Brittany: St. Malo, Mont Saint Michel, France 2014

St. Malo is a city on the N.W. coast near the Channel islands and a moderate ferry ride or long swim from England, and therefore a favourite destination of Brits - quite a lot of whom are just plain too boring to go any further from home.  It was Britain on and off through many wars and some probably think they still have shares in it.

The main feature for visitors, except for taking a place on the sea and relaxing, is the vast old 14th C. walled city.  I have never seen any walled city in this fine condition so I think it has been greatly rehabilitated, but also it was massive and powerful even when it was new.  In the center photo you can see the walkway which almost encircles the town and the wall in the side show extends nearly to the right side of the photo.

Part of the reason I want to show this image is a great story.  As you travel the coast cities, you see the massive forts build over centuries to fend off pirates and foreign navies.  The occupants worried about ugly invaders coasting in using the dark nights and scaling the walls to invade.  St. Malo's solution was a 10 p.m. curfew and at 10:01 to let loose 12 hungry and terribly unpleasant English mastiffs.  They were so effective that the entire population became exhausted with them after a decade and the poor fellows were abolished by means of poison.

Inside the walls, there are now many hotels, restaurants, and hundreds of shops.  The cathedral of St. Vincent was born about 1160 AD and has beautiful additions up to the Renaissance.  I was there at 11 on a Sunday morning when the only mass of the day was being said.  There was a sign saying a mass was in progress and visitors should stay out.  But I looked through the open door and there were no more than 10 people attending the mass in that monumental church.  I believe all the great cathedrals in France are now the property of the French government and seeing them empty of adherents constantly illustrated to me why that must be so.

St. Malo is often the preferred city nearest to Mont St. Michel (bottom photo).  The photo cannot give you any idea of scale.  But if you look at the bottom, between the clumps of trees,that is a five storey building.  About 1/10th of a pin dot on the stairs of the house would be a human.

It is somewhat of a waste of time if you have just been through many of the 71 chateaux on the Loire and many of the great cathedrals.  For me, the problem is humanity in the thousands.  I believe there were probably about 5,000 humans there writing, pushing struggling to cram thorough the place.  It was insufferable to me and I took the first exit I could find and got out of there.

In this ancient place, I witnessed a modern horror.  They have these coin operated toilets which shower washed after each client and are clean and handy.  But on the Sunday I was there, a person had become trapped (on maybe incapacitated) in one.  The spouse was outside pushing in more coins, then banging on the door shouting Hello, Hello, Hello, and growing ever-more frantic,  When I was young and in Europe  you could trip over the attendants for every possible thing in every possible place.  But today there are none - nowhere - and you cannot find help.  Dreadful situation.

Didja wan somthin or were you jes lookin?

Loire, Brittany, Conclusions

Did you want something, or were you just looking?

France is such a diverse country, and offers such sharp contrasts of medieval vs. ultra-modern and heavy dark forests vs. high speed tollways, and huge fields of sunflowers next to endless vineyards. However, some missing things are shopping malls, walmarts, Sam's, etc.  I did see a few modest malls in medium cities or on the edge of them, but not the monsters that inhale thousands of acres.  Surely nothing at all is cheap. You need to pack plenty of money.

The French post office has a large amount of its employees on electric bikes (above) now.  They cost about $3,000 each and it is hard to see in this photo, but there is a large battery in that yellow "C" behind the downtube and just above the pedals.  It is quite emblematic of the use of electric and mixed power in Europe and France right now.

A lot of cycling tourists now rent such bikes for travel.  It is amusing to read of traditional cyclist powering up a steep and long incline with their legs only to be passed rapidly by some old person smiling and waving from atop their power assisted bike.

There is a lot of cycle tourism in West France - I suspect one of the attractions is the relative (often absolute) flatness of the region.  I did some cycling on the separate paths along the Loire and enjoyed it.  But the roads, although well paved are really narrow.  I think a two-lane highway is about 20-25% narrower than here and no shoulders at all.

It was disturbing to me to see those ghastly wreaths along the roads where there had been a fatality as most (or possibly all that I saw this trip) were along straight, flat stretches, with no intersections or common reasons for a car crash.  I suspect probably all of those fatalities were either pedestrians (not many out there tho) or cyclists - the most likely victims.

