Travel - ramblingeconomist.in

March 22, 2021March 23, 2021

Japan – Tokyo , June 2018

This is a revised version of my earlier blog about Japan, but here I am planning to add a lot of pictures. Some pics have been added, I will add more later.

Impressions of Japan –Tokyo, June 2018

You don’t understand Japan and the Japanese until you actually visit Japan and observe the behavior of your Japanese friends (both in Japan and abroad) over a period of time. Now I have done both. This does not make me an expert on Japan. Yet the conclusions I will draw by myself are not in any book or film or video. These are unwritten and unpublished truths about the Japanese society. So here they come (without much evidence!) – I invoke my freedom of expression rights, so you absolutely have the right to vehemently disagree with me.

The Japanese have many rules and customs and etiquette – some formal, some informal, some strictly enforced, some expected of good citizens. They are crazy crazy polite. If you go to a store to buy a loaf of bread, somebody will bow to you at the door, and will say ‘connichewa” (hello). You will have to do the same. When you come near the shelf where they keep the bread, another employee will notice you, bow and say hello and possibly enquire about your shopping needs. You will need to bow and speak with him and smile. When you are going to the cash counter, another employee will thank you for your patronage and ask you some additional questions. You will need to bow and smile and talk to him or her.

Finally at the cash counter, more bowing, exchanging pleasantries and a round of “arigato” (thank you). At the exit door, another bow and more pleasantries exchanged. In India, some stores may have a lot of employees on their sales staff, but you can ignore them. In japan, you have to speak to everyone, and BOW until your waist hurts. Almost all of us foreigners can not possibly follow these customs and many others that are followed by the Japanese every day!. We are excused by the Japanese for failing their standards but at the same time, under all the politeness, they feel smug at our lack of sophistication. As a result, the Japanese think we foreigners are rude and impolite in general

The Japanese do not care much about diversity. They like their society as it is, almost entirely consisting of ethnic Japanese. There is now a sprinkling of working foreigners and students. Of late, the resident hafus (mixed race) have grown up. If they are successful, they are celebrated (like Naomi Osaka). If not , they are tolerated and suffer quiet but persistent discrimination throughout their lives.

The Japanese do not care about economic growth that much – in fact stagnation is OK with them. They already have a high standard of living and they want to stagnate around that forever.

No drugs, no crime, decent food , excellent transportation and entertainment options, and decent salary and job security even for the lowest level jobs – the Japanese have quite a high standard of living indeed. Apartments, like hotel rooms, are tiny but clean and efficient – and outside Tokyo, they are not that tiny!

The Western media cares more about Japanese stagnation than the Japanese citizens.

Nor are the Japanese worried about declining birthrates, or decline in the number of married people. The Western media write alarmist articles frequently about the decline in Japanese family life, and the depression and the high suicide rate. Any evening of the week, there are huge crowds on the streets, shopping, eating and having fun – not consistent with a depressed society.

Every night, buildings and streets are crowded like this.

Every night, buildings are lit up like this and filled with hordes of people. A depressed, suicidal society? Not for most people!!

A typical night in the middle of the week in Shinjuku, the central business district. These are just regular bars and restaurants on both sides, nothing special like live music, concerts or wild parties. This is just normal for Tokyo.

Mostly, the Japanese do not wish to travel to uncivilized countries in Asia (includes India, Malaysia etc.) or Africa or Latin America. USA and Western Europe are OK . I have kept in touch with many Japanese friends since our university days about forty years ago. Everyone has travelled to many western countries during these years, but not a single person has visited India. The thought of visiting India with its lack of discipline and order, along with the dirt and poverty terrorizes the Japanese people (at least discourages them). You will see busloads of Japanese tourists all over Europe and USA , not at all in India or other South Asian countries. The Japanese travelers to India will be heretics and outliers.

The Japanese love Japan. Even with foreign degrees, good jobs in USA or Europe, they will ultimately return to the land of the rising Sun unlike us Indians or Chinese or others.

