Beijing/Shanghai and a Princess Southeast Asia Cruise - Dec 2009

Day 12: Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

6th cruise day: Hong Kong, China

Wow! What a day in Hong Kong! Just as everyone predicted, Hong Kong is our favorite city so far on this trip. It is remarkable with its beautiful city skyline, picturesque green mountains and pretty beaches. Plus, the city is one big shopping mall after another – we thought Beijing and Shanghai had a lot of malls, but this was unbelievable. We seriously went into 5 giant shopping malls yesterday and didn't cover even a ¼ of all there is in Hong Kong. They are serious shoppers! Luckily the prices are so high – especially electronics – that we aren't buying anything here because we can get the same stuff much cheaper in the US. And the things that are really cheap – stuff they sell in the local markets – is of such poor quality that we're not even bothering to do any real shopping. It looks like we won't need to buy another suitcase after all as we didn't buy a lot in China thinking we would get stuff in Hong Kong, and then realized Hong Kong was too expensive!

Our day started early and we were off the ship by 8:30am after a quick continental breakfast from the buffet. Princess docked in Kowloon, at the Ocean Terminal, which is of course connected to a giant shopping center. We walked towards the Star Ferry terminal through one floor of the shopping center that was nothing but children's stores of all high end brands, like Burberry. We didn't even know that these designers make children's clothes! There was an information booth at the Star Ferry and we found out we could only buy a transportation “octupus card” from a metro station so we used cash to get a token for our first ferry ride over to Hong Kong Island. It was a very fast ferry ride and we were amazed to see so many boats in the small harbor...this made the water very chopping as all these ferries and fishing boats passed back and forth, but luckily Hunter didn't get sea sick because it was only a 10 min ride. The ferry dropped us off at Central and we made a detour into the nearby metro station to buy the octopus card so we could have a “fast pass” for paying for all the bus rides we were going to take. Each card cost $150 HKD with $100 in transportation and $50 as a deposit. If you return the card within 30 days for a refund, they assess a $7 HKD fee. We then walked to Exchange Square and passed IFC I and II, two giant glistening glass buildings, one of which used to be the world's tallest in the late 1990s. One of those buildings housed the Capital Group offices. Exchange Square is the main bus terminal and we easily found Express Bus 260 which took us to Stanley Market.

The bus ride to Stanley Market made it worth the trip just in and of itself. The bus system is amazing in Hong Kong. Most are double-deckers, with giant widows and comfortable seats, like the ones you would find on the coach buses in the US. But the buses are really narrow in width, which we found out is needed because the country roads are so narrow! These bus drivers give the NYC taxi drivers a run for their money in daring driving. Hunter and I sat in the front two seats on the top deck so we had great views of the trip, and we were holding our breaths as the bus would stop at a stoplight literally inches behind the bus in front of it! There were buses EVERYWHERE in the city and getting out of the Central district to the roads leading to the southern end of the island was a bit chaotic. But we got to see the Central district as the bus drove through the crowded streets of skyscrapers and shopping malls. Then, once out of the busy section, we got to enjoy the beautiful scenery. The bus route to Stanley Market took us up over the mountains, past Repulse Bay, where we got to enjoy incredible vistas of the crescent shaped beach with smooth sand and blue water. We couldn't believe such a fast-paced NYC-like city could also have the advantages of such nice beaches! The roads twisted and turned and the bus crisscrossed lanes whenever it felt like it, but made sure it got back to the left side of the road before the oncoming jaguars and bentleys and mercedes benz cars came zooming past us on the other side. The bus drivers actually have speed reader boxes handing from the ceilings so passengers can see how fast they are going – I guess it's to allow passengers to complain if they're going too fast?

We made the bus ride in one piece and got off at Stanley market. It was still early, around 10am and the market stalls were just setting up. There were a few toy stores in there and a lot of the same goods we've seen elsewhere – chinese scarves, shirts, ties, etc. Surprisingly we were never hassled to come in and look around – they left us alone as we walked up and down the stalls. We then ventured down to the promenade, then started to walk towards St. Stephen's beach until we could peer down from the top of the hill to see the view. We then walked through Stanley Plaza, another shopping center, where we visited the ATM and pharmacy. We ended up at the bus stop, but we didn't see signs for bus 73 which we wanted, so we asked a young British man if any of the buses went to Aberdeen. We found a few and then boarded a minibus (#52) that pulled up. The minibus ride was also fun – he sped along down the winding roads until someone ran the bell to stop and they got off.

