Shanghai

Ray and LeAnn spent a couple of days sightseeing and shopping in Shanghai in conjunction with a business meeting Ray was at. LeAnn came in on Wednesday evening and spent Thursday on her own looking for bargains. She found a few at the fabric mart where she got some silk to make a cover for a blanket we had purchased in China on another trip. In addition, she picked out some fabric to have a couple of coats made, a long coat with dragonflies against a black background along with a nice red cashmere jacket. One of the custom made coats was completed and deilvered to the hotel that evening, and the next was brought in the next morning.

On Friday, Ray and LeAnn spent the morning at YuYuan Gardens, which is an old park area with traditional buildings and gardens. We stopped at a golden tree inside the YuYuan Garden area to throw lucky coins into the tree. The coins were tied to red ribbons which represented good health, family, wealth, and luck. The buildings now hold businesses selling to the tourist market. It is a "barter for the best deal" environment, which can be fun, but gets tiring after a while when you just want to get something quick. Prices usually start about 5 times higher than what you will end up paying. We picked up some embroidered displays and some Chinese porcelain dolls.


After returning to the hotel, we made our way across the street to the Urban Planning center in People's Square. Inside were historical photos, maps and future plans for the city of Shanghai. The most impressive part of the exhibit was a scale model about 100'x100' of the entire city of Shanghai showing the buildings, roads, bridges, parks and rivers. All the buildings matched the shape and style of what they represented. The time to put this together and keep it up to date must be tremendous.

We then hopped on a subway to go down near the US embassy and French Concession area for dinner. Since Ray had been eating Chinese food all week, we decided some Mexican food would taste good for a change of pace, especially since it is not readily available in Manila. A final stop at the fashion market for a few more bargains and souvenirs and then it was back to the hotel. Many touts hound you and try to get you to come to their stalls, especially if it is not on a main walkway. LeAnn asked one where the toilets were, so we started to follow him. We went past the signs for the toilets, and ended up at his stall. Another gal there said he thought LeAnn had said chocolate, not toilet. We all enjoyed good laugh over that one.

Saturday we got up early to go to the Oriental Pearl TV tower and the observation floor 263 meters above the ground. You get a very nice view of Shanghai and the surrounding area, except it was a little smoggy on Saturday. After multiple trips to Shanghai, seeing it from above helped pull all the pieces together. There were hundreds of local school kids on a field trip to the tower, so it was very crowded, but a lot of fun. Many of the kids would come up to say hello or ask you how you are doing. They like to use us to practice English. We walked down to the riverbank to visit with some of the terra cotta soldiers on the walkway and look across the river to the Bund area, which has old European style buildings from the 20’ and 30’s. The tower is on the newer Pudong side of the river while the original Shanghai is on the Puxi. The first large river crossing bridges weren’t constructed until the early 90’s, and this allowed the huge growth on the Pudong side.

We are going to miss our trips to Shanghai once we return to the states. It is such a fun and exciting environment. It is easy to get around between the subways and cabs in order to see the different parts of the city.

John Bloom 1930-2006

My dad passed away on Wednesday morning, April 12th. He was 75 years young. He was born on the easy to remember 10-20-30, which always got a chuckle out of people when he had to give his birthday. He died of Mesothelioma, a nasty lung cancer related to asbestos exposure. We do not know where his exposure came, and must have been indirect. He first went to the hospital on Dec 30th with shortness of breath, which turned out to be pneumonia, and has been in and out of the hospital and rehab centers ever since.

He was a sportsman while growing up, enjoying hunting and fishing. He had some terrific stories to tell about his hunting trips like dumping a borrowed shotgun into a lake (and later having someone retrieve it and passing it on to me) and nearly burning down an island. However, once he married and had kids, we were his passion.

As a father, he was always involved in his kids and family's activities. We played catch daily, and he came to my games to watch or coach. He was an Indian Guide and Boy Scout assistant.

We took family vacations up to visit my grand parents every summer. Along the way, we tried to do something different each time.

He worked at Peavey Company all his working life, a great work ethic that he passed on to his kids.

He switched roles to grandfather very easily. Every year, he rented a cabin for the whole family to be together at the end of the summer. It is a tradition that we looked forward to every year, as did he.

I’ll miss my Dad.

Ray

Ho Chi Minh City April 11-14

After leaving Singapore, we went to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) in Vietnam. The first thing you notice is the number of motorbikes and scooters everywhere. The roads that are two lanes each way have the large vehicles in the inside lanes and bikes in the outside lane. The mass of bikes at an intersection can be tremendous as the bikes line up for the light to change. Many bikes carry 2 people and are driven as taxis.