In our Ph. D. program in University of Rochester, among our contemporaries in economics, there were five Japanese, four Indians, one Taiwanese, one Israeli, one Mexican, and about seven Americans. All of these students worked in USA all their lives after finishing their Ph.D’s . Except, the Mexican guy was from an aristocratic Mexican family, so he went back after a while and eventually became Mexico’s finance minister. The Israeli man went back to the most prestigious university in Israel, and all the Japanese guys went back to Japan, gladly giving up economic opportunities in USA. We Indians gladly gave up our country for economic opportunities in the USA.

Many US universities have a small number of Japanese born faculty – they are there because of their academic or personal interests . They also often go back to Japan after about ten or fifteen years in USA. Compare this to Indians in our generation – none of us went back to work in India, ever. The only Indians with PHD.’s in economics that went back were the ones who did not get a single job offer in USA. Ashim Dasgupta was no exception- his Ph.D. thesis from MIT was below par and he never got a job offer.

The Japanese like to claim that they work very hard, in fact they quote long working hours and high burnout rates etc., to prove this. While some people of course work very hard and /or burn out (in every country), a little more probing will reveal the following:

A lot of work is “pretend” make-up work. In order to submit a report to a high level employee of the same company in a different office, email or fax is supposedly insulting. Somebody has to go clear across town to deliver the report, chat with the employee and maybe have coffee. Five hours of “hard work” that could be accomplished in one minute!!

In a university, a lot of professors bring sleeping bags and sleep in their offices because they are doing so much research! You can draw your own conclusions (hint: they sleep at night in their offices!)

Every evening, in the central business and entertainment district ( Shinjuku, where I stayed for four nights) , there are literally hundreds of bars and restaurants and they are all packed from early evening. Who are these people? Tourists? Teenagers? Singles hunting for partners? Yes, some of them are but these still do not explain the huge crowds every single night. We are looking at an area about twenty times the size of Park Street in Calcutta, or Times Square in New York City, with bars and restaurants at almost every building! And there are similar areas in Central Tokyo and many other places. The crowd consists of people working! They are conducting important business meetings! Yes, drinking, eating , smoking, chatting and maybe talking business a little bit. All on company time. I won’t mind working hard like that! After all that hard work, they are too tired (drunk) to go home, so they crash at a cheap hotel, and go back to the office in disarray the next morning and proudly claim that they worked so hard the previous day.

Because the way they are brought up, the Japanese are socially awkward . In the famous cat café, I saw Japanese men quietly sitting next to cats, not interacting with them, after paying a hefty admission fee to go in and play with cats!! In the subway or train , restaurant, or even in a park, many people are working on their phones or laptops instead of talking. This accentuates the hard work syndrome!

All tourist spots, temples, shrines, parks, iconic buildings, are all packed with Japanese people every day in addition to foreign tourists. Tourists from outside Tokyo ? Well , they are supposed to be working hard too!! My guess is that the Japanese get a lot of days off from their arduous work schedule, they just don’t want to admit that they do!

Overall. I have felt that the Japanese think that they are superior to others in the world. The people from Asia and Africa are deemed to be uncivilized and without manners – more so than people from Europe!

Obviously, not everyone in Japan holds these opinions, there are many exceptions !

Now I write about the good stuff! Japan’s society is so outstanding in many ways that I would happily vacation there every year even if all the above stereotypes are true for every single Japanese person (and they are not, obviously!)

Transport

The transportation hubs in Tokyo are massive! They were overwhelming to me when I landed in Tokyo, but once you figure out everything, it is really impressive and well-organized. Shinjuku station has five floors , one for subway trains, one for long-distance trains, one for long-distance buses , one for local buses, and one level for taxis and private cars. You can plan your nation-wide travel itinerary from that one place! And the entire building is full of restaurants and takeaway places and it is next to huge shopping areas. I had a hotel near the station. I took a train from Narita international airport to here on arrival in Japan, then used the same Shinjuku station for subway rides inside Tokyo and left by long-distance bus from the same Shinjuku station for Mt. Fuji. Subway trains are numerous and color-coded and well-organized, yet I managed to get lost on the first day and had to rebuy my tickets, so thereafter I bought an all-day ticket every day in Tokyo, and Kyoto and Osaka.

The cleanliness of the streets is striking! They do not allow smoking on the streets because the ash from your cigarette will make the streets dirty ( not the butts which you can dispose of separately) . Surprisingly, you can smoke in many bars and restaurants because the Japanese respect your private space, although this is changing fast!! But heck, I have no idea how they keep the streets and the sidewalk spotlessly clean even in high traffic areas.

