NEW YEARS GREETINGS to all our dear friends!
As promised, here’s the full rundown of our recent trip. You may want to get another cup of coffee now.
We had long wanted to visit our daughter Sarah, her husband Lt. Dr. Jon, USN, and our 2-year-old grandson Thomas in Jakarta, and after exploring travel possibilities and fainting over the cost of flying half way around the world and back, we found that by spending a little more money, we could purchase round-the-world tickets that would allow us to stop off in a number of interesting countries as long as we kept moving in the same direction. When a gifted New York musician offered to house sit and cover my rehearsals, the way was clear to take a seven-week trip, so we resolved to drive old cars for the foreseeable future, pulled out our credit cards, and did it!
On Dec 11, I conducted Messiah at USNA, took a day to recover then boarded a plane bound for Maui, in the Hawaiian Islands. We changed planes in San Francisco where a thoughtful crew upgraded us to first class. In Maui, we stayed at Marriott’s Wailea Beach resort, where we spent three heavenly days in a beachfront room equidistant from hot tub, beach, and bar. People who think money can’t buy happiness haven’t been to Maui. We swam, snorkeled, hiked up mountains, drove on twisty, cliff-hugging roads and had a grand time.
Then, off to Aukland, New Zealand on a 12-hour flight where Dec 17 was lost to us forever as we crossed the International Dateline. In Auckland, the main port on the North Island (where the entire NZ navy was anchored – both ships), Sarah and young Thomas joined us, while Jon kept trying to, but because of a delayed flight he missed a critical connection and spent several days jetting all over the far east chasing us (and his luggage!) Meanwhile, we rented a van and headed south: Rotorura, Matamata, Tongariro and Wellington, where Jon finally caught up with us on Christmas Eve.
For those of you who are wondering, New Zealand *is* Lord of the Rings. Fantastic rock formations, huge grassy mounds – of course Hobbits live there! – and dark, brooding mountains. 
We stayed at the Grand Chateau at the base of Mount Doom in the plains of Mordor – actually it’s Mt Ruapehu and it’s in the middle of a national park, but that’s where the LOTR crew stayed, and where those great final scenes of the movie were shot. One evening a couple of days before Christmas, deeply depressed listening to a lounge piano player who entertained us with themes from “The Godfather”, I commandeered the piano and played actual Christmas carols for several hours. Real English carols, too, not that Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph foolishness. People drifted out of the dining room, settled into overstuffed armchairs in front of the blazing fireplace, ordered more drinks, and cried. I hope it wasn’t my playing. For a 360-degree view of the hotel lounge, check out (Link)
While on North Island we visited Rotorura, an eye-popping thermal hot spot, Link and visited a nearby Maori village where we experienced hongi at a hangi, a traditional feast featuring song, dance and dinner cooked underground, in a pit heated with hot stones. The Maori were definitely the toughest customers in Polynesia -- shooting at them didn’t defeat them, it just made them mad.
But if they liked you, you got hongi, the traditional touching of noses.
In Wellington we picked up Jon and took the ferry across to Picton on South Island. Kaitaki was a huge modern ferry with a capacity for hundreds of people and cars, but the Cook Strait is not for the faint hearted; that big ship pounded and lurched and pitched and rolled just like a small boat in a serious Chesapeake Bay chop. Casualties ran high with many requests over the ship’s intercom for the “passenger events team” a circumlocution for the people who look after the folks who are throwing up all over everyone else. We were in Blenheim for Christmas Eve, and attended the local Anglican church that presented a sweetly inept service. That was the first Academy Christmas Eve I’d missed in 35 years; and as I watched the liturgical dancers, I was struck by the high quality of our work in Annapolis.
Blenheim, we discovered, is in the heart of the Marlborough wine region of NZ, noted for its fine Sauvignon blancs; we toured the Montana winery and became great fans. Continuing south, we took a 300 kilometer drive down the east coast to Christchurch, passing miles of beautiful beach with no one on it. The weather was beautiful, it was high summer, and a holiday week to boot; but there were practically no people in New Zealand. Lots of seals on the beach, plenty of sheep, stunningly beautiful mountain-strewn scenery, but blessedly few people. Sarah kept saying, “Jon, we’re going to move here. Like right now.” I felt the same way.
From Christchurch – a bright, clean, veddy-veddy English city, we flew to Cairns, our point of departure for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Here we stayed at the fabulous Kewarra Beach Resort Link where each room is a house among the palms with a balcony overhanging a mysterious lagoon. It’s possibly the most romantic lodge in the world. Kewarra staff could arrange anything, if you were willing to pay the price, including a private dinner on the beach with crystal, candelabras and a violinist. We passed on the violins, snorkled the reef, took grandson Thomas on a cable car ride to Kuranda, a mellow mountain town in Queensland’s rainforest where I bought a didgeridoo. 
And for days after he embarrassed me at restaurants by practicing the circular breathing required to play it properly using his water glass and a straw.
