This is by far the longest cruise we've ever taken: From Singapore, it squiggled through the Malacca Strait to Phuket, Thailand, skidded west to Colombo, Sri Lanka, snugged up the southwestern and western coast of India, stopping by three cities along the way; skidded west again to the southeastern tips of Arabian Peninsula, for its final three destinations: Muscat of Oman, Dubai and Abu Dhabi of United Arab Emirates. All in 16 days.
From Southeastern Asia through South Asia to Western Asia, these were the places we got off to see:
Phuket is a synonym for beaches: there are beaches with canoes, beaches with sailboats, beaches with body building machines, and beaches with just lounge chairs and umbrellas. Pick one you like and while away the day easy.
In Colombo I smelled the Zen-y calm in the rush hour traffic, and subtropical charm at a colonial style beach resort, in a Buddhist country that had been under British rule for over 150 years until mid-20th century.
Cochin was an ancient Indian spice trade center that had been touched by Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, and British influences from the 15th century on. We saw Chinese fishing nets, Portuguese fortresses, a "Dutch Palace", an Anglican church, and a Jewish synagogue that has stayed open for over 450 years to this day.
Goa was yet another crown jewel of colonial Portugal in India and remained its province for four and a half centuries before being forcibly taken back by India in 1961. It's now a laid back country with scattered farm houses and roaming cattle, and a resort beach where I trod my feet on the Indian Ocean water for the first time.
Mumbai is a congested, noisy, mega city with a nice looking beach that's too polluted to swim, luxury hotels sending their linens to an open laundry factory for cleaning, 700,000 people living in the largest slum in Asia while one rich family living in a billion dollar mansion... yet everyone seems to live happily with everyone else with what they have.
Muscat was the first Muslim city we ever visited and surprised us with clean streets, neat buildings, friendly people, and a seagull hovering, dolphin visiting bay of peacefulness.
Contrasting Muscat's modesty, Dubai flaunts its wealth and modernity with glitzy high rises, luxury hotels, multi-entertainment malls, man-made islands... that look like and are indeed wonders in the desert land.
Abu Dhabi, the brotherly city next door to Dubai, then offers an over-the-top Grand Mosque that features world record breaking mosaicked marble courtyard, hand-woven carpet, crystal chandeliers, gem-stoned columns, etc., that make it a tourist attraction even more popular than St. Peter's Basilica and Taj Mahal Palace.
Traveling the route as we did, one could not help but realize fairly quickly that all these countries we visited were once directly under or influenced by the reign of British Empire. I noticed, for example, before we reached the Arabian countries, all the places we visited (Singapore, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India) drive their cars on the left side of the road, like UK. Even our fellow passengers came mostly from the British Commonwealth countries--Australia, New Zealand, Canada--and UK and US. One Scottish woman we met on our Sri Lanka excursion, who was of my same age, told me she was born in Singapore to a military family on the year when Britain withdrew their troops there... The fading of the British Empire was not such ancient history yet.
I also could not help but find some similarity of our route to those by the famous Chinese explorer Zheng He (鄭和), who led expedition fleets to this part of the world and beyond for no less than seven times and left his marks along the way as well. One obvious example is the Chinese fishing nets in Cochin he introduced to the locals for better fishing, and some say the name Cochin implies "Co-Chin", meaning "like-China".
Then I think back even further, to the days when scores of homo sapiens trekked over the shallow Red Sea out of Africa some 100,000 years ago, and through the ages migrated along Arabian peninsula then Indian subcontinent then to southeast Asia then to New Guinea and Australia... What a journey!
Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Keep traveling.
* For more photos and narrations, click on:
