Wednesday February 15, 2023
The day at sea after the excitement of Singapore was very welcome. We find that it is good to have a day or so between ports as it gives you the chance to catch up on Blog writing, while at the same time feeding the brain with many interesting lectures and other activities.
Mark Fitzpatrick, a former diplomat and nuclear expert, spoke about ASEAN – Association of South East Asian Nations. It is based in Jakarta, Indonesia and has 10 member nations. It was established on August 8, 1967 in Bangkok Thailand. The founding members were – Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Since then other nations have joined – Brunei on January 7, 1984; Viet Nam on July 28, 1995; Laos and Myanmar (Burma) on July 23 1997 and Cambodia on April 30, 1999. Although it was modeled after the European Union (EU), it falls very short of that. It is more of a recognition of the independence of each nation, the agreement not to interfere with the internal matters in each member state and generally to promote trade in the region. The current head (2023-2028) is the Cambodian – Dr. Kano Kim Houtn., and the first head was the Indonesian H.R. Darsono – June. 7, 1976 to 198.
The next lecture was by Pamela Chen who had the interesting title of Tones, Dialects and 8,000 characters. We had hoped for an erudite linguistic discussion of the languages of the region. What we got was a Taiwan native who lives in England, talking about Chinese characters and tones. It was interesting, but not overly relevant to the area. The third lecture was by the Geographer – Dr Christine Drake who spoke about the similarities and contrasts between people, geography, political, economic situation of the countries in South East Asia. She gave lots of facts and figures which showed how different each county is from the other.
In the evening the Singers and Dancers of Cunard did the show – Be our Guest. Overnight we went back another hour in time.
Roger & Anne Travels 