USN59-79

I would suggest, rather than more ports, to spend more than 8 hours or so in each port. When I think of all the times we have stopped at Barcelona and each time we have seen something different. If they stayed one or two days in a port, you would have a choice or more than one excursion. The cruise line would have less fuel expenses and probably food expenses as many of us would be eating ashore. I think a 14 day cruise stopping in the same ports as a 7 day cruise could be less expensive for the cruise line and maybe less expensive for the cruisers.

I have never ordered wine to be delivered to my house. Are there some wines that can only be bought that way or is there some other reason to do that? Ray

Another pleasant, but dry day here in the Pacific NW. Who said it always rains in Seattle? Appreciate the mention of the Navy Birthday. I enjoyed serving my 20 years. Incidentally, my avatar, a helium atom, is the collar device I wore the six years I was a temporary Warrant Officer, during the Vietnam era. It signifies that my specialty was electronics. Ray

We expect to cruise around Japan beginning in March, 2023 aboard the Holland America ship Westerdam and return to Seattle when it repositions in May. It looks like it will happen as Japan is just starting to relax their covid travel restrictions.

One more holiday to celebrate today. Today is Double Ten Day in Taiwan. It is their National Day and celebrates the day in 1911 when a revolution started that led to the downfall of the Ching Dynasty and establishment of the Republic of China in 1912. Ray

I have never heard of a country placing a requirement like that on cruise ship passengers, particularly mid-cruise. I would refuse to buy it as I self-insure. I wonder what HAL's reaction would be to that? Ray

Forgot to mention about Vladivostok. Got this email from HAL in August concerning our upcoming Westerdam stop. "Please be advised that due to port closures we will no longer call to Vladivostok, Russia on Tuesday, April 18, 2023." They substituted Buson, South Korea for the stop.

We have visited Vladivostok a few times; usually just walked around the city and once visited that WW2 submarine. I noticed that most of the cars were Japanese with right hand drive although the Russians drive on the same side of the road as we do. I asked a local about it and he said that used cars from Japan were cheap, that the government in Moscow tried to discourage ownership of foreign cars, but they generally didn't pay much attention to what was said in Moscow. I have had a few motorcycles, the largest a 750 Honda. In 1969 I was commuting from Treasure Island to Berkeley on a Suzuki X6, a 250cc two stroke. It had maximum power at about 7000 rpm, so you had to give it the gas when you started out. When you did that, it would lift the front wheel a few inches in the first two gears. I was leaving the Bay Bridge toll booth and a CHP on a Harley was in the next booth. He immediately pulled me over. I asked what the problem was and he said it was for "Exhibition of speed". I finally talked him out of a ticket when explaining the differences between our two motorcycles. Ray

Had a wonderful day here today. Blue sky and about 75F. We have four friends (husbands and wives) from Taiwan who live in the area. We have been friends for the last 20 or so years, but haven't seen any of them since covid started in 2020. Today we all met at a local waterfront park for a pot luck lunch. It was good to see them all and talk about happenings in the last two years. Since we were all outside, masks weren't necessary. I loaned one friend a copy a book and cd for making your own will. He will make theirs and then he and his wife can witness ours and we can witness theirs. I lived about a mile from a two room country school from the first to sixth grade. First second and third grade in one room and fourth, fifth and sixth in the other. The school was built in 1897 and is still there, but when I drove by a couple of years ago it looked like they were enlarging it. We walked to school or rode our bicycles, but they did have a small shelter where you could keep your horse if you rode it to school. I think I got a great education there. Ray

It is interesting how many times I notice that Sara and I were on the same cruise as some of the Dailyites. @StLouisCruisers mentioned visiting Shanghai on the Diamond Princess in 2010. We were on her repositioning at that time but boarded in Beijing. In 2018 we boarded the Coral Princess at Los Angeles and disembarked at the same place 60 days later, so we visited Shanghai with the @Quartzsite Cruiserthen. This was the cruise that we stopped in Korea and toured the DMZ with Eddie Murphy who was the Executive Officer of the USS Pueblo when it was captured by North Korea and his first time back since the event. Ray

That is something to think about if I am ever tempted to buy a nice waterfront home. Ray

Another beautiful day in the Pacific NW. Should be about 75F every day for the next week. Still waiting for the Fall rains. Today's wine brings up memories. In the 1970s we lived in the San Francisco area. When out of town guests came we often took them to the Beringer winery in the Napa Valley at St Helena. They had caves that were dug by Chinese laborers in the 1800s after work on the transcontinental railroad was over that were used to store wine in wooden barrels. They also had wine tasting and a park to eat lunch and drink wine. We were new to wine then, and they sold a sweet desert wine called "Malvasia Bianca". Don't remember the price, but think it was more than that of today's wine. They had a special estate bottled version for about 4 times the price. I decided I didn't want to taste it because if it was so much better than the original I might no longer like the original and I knew I couldn't afford the expensive one. I grew up on a farm where if something broke we fixed it ourselves and became kind of a techie. Was an electronics repair person in the Navy and retired as a Master Chief Electronics Technician. Ray

A few years ago we subscribed to the local newspaper. We found that when a customer told the delivery person to hold the paper for a few days or weeks while out of town, the delivery person would pass that info to his friend who was a thief. We stopped our subscription. We let our neighbor know we will be gone so he can pick up any advertising newspapers that are thrown on our driveway which after a few days tell any drive by thief that the house is vacant. Prior to covid we have cruised 2 to 3 months each year and have not had a problem.