The area around Stanley Market is home to some beautiful and very expensive apartments because the views of the water are so incredible. We passed some real estate stores and saw that even the rundown apartments of less than 1,000 sq ft were going for over $1 million USD. There were a lot of international people (mainly British) in the area, walking their dogs in the morning and eating in cafes, and all of the signs were in Cantonese and English so it was very easy to get around.

We got off the minibus at Aberdeen, which is also on the south end of the island and is where the local fishing people live in their boats. We walked along the riverfront promenade and found a sampan ride which took us for 30 min around the harbor area past all the boats. This was a unique experience. We picked a sampan operator that was run by a very old woman with tons of wrinkles and a funny pointed hat, like what you see in the old movies. She looked like something right out of a picture of Hong Kong 30 years ago. Her partner in crime was a one-eyed Chinese man who spoke almost no English and just yelled at passer-bys to hop in the boat. Or at least we think that is what he was yelling about! The sampan itself was cool – it was an old wooden motorboat that could probably hold a good 25 people sitting on the hard wooden benches around the side of the boat and on a strip up the middle. ¾ of the boat was covered in a canvas roof, offering shade protection. The keel was covered in side by side rubber tires. There were lots of tires everywhere, held together by thick rope so the boats could crash into things without damaging anything. The boat ride took us around the Jumbo, the famous floating restaurant, and we saw the beautiful red/green/black chinese decor-ed front, and then the decrepit, falling down, moldy section of the back! Talk about fake appearances! The boat then drove past hundreds of wooden boats, from large fishing boats, to smaller houseboats, to canoe-like boats with 3 people. Some of these boats are where people live full time. We could see lines of clothes and pots and pans hanging out to dry. Our favorite boat was a medium sized one that had two rows of dead fish drying out clipped to the clothes lines, and then a third clothes line of men's and women's clothes. Yum – how good those shirts must smell after they are dried out! One thing that really surprised us was that the water was actually pretty clear. We expected to be floating in dark, murky brown water, like you would see in the Atlantic, because of the pollution from all the motor boats, but surprisingly the water was a clear turquoise with very few pieces of garbage floating in it.

After the interesting boat ride, we took another boat that dropped us off at the Jumbo restaurant. We decided to splurge on an authentic chinese lunch of dim sum as the restaurant is very famous. The inside was exquisite. Everything was very fancy with hard wooden slabs that served as charter plate, and heavy carved chopsticks. The chairs were arranged in groups around the table. We had a table for 4 and two chairs were placed side by side on the pointed ends of the table. They moved two of them to the side so we could sit down facing the flat part of the table, but Hunter went to move another chair back to its side of the table and they promptly moved it back to the pointy end of the table. That was the first of probably several taboos we made in the restaurant. We figured out how to order dim sum and then just picked at it with our chopsticks, and only later realized they gave us a third set of chopsticks to use to remove the pieces from the platters onto our plates. The waiters hovered over us so as soon as the last morsel left the serving plate, they whisked it away and plopped down the next dim sum dish. The food was very, very, good, although it gave us our fill of dim sum for a while! We stuck to pork and shrimp dishes. The restaurant had very high end food on the dinner menu and we saw one dish of a very rare fish that was sold at $15,000 HKD, ~2,000 USD! That must be some tasty fish!

After the boat ride back from the restaurant to the promenade, we walked to the bus terminal and found one that took us to Causeway Bay, probably the largest shopping area on Hong Kong Island. This place was unbelievable! There were literally 10 giant shopping malls all in the same area. We walked through 4 or 5 of them, wide-eyed, counting all the different stores we saw. Many were the American brands, and we spotted several Starbucks cafes, crepe shops, gelato stands, and even Toys 'R Us. As we said before, the prices were much higher compared to the US, so we didn't buy anything, which saved us a lot of money!