Manners

The discipline and the politeness of the people working everywhere is amazing! They actually learn politeness and cleanliness at schools. In primary schools, students have one class period allocated to cleaning their own class rooms and toilets (yes, try this in India!!)

People everywhere think they are well –paid. Thus you do not tip the wait staff in restaurants or the taxi-drivers in Japan because they are insulted if you do so (no kidding)!

The politeness of people on the street and in social situations is totally off the charts! I think in Tokyo, you can take off all your clothes and step into a busy street while playing with your private parts and you will be summarily ignored until the Police politely asks you if you need help (alright, I made this one up, this is not true!!)

You will see bicyclists riding for about 20 meters on the sidewalk, stopping because they would not use the bell to distract the pedestrians in front and dismounting and walking behind them until they can ride again maybe this time for 15 meters!!

Everywhere in a humongous city like Tokyo, you see young boys and girls (8 to 13) taking the subway to school alone , hanging out in groups or playing in parks unsupervised. Older kids, 14 to 18, work in convenience stores or takeaway places, sometimes unsupervised by adults. Nobody kidnaps them, nobody assaults them , nobody robs them (try this in USA!!)

And, no, in case you have turned on your filthy imagination, teenage girls are normally dressed, or sometimes weirdly dressed with multi-colored hair and funky accessories, but not wearing micro-mini skirts and trying to seduce older men for money. If this does go on in Japan, it is an online, secret thing using only Japanese language, and I did not see any evidence of that at all in public places – I was not looking for it anyways!! The Western media often writes about teenage girls behaving inappropriately in Japan – it is simply not true!

The punctuality of Japanese transportation that you may have heard of is all true. A train leaving at 2:13 pm will not leave at 2:14 pm. Even my long –distance bus to Fujiyama from Tokyo went through highways and little towns and arrived on the dot after four hours.

Food

Japanese food turned out to be surprisingly tasty! They use a small amount of spices, but skillfully enough so that the food becomes flavorful. This applies to all the beef and fish soups and entrees I have eaten in Japan. And all the pickled and cooked veggies. Of course I liked the sushi and the tempura too.

Beautifully presented sushi platter in Asakusa, Tokyo

Breakfast Sushi, anyone? Fresh, raw fish for breakfast tastes surprisingly good!

What is even more remarkable is that the quality of food is the same everywhere. You can buy a chicken sandwich, or a lunch combo with soup and a piece of fish and pickled veggies from a roadside convenience store or from an expensive restaurant, they will taste the same. The restaurants only offer much more variety and ambiance at much higher prices. As soon as I discovered this I started having excellent meals in my hotel room that I bought from roadside convenience stores. A meal of four small sandwiches (egg salad, tuna, roast beef, and Japan’s unique strawberry and cream sandwich) and a small salad and a small pastry will be about 8 dollars and everything will be super fresh and taste great! A meal like that in a proper restaurant will cost at least twice as much.

Talk about ambiance in fancy restaurants, the menu shown above includes Wagyu beef, the most expensive beef in the world, at just 11000 yen per serving (that’s about $110, or 8400 rupees !!) I did not eat this, could not force myself to spend so much on one meal. Instead I ate Bulgogi

Korean Bulgogi (beef) – cost about 10 dollars – very tasty!

The Japanese are very innovative about service in restaurants – some of these are now being implemented in other countries.

You may have seen or visited the rotating wheel restaurants where freshly prepared food items are loaded on to the conveyor belt. You grab whatever you like. This lets you taste many small items.

Another way is online menus at the tables, your order reaches the kitchen online and delivered to you by the waiter. I have seen this in USA during recent years. Still another way is to look at the menu items at the entrance, order and pay at the machine at the gate and get a receipt. When you are inside, your receipt gets you the food you ordered already.

Then there are specialized places in entertainment districts. Apart from the ubiquitous Karaoke bar, there are Robot cafes, Anime cafes, Maid cafes, and so on. And finally cat and dog cafes where you can hang out with your favorite animals and have a latte at the same time. I tried the cat café, and loved it,

You can not finish a discussion of Japanese food without discussing their vending machines. Yes, they have scores of beverages and snacks instead of only a handful in USA or Europe. You can also get prepackaged food and freshly cooked food in some machines that are supposedly very good. And machines are everywhere including at the street corners.

