for more on this channel…
(you can sing along with the music if you like)
The city pretty much draped in black and white ribbons since the country is mourning the death of their 9th king who ruled the country for almost 70 years (world record for a dynasty).
We wanted to have a tea with the Prime Minister, but he was busy dealing with the latest Red and Yellow protests. It is interesting that the Red shirt political party is lead by a historic wealthy arms dealer who has organized the farming population of the country to upset the historical monarchy and Yellow shirt traditionalists. It sounds like every country is having the same political problems.
Regardless of protests, the traffic is brutal in Bangkok (like every large city). It felt like a combination of New Delhi and London. The drivers swarm everywhere, but they are very polite, follow all rules, never honking their horns. Quite efficient.
Of course, we had to visit the Royal Palace and Golden Temple (Stupa).
It was filled with millions of locals and tourists. The dominated crowd was Chinese and they will push you out of the way if you are in their way for more than ½ a second. The soldiers yell and whistle at everyone, but it does not make any difference.
This is definitely the most famous tourist stop in Bangkok and worth a visit, but you better be prepared for waves of people with no organization or controls…unless you want a Buddha tattoo. The city is filled with billboards and signs warning about this.
From there, we decided we needed a break, so we walked over to the canals and hopped on to one of the customary unique long canal boats.
You really get to see a different part of Bangkok by spending an afternoon cruising around the canals.
I know it is not a great comparison, but for a few minutes, it felt like we were cruising down the Mekong river in Vietnam/Cambodia again when seeing all the homes living along the river…we took a cruise along the Mekong previously that I posted in this trip posting of Cambodia and Vietnam a few years previous.
We grabbed a quick lunch near the local flower and vegetable market and then headed to Wat Pho. Yes, it is one of the 600+ temples in Bangkok. It is also holding a special memorial for the recently deceased King.
Now, what is Wat Pho famous for? Well, first, I will first share a pic of Marco Polo statues. What are they doing here? The Chinese traders used these giant statues in their empty boats to settle them and then dropped them off when they loaded up with tea and spices from Thailand. (notice the western style hats on them)
Now, here is the surprise: the reclining Buddha. I have to admit this is an amazing site to see and had the same allure, magic and experience of my visit to the Taj Mahal in India. A must see and hard to describe until you see it yourself.
And one final site before headed out of the city, we stopped and gave a visit and a listen to the temple on the mount known as Wat Saket. It has bells all along the exterior and in the wind, they make quite a melodic sound. Interesting montage of the old and new in this picture isn’t it?
You can also check out some of the other parts of Thailand we saw in these postings:
Surprisingly, the cruise ship has a very nice, large and modern fitness center (gym). Lots of equipment, free weights, treadmills, etc. The only disappointment is the gym is only open from 7 AM to 10 PM. You cannot get up early for a workout before an early breakfast if you want. As an alternate, we found, as runners, you can get a decent run around the ship on deck 7. You do have to run up and down some stairs at the front of the ship, but if you treat the ship run as a track workout, the stairs make a nice slowdown interval.
It is kind of fun as a GPS watch records your pace around 3:00 minute miles! 🙂
95% of Thailand is Buddhist, so we ventured over to see the giant Buddha known as Wat Phrayai.
He is not huge, but he is the landmark on Fan Island which is an island connected to the island of Ko Samui. He is about 30 feet tall and you can get some views of the water and beaches from the top.
Now, I have to admit that one the COOLEST elements of this area is the sci-fi metal artists. They have some AMAZING pieces of characters that they have made from various metal parts and welding.
I almost wish we could have purchased something and shipped it home…but my partner would have killed me to have a giant terminator statue in the living room…
From there, before heading back to the ship, we stopped by Wat Plai Laem which is an extension of the Buddha Temple and is best known for its famous (large) statue of Kwan Yin who is the 18-arm Buddhist avatar of Mercy. (sorry, I did not upload the giant avatar picture yet)
You can also actually find some western toilets versus the local holes in the ground…
We escaped the Thai Navy flotilla and we are now headed north towards a port that will enable us to reach Bangkok (blog posting now live). We also did some diving near Phuket Island while in Thailand (blog posting live).
Running around the world is always fun. Some of my other favorite spots:
David Cross Travel Blog 