Which is why I being currently in Vietnam, Sai Gon or Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), to be exact.
Why here? Why now? Why not:
I have a friend here.
I needed a vacation from Dauntless.
She needed a rest from me.
I needed to be in New York for a bit, so it’s almost on the way.
It’s incredibly cheap, with wonderful food.
The people are so very friendly, nice and welcoming
And I do like women in uniform.
After this post, my writings about my other, non-Dauntless related, travels will be underDispatches From the Orient
I can write gobs and gobs about HCMC so far. Let me suffice to say in this little introduction that it is a true working city full of really nice, friendly people, with incredibly good food at even more incredibly inexpensive prices.
Today I did a little exploration of a new section of town, took four buses that cost me a total of $1.00, that’s 25 cents each.
My DInner that Cost $0.90The image on her fight is some kind of missile sitting on a stand on a table. This show was about various weapons systems, as I saw some US and Russian made stuff.
Here is a little video I took on my first days.
I found it best to just close my eyes often.
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This video doesn’t exist
And if you think the motobikes are numerous, think of the alternative like Bejing, where cars sit in endless traffic jams and the pollution is so bad it’s hard to go out!
I have a lot of pictures that things to of Vietnam so far. I’d like to keep my writings more focused than usual on a particular theme for any given post.
And while many of these writings will be about places new to me and many of you, I will also use this blog to write about all of my travels that are distinctly of a non-nautical nature, whether they be in North America, Asia or Europe.
I find Vietnam incredibly fascinating.
First Impressions:
I really admire the people, I have never been in a place where everyone seems to work all the time and still be pleasant doing it. My days are full of smiles and pleasant interactions.
The Vietnamese people I’ve run across have been the friendliest I’ve ever met. Much like Ireland, but maybe a better comparison is Latvia. Another place with incredibly friendly people and speaking an incomprehensible language. Oh, I’ve learned a few words, just a few, but with my non-musical brain, the words I think I am saying and what others hear are pretty much mutually exclusive.
My hotel is just 20 minutes south of the airport and about 30 minutes west of “downtown”. A great location. HCMC aka Sai Gon, is much like NYC, a city of neighborhoods. Pretty much everything I need or want can be had within a 15-minute walk. The only disagreeable moment occurred when I was “downtown”, in District 1. The place where Trip Advisor and that ilk tell everyone they must go and as expected my experience is just the opposite. The one place I will not return.
They actually make things here. In fact, they seem to rebuild everything. There is remarkedly little trash. And everyone seems to be working literally from dawn to dusk (and later).
Nothing is thrown away. The little sacks of garbage that are picked up periodically seem full of inedible things and a little plastic. These people would probably build a whole new civilization with all the crap Americans throw away in a week.
IF there are no free seats on the bus, a young person always insists I take their seat.
Air Conditioning on the buses works better than in New York City buses and I am sure the buses cost 1/100th
Costs are even better than anticipated. Bus costs 20 cents. The three of us has a 6-course dinner for $19 the other day, yesterday it was $15. This is very typical. My lunch today was $0.90. Yes, less than a US dollar.
Foods are as tasty as one would expect.
There are a million coffee places and the iced coffee is like the old days in NYC, strong and good. (Not like today where Starbucks gets people to pay $7 for a glass of water with coffee color)
HCMC is full of trees and motorcycles.
Upcoming:
A city of motos and scooters and I am the only pedestrian.
How to cross the street and live to tell about it.
Since I have talked, written, about my planning process a lot, you know I like having a plan.
But there are times when a plan, any plan, has been elusive. Also, the best plans are always subject to change.
Generally, I find that the best plan, or better stated, the best initial plan, is one that stands the test of time. Having a straw man to test, If I go here, this will happen, allows me to continuously refine the plan and test it mentally with many different scenarios.
Having an initial plan also allows me to write about it, talk about it. So, my friends or anyone has a chance to ask, Uh, you’re not really planning on doing that, are you? I like, even need, questions like that. They are part of my extroverted thinking process. They make me better articulate, or think through, the what and why of the plan. And of course, there are times, I learn of significant mistakes.
Oops. Like this summer’s missing 1,000 nm. That’s about 25 days’ worth of coastal cursing. A month out of a season that may only be 5 months.
My initial plan after transiting the Panama Canal in January, was to head up the west coast ending in Southeast Alaska 6 months later. Not a terrible plan, if traveling by car!
But when the details are still an ocean away, don’t sweat, don’t worry.
Then as my Panama Canal transit got later and later, I’d make some adjustments to the west coast plan, deciding to stop in the Pacific Northwest or even Oregon if that’s as far as I got by October.
I still had not found the missing 1,000 miles, but then I still did not know they were missing.
We had a quick five day, 300 miles run from Panama City to Golfito, the southernmost port in Costa Rica.
Dauntless Initial Planning 2017 through 2020+ All Dates, destinations are tentative, but gives me frame work for the Cruise.
I could finally catch my breath. In fact, during the five-day run, though it meant two long 14 hour days and then anchoring in waters no so protected, the seas were flat and it allowed me to start seriously thinking of the coming cruise up the west coast.
And then I noticed that my little planning table had a little error. I had not accounted for the miles of Baja California. Mexico from beginning to end is 2100 nm, I had typed 1100 in what I call my “Planning Table”. I found the missing 1,000 miles.
Another factor came to my attention. A few posts ago I wrote about the expenses of Dauntless. Our expenses are very consistent, when I’m on the boat they run close to $100 per day. The only way that number changes significantly, is if I am not on Dauntless, like in the winter and if Dauntless is in a safe, secure, inexpensive location (like Waterford, Ireland).
Also, In the last weeks, I’ve realized how much I miss Northern Europe. My biggest mistake was not spending two summers in the Baltic. And to have this realization half way around the world is a bit annoying. (since there is nothing I can do about it now).
Martinique was a nice port, made nicer having endured a relatively rough three-week passage across the Atlantic from Europe. Beautiful women, French food & wine, what more can anyone ask for?
But after three weeks, Micah and I were both ready to move on. Sitting for months at a time is just not in me.
Therefore, my new, updated, improved plan allows me to take my time traveling north up the coast. I won’t have to travel in bad weather or contrary winds for a change. But it will be incumbent upon me to find good, economical places for Dauntless to winter over.
This winter that will be someplace in northern Mexico, next winter probably British Columbia and finally Southeast Alaska, maybe near Wrangell for the third winter.
Crossing the North Pacific will come next, then probably wintering over in Korea before heading south along the Chinese coast the following spring.
Exploring Southeast Asia and Vietnam will be up next.
And after that?
A return to Northern Europe; unless of course, the plan changes.
Dauntless is that little Green boat in the far bottom right corner. The red route is my currently planned idea. The Black route is just a gauge for me to look at the Great Circle routes easily. The fact that it is so close to the actual route means that it’s a pretty efficient route. The hard to see white routes past Korea are various ideas.
As I mentioned before, if you are not living in the moment, you are reflecting on the past or planning the future.
At night, as I drift off to sleep, I am usually always thinking of the future. I hate surprises. For me, there is no such thing as a “good” surprise. Unless of course, I get notified that a non-existent relative left a large sum of money in Nigeria for me. What could go wrong with that?
Exactly my point. A surprise meant I did not anticipate well enough. As many of you reading this will understand, it helps if you do read. To know and have experienced everything, I would have to be as old as the Universe itself. I’m not that old and as most of us figure out in our formative years, we will never catch up to that second-grade teacher we are in love with.
Reading and writing allowed our civilization to grow on the experience of those who came before us.
Reading allows us to experience without doing. While not the same as doing, brain studies have shown that it’s remarkedly effective. Two pianists given the same piece of music to play, one actually plays it, while the other only “plays” it in their mind. After a given set of time, there is remarkedly little difference between the two, when they actually perform it on a piano.
So, developing a mental picture is critical to my planning process. I also always have an idea of best and worst conditions. I simply never want to be surprised.
Now that the Pacific chapter of this story has started, my vision has shifted to the west, Asia in particular. Even though Asia is still years away, once I get north of Mexico, there is not much of the coast I have not seen. When I was on Shemya in the Aleutians, 30 years ago, I never envisioned returning on my own bottom.
So, the eastern and even northern portions of the Pacific, I have well imagined for a long time. So now it’s time to learn the western periphery, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
At the same time, I’m starting to think again about what is beyond that. The Indian Ocean, getting around Africa and even, once back in the Atlantic, then what?