Australia is beautiful, but has some significant drawbacks. At that time of year, we couldn’t swim on the beach because of the box jellyfish whose sting is so potent that victims want to kill themselves. There is no antidote, and the only treatment is quantities of morphine to take the edge off the agonizing pain. The lagoons have notorious salt water crocodiles, so the lagoons are out. The reef is indeed stunning, but at 50 kilometers from the nearest beach, it required a long and expensive boat ride to get there, where you found yourself snorkling in open water with hundreds of other people, fighting waves, with an occasional great white shark for comfort. We’re glad we went, but will opt for the BVI for easier snorkeling, fewer people, no crocs, no lethal jellyfish, and smaller sharks. 
We also visited Jon’s Australian family in Sydney – brother, aunt, uncle and assorted cousins -- and took advantage of their incredible hospitality at their beach house at McMasters, one hour north of the city. In Sydney we visited the famous opera house, took a harbor cruise, and enjoyed the zoo, but found we much preferred the countryside. You know those deer crossing signs we have in the states? In Australia, it’s kangaroos, wallabys and kimodo dragons that get caught in your headlights.
From huge, sprawling, but surprisingly people-friendly Brisbane, we left civilization and flew to Bali, still in company with Jon, Sarah and Thomas. We stayed for almost a week at Alam Sari, a charming resort north of Ubud, the arts and crafts capital of Indonesia. Here each room was a separate Balinese house with a high, open-raftered ceiling, indoor garden bathrooms with orchids flourishing on the rock wall, all beautifully appointed and scrupulously clean. (Link) There was an oversized painting hanging over our headboard, and behind the painting lived a spider the size of my hand. The staff assured us he was harmless, so we named him Murray. 
The Balinese are Hindu, sweet-spirited folks very attuned to the earth and their relationship to it. We hiked, drove, visited Balinese traditional villages, ate lots of strange but very inexpensive food, and I especially enjoyed seeing Balinese dance and hearing gamelan orchestras. When this musical tradition was introduced to Europeans around the turn of the last century, it had a profound effect, with its many varieties of percussion instruments, cymbals, drums, and tuned gongs of all sizes. At a native market I bought a sarong (a man’s dress) and plan to acquire one of the solemn tuned gongs so that I can play the didgeridoo, wear the sarong and hit the gong. Should be especially effective at difficult budget meetings back at USNA.
In Bali, the air was clean, the scenery spectacular, the people warm and friendly. Then we went to Jakarta. By contrast, this is a dirty, crowded, chaotic city, capitol of the most populous Muslim country in the world. The car Jon sent to pick us up was equipped with flak jackets. Now that’s a sobering welcome. Sarah and Jon live in an international compound with ex-pats from various countries, where there’s a double wall and guards open your hood, trunk and run a mirror under your chassis before allowing you through. Labor is incredibly inexpensive in Indonesia, so everyone seems to have lots of help. Sarah and Jon employ a full time cook/housekeeper, a nanny for Thomas and a chauffeur. This on a Lieutenant’s pay! It’s the one great redeeming feature of the place.
The exchange rate in Indonesia is 10,000 to 1 (i.e. 1,000 rupiah = 10 cents) making each trip to the ATM a religious experience. If I want $100 US, I punch in 1,000,000 rupiah. All those zeros! Can that be right? Do I really want to hit Enter?
Sarah arranged many interesting tours to introduce us to the people and culture of Indonesia, including a fascinating visit to a gong factory in Joghor. 
Six sweaty men wearing little clothing and no protective gear sit in a circle in an unlit barn. One guy operates a bellows, one has a set of long, chopstick-like tongs, and four hold heavy hammers. The future gong is heated on the coals until it’s red-hot, then flipped off the coals with the chopsticks, and the four guys form a circle and pound away in rhythmic succession (clink, tink, clink, tink, clink, tink) until the gong cools, and it’s plopped back in the fire for another go. Sparks fly, there’s lots of smoke and undecipherable smells, although whether it was the foundry or the folks across the street who were cooking a whole goat in their front yard, it was hard to say. 
After Jakarta we flew to Singapore; a radically different city experience. Singapore is like a country run by a strict second-grade teacher. Everybody toes the line -- no littering, no grafitti (remember the young American who spray painted a few cars and was arrested and caned?), everyone buckles up, even in the back seats of cabs, and when you arrive at the airport, there’s a big sign announcing “Penalty for possession of drugs: DEATH.” And they mean it. The city is pristine, possibly because cars are discouraged by a very high tax on inner city driving, and even when Marcia went out on her own, she reported feeling safe. We had cocktails at the bar atop the Swissotel, dinner at the famous Raffles Hotel, and visited the Singapore Zoo which is world famous for it’s no-cages displays. You look right into the eyes of tigers across a 30-foot moat, and wonder about the signs that inform you that tigers can leap 30 feet. Now, is that a maximum of 30 feet, you muse, or is it really 29 feet, or if the big fellow is really hungry and motivated enough, say, to make a 31 foot leap, would you then become lunch? Anyway, it’s worth a trip around the world to get to that zoo. And the Singapore airport has to be the best in the world. (Link) They offer guided tours. And I can attest to the efficiency of their medical care. Having consumed one too many strange things in Jakarta, I was in serious need of medical attention, and found that the airport had a walk-in clinic where I had to wait only 10 minutes to see a doctor. 20 minutes later was on my way with industrial strength Immodium and some antibiotics. The cost? $30 for both drugs and the doctor. This was good because we next plunged into Bangkok.
