Singapore

Rex Reed & Marge Champion
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3.28.2007 Singapore

We arrived here as the sun was rising over the city. The city is already interesting with its modern skyline and busy harbor with tremendous container facilities and hundreds of large gas storage tanks. Yesterday at 6:27 PM we crossed the equator as we moved from The Southern Hemisphere to the Northern Hemisphere. Due to rain yesterday we did not have the traditional ceremony on deck to initiate those crossing the equator for the first time. They were given their certificates, though. Yesterday, I attended another Q & A session by the former film great, Marge Champion and the critic Rex Reed. Again they showed film clips and the commentary was interesting. What a remarkable lady at 87 and what a great career when movies were worth seeing.

Marge & Gower Champion in Showboat
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In 1819, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles landed on the main island, now Singapore, and seeing its potential signed a treaty on behalf of the British East India Company to develop a trading post and settlement, marking the start of an amazing city/nation. Raffles had the foresight to plan the city to accommodate settlers from Portugal, England and Holland and made sure that later immigrants from China, India and Malaysia could maintain their cultures and traditions which should be respected by the others while proudly being part of a bigger family. By the time he left Singapore in 1823 the city was on it’s way to becoming the biggest port in the world and today continues to thrive as a low tax hub. Today the population is over 3,000,000. The reputation the city has for law and order is well deserved and results from strong laws well enforced and stiff punishments for offenders, local and foreign alike.

Sal & Bill in The Bar
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Sallie and I had been to Singapore on two occasions, first in the late seventies to end up a five country speaking tour sponsored by The AIA Life Insurance Co. of China after my book, “Doing Better” was published and on a cruise in 1997. As a resulted we decided not to take a tour but to take the shuttle into the heart of the city and strike out on our own. After our experience in Bali it was great being in a city so clean with no one to hassle you for anything. There are beautiful malls, streets, buildings, and, parks everywhere you go. The shopping is we believe the best in the world. Our first stop after changing some money was at one of the biggest book stores we have ever been in. From there we took a cab to The National History Museum-a beautiful new building that had just opened in Dec. It is beautifully done but in one hour we could only touch a small part of what it offered. The walking radio device provided gave full descriptions of everything in nine languages. From here we took a taxi to the famous Raffles Hotel where we toured the shops and than went to the famous Long Bar where many famous writers such as Maugham, Coward, Michener and Kipling have sought respite from the damp, tropical heat. We ran into Stuart and Mike Moore and several other passengers from our ship. This bar is beautifully done with everything supposedly left as it was 100 years ago. From there we went into the Grill room for more lunch than we needed. Here we ran into Marge Champion & Rex Reed and John & Rose Mary Galbraith from Charlottesville having lunch. Later we found out Joanne and Donny were having lunch at the same time in another room in the hotel. The Moore’s had left the ship three days earlier in Bali where they spent one night at the famous Oberoi Hotel, one night at The Four Seasons and then flew to Singapore and spent last night at The Raffles. They wanted to compare and now believe The Raffles ranks with any in the world. We haven’t stayed there but after two visits over eight years we agree based on what we have seen. After lunch we took a taxi back to the ship just as it started to rain. The new terminal building is so large with so many shops that we got lost and a kindly Singaporean had to direct us back to the embarkation area. Sallie was tired and I wanted to go back out for a cable car ride between 350 feet high Mt. Faber and Santosa,,Singapore’s theme park island, a ride that we have taken twice before. This time it was different because the cable car’s passed directly over our ship and once in the Island I decided to for a ride up the Sky Tower. This is a fifty story revolving elevator and the views were spectacular in every direction. Unfortunately the sporadic rains made it difficult to get good pictures.

Bamba on our 3rd cruise together
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Following dinner we walked across the pool deck, which is the deck we are on, and enjoyed the night lights of this beautiful city with the colored lights of the cable cars passing directly overhead. We truly believe this is one of the great cities of the world and just wish we could have spent a couple of more days here.

3.29.2007 At Sea

Today we are transiting The Malacca Straight between Indonesia and Malaysia. It’s hard to believe that this body of water ranks third in the world behind The Panama Canal and The Suez Canal in shipping. In recent years there has been some problems with pirates raiding some of the ships but has declined because of patrols by Indonesian, Malaysian and Singapore Navy boats as this body is of critical importance to them economically. Nevertheless our Captain had crew members stationed around the ship with binoculars checking any boat or vessel in our vicinity and moving toward us. Between fishing boats and shipping vessels there is a lot of traffic. So much so, that during a brief heavy rain squall we were told by the Captain that he could not avoid it by altering course because of traffic.

The Long Bar Raffels Hotel
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We have a new lecturer aboard, Stephen Dachi a retired 30 year veteran of The US Foreign Service. He is a leading expert on the history, culture religions and politics of South Asia .Today was his first lecture which was most interesting. He started out by saying that he agreed with many who say that the 19^th Century belonged to Europe, the 20^th to The U.S. and that the 21^st will belong to Asia. He spent how fortunate the western world was to have Australia as a partner and why he believes in the future of this big country with a stable government ,a great people with vast natural resources, a balanced budget and no debt.. Most of his talk was about India since we will here soon. India is so big d its recent development has been remarkable but is dealing with many problems that will limit the speed of change. There is little infrastructure in the country such as roads, electrical systems airways. Except for the hi tech industry , all the other industries are over regulated by a big bureaucracy. In addition there are 18 official languages in the country. We are looking forward to getting their but first it’s beautiful Phuket, Thailand tomorrow.

Grill Room lunch
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Tonight we enjoyed cocktails and dinner with Joanne and Donald and Dianne & Dr’ Ken Axmith from Toronto. They live across the hall and are a lot of fun. He is an Optomolgist but she has been very successful as an owner of a large international PR firm which she recently sold and is now serving as an Appointed Judge in Canada’s Wildlife and Gambling Commission for their region. They have one son married and living in Copenhagen and the other married and living in Barcelona. Boy, are we lucky.