Our next experience was becoming a millionaire by going to the cash machine (no, not the slot machines in the hotel). Since the exchange rate is about 16,000 VND (Vietnam Dong) to the dollar, a withdrawal of just $100 US gives you over a million dong. The notes have values of up to 500,000 dong, but we only got 100,000 dong notes. Another interesting observation was the use of US$ in pricing and payment. Many of the vendors at the market priced their products in US$ (at least for us), or at a minimum would take the dollar in payment for items

With nothing planned on Tuesday, so we took the hotel shuttle into the city center and went to the local vendor market called Ben Thanh Market. You can find all varieties of goods at this market, such as handicrafts, shoes, watches, fabric, clothing, bags and food. Again, prices are low to begin with, so bartering is not very necessary.

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Day 2

Wednesday began with a city tour with our guides Phu and Bao. We headed off to China
Town and stopped at a temple, very similar to those in China. Incense was burning throughout, and offerings of fruits were given to the gods and placed on the alters. This temple was dedicated to the gods of the fisherman. Prayers are often made for the safe return of the local fisherman every time they go out into the ocean to fish.

From there we walked over to a wholesale market in China Town, which was laid out by product. Stalls and stalls of hats, then dishes, then hair accessories, cleaning supplies, etc. Crossing the streets here can be quite an experience, as there are very few stop lights to control the traffic, so you just kind of work your way across lane by lane.

Next we went back to Ben Thanh Market and wondered through again and picked up a few things. Being time for lunch, we then went to Pho 2000, a famous local noodle house. Bill Clinton ate there back in 2000, and there were numerous photos on the wall of the event. Amazing that we can come all the way over here and eat where a president has eaten, but never in the US have we eaten in the same place as a president (unless we happened into a McDonald’s that Clinton had gone to at some time). Pho is noodle in the Vietnamese language.

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Day 3

On Thursday, we visited Cu Chi, an area north of Ho Chi Minh famous for the underground tunnel system built starting in the late 1940’s. The Cu Chi tunnels stretch for about 200km (130 miles) in a spider web configuration. The tunnels were built out of clay and connected various rooms together. These rooms served as eating, kitchen, sleeping, and meeting areas for the Viet Cong. During the day, they took shelter in the tunnels and rooms and then moved out in the night to do all of their activities.

Elaborate systems for ventilation, camouflage and concealment, and protection (booby traps, trap doors, etc) protected the inhabitants from their enemies. Barbed spikes were made from the casings of unexploded bombs. The openings were very small, preventing many of the Americans from even having the capability to fit into the openings. Smoke from kitchens would be exhausted over 100m away after being cleansed to make it almost invisible.
Some of the rooms were at ground level, while others were up to 8-10m under ground, which offered better protection from the bombings. We crawled through a couple of tunnels connecting various bunkers. The bunker roofs have been lifted and openings enlarged to make them accessible to all. Actual tunnels remain the original size and you have to stoop halfway over to walk through them.

The evening ended with a trip to Ngon restaurant. This was a Vietnamese buffet style restaurant, where they take your order and go and get your food and bring it back to the table. The food is already prepared at each of the individual food stalls that surround the eating area. There were about 20 different stalls making the various foods, such as soup, stir fry, barbeque sticks and different desserts.

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Day 4

Today we toured the Mekong Delta area of Vietnam. It is about a 1-1/2 hour drive from our hotel in Ho Chi Minh City. On the way, we stopped at a Buddhist pagoda, which is the largest such pagoda in Vietnam. This temple is somewhat unique in that the architecture is a combination of Oriental, French and Vietnamese styles.

Next we got on a riverboat to cross the upper Mekong River. We went past a floating fishing village and saw many boats in the river, both riverboats and ocean vessels. There were large drive-on/drive-off ferries constantly going from one side of the river to the other. The area we were at was about 50 km from the ocean and 170 km from Cambodia. The Mekong River is the 8th longest river in the world, at over 4000km from its starting point in Tibet. Our destination was Unicorn Island, one of 4 islands in the river in this area.

Our first stop on the island was a small restaurant that specialized in honey tea. This is a combination of honey, mini limes, and bee pollen mixed in with green tea. They also provided candied coconut strips, lotus seeds, ginger and a type of peanut brittle. We next moved down to a candy shop where they made coconut candy. The coconuts are split and then the meat is separated from the husk and broken up into small pieces. They are then put into bags and squeezed to get the sugar water and oils out. The sugar water is mixed with powder and to form a paste, which is put into trays to form the coconut candy.

A walk through the jungle brought us to another place for a snack. This time it was fresh fruit, including mini bananas, mangos, pineapple, jackfruit, sapodilla, and longan. We then listed to some music and songs played on traditional instruments. One instrument only had one string and made a different sound depending on where it was plucked. The kids tried playing it, and found it very difficult to get the sound to come out crisp.