It was well after 4pm by the time we finished up with the shopping malls and we took the metro to another district called Wan Chai, where we visited a “computer mall” which was nothing but tiny shops selling computers, camcorders, cameras, flash drives, etc. There was one really cool store selling spy gear with hidden video cameras! Luckily everything was too expensive so we didn't buy yet another computer! We then hopped on another bus which drove towards the Central District. The bus driver spoke English (as it seems everyone does in Hong Kong and their English is very, very good, too. We had forgotten it was under British authority before passing to China and you can definitely see the western influences the most in HK than in the other cities we've visited so far). We asked the driver to point out which stop was closest to the Victoria Peak tram, and he did, and it was only a short 5 min walk uphill to the tram. The tram is a very old cable-car transportation system that takes you up to the top of Victoria's Peak, the highest point on Hong Kong island. It was very crowded with people as it was getting to be around sunset and people were going up to the top for the nighttime views and for the eating in one of the many restaurants housed in the shopping complex at the top. One restaurant was Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company! We got there after 5pm and it took about 40 minutes of waiting in line and the tram ride included to get to the top. It was well worth the wait and the money to see those views! Unfortunately the nighttime fog was starting to set in, but it was still breathtaking to peer down on the tall skyscrapers twinkling with white and colored lights, and to watch all the boats in the harbor and the ferries making their crossings back and forth from the island. There is a lot of history on the peak tram and its role in WWII and we saw a display that had an actual newspaper from 1941 with articles about Hong Kong Island's surrender to the Japanese. We took a lot of photos and some video and then waited in line to take the tram back down.

Our timing was perfect and we caught the Express bus (15C) back to the Central ferry pier to take the Star Ferry back to Kowloon, where we walked to the riverfront promenade. It was 7:45pm at this point and the place was packed with throngs of people waiting to see the 8pm light show. Everyone had told us to be in Kowloon for the light show, as the lights on the buildings on HK Island are much nicer than the buildings on the Kowloon side. We found an opening near the front and were able to hear the narration and the music as the lights danced and flashed in synchronization to the music. What a fun light show! It was like seeing the 4th of July fireworks, but you can see this every night! It was only a 10-min show, but worth the trouble of seeing it from the promenade.

After the light show, we were STILL GOING (like little energizer bunnies) but decided we needed food to keep moving. We started walking down the famous Nathan Road in search of a restaurant. Most of the street was flanked by stores and yes, you guessed it, more shopping malls so it took us a while to find a restaurant (which we found in the i-Square shopping mall). It was a cafe that sold American and Chinese food. Hunter ordered a bacon cheeseburger and
I had spaghetti bolognese which came covered in melted cheese like a ziti.

Nathan Road area reminds us of Time Square and is what we pictured Tokyo would be like. There are huge neon flashing billboards that are suspended over the street or attached to the large shopping complexes. And there are crowds of people everywhere! It was like walking down the Strip in Las Vegas at 10pm and being amazed at how many people are still up and walking around. Even the side streets off Nathan Road were glowing with neon signs and filled with people. We wonder if it is always this crowded, or if it is especially so since it is one day before Christmas Eve. It is also Winterfest, a 5-week celebration in Hong Kong where the city is adorned with Christmas displays of brightly lit christmas trees and giant bells and snow flakes, etc., so we saw a lot of families and groups of teenagers taking pictures in front of the displays.

We managed to walk all the way to Temple Street without our legs giving way and started the long market walk. There were stalls upon stalls of the same stuff – mostly junk – so we didn't buy anything but thought it was fun to just watch all the people combing over the hair ties and bracelets and fake watches and leather belts and broken electronics. Surrounding the market stalls were two rows of local cooking stands. Temple Street Night Market is supposed to be a good place to try local delicacies, but after our dim sum lunch, we thought we had enough local flavor for the day! We then passed by streets of jade sellers, near where the jade market was, which was closed at night. We are glad we made it to the temple market because the busy activity was something to see.

At 11:05pm we flagged down a taxi, thinking our busy day was over and we were on our way safely home to the ship. But we had one more fun adventure. We told our taxi diver to take us to Ocean Terminal where the cruise ship was and showed him the spot on the map. He said, “oh, ok, Ocean Center” and we thought Center and Terminal could be interchangeable so we said ok. He then proceeded to drive us to the outskirts of the city, which didn't look right, and then stopped in a parking lot full of cars and teenagers sitting on the cars. He brought us to a drifting challenge! We immediately said, “no, no, this isn't right” and took out the map again. He took a more careful look and then laughed and said he knew where that was. Thank goodness! We didn't want to get abandoned at a drifting challenge! Luckily, we made no more detours and we got back on the ship in one piece, a little after 11:30pm. What a day! We crashed immediately and didn't wake up even once during the night.