I did not try the food, but I tried all kinds of weird drinks and liked some of them( my favorite : Pokari Sweat Water – yes sweat water!!)

No drugs, no crime, decent food , excellent transportation and entertainment options, and decent salary and job security even for low level jobs – the Japanese have quite a high standard of living indeed . Apartments, like hotel rooms, are tiny but clean and efficient – and outside Tokyo, they are not that tiny! Healthcare coverage is a lot less comprehensive for working adults in recent years. On the other hand, for many seniors, health care coverage has been so excellent that many people of 100+ years continue to roam the streets, which results in some obvious social problems of depression, abandonment and loneliness.

Seniors

Talking about senior citizens, I thought I was in decent physical shape for a man in my mid-sixties. The Japanese senior brigade put me into deep shame. I have never seen so many old folks with flat stomachs and ramrod straight posture, hiking, biking, exercising and playing sports (and apparently, having sex too) in their sixties, seventies and eighties! Some of them work in their mid-eighties, not for money, but to spend time!!

I enclose two pics of my classmates in Rochester that I met after 38 years. the man with his daughter is Dr. Fukiharu, the guy with white hair is Dr. Kodaira, and the other guy is Dr. Takahashi

OUTSTANDING Parks right in the middle of big cities:

Huge parks and gardens with amazing landscaping that generate a sense of peace and tranquility. Almost every temple has a garden or a park adjacent to it that I found sometimes more appealing than the temple itself.

Serenity right in the heart of Tokyo

November 10, 2020November 10, 2020

My Travels

June 2018

Japan – Tokyo only – Part 1

You don’t understand Japan and the Japanese until you actually visit Japan and observe the behavior of your Japanese friends (both in Japan and abroad) over a period of time. Now I have done both. This does not make me an expert on Japan. Yet the conclusions I will draw by myself are not in any book or film or video. These are unwritten and unpublished truths about the Japanese society. So here they come (without much evidence hahaha) – I invoke my freedom of expression rights, so don’t hate me!!

The Japanese feel that they are superior to other people

The Japanese feel that the others are uncivilized . Asians and Africans are more uncivilized than people from Western Europe and USA.

The Japanese have many rules and customs and etiquettes – some formal, some informal, some strictly enforced, some expected of good citizens. Almost all of us foreigners can not possibly follow these customs . We are excused by the Japanese for failing their standards but at the same time, under all the politeness, they feel smug at our lack of sophistication.

The Japanese do not care much about diversity. They like their society as it is, a sprinkling of working foreigners and resident hafus (mixed race) that they currently have is sufficient.

They do not care about economic growth that much – in fact stagnation is OK with them. They already have a high standard of living and they want to stagnate around that forever.

The Western media cares more about Japanese stagnation than the Japanese citizens.

Nor are they worried about declining birthrates, or decline in the number of married people.

Mostly, they do not wish to travel to uncivilized countries in Asia (includes India, Malaysia etc.)or Africa or Latin America. USA and Western Europe are OK .

The Japanese love Japan. Even with foreign degrees, good jobs in USA or Europe, they will ultimately return to the land of the rising Sun unlike us Indians or Chinese or others. Dissenting citizens, rebels , misfits and escapists of course exist in every society and Japan is no exception.

In a university, a lot of professors bring sleeping bags and sleep in their offices because they are doing so much research! You can draw your own conclusions.

Every evening, in the central business and entertainment district ( Shinjuku, where I stayed for four nights) , there are literally hundreds of bars and restaurants and they are all packed from early evening. Tourists? Teenagers? Singles hunting for partners? Yes, but these still do not explain the huge crowds every single night. We are looking at an area about twenty times the size of Park Street in Calcutta, or Times Square in New York City, with bars and restaurants at almost every building! And there are similar areas in Central Tokyo and many other places. The crowd consists of people working! Yes, drinking, eating , smoking, chatting and maybe talking business a little bit. All on company time. I won’t mind working hard like that! After all that hard work, they are too tired (drunk) to go home, so they crash at a cheap hotel, and go back to the office in disarray the next morning!!