From here we jumped into some small canoes and traveled in some narrow creeks back to the edge of the main river. There were people at the front and back of the canoe paddling and controlling the boat. In some areas we could barely fit between all the boats tied up along the creek. We put on traditional Vietnamese hats (conical shaped with a tie under the chin) for the ride up the creek. They do a good job keeping the sun off your face and neck, but they got caught easily in the wind, so have to be tied on tightly to be effective.

Back on the river and time for our lunch. We had elephant ear fish that was wrapped with cucumber and noodles in a rice paper wrap to make a type of spring roll. The shrimp were the largest I have ever seen—about 6 inches from tip to tail. We also had a soup with pasta in it, fried rice and some large chips. On the way back across the river, we had coconuts milk right from the coconut. After drinking the milk, the coconut was split open so that we could eat the meat.

Vietnam has been a very interesting place to visit. It has not been over run with tourists yet, although the tourism industry is growing all the time. We felt comfortable in the places we visited, and enjoyed meeting the people along the way. The food is unique and delicious.

Singapore April 9 & 10

During the Holy Week holidays of 2006, the Blooms spent a couple of days in Singapore the first part of April. Singapore is a city-state on its own small island at the southern tip of Malaysia. It is just north of the equator. It is known for its cleanliness and orderliness, and this shows. Up until last year it was illegal to chew gum as it was considered a messy habit, both for the packaging and the left over gum. It has been made legal to chew now, but you must take care to properly dispose of the chewed gum. Traffic, although heavy, is very orderly and flows well. Most people live in high-rise flats as land is at a premium

On Sunday, we got up and began a self-guided tour of the city on the Hop-On, Hop-Off tour bus. This allowed us to take some time at any of about 25 tourist stops throughout the city. Our first stop was in Little India. There were many restaurants and souvenir shops in the area. There was a noodle shop along a side street that was making noodles on a long, multi-level continuous conveyor machine. We were invited in and saw the whole process from making the dough, the submersion heating in boiling water, pressing of a 12” wide web of pasta, the slitting of the wide web into strips, the long drying process, and the final cutting and bagging of the noodles.

We stopped by the Raffles Hotel, home of the original Singapore Sling, and then walked over to the harbor side theatre (ala Sydney), and the Merlion statue. The Merlion is Singapore’s symbol. It is a combination of the fish’s fins and body with a lion’s head, similar to a mermaid except being a lion rather than a person. The one at the harbor is also a fountain that spews water back into the bay.

Our next stop was Chinatown, another area of food and souvenirs. As opposed to some markets in other countries, prices are very close to rock bottom to begin with, so the bartering is very minimal. An artist was drawing names in Chinese characters using various local animals and vegetation to form the characters. A walk to Clark Quay and the last leg of our ride was to Sentosa Island, a recreation and resort island just south of the main island of Singapore. At Sentosa Island, we went to the top of a 10 story Merlion Tower to look out over the island and area. There are man-made breakwaters that make well-protected beach areas for swimming. After the bus ride back to Clark Quay, we took the subway home for the evening.

On Monday, we took a bus tour that went up into Malaysia. That meant crossing the border and going through immigration in both countries coming and going. While in Malaysia, we saw a show that demonstrated a customary Malaysian wedding dance, and toured a typical home, decorated for the wedding. We then saw a demonstration on making pewter, went to a large mosque, and then toured a batik (using wax and dies to create patterned clothing) factory.
After returning to the hotel, we walked down the Hard Rock Café for lunch, something we have tried to do in each city we tour that has a Hard Rock. The evening ended with a trip to the Singapore Night Zoo. The zoo has a tram ride through the park and multiple walking trails. The animals are more active since it is their normal eating and activity time. The lighting is a little brighter than a bright moonlit night, so you can see the animals fairly well. The animals are also fed about dusk, and the feeding stations are very close to the paths, making the animals easy to see.

King Midas and the Palace of Gold

Written by Kara

On March 15, 16, and 17, I was part of a play called King Midas and the Palace of Gold. King Midas was the first Middle School Play production. The play was about the king, King Midas, loving gold so much he got the golden touch! Whatever he touched turned to gold, even his daughter. King Midas felt really bad about it, so finally, the three magical sisters took away the golden touch, but gave him donkey ears instead. King Midas felt like a fool with donkey ears, so the three magical ladies thought he learned his lesson, so they took off the donkey ears to.

There were many roles to play. My role was a citizen. There were two other citizens, and we would give gifts to the princess on her birthday, and just be regular people. Everyone would be in the songs dancing and singing, so everyone got a chance to be on stage.

The costumes were beautiful. Most people were in togas, but the royalty were in really nice dresses with jewelry. Ricky Reyes Learning Institute did everyones hair and makeup. Everyone was in there for hours getting their hair and makeup on. Most peoples makeup was really dramatic, even mine! That's me in the middle of the picture on the left

On March 15 and 16, we performed for the lower and middle school in the afternoon. On March 17, we performed for the parents in the evening.