Day 15: Saturday, December 26th, 2009

9th cruise day: Hue, Vietnam

Our first day in Vietnam! We pulled into port before 6:30am and passed by many small fishing boats in the harbor. The view was beautiful as there were beautiful, tall, green mountains near the pier, which we later learned were the mountains separating Vietnam and Laos. The captain said they were late docking because the pilot boat met them late, but they quickly got immigration officials on board to clear us. Hunter and I ran into two of them in the hallway and they were SCARY! They were dressed in their green military uniforms and looked ominous as they weren't smiling. We grabbed a quick breakfast and then packed up for the day for our tour of Hue and the Perfume River Cruise. We met in the Cabaret Lounge and were released for the bus 10 min early.

We were in the B2 tour group that had less than 40 people. Our shuffleboard partner-in-crime, Jim, was on board, and we finally introduced ourselves as we keep running into each other throughout the cruise ship. We had a very pleasant tour guide who spoke a lot of English, but was difficult to understand sometimes as she couldn't pronounce “c” or “r” in her words. She was a petite young woman, probably no more than 30-ish and was originally from Saigon before moving to Hue. She told us a lot of interesting facts about Hue and the Vietnamese and proved the benefit of taking an organized tour instead of going off on your own.

Our tour started with a bumpy bus ride to Hue. The guide said the ride would take one hour, but it was more like 1 ½ hours each way. The main road leading out of the pier was a dirt road and we passed by more scary looking police at booth stations exiting the pier. The bus ride to Hue took us past many small villages, which were really just one road with shanty tin-roof houses (with sand bags holding down the roofs) . There were small boxes that looked like oversized open-faced mailboxes that were shrines where family members would pray for deceased parents and grandparents. Then each village had multiple large shrines which were places to worship 3rd and 4th generation ancestors. Only 2 generations of family members could be worshiped in the home. It is difficult to know who is related to who across all these villages, so once a year in the beginning of the new year, all relatives make a pilgrimage to the large family shrine, at which point you look around to see who you are related to, so that, as our tour guide said, “you don't fall in love with your relative,” The villages were very rundown and looked very 3rd world. In between villages were acres and acres of rice paddie fields with workers plowing the field. Even though a few rich farmers can afford motorized plows, most of the farmers we passed on the journey were literally plowing their fields with a wooden plow pulled by 2 water buffalo. The water buffalo were everywhere! We don't know how the farmers keep track of them as they wander into the roads and munch on grass growing in the cemeteries. The bus stopped once off the side of the road so everyone could get out and take pictures of the rice farmers plowing nearby. There was a small boy on the road, balancing on one foot on top of a water buffalo, hand outstretched for money. Another little boy in a ragged t-shirt walked up to people, poking them, begging for money. We saw little kids everywhere, and so many of them! Our tour guide later told us that 5 and 9 are very lucky numbers to the Vietnamese and each farming family tries to have 5 or 9 children. Only 20% of children go to school and the rest help their families on the rice paddies. We also think the parents exploit the children for money and we saw several mothers parading their babies and young children in front of tourists begging for money. It was very sad.

We also passed eucalyptus trees in the fields and learned that eucalyptus oil is a very popular remedy for pregnant women. The rub it on their bellies all during pregnancy and for three years after the birth of the child. Kem never said what it was for, (prevents stretch marks or promotes fertility!) but said the men hate the smell but the women wear it anyway. I'll have to look for a big bottle to take home for Liz! We also learned that the Vietnamese want at least 1 son with their huge family and if after 9 children they don't get any sons, they blame the wife and the husband is allowed to go out and have an extramarital affair with another woman to try to produce a son. Nice thought – after giving birth to 9 children you still have to watch your husband dally with another woman!

The mountain range was so beautiful and a great backdrop to the wide murky rivers carrying the motorized dragon boats and fishing boats and sand boats. The trees were tall and green, although we weren't in the “jungle” area that you hear about when talking about the jungle warfare of the Vietnam war. However, Vietnam was exactly like what we pictured and we don't think much changed in the 40 or so years since the start of the Vietnam War. There is a lot of road construction being done on the route to Hue, and even in the city, but instead of Caterpillar bulldozers and forklifts, the construction is predominantly done by men with shovels and pointed hats – and sometimes working barefoot! At this rate, the construction will never be done! Our tour guide told us that one of the fancy hotels in Hue took 10 years to complete because the sponsors kept pulling out and the government delayed the project many times in hope of finally getting financial aid from Unesco and other agencies. The hotel opened just 1 month ago and looked very nice – it had a lot of French architectural influences to it, which could be seen in many buildings in Hue. Kem also talked about corruption and said it is EVERYWHERE. Each time we crossed a bridge, we were stopped by policeman who made the driver turn over $10 or $20 USD as “payment” for crossing the bridge because we were a large van with many passengers. That money, Kem said, goes straight into their pockets. The chairman of the city makes only $500 USD per month on his government salary but takes home a total of $10,000 USD per month when you factor in all the bribes and special payments he receives from his dominant position in the city. The average city resident (60% of the Hue city residents work in the tourism industry) take home on average $300 per month. Government employees take home an average of $500/month while rice farmers earn only $50-$100/month.

The bus ride pulled into the city of Hue, and we thought it was more like a larger town than an actual city, but it is the 3rd largest city in Vietnam behind Saigon and Hanoi. Hue maintained its pro-US sentiments and the tour guide made many disparaging remarks about the NVA and talked about the heroics of the US soldiers during the fighting in Hue. We passed several markets and street vendors selling scarfs and ceramics and china and touristy items like t-shirts and pointed hats.

Our first stop was at an embroidery factory next to the Century Hotel that later served us lunch. We were ushered into stuffy rooms where very young woman in long beautiful silk gowns were hunched over sheets of silk, embroidering patterns by hand. They encouraged us to take pictures, which made them seem like the workers themselves were on display. Throughout this whole trip, we felt bad taking pictures as every place we went, the tour operators treated the locals like items in a zoo, there for our amusement and picture taking. More on that later....the embroidery was gorgeous and so inexpensive! We would have loved to buy a framed print but have limited room. We later saw many much simpler patterns being sold in the markets for $1-$5 USD. We picked up the Perfume Riverboat cruise at the pier near the embroidery shops. On board, older women and men were eagerly ready to sell us silk pajamas, robes, and embroidery prints. Our tour guide passed around a binder that contained old photos of the wartime in Hue in 1968 and we saw American soldiers rescuing local people, wounded soldiers being helped to safety, and other pictures of the city of Hue during the war.

The riverboat cruise lasted only 30 minutes but gave us great views of the tourist dragon boats and of the canoes paddled by the locals. We also passed several sandboats, which were large flat motorboats with holes in the bottom from which a worker would shovel out heaps of sand from the bottom of the river. We learned that after they pay off the policeman guarding the river banks, a boat operator can sell a boatload of sand to construction companies for $10-$50 per boat. Unfortunately, this drains the river of the rich sand that allows the microorganisms to survive and which used to give the river its fragrant perfume smell. Now the river is just murky and smelly in a not-so-good way.

As we pulled in to the dock to end our tour, we passed a canoe boat with a very old woman, hunched over, covered in wrinkles, wearing a pointed hat, just like you would see in the old pictures of Vietnam. She paddled right up to the side of our boat and tried to squeeze in between our boat and another dragon boat, as the passengers on our boat shouted “look out, you are going to crush her!” She then tried to leap from her boat onto our boat, trying to get up so she could see us and beg for money. Our boat driver kind of just pushed her boat aside, preventing her from climbing up. She was so desperate for money she was willing to crush her boat!

The perfume river boat stopped at the Thien Mu Pagoda, also known as the Temple of the Heavenly Lady Pagoda. We got a lot of good history on it and then proceeded further into the temple area to see the monks. Each family tries to send one son to the temple to become a monk, either for financial reasons as they can't support all their children, or because they think it is lucky to have a religious son. The monks start as early as 10 years old and get special haircuts to show they are novice monks until they pass all exams. Our tour guide pulled over one novice monk and made him answer questions for us and pose for pictures. Again, we felt like we were at a zoo gawking at unusual things and felt very bad for the monks who were trying to go about their day, interrupted by picture-snapping people.

We continued the tour by driving back across a white bridge that had its own lane for motorcycles as EVERYONE rode motorcycles instead of bikes. We then went back to the Century hotel for a big buffet lunch of lots of kinds of rice and noodles, beef satays, pork and different shrimp dishes, with a few cakes and fruits as desserts. They basically ran out of food once our tour group got there – the last one out of many Princess tours that stopped there – and we got the bottom of the barrel. Surprisingly the food was good and luckily didn't make us sick! We had free soft drinks, waters and beers, and the waters all came with protective plastic wrap over the top so you know it was unopened. I kept flashing back to the movie Slumdog Millionaire where the restaurant waiters refilled plastic water bottles with tap water and then resealed the caps with glue. I felt much safer that there was unbroken plastic seal covering the main plastic seal. There was a wedding going on in the hotel with a beautiful young bride and the guests were all dressed in fancy outfits.

We were supposed to have an hour and a half for lunch and more shopping at the embroidery factory, but most people finished their shopping early and so we headed out by 2pm, a half hour ahead of schedule. This gave us time to stop at the busiest food market in Hue, which was unbelievable. We passed by market stalls selling fully chopped up pigs – they sold platters of giant pig ears and calfs with the black hoof still on the foot/leg! We also saw pig intestines, pig hearts and so many kinds of fish, all chopped up and sliced open so you could see the insides. You should see the kinds of photos we got – it was truly disgusting from our point of view, as we would never buy food like that – just sitting out exposed to the air for all those hours – and the food parts were so unbutchered and distinguishable that you felt as though you were buying an actual body part of the pig. But these are delicacies to the Vietnamese and they were buying this stuff in bag-fulls!

After the eye-opening trip to the market we drove to the Royal Ruins to see the tomb of the second king of the last Vietnamese Dynasty. We couldn't see the actual tomb as the stone wall that enclosed it was locked since a fire broke out there several years ago as a result of teenager negligence lighting a camp fire nearby. But we saw the beautiful imperial grounds with waterways for the king's canoe. The lush park-lake hectare was a great contrast to the dusty impoverished streets of Hue. On the walk from the bus to the imperial grounds, we had to walk down a dirt road which was bordered to the left by a barbed wire fence. There were mothers and children on the other side and the little boys climbed through holes in the barbed wire with platters of bananas singing “have a banana. Won't you buy our bananas?” and the mothers held up their babies with distended bellies begging us to buy the bananas to help their babies. Everything was on sale for one dollar – as soon as you got off the bus there were old 70-ish year old women selling coins on a chain for $1 dollar. We again had that impression we were walking through a zoo just gawking at people. It was not a pleasant feeling.

The sightseeing aspect of the tour ended at 3:45pm and we started our bus ride back, which didn't take an hour as the tour guide planned, but more like 1 ½ hours. We avoided collisions with wooden log-bearing trucks more than once although Hunter didn't think we would make it home alive. There was constant horn honking as our bus driver swerved into the on-coming traffic lane in order to pass the truck or motorbike in front of him. It was a ride to remember! We got back to the ship with 10 minutes to spare and were the last tour bus.

We are glad we did the Princess tour as our guide was very informative about Vietnamese life and we got some basic sightseeing in. The city of Hue is not impressive and we really weren't interested in the pagoda or imperial tomb, but the drive through the small towns, and seeing the boats on the wide murky rivers surrounded by the mountain range was worth the trip. Vietnam has not changed very much in 40 years and we can't wait to see what Saigon looks like!

The rest of the night was uneventful. We quickly showered and attended the entertainment show, which was scheduled tonight before dinner at 7pm. It was the comedian, Mike Newman from Ireland, who was probably in his early 70s and did a basic comedy routine with some raunchy humor but mostly puns. We then ate dinner with Connie and Tony and had beef short ribs, before heading to the Tahitian Lounge for Wii Sports night with Chantal and Ian. Only our new friend Jim was there playing (playing Wii for the first time!) and so Hunter got to play a lot of rounds of Mario Kart. Everyone was having such a great time that we past the ending time and other cruise passengers had to send over a waiter to ask Chantal when they were finishing so the dancing could begin! I was wiped out and hit the pillow as soon as we got back to the room.

Beijing/Shanghai and a Princess Southeast Asia Cruise - Dec 2009

a travel blog by mohicanfan

Day 11: 5th cruise day - Day at Sea

Taipei, Taiwan

Day 12: Hong Kong, China (6th cruise day)

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Day 13: Hong Kong / Macau, China (7th cruise day)

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Day 14: 8th cruise day - Day at Sea

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Day 15: Hue, Vietnam (9th cruise day)

Hue, Vietnam

Day 16: 10th cruise day - Day at Sea

Hue, Vietnam

Day 17: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (11th cruise day)

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Day 18: 12th cruise day

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Day 19: 13th cruise day - Day at Sea

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Day 20: Singapore (14th cruise day)

Singapore, Singapore