In the subway or train , restaurant, or even in a park, many people are seen working on their phones or laptops instead of talking. This accentuates the hard work syndrome!

Obviously, not everyone in Japan holds these opinions, there are many exceptions !

The discipline and the politeness of the people working everywhere is amazing! You do not tip the wait staff in restaurants or the taxi-drivers in Japan because they are insulted if you do so (no kidding)!

What is even more remarkable is that the quality of food is the same everywhere. You can buy a chicken sandwich, or a lunch combo with soup and a piece of fish and pickled veggies from a roadside convenience store or from an expensive restaurant, they will taste the same. The restaurants only offer much more variety and ambience at much higher prices. As soon as I discovered this I started having excellent meals in my hotel room that I bought from roadside convenience stores. A meal of four small sandwiches (egg salad, tuna, roast beef, and Japan’s unique strawberry and cream sandwich) and a small salad and a small pastry will be about 8 dollars and everything will be super fresh and taste great! A meal like that in a proper restaurant will cost at least twice as much.

The Japanese are very innovative about service in restaurants – some of these are now being implemented in other countries.

You may have seen or visited the rotating wheel restaurants where freshly prepared food items are loaded on to the conveyor belt. You grab whatever you like. This lets you taste many small items.

I did not try the food, but I tried all kinds of weird drinks and liked some of them
( my favorite : Pokari Sweat Water – yes sweat water!!)

No drugs, no crime, decent food , excellent transportation and entertainment options, and decent salary and job security even for low level jobs – the Japanese have quite a high standard of living indeed . Apartments, like hotel rooms, are tiny but clean and efficient – and outside Tokyo, they are not that tiny! The only problems I heard of is regarding welfare payments for the unemployed ( a single mother with two young children will not earn enough to pay for childcare and living expenses – this problem, though serious, exists in almost every country). Healthcare coverage is a lot less comprehensive for working adults in recent years. On the other hand, for many seniors, health care coverage has been so excellent that many people of 100+ years continue to roam the streets, which results in some obvious social problems of depression, abandonment and loneliness.

So what did I see in Tokyo?

Part 2 coming up with pics

Here are friends from Rochester after about 38 years!

November 7, 2020November 7, 2020

My trip to Alaska, Part 2

Alaska Travel Part 2

Ports of Call on the Celebrity Solstice Cruise

As I am writing this in 2020, I recall fondly the small cities in Southwestern Alaska . They used to be quiet fishing towns , with the exception of Juneau which used to be a sleepy state capital . Alaska’s total population is less than 200K, so the state capital is not a very big deal – a medium sized city in contiguous USA has more than 200K residents. Juneau has only 30K people.

The Alaska Ferry is the main mode of commuting to these coastal cities, most of them do not have any access by road, although they also have small airports as well.

Once the Alaska Cruises became popular, these cities now host many humongous ships per day . Each ship disgorges from 1000 to 3000 passengers, who spend a few hours in these towns, sightseeing, shopping, eating and just aimlessly walking around beside the harbor.

These little towns on the western coast of Alaska are beautiful. They are right on the ocean, usually with a big harbor good for large ships. Behind the little town there are mountain ranges, and/ or dense forests and no human habitation for hundreds of miles. So there are no roads to access the mainland on other side of the mountains.

Interestingly, some of these little towns were swamped by people in the mid 1800’s, people chasing gold landed here then went by foot or mule to the hinterlands in the Yukon territories. Lawless and uncouth townships sprouted, most people spent countless days searching for gold , panning the rivers and ponds , a few lucky ones found large nuggets or plots of land with veins of gold. It was a short lived time of prosperity for these little towns which worked as landing stations for the famous Yukon Gold Rush. After that ended, the towns lived in relative obscurity with fishing and canning for about a century. The folks that lived there are real hardy, the weather is brutal for about six months, and nasty for about four additional months. During two months of summer, it rains most of the time and the temperature is from 40 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Juneau is one of these towns – an exception because the state capital shifted there in 1906. The others with their romantic names, Ketchikan, Skagway, Sitka, Hoona, , Metkatla, Hydabug and many others dot the coastline , the lucky (!) ones get up to a million or more tourists from Cruise ships per year. One of my American colleague’s sons that I have met as a teen , dropped out of mainstream USA, and lives in Hoona, Alaska nowadays !

