I have been traveling for the past 20 days and somewhat out of touch. My weekly e-brief will now return to short posts about new developments in healthcare, technology, and Internet voting. This post will include a brief summary of my travels and some links to some sites and photos for those who may be interested.
The trip started out from New York to Los Angeles and then down to Malibu. The Davenport Institute at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy held an excellent conference called Election 2.106, attended by students, faculty, election officials, and various industry experts. I was privileged to participate in a panel of experts discussion on voting technology. The participants and the entire conference agenda are here.
That evening, after a Mexican buffet at Casa Escobar, I flew to Denver and then drove up to Ft. Collins to meet up with my wife who had flown there as I was flying to LA. We spent the weekend with our daughter, son-in-law, our two grandchildren, two granddogs, and grandcat. Nothing on Earth beats time with grandchildren (we are blessed with six of them).
The flight from Denver to San Francisco began our odyssey to Southeast Asia. After a couple of rainy days in Hong Kong, we boarded the Silver Shadow and cruised to Chang May, Vietnam. We made subsequent visits to Nha Trang and Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City. The trip up the Saigon River took a few hours and it was an amazing site to see with every imaginable type of water craft navigating the crowded channel.
I served in the U.S. Army during the war with Vietnam. Fifty years later I witnessed a country of very friendly and forgiving people. Like in America, most of the population is too young to know about the war and the incredible toll it took on both countries. I cannot help but recall the loss of 55,000 young Americans during a war which was lost. Vietnam is now bustling with economic activity and tourism.
The next stop was Bangkok, another incredibly busy harbor. The traffic in Bangkok makes Los Angeles seem like an automobile breezeway. We disembarked and saw Bangkok’s beautiful temples and took a river cruise along Thailand’s Chao Praya River to see the museum of ancient barges. The most surprising sights in Vietnam and Thailand were the wire infrastructure for electricity, TV, and communications. It is amazing that the wires hanging from poles, some touching roofs and close to the street, actually work. The reliability is said to be good, but it sure doesn’t look like it.
Koh Samui is a small island off the coast of Thailand. We had to anchor offshore and then take tender boats to get there. Our bus tour of the island took us to an elephant park where trained giant females played harmonicas and dunked basketballs in hoops. At another stop at a coconut plantation, we saw very intelligent Meerkat monkeys climb 100 foot trees and twist coconuts from the tree tops and deliver them to the ground. A local expert demonstrated the process of extracting the coconut milk and converting it to coconut cream. No parts of the coconuts are wasted.
The contrast between Vietnam and Thailand and Singapore is more than substantial. For some reason, Vietnam and Thailand cities do not appear orderly and clean. Singapore is pristine. Often called the shopping capital of the world, Singapore is impeccable throughout the country. We finished our days there with a Night Safari. The Singapore Zoo is considered among the top three zoos in the world. It was the first to develop a night ride on a tram providing a near natural view of animals in the jungle at night.
Flying home from Singapore was a pleasure, but a very long one. We left the Mandarin Orchard at 6 AM. The flight from Singapore to Narita, Japan was six and a half hours. After a few hours layover, the flight to JFK was almost 14 hours. Although it was a 26 hour day, thanks to time zone changes, we arrived at JFK a half hour before we left Singapore. The new Boeing Dreamliner 787-8 was impressive. Most of the flight was at 41,000 feet at 650 miles per hour.
We were fortunate to make new friends during the cruise and hope to connect with them in the future. Now it is time to get back to posting about new developments in healthcare, technology, and Internet voting. There is a lot going on. Four Cruise 2016 albums are on Facebook.
