SATURDAY, MAR 13TH--AT SEA

HUMP DAY! The cruise is half over now. It’s going way too fast. This afternoon we are passing through the Hainan Straits, a passageway between mainland China and the island of Hainan just off Vietnam. This evening we will be in the Gulf of Tonkin where two US aircraft carriers were stationed during the War in Southeast Asia, better know as the Vietnam War. Visibility here is reduced some due to fog but now I can see China from our balcony. There are hundreds of small fishing boats in this strait and buoys with fishing nets under them that we are sailing past. The Captain said this morning that you need a special permit to sail through this strait and it has to be at a reduced speed. He also said that we did make contact with the ferry boat last night. There was one short “scratch” on the bow (front) of our ship about 12 feet above the water line. Had he not maneuvered it would have been much worse. So all is well with our ship and I was worrying for no reason. We will be arriving early tomorrow morning in Hong Gai in Halong Bay. This is the closest port to Hanoi where we will be visiting tomorrow. From the port to Hanoi will be a 3 ½ hour bus ride each way. Our tour is an 11 hour one so only 4 hours of it will be in Hanoi itself. Tour time will be at 7:15am but we turn our clocks back an hour tonight so will get extra sleep time. I am having mixed emotions now about going into Hanoi but need to do it. Well, with the beginning of this segment we went from “silver” level on Regent to “gold” level as we now have over 75 days of cruising on Regent. So now we are getting a free copy of our home town newspaper, The Dallas Morning News, every morning. We will now have an additional 2 hours of free phone time (had 1 hours as “silver”). The newspaper helps us feel closer to home so is very nice. Seems like I am jumping all over the place with this posting. This morning we went to Sandra’s lecture entitled, “The Music of Vietnam and Thailand”. I did not last too long here so left and was sitting in Centrum area reading my paper when a passenger walked by who is from St Louis. We had talked on a tour one day. We started talking and I discovered he was a Vietnam vet also so we had a long discussion and shared stories. At 11am we went to a lecture by Morton Dean entitled, “A Reporter’s Notebook-The Vietnam War”. For those of you old enough to remember, Morton was seen many nights on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite reporting from Vietnam. It is my contention that the liberal news media during this period was partly responsible for the terrible treatment us Vietnam vets received by our fellow Americans when we returned from the war. Back then 15 minutes (half) of the evening news every night was footage of Vietnam and they like to sensationalize that war. How many minutes of the evening news today is of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars? Answer: Practically none. Enough of that. At 3pm I am going to enter the golf putting tournament. Tonight we were booked to go to the “Dinner and a Show”. It is dinner in the French restaurant then a 40 minute lounge show featuring the singing of our general manager’s wife, Stephanie. I cancelled as it is a formal night tonight and the menu in the Compass Rose, main dining room, is my favorite. Show in the show room tonight features a headline singer named Sally Jones and we will be going to hear her at 9:30pm. As we are on tour all day tomorrow I will not post again until the day at sea after we leave Hanoi. Will be uploading just a few pictures later today.