As the cruise ships got bigger (actually massive), summers in these towns were transformed completely.

Everyday, starting around 8 am, the ships dock and discharge hordes of mainly elderly people. Some stay in town, snacking, lunching and shopping. In a daring effort at vertical integration, the cruise ship companies have opened their own gift shops and restaurants in these towns. Yes, you can buy Peruvian Alpaca sweaters in Ketchikan, Alaska at exorbitant prices, or get Swarovski crystals for your sweetheart at double the usual price at Juneau!! For the townspeople and some itinerant workers that come during the summer, it is their only chance to make a few bucks by selling pizza, sandwiches, coffee and souvenirs – they totally resent the encroachment from the shops owned by the Disney or Celebrity cruises, although they welcome the tourists bought in by them.

For the more physically active folks there are lots of activities offered as day tours – they run from 50 to 500 dollars depending on the activities and the duration, This is my evaluation of these trips (according to my own preference)

1. Native American cultural tour – mainly Tippis and totem poles and lectures from a guide. Go if you are really interested.

2. City sightseeing and food tours – the historical sights in these cities are at best unremarkable and the food is way better in modern cruise ships and free too if you are on the cruise!!

3. Hiking or biking tours – you will see wonderful scenery – land and mountains and oceans – take the mild to moderate tours unless you are below forty and in great physical shape . If you are in great Physical shape, then you are rewarded with a spectacular trekking experience. But you are unlikely to be on a cruise ship with that demographic – unless , of course you are on your honeymoon in which case you may have other pleasant activities in mind!!

Remember it rains frequently and hard and it is cold and windy during summer. There are occasional gorgeous days with sunshine though!

4. Wildlife tours – mainly moose and elk. If you live in North America, you may have seen them already, occasionally you may see black bears, but unlikely during the day when these tours occur. Tons of horse flies, gnats, mosquitoes and other insects inside the forests – and they bite hard!

5. Glacier trips – yes!

6. Whale-watching boat rides – yes!

They cost some real money!

7. Train rides from Skagway through the rugged mountains – this track goes to the Yukon territories in Canada, originally built during the gold rush era – a big yes!

Our ship stopped first at Ketchikan (hard rain, did nothing),

Ketchikan – I will smoke cannabis all day if I lived there!

Juneau (enjoyed the M glacier – but constant drizzle! )

and finally Skagway ( a gorgeous sunny day, a wonderful train ride and a side trip to the Siberian Husky training Center for sled dogs). Three cities on three different days.

Some affluent Mexican families were vacationing with us, I had a good time hanging out with the two boys in their late twenties on the Skagway trip. Also met two pairs of Indian old couples who have retired and traveling the world now.

The train ride from Skagway to the Yukon Territories.

One bright Sunny day in Skagway, Alaska (out of eight days)!

Huskies in training for sleds, poor dogs were hot even at 80 F!!

Always wanted to do Alaska, I got it off my bucket list. On the way back, the ship stopped at Victoria, British Columbia, and I got a chance to see the beautiful Buchart gardens !!

Buchart Gardens in 1987, with my son who was three years old!

Some tips for cruising:

By all means, buy an insulated beverage container. In the buffet station on the ship, high quality coffee, tea, juices and soft drinks are free, whereas anywhere else on the ship a cup of coffee is $4.50, a coke is $3.50 and so on. Heck, buy three beverage containers and a shoulder bag and carry all your daily non-alcoholic drinks with you all over the ship and in your cabin too.

There is no weight restriction on your baggage, so if you want to look really good, bring all kinds of clothes and shoes with you. BTW, the formal night when everyone is supposed to dress up is kind of defunct because of all the old fogies who insist on wearing sweatpants everyday!

If you wanna drink a lot, bring two or three liters of alcohol or several six-packs of beer with you, it will save you a lot of money. Yes you can bring alcohol on board!

