Many here probably have memories of places and events that happened years ago, either at sea, in ports around the world, or more homely places.
Here is my first contribution. Where is this and do you have an interesting memory from there?
I’ve never been to Vietnam so no memories conjured by your photo. But even the most boringest of mariners have at least a few good sea stories. I think the secret of sharing a memory in the form of a sea story is not being too long winded & not sharing them too often.
Bars, foriegn hotels, fights, whores, taxis rides, being sheetfaced drunk, crooked police, assholes & angels. Most of us have so many of these memories they’re probably not as special as we might think? But a truly unique memory for me involved a UFO, 3 of them. It was '01 or '02 & I was on an OSV in the GoM. It was just before midnight, I was turning in the fuel ticket & there were 4 others in the bridge. Someone said something about strange lights in the crystal clear night sky & sure enough, 3 tiny globes or tiny stars were swirling around each other. They would spin fast, stop, go slow, spread apart, come back together & so on. It looked like they were playing with each other. 4 of us 5 clearly seen them. They swirled & danced about for 10-15 minutes, then vanished. 100% sure, without a doubt, we all seen the same thing & none of us could come up with a reasonable explanation of what they were. I’ve always been cautious of telling this story to individuals & hardly never in public to a crowd. Who would believe such nonsense? Since I’ve been selective in telling this story I’ve only been accused of lying or being crazy a couple of times, at least to my face. I’m happy the US government recently has been releasing credible files on these strange sightings so others aren’t shunned for sharing similar interesting stories.
Miss Kitties Long Branch Salon
Busan - Texas Street.
Much more coming soon about UFOs, or UAPs as is now the terminology. They are real enough. They have been observed for centuries and are even depicted on ancient stone carvings etc.
I have no personal experience but my wife experienced the same as you near our home when we lived in Sydney.
I saw one flying low above the Kill Van Kull before sunrise in the early 80s, and two between Malaga and Almeria on the Spanish coast. Each time I had witnesses aboard ship with me.
La Concha, Punta