Bangkok was a profoundly unpleasant experience. The city, like Jakarta, is crowded, dirty, polluted -- boy is it polluted, even the cockroaches were coughing. 
The old royal palaces and temples were stunningly magnificent in ways not seen anywhere else in the world, and the Jim Thompson Thai House and Museum (Link) is fascinating and well worth a visit, but the traffic makes Naples look organized. Even motorscooters are used as taxis, the closest I’ve ever come to an extreme sport. Everyone drives in whatever direction his whimsy takes him, and even on one-way streets it’s impossible to tell which direction is the legal one. Thailand has not yet discovered pollution controls, or unleaded gas, the factories belch all kinds of stuff into the air which is so gritty that you can actually chew it. To get us out of the city, our host, an old college friend, arranged a wonderful chauffeured guided tour to the old Siamese capitol of Autthaya, north of Bangkok, where we boarded a small but luxurious teak barge that had been modernized to carry passengers in 6 cabins, each with their own double bed, full bath, desk and settee. The crew pampered us silly on an idyllic overnight cruise down the Chao Pharaya river to Bangkok. I’ll never forget sitting on the deck at dawn, sipping hot coffee and watching the sun rise like a fat, red balloon over the wats (temples) along the riverbanks. 
We took another overnight sailing excursion, chartering a 38-foot catamaran out of Pattaya on the Gulf of Thailand. While the scenery was wonderful, much like the Caribbean, again pollution was incredible. The Thais have a law prohibiting the dumping of garbage within 12 kilometers of shore, but rather than the law serving to restrict this practice, every ship seems to view it as a requirement to dump garbage at that 12-kilometer point. Water that should have been pristine is floating with plastic bags, Styrofoam food containers, sippy boxes, plastic bottles, drink cans, partially consumed chicken legs and other unmentionables every square yard or so. It litters the beaches, too. Yuk. If you plan a trip to Bangkok, make sure your shots are up to date. We’re told the water is better off Phuket where there’s no commercial ship traffic. Pity we weren’t sailing there.
We departed Bangkok for London, staying with longtime friends in Bedford, north of London. We caught our breath there, I was treated to an amazing 12-oz Scotch Angus beef steak (definitely recognizable!) and in keeping with our goal of staying warm, took advantage of one of England’s best-kept secrets – incredibly cheap (almost free) flights on Ryan Air or EasyJet to hundreds of European destinations – and flew to Malaga.
We spent the next three nights at the Hotel Simon, a converted 17th century palace in the heart of Seville, a gorgeous, romantic old city with wonderfully recognizable food and the narrowest streets that I have ever seen with automobiles in them, some so narrow that I could stretch out my arms and touch walls on both sides. The oldest part of Seville dates from Moorish times, and the Alcazar (royal palace), the cathedral, the Casa de Pilatos, and the Museum of Fine Arts are all worth a visit. We completely failed to stay warm. Sunny Spain (3 C.) was colder than London (5 C.) Undaunted, we drove through four inches of snow to Granada and toured the Alhambra which was truly magical in the snow. 
The Alhambra was the Western capitol of the Islamic empire, set high on a hill with panoramic views of the mountains and the sea. The Arabs lost it in the 14th century, I think, and have been mad ever since. 
We returned from Spain to London, spent one additional night with our friends, and boarded a plane for Charlotte NC and return to Baltimore. All in all, 13 flights, 42 days.
Now that’s more than anyone would ever want to know about someone else’s travels, and if you read this far, you deserve some refreshment.
Our plans are to go sailing next. Late this summer I’ll begin moving Troubadour south down the intercoastal waterway, a few days at a time, while I’m still working. Maybe I’ll get as far south as Charleston or even Jacksonville so that when I retire in December, we can pick up the boat someplace warmer than Maryland, and spend parts of the next two years cruising the Bahamas and the Caribbean, with frequent return trips to Annapolis during the hurricane season or the tax season. Perhaps we’ll find a piece of real estate in the sun that we like (I’m sure will succeed with this) and can afford (far less likely). If we can’t do that, I’ll probably sell Troubadour and get a larger boat. As Barry keeps reminding me when I moon over waterfront property, “Marcia, we have waterfront property. It’s called a boat.”
Hope you had a joyous holiday season, and please keep in touch. -- Barry