The French drive terribly fast and are indisputably selfish and arrogant on the road.  You might think Og gave cars, trucks and roads to French men to get from one place to the other.  No, silly, that's not it.  It is all so that when they have exhausted their families, bosses, employees, etc. of their constantly being the south end of a northbound horse (Mark Twain), they can get on a highway and enjoy making your life miserable, or even end.

The major toll roads are really fast - 80 mph standard.  The secondary roads can be almost relaxing, scenic and a pleasure to drive.  The tertiary roads are actually just slightly over one lane wide and are great to drive, but you need to stop and maneuver when meeting an oncoming car.  So, of course, some of the worst male drivers cannot possibly adjust their 80 mph highway race car driver beings to country roads, and they drive like absolute hell. I suspect these drivers of causing the proliferation of those wreaths along the roads.

The nation, and every city and burg have all taken extreme measure to alter and partly block roads to slow them down.  But the only one I saw that had an effect was photo radar.  Where signs showed that it was automatic and the speeds were 90 or 110 kmh, almost every vehicle suddenly dropped to precisely the limit and not a fragment more.

The Loire is one of the destinations you might wish to avoid due to being over-touristed.  But I would say do not let that bother you, and go anyway.  The one place I would avoid is Mont St. Michel, which is the definition of over-touristed and after all the great Chateaus and cathedrals along the Loire, not really worth the visit with 5,000 other people being herded though.

Vietnam and Singapore: January, 2014

On January 14th I finally consumed the final portion of my Air Canada points by boarding one of their 777s flying to Frankfurt (8 hours).  There I changed to a Thai air A-380 for Bangkok (13 hours).  At BKK, I boarded another 777 for Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon, 1 hour).  I did not know how long the VOA (visa on arrival) process would take, based on my previous experience, so I had not booked a flight on to Da Nang.  That was somewhat of a mistake as domestic flights are so heavily booked in Viet.I had to go back and forth between different airlines and agencies in a hot and crowded terminal for a couple of hours, all to be told there were no flights available until late evening (it was 0900 then).  Then mysteriously, I accepted a standby position on Viet air and was given a valid boarding pass with a seat.  Why that happened when three minutes earlier it was impossible, I do not know.

After a couple hours waiting, I was off to Da Nang, where after 31 hours of wide awake flights and changes, I would only have to fall into a taxi and go 30 km. to Ho An.  So easy.  Ha Ha.  Incredibly, I found in the line up, the only driver in Vietnam who did not know the way to Hoi An.  It is like not know where JFK is in NY.  The driver was good, except that he could not shift the manual gears without killing the engine over an over.   It took two hours to make what should have been a 20 minute trip.I was so exhausted by the time I arrived at a nice four star hotel.  But I was just glad to be there.

I must mention something odd about Thai Air.  The A-380 is the double decker monster that is the largest passenger aircraft in the world today.  Usually on the main deck, there are 500 souls on board.  I have flown A-380s on Emirates, and Singapore airlines previously and were v comfortable despite being packed full.
But the leg room on Thai was for Midgets - just terrible, especially for a 13 hours flight.

But then I learned something amazing to me.  Because these giants fly v. long routes, they need double crews.  The crews on Singapore and Emirates have a kind of big box at the back to the aircraft where the crews go in to sleep.  But Thai air has decided to put the sleeping rooms down in the freight area and the stews have to descent a ladder to get to the freight section, and they are not happy about it.  It seems surprising that you get the largest psgr craft ever made, reduce the legroom seriously, and stick the crew in the basement!

Singapore is where I finished up the trip, but I put it at the top here because it is the most visual part of the trip.

When I was last in Singapore, the Marina Sands Hotel and Casino were completed, but not open yet.  It is such an amazing structure and development that I wanted to return to see it all.  It is three 57 storey hotel buildings with a plank across the tops of the three buildings.  The interesting thing is that the buildings are not only massive, but slightly curved which is fascinating to the eye.  The hotel rooms are constantly sold out at $330-350++.  I did not stay there because of the tours that make it a noisy - all-night place.  

On top is a viewing deck - which is the 221 foot point that sticks out.  The public can go up there for $20., but they cannot go to the infinity pool as that is only for guests.  There are several restaurants and  bars up there and the view is wonderful.  I am an addict of the harbour and it is always full of huge ships,

I saw tv program on how the hotel was built.  The unsupported point sticking out had to be counterbalanced with two 7,500 ton weights on the hotel's top floor.  Singapore insisted that they wanted the concrete sides painted - which is not common with concrete.  The tv doc. showed men on window washing equipment painting the walls with little hand rollers and 4" brushes that you would use at home to paint the bathroom.  But they mostly looked like Bangladeshi men, so I guess the labour cost was meaningless.