Caffebene in Ft. Lee, a really nice place to spend timeEach morning I watch the feeding frenzy of Blue Jays, Cardinals, squirrels and chipmunks.
But it was a quick trip, 5-days, to New York to tie up some loose ends.
Some lines always need a good whipping.
I also got to spend some time with some good friends, both new and old.
And best of all, I ate Korean food 3x, Japanese 2x, pizza 2x and lastly French once; best of all, I ate so well and gained no weight. Lekker.
When I get back to Dauntless tomorrow, I’ll be doing the preparing to head south to France, Spain and Portugal for the next 5 months.
Such a short trip may seem pointless, but I leave NY today feeling much better than on arrival. Being able to articulate my goals and reflecting on them with friends makes a big difference.
During June, having my friends Brian, Dan and Robin on Dauntless, really helped me put a focus on my goals for the coming years. It is great to have people around as enthusiastic as I.
Then, coming to NYC, talking with friends, facilitated the final touches on the plan. As articulated in my last post, by adding 10 months in S.E. Alaska, everything finally feels like it’s coming together.
Not having to spend all of 2017 rushing someplace will allow me to pause and smell the roses.
Having Dauntless staying put for 6 to 8 months, allows me to visit friends in Europe and probably take a trip to reconnoiter Asia.
I feel unburdened and that’s a good feeling.
So now I can concentrate on the important stuff: What’s with these cats. Here we have a billion-dollar company and they must Photoshop the cover for all their kitty liter bags.
Clearly Photoshopped
Do these people even have cats? One would think someone in this company would think they should show some indication that they understand cats.
Must be dog people.
So, I’ll end on this poster. It fit my two cats perfectly at least in their first year as kittens.
Bad Kitties
A link to the site for T-shirt Bad Kitties T-Shirt
The Atlantic Trade Winds (click on the links below to see the winds move. Click on “Earth” in the lower left corner [of the link, not my picture] to change parameters)Well any number of plans; the current one, 15 months to Japan, now in the 29th day since its start date.
But like all plans, a plan is good only until first contact with the enemy. For Dauntless it’s headwinds, or better said, for Richard it’s the hobby horse ride headwinds produce on Dauntless. The fact that we are consuming half of our fuel, just to go up and down waves, adds to the sick feeling the ride produces.
Yep, it’s a lose, lose, lose situation for all: the timeline, my wallet and my health.
Dauntless in the meantime just motors along, oblivious to my misery.
For my long range planning, other than Jimmy Cornell’s books and pilot charts, on a daily basis I pretty much only look at this: link to current Atlantic map
This shows the current surface winds over the Atlantic. You can see that draw a line from Gibraltar to the Canaries to Barbados and the trade winds are running strong as they have all winter. So no problems there.
The Eastern Pacific showing strong northerly winds from British Columbia to Southern California. Ugh!
(side note, there is simply no point in looking at anything more specific for any period more than two weeks away. Even when I was waiting to cross the North Sea from Norway to Scotland, a three-day trip, I read the marine forecast, but really only looked at this site to figure out when I would have at least a two-day window, which is what I got)
I’ve been looking at this about once a day since fall. Only in the past month have the northerly winds let up south of Mexico and Central America.
My current 15-month plan would require me to be able to travel north from the Panama Canal to Kodiak Alaska in 170 days or about 35 miles per day. Doable with favorable winds, but I’ve been watching and the winds are not favorable, not at all. At this point, at best, I think a quarter of the days would be “good” cruising days and that may be too generous.
The other problem with this current plan is that I would probably be able to rush north out of Central America, but then get stuck in Mexico and the coast of the western U.S. for months on end. Thus passing by places I would like to spend time only to be stuck in places I don’t.
So, Plan B.
I will add a year to the Cruise Plan, wintering in Southeast Alaska.
Many boaters do it, I know it somewhat, but only from the perspective of the Alaska Marine Highway (Ferry) system.
Thus I can spend more time in Central America at the height of the winter when the northerlies are strongest and I can spend 10 months in British Columbia and Southeast Alaska, some of the prettiest cruising areas in the world, full of fjords, whales, birds and bears!
The weather is not that bad and having visited Juneau and Sitka many times back in the 90’s, it will be nice to go back on my own bottom.
I have a lot of pictures that things to of Vietnam so far. I’d like to keep my writings more focused than usual on a particular theme for any given post.
Dauntless at Sea 