Swimming and watersports no good on Alaska cruises. There is one small heated covered indoor pool and sauna which is always very crowded. Other pools are uncovered and/or unheated, and the temperature outside is about 40 – 50 degrees F

Parties happen but most passengers are over 60/65

Remember, even with the special internet package, internet does not work well on the ship

Phone calls on your mobile are chargeable and expensive, so if you want to be a chatterbox, buy a cruise ship package from your phone carrier or be prepared to spend a few hundred dollars in a week.

You have an option to go to one of many sit down restaurants or to the huge buffet – all are free. but the restaurants will take your order for specific items and serve you only what you ordered. In the buffet , you are free to choose basically from the best multi-cuisine, multi nation food collection I have ever seen. Unless you and your spouse want to dress up and feel like being served by a liveried waitperson, there is absolutely no reason not to go to the buffet!!

Plan to diet while on the cruise – hahahah!

The crew members are generally very attractive and multi-lingual and fun to talk to, They will hang out with you if you ask them!. If you are attractive, they will flirt with you and maybe more (although strictly against regulations!!)

Bring Winter Jackets even in June, July and August, you will need them!!

Hopefully in a couple of years we will be able cruise like we used to!!

I leave you with spectacular views of the inside passage:

September 29, 2020May 17, 2021

My Trip to Alaska, Part 1

My Travels: Alaska Part I

I have no literary talent whatsoever, just a lifetime of strange stuff, some not so pleasant, some unexpectedly delightful.

I have lived in USA for about forty years. I visited many states, some numerous times over the years. Memories fade, photos get lost. I reveal my thoughts, my vices , and my personal life contemporaneously in these blogs. I will only use limited amounts of profanity, and will post no pics of naked or semi-naked women !! Everything else here is real and honest.

ALASKA: Of course this one comes first! During my years at USA, I could never afford to go to Alaska. Did not have the time or the money. I watched in awe all the travel videos, the magnificent mountains, the icebergs, the wildlife.

My last years as a professor in the university of Kansas were depressing, to say the least. Fortunately I was offered a job at an university in Kazakhstan, of all places, that I accepted in 2014. Suddenly, my financial problems were gone, I actually became relatively affluent!!

Every year, I started taking long vacations during the summer months. By 2017, I had enough money to splurge. I could not go to Alaska and drive through the state by myself. It is a huge state, I will have to drive alone several thousand miles to visit the sights. I opted for an eight day cruise. Went all in, a deluxe cabin with a balcony all for myself. Cost a ton of money but I could finally afford it.

I went from Almaty to Frankfurt. Rested there for two nights. Unlike other cities is Germany, Frankfurt is brand new, most of it anyway. I found it to be rather boring. You get some German flavor near the train station – there were lots of streetside cafes and bars. I stayed in a hotel near the station. German food was disappointing, but I had the best baby squid in my life at a Turkish place near the train station. A little bit of herbs and some butter, and it was heavenly!

I took a sightseeing tour mainly through modern Frankfurt, all steel and glass

A terrible cough ensued , aggravated by my smoking which stayed with me for months to come. I was Ok for the seven hour flight to NYC, but really miserable on the five hour flight to Seattle from NY.

Next morning I boarded the Celebrity Solstice. The ship is huge, more than a thousand passengers , six floors. Almost everyone was paired up, mainly senior citizens. There were a few couples on honeymoon or on fun trips. Most were white Americans, with a smattering of rich Mexican families taking family vacations. The passengers were old and mostly fat, the crew came from different parts of the world and were very lively.

The restaurants had formal seating, but it was pointless for a single person to sit down for a meal. I chose the buffet and what a great choice it was! Unlike the cruise I took way back in 1990 in Florida, food choices have become spectacular in international cruises! There were numerous food stations in the buffet – continental food, American food, salads, chinese food, Japanese food, Mexican food, Indian food, Middle Eastern food – and of course Indian food was being cooked by Indian chefs, Chinese food by Chinese chefs and so on! It was essentially a food heaven! I had fun mixing and matching, like beef stroganoff with naan bread, oxtail soup with chinese noodles – you get the idea. I should have taken more pics, but here is one fourth of the dessert station for your perusal. In case you are not satisfied, there were fifteen kinds of icecream right next to it. I suggest if you go on these cruises, fast for one month prior to departure! Everything in the buffet was free except alcohol.