Of course, there is a giant  - and v. pretty - shopping mall in the base of each building.  The Casino is managed by the Sands corp. of Vegas under the strict eye of the State.  But all reports and local people say it is a great success.  Locals have to pay $80 (U.S. to enter, but they say that nothing

will stop them from gaming).   The two humps shown are the Symphony hall and the Art Gallery.  It took me 16 years to finally find a program I wanted to attend there and a ticket available.  The program was Strauss, Four last songs with a Swedish soprano and an hour of Wagner.  Unfortunately both the orch. and the soprano were 2nd rate. But the interior of the hall is amazing.  It has many features, of which I can only describe one - the raw silk covered walls in a pleasant green colour.
I like the design of these buildings.  You cannot really see here the odd surface of each of them which together with their shapes has led locals to refer to them as Mating aardvarks.

At one huge exit wall (probably 20'high and 24' wide, at one of the hotel towers is the above.  It is a water wall where a perfect flow of water runs down from the top, and activates thousands of little white bars probably 6" each.  Some obsessive/perfectionist artist worked out the precise amount of water it would take to activate all of these bars simultaneously.  It is a great piece of art and one of the most exciting things

 I saw the whole trip.
Singapore is just amazing.  Although foreigners like me admire it - still regretting that not a speck of old Singapore remains - many of the locals think there are too many glass towers and concrete, and that they have lost a lot of their culture.  Understandable.  But people like me admire it because when you come from a trip in seriously undeveloped China, Indonesia, or chaotic Vietnam, the orderliness, cleanliness and fine architecture of the place is pleasing.  The stupid No. American media can never get over chewing gum and haircuts and fails to notice it is the 3rd richest nation per capita, and about 2nd or 3rd richest in its sovereign wealth fund.  It is a (bitter)  miracle compared to all its neighbours in the region and achieved all of its gains through hard, single-minded sacrifices and unsurpassed economic intelligence.

I was very happy to be back again, especially as it was 81 F. when I departed and -2 F in Toronto.

Singapore, January 2014

One of the greatest sights in Singapore are two shell shaped conservatories.  One is for flowers and the other for plants  The one shown is for flowers, although the plants one is more exciting, there is no room for another photo here.  But you can see part of the giant scale of this building, and not only are there no pillars at all, but it is entirely air conditioned.  Even Singaporeans are surprised that a building of the magnitude with clear glass panels can be successfully air conditioned in hot Singapore.
The tree shaped metal objects are about 45' tall - large.  The are encrusted with orchids and other plants and vines.  There nine of them (I think, could be 12) and several are actually solar cells providing power to the multicoloured lights that make them a spectacular sight at night.
Right close to this large park is what Singapore calls a battery. That is actually a reservoir to collect run off water from the city-state and clean it for all uses.  Since Singapore and Malaysia parted ways decades ago, Singapore has had to play nice-nice with Malaysia because it depended on them for fresh water.  But over the past 20 years, Singapore has built so many batteries that it soon will be self-sufficient for fresh water even though it has grown so much.
You have to admire Singapore.  Iran has all that oil, but no refinery and has to depend on foreign countries to refine its oil.  Little Singapore has no oil, but one of the world's largest refineries.  They never lack for resourcefulness nor daring.
In the background, you can see ships in the harbour. You can see more ships at anchor here than almost anywhere else in the world.  They go on for miles.  They stop at Singapore for fuel, insurance, crew changes, and supplies.

Vietnam and Singapore, January 2014

One of the reasons I wanted to get back to Singapore was that I had never visited Jurong Bird Park.  It is a huge and beautiful park with thousand of birds, the great majority of which are free and in the open.  There are beautiful king penguins inside a chilled glass and rock enclosure.  There are some species in large cages.  One group of S.E. Asian birds is in about a two block square enclosure of genuine heavy jungle around a man made 100' waterfall.  It has nets over it, but from 25' to 105' over the trees and is kind of hard to even notice most of the time (if you are not a bird of course).  There are many feeding shows.  The one in the netted enclosure allows visitors to hand feed birds - which is thrilling.
The Shoebill shown at the top here, but it was more than 4' tall and quite friendly.  I hope you are able to enlarge the nine birds hopping up the stone stairs - they are wonderfully spotted and charming
This visit to the bird park was one of the highlights of my trip and I am so glad I was there.  Among other things, I really wanted to see some nesting storks up close and had contemplated a trip to Poland just for that purpose.  But I saw lots of them up close and nesting and they were wonderful.

