Temples in Thailand, Temples in Busan & trying to cross the street in Vietnam! More Asian adventures from the Sun Princess

As part of our Asian itineraies we'd be hitting some fantastic ports such as Bangkok, Busan, Ho Chi Minh City & Hong Kong to name but a few.

First up was Bangkok, Thailand and for my first time there was a trip to various temples and the Grand Palace which led to my stunning fashion choices above. As the Grand Palace is one of their most sacred sites no barefeet or exposed legs are allowed, as I was wearing shorts and apparently tourists don't know the rules (like me!) they keep a massive box full of trousers you have to put on to gain entry to the site.

Can you imagine in the current post COVID climate picking up someone elses (most definitely unwashed) trousers?

The crazy thing about central Bangkok is the sheer volume of people, motorbikes and shrines! As you can see above just walking through a market there was a small shrine where a lady stopped to prey, its really strange as in most western countries and religions most preying is done a church in a quiet spiritual enviroment. Yet here in the centre of the city this lady stopped on a busy shopping street to prey in the middle of a crowded market, I don't imagine it could have been that peaceful!

The architecture of the Grand Palace is truly stunning however filming them was not the easiest and this would be my first time filming temples in Asia. Back then as our cameras were so large and could be shoulder mounted we didn't have to carry tripods with us (also lots of places would not let you set up a tripod) but of course this also limits the type of shots you could.

As I was fast learning Asia is swelteringly hot and I was drenched in sweat with the oppressive heat smothering me whenever I stepped off the tour bus. Most days on this run the weather would be overcast which was not great for filming giving us grainy washed out footage.

One little filmmaking tip here is because of the weather I tended to focus on close ups and breakdown the statues by grids to film, so for example have a mid shot of a whole statue without the sky in frame then I'd pick out various details from the statur for close ups. This worked for several reasons firstly, you were almost shooting in the order you were cutting so when I went to edit the shots on the tapes would logically flow into the next one so I saved myself time in the edit while shooting.

Secondly you don't have much time in many of these locations so you sometimes need to just take up one good position where you can get a variety of shots in the short time you have.

Next up was Busan (this was before the zombie infested trains), South Korea where you guessed it we were visting some temples again, this time the Beomeosa buddhist temple and once again the weather was dull, overcast and like standing in an oven!

There was a massive layer of smog / fog descending on us throughout the day so once again it was close ups of statues

The above picture is my abiding image from the day, not only because there was a proliferation of creepy budda baby statues around but my cheap point and shoot camera was playing up and it looks like the above picture was intentionally with the focus intended on the back of the image, it wasn't and my camera was only a few weeks away from dying!

Next was Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), Vietnam which at the time was one of the most eye opening experiences I had in my brief time travelling the world so far.

Never in my life had I seen a more chaotic scene than trying to cross a road in Vietnam, that is technically a pedestrian crossing in the picture above but I sure as hell wasn't risking it! Official tourist advice was once you start crossing the road keep going beacuse if you stop / start and try to anticipate the traffic you are more likely to get hit by a motorbike. Incidentally there are more motorbikes than cars and people in Ho Chi Minh city and following the crossing the road advice resulted in the two problems. Firstly half the PAX were too scared to cross the road and the other half took the advice too literally and seemed to disregard everything they had previously learned about crossing the road. Yes, by all means cross the road and let the bikes swerve by you, but some of these idiots would walk out oblivious right into the middle of traffic without even looking both ways first! I was amazed I never saw any PAX get seriously injured on my visits to the city.

The port for the city was a good few hours bus ride away, and the most popular tour was always the Ho Chi Minh City highlights tour which involved stops at the Reunification Palace & Golden Dragon Water Puppet Theatre among others. Usually the highlights tours were terrible for video as you spend most of the day on the bus with very short times to stop to film off the bus and one of the my early rules was to not film shaky cam footage through a dirty bus window for my videos. However on a personal level it was an amzing eye opening experience, never had I seen so many motorbikes and just looking out of the bus window was like watching a traffic accidents reality show moments before the collisons happened!

The sheer amount of crazy stuff you would see on a bike was incredible, sometimes there would be a full family of 5 on one bike with no helmets, other times I saw guys transporting cages full of live chickens and even a live pig hogtied to the back of a bike once!

Another key stop was the Golden Dragon Water Puppet Theatre which would be a staple of every visit, an amazing show where the puppet opeators would be up to their waists in water and operating the puppets from behind the green curtain the above photo.

As with every port I'd encounted in Asia so far it was overcast and ball swelteringly hot all the time, the above picture is what you get at the end of a 9 hour day of filming and also what you get when a passenger others to take a picture for you! I went back to Vietnam many times over the years and will cover it in more detail in some later blogs.

In the next cruise diaries - The Great Wall of China & Hong Kong!