Breakfast was healthy (haha), I had three types of fish every morning – salmon, herring and mackerel, along with rolls. The amount fish I scarfed down every morning will probably cost about $25 in US restaurants. I finished off with puri and sabji of course!

This was my breakfast every morning. Did not go for eggs and pancakes

My cabin was fantastic. Every morning I woke up to something like this

Oh yes, it was cold! A few degrees above freezing even in June! And constant rain, and heavy winds! The swimming pool on the top deck was closed, the second deck had an unheated covered swimming area, that’s where one of the few smoking sections were. In order to smoke, we had to wear a winter coat and brave some chilly wind! The third deck had a small heated swimming area, that was packed with people at all times.

As I said before, the ship was huge – filled up with lounges and restaurants and gift shops everywhere. The cruise line makes extra money by selling specialty drinks and beverages all over the ship. I did not fall for that except an occasional beer. On the third day, the sun came out and the top deck was open, it was still cold. I succumbed to having a huge crab fest that cost some extra money.

As you can see, the crab leg was huge, about the size of my arm, and there were crab cakes and crab chowder and hush puppies and some bread – everything was soaked with butter – that was an ordeal for my poor arteries. They used no spices whatsoever, my Indian soul craved some masala on the beautiful crab meat!

The top deck is practically empty because it was cold. I was one the brave souls to try the crab fest.

Oh yes, I was lonely as hell, like for most of my life. I was probably the only single person on the boat with about a thousand people! I managed to speak with some people in the smoking area. Many were senior citizens, some were continuously drunk with blurred speech and meaningless jabber. There was the bald fat guy carrying a big bottle of vodka with his wife in tow, there were several elderly ladies with the ever present cocktails in their hands. The lives they led were rather depressing. With enough money to their names, and the children grown, they did not have anything to keep them intellectually alive. They drifted from one cruise to another, drinking, eating and just hanging around. There were some middle aged men who appeared to be interesting ,but they were taking smoke breaks away from their families – they did not talk much.

On the ship, internet did not work very well, my internet package was a waste of money. Phone calls were expensive even with the package deals offered. It was surprising to see some people constantly talking on the phone spending hundreds of dollars for conversations that I think did not involve lucrative business deals !

The crew consisted of young people, some very attractive, from all over the world. I had fun startling the Indian guys with my Hindi (most people think I am Hispanic ), and startling the East Europeans with my poor Russian that I learned in Kazakhstan. Once, I got into a singing lounge which had a smattering of old overweight retirees. A striking blonde in a gorgeous outfit was sitting on a stool in the middle, obviously she was going to sing a little later. As I entered she smiled at me which I thought initially was just an artificial greeting smile. But no, she was giving me the eyelash batting seductive deal !! I looked behind me, there was no one! Apparently I was the only decent looking man in the room (which really is sad). I went up and talked to her. She was a country music singer from Georgia, possibly famous in her own circle. Her voice was melodic, I listened to her for a while. Later I saw her in the buffet because the crew members also dined there. I was tempted but she was way way above my league, and I was prudent enough not to make a fool of myself!

Romance on an Alaska cruise is unlikely, I heard that if you want to party hard, you need to go to Caribbean short cruises. There were teenage girls presumably granddaughters of senior citizens, all attractive young women were with partners, and there were spinsters roaming about in groups that I did not care for at all. There was actually an Emergency Room nurse that I met, she said she gets stressed out form working with trauma patients, and takes a cruise every couple of years to smoke and drink heavily. She was kind of attractive, but appeared to be looking for a serious relationship. I had a mistress in Kazakhstan (until 2019) who I think is stunning, I was not into the nurse at all. In any case, I was not looking for romance on this ship.

This was in Almaty where I was working in 2017!

I met three young men from a rich Mexican family that was taking a family vacation. Two were brothers and the other one was the husband of their sister. I hung out with them whenever I could. Their pics will come later.

The highlight of the trip was on the fourth day where the ship went inside a fjord barely wide enough for the ship to sail through. This was the famous Inside Passage! There were towering snow covered mountains right next to the ship and glaciers and waterfalls. Everyone was on the deck, transfixed by the scenery. A charming Southern lady took some photos of me.

Photos of the fjord:

This is it for now. Part 2 is coming up covering the ports of call

Many more Alaska photos and video on Flickr