Hoi An, Vietnam

You may recall that Hue and Danang were both near the DMZ and (sickeningly) in the news constantly for years.  Hue is a historically interesting city today and although there are many references to the war, it is long behind most of the people.  Danang is nearby and is quite a vibrant city. It has a busy downtown, and three quite tall glass-wall buildings.  (maybe 30-32 stories).  Although the city is hideous, the beach area is developing with many big hotels and one convention hotel.
The important thing about Danang is that it leads to Hoi An 25 miles away - if your taxi driver can find it - which mine could not and a 20 minute normal ride took more than 2 hours.
Hoi an is an ancient town with a population of 120,000 today.  It is midway between Hanoi and Saigon and is on the coast, and was little affected by the wars.  It has a nice beach.  But as it was raining quite heavily most of the days I was there, I did not attend the beach.
I stayed in the Hoi An Historic Hotel.  The Historic part of the title only means it is in the old part of town.  The hotel is a modern four star, although it does sport several beautiful old oaks.

The traditional Viet house is handsome and it is difficult to grasp how they became so fond of ugly.  The old part of town has many nice buildings, a good market and many interesting shops.  Interesting shops means they do not all have the same repetitive junk and do not sell mainly t-shirts and mugs.

One of the things Hoi An is noted for is tailoring clothing like dresses, jackets, suits etc. overnight.  Before I went there, I knew without question that I would not even think of having something made fast and cheap.  But, there I stood under a shop awning one day when the rain was sloshing down, and two shop ladies began talking to me.  They were from the store behind me which, of course, was a tailor shop.  They showed me some bolts of the remarkably fine wool cloth they were using - which really surprised me.  Then I saw a sample (Nehru) style of jacket I long-thought of having made as I thought it would serve well in travel.  Then they said it would be $80 in that wool and ready in less than 24 hours and include 1-2 fittings.

Well, what does a man do?  That is the price of a Brooks Bros. shirt. So obviously they absolutely forced me to change my mind, yes.  Yes, they did.

It turned out just better than OK.  There are a couple of problems, but it is good enough to wear in many circumstances, as warm as a good sweater, and doesn't require a tie - or even a shirt actually.  I wouldn't do it again, but for such little money, it was worth it.  It is amazing that they can do that much work overnight.  They had to take me down an alley to the cutting room to make an adjustment.  They work all night long there and move quickly.  Typical modern Asia, they have fast down just fine, but good will have to come later.  We used to tell my customers - good, fast, cheap, choose any two please.  My only risk now is that people will ask me to bring them a coffee with cream, which way is the bathroom, or could  you show us to Row 12 seats 22 and 23?

Which reminds me. You may ask for one good reason to travel half way around the world.  That is easy.  You don't have to change your watch time.  Six p.m. in Vietnam is 6 a.m. in T.O.  OK, so you go to Cuba or Mexico and you are going to have to change your watch.  Better go to Asia.

Dalat; a funny episode

On the Dalat day tour we visited the highest mountain top there.  One of our group of 8 was a gouty Texan 63 yrs of age and looking every year of it, paunchy, creaking getting around, but nice and funny.  To get to the mountain, we went up and up in our minivan a long way.  Then arriving at a parking lot, we buy a ticket and transfer all 8 of us into an old Russian (covered) jeep meant for 4 people not 9 with driver.  We roar, and I do mean roar up the curvy road through the lovely pine forest, at a stomach moving rate of swerving and bumping and CO2 fumes.
Once at the apex, there are some little diversions, but the most amusing is an old Russian jeep.  The two attendants dress-up the willing in military boots, pants, jacket, helmet, etc and then give them an assortment of weaponry to hold as well as rocket launchers.
Mr. Gouty Texan went from that to General Patton in minutes - the transformation would have been a miracle in any Catholic country.  I could not stop laughing as he really got into it and held up one weapon after another while they photographed him with his own camera.  That is is Viet mail order wife behind him.  No, she is neither young nor pretty - apparently never was.  She can barely speak two words of English even to him, and they claim to have been together several years.  I can't figure it out, but good for them.

Just now it looks in this photo as tho the old jeep has an oil leak standing still.