As usual I’ve procrastinated posting again, but I’m just going to pretend it’s the 24th of December today. Just came back from a cruise on board the MS Costa Allegra, and its really a mixed bag of feelings I have. On one hand the initial seasickness was really troublesome, and on the other hand I got to see some really unfamiliar places and meet some really cool people, as well as getting gourmet food and free pizza every day haha.

I think I’ve uploaded some of the photos I took on facebook though I’ve left out most of those with people in them for privacy reasons.

Vietnam was an experience, especially Ho Chi Minh city, which is still sorely underdeveloped and lacking in budget despite being named after the man himself. I also found out that you could use a motorcycle not just as a minivan, but also as a pickup truck, a lorry, a schoolbus and a family car. When you go to Vietnam and hire a taxi to bring you around, you will be faced with a sea of motorcycles and if you’re lucky, a lone traffic light now and then. In fact in most places they have opted to put a single traffic police officer at the junction instead of a traffic light, not that the motorists actually follow his orders. Going against the flow of traffic is a very common thing there. Then again, paved roads are hard to come across, and those that you are lucky to find probably have potholes the size of bomb craters filled with stagnant water.

It wasn’t all that bad though, while Ho Chi Minh city struck me as being economically undeveloped, Da Nang didn’t fare as badly. This time the container port actually had containers in it, and in the background one could see a ambitious bridge in construction. Not to mention in Da Nang, there are actually traffic lights.

Sanya wasn’t too much of a new experience since most of China’s cities are monolithic, so it looked like Hangzhou and Suzhou, which I’ve been to before, complete with the mindblowing cheap prices of most things there. Things that cost S$20 in Singapore cost like S$4 there.

Hong Kong was by far the best part of my trip, it strikes me as a very nice place to live in. That is, if you can speak Cantonese. Never have I been to an island with desktop wallpaper quality picturesque mountians all around. Those people who stay in high rise apartments in HK and are not blocked by other tall buildings probably have a treat every day when they look out of their window. That said, Hong Kong island itself is incredibly dense, it’s like a really tightly packed version of San Francisco. What with all the 2 lane roads that go up at like 60 degree angles and make walking uphill a really uphill task. =p The buildings are so packed together that when you walk around in the city you don’t get direct sunlight, unless it’s noon or smth. Shophouses and restraunts are also incredibly squeezy, and you’ll probaby get a seat like, at the very corner of the wall. Kowloon and the New Territories apparently don’t suffer from this space problem though, the HK government should look into expanding into that area instead of shoehorning like tens of thousands of people into an area twice the size of Jurong island. That said, Hong Kong while having alot in common with Singapore somehow has it’s own unique charm and is a really great place to go.

Starboard stern of MS Costa Allegra