BY JOHN JAWORSKI
After many years of dreaming of a trip to the Orient, my wife,
Dorothy, and I travelled to China to begin a cruise to several
locations around the Far East.
After spending four days in inland China, we boarded the Regal
Princess ship at Kingan for a 20-day cruise. The first stop
after sailing the China Sea was Pusan, Korea, a beautiful and
fascinating country.
Our first excursion was to see the Tongdosa temple two hours
from the port. Here in the midst of the mountains is a
sanctuary of Buddhist temples and ancient statues and carvings.
After several hours at the Tongdosa, we returned to Pusan
and visited the United Nations Cemetery where UN soldiers who
fell during the Korean War are buried. For us, the most
interesting area of the cemetery was where the Canadian
soldiers are honoured. A memorial of a Canadian soldier statue
had been finished and placed in this section.
The next stop was Japan. In Nagasaki, we took the guided
tour of the city and visited the Peace Garden which honoured
civilians who perished when the atomic bomb was a dropped on
Nagasaki. The garden is only 100 yards from where the bomb was
dropped.
Our next destination was Shanghai, one of the biggest cities
in the world, with a population of 12 million. Here, we took a
tour of the city and visited the Children's Palace, a school of
gifted children where piano, violin, accordion, art, dancing
and English are studied.
After visiting several other famous sites including the Shanghai museum, the jade Buddha temple, Yu garden, the old town and Garden of Happiness, we went shopping at a large modern department store called the Friendship Store.
Here, an aquarium the length of one entire wall of the store
caught our eye.
Later we travelled on to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon.
While in the city we visited the National History Museum, saw a
water puppet show, Chinatown, reunification hall (former
presidential palace) and the national exhibition centre.
The next stop on our adventure was Singapore. We boarded a city
bus and got off in the middle of Chinatown. We walked up and
down the main street stopping at all of the stores and malls.
We decided to hail a taxi to take us back to port. Taxis in
the Orient are a very cheap way to travel, but the drivers are
very fast and furious.
Our last day of sailing took us to Laem Chabang in Thailand.
This port, we traveled to Bangkok, stopping at Noon Dang
Botanical garden on our way. Noon Dang is known for its
elephant shows and theatre demonstrating ancient ritual dances.
The shows were fascinating and gave a wonderful look back at
the history of Thailand.
In Bangkok, we hired a man to take us around the city on a
Tuk Tuk, a motorized bike with two covered seats at the back.
A Tuk Tuk is a good way to travel in Bangkok, with the heavy
traffic and narrow streets, we zipped along moving in between
cars. We found the smog very heavy between the cars and the
narrow streets.
On April 14, we left Bangkok and arrived the next day in San Francisco, it was still April 14. We crossed the international date line. My wife had two birthdays.
John Jaworski is a Sudbury writer who enjoys travelling.