Thought I might mention something about stairs and us older people. I think the main concern is about falling on them rather than whether or not we have the strength to climb them. We have a two story house built into a hillside. The main living area is upstairs, but downstairs includes the laundry, two other bedrooms, a bath, living room and a large storage area plus a bar. I have to go downstairs to refill my wine glass, so I use the stairs daily. However, I am not concerned about falling because the stairs have a thick carpet with a pad. So if I fell, the tragedy would be in spilling my wine. A second language is how I met my DW. I was living in Taipei and wanted to learn Chinese. She had attended English school there, but the instructor was Japanese, so she needed to learn to pronounce the English words. We exchanged language lessons twice a week; she helping me with Chinese and I with her English. That was 60 years ago and her English is much better than my Chinese. Ray

In 1968 we were living near San Francisco and I was teaching at a Navy electronics school and we decided to buy a new car. I was interested in a Pontiac Firebird with the six cylinder engine. The salesman was only interested in talking about the monthly payments, not the cost of the car. I took out my pocket slide rule and figured the cost, which was close to $4K. The salesman sneered at me and said "If you want to save money on a car, maybe you should buy a Volkswagen." We went directly to the VW dealer and bought a VW fastback at about $2400. Ray

For @dfish I suggest you do a Google search for homes for sale in Midland, MI. A couple of sites like realtor.com and homes.com will come up describing about 300 available homes there with new ones added daily. Another thought is that a high percentage of current offers do not end in a sale as mortgage rates are increasing or a costly defect is found in the inspection. So that house may be back on the market again. Ray

@dfish I would suggest, if the seller is being so hard to deal with, that you have your realtor show you similar houses in that area that are for sale. It is possible that there are better houses at a similar price with more willing or reasonable sellers available. In our area, the hot real estate market is not so hot as it was a few months ago and many sellers have had to reduce their asking price. As mortgage rates have gone from 4% to 6%, there are not as many qualified buyers either. In other words, it has gone from a seller's market to a buyer's market. Ray

We visited the Shanghai zoo a few years ago and saw both the giant pandas and the red pandas. I was much more impressed by the red pandas. Although they are both called pandas, they are not related. Their similarity is that they are both bamboo eaters and apparently the Nepalese word for "bamboo eater" sounds like panda. One of the reasons the red pandas were attractive was that they clean themselves like a cat, while the giant pandas were not clean at all.

We are having pleasant end of Summer weather here. Sara saw here eye doctor yesterday the day after cataract surgery and all is going well. He gave her some well-fitting sunglasses to wear in daytime and some clear glasses with foam around the edges to wear at night to protect the eyes. As a child and teenager I was a rockhound. Grew up in Central Washington where there was a lot of petrified wood and agates in the hills. My parents bought me a lapidary outfit so I could cut and polish stones. My father turned our milk house over to me to set up the cuting and polishing equipment when we go rid of our milk cows. I now have a wooden dynamite box in the garage filled with rocks I collected as a kid. Surprising I have held on to that box for more than 60 years. There are a lot of veteran's organizations; American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Vietnam Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans, etc. I belong to the DAV, as they were very helpful when I needed to file a claim to the VA for my leukemia associated with my service in Vietnam. Ray

I think the issue would be the time and distance to get from Japan back to Singapore or Indonesia or Thailand. Two days to get there and two days back is four sea days for a single Southern port. While the Westerdam is travelling up from Singapore, she is travelling around Japan for a couple of months, which would require the foreign stops. Ray

Actually, a lot of people came to our aid. The U.S. Embassy was extremely helpful setting up a desk in the hotel and having people at the airport to get us around some of the Cambodian laws about how long you could stay without a visa, etc. The HAL CEO was also there making sure everything went smoothly. Ray

Can you tell us something about the Japanese cruise industry? I have heard that the Asuka II started cruising in Japan in November 2021 with about 300 passengers and there is another ship Nippon Maru. It doesn't sound like a big industry compared to the major foreign flagged ships that cruise around Japan when they can. Ray

Kind of a busy morning. We had to be at the Navy Hospital at 0630 for Sara's cataract surgery. Got home about 10:00. She has three different eye drops to use every four hours, and then goes back tomorrow morning for a follow up. Seems to be going well. We were in Sihanoukville a few years ago on one of our Asian cruises. I remember a shuttle took us into the town and there wasn't much to see. We walked over to a hotel and got a couple of dollar beers in the lobby. A sign on the wall said "Rooms $5.00 With Air Conditioning $10.00. We then came back to the ship on the shuttle. We also stopped there in 2020 on the Westerdam as it was the only country that would let us disembark. Their ruler flew to the pier by helicopter to greet us and give us all a traditional scarf. A couple of days later we flew from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh and stayed in a nice hotel for a few days while they arranged for us to fly home. Here is a picture of how we got around town and one of the crowded airport. Actually we were supposed to leave the day we arrived at the airport, but it didn't happen. So we picked up our luggage and got on a bus to the hotel. But it dropped us off at the wrong hotel, so we waited a few hours there, loaded our luggage in a new bus, and finally got to a hotel where we stayed for a week.

That was me. I was confusing the Charles Smith wine of the day with Charles Shaw, the "Two Buck Chuck" sold by Trader Joe's. Ray

We often enjoy today's meal. The word looks unpronounceable as written. It is pronounced "sway jow". We usually buy them frozen in Asian markets or Costco. If first boiled then fried, we call them "pot stickers", but the Chinese name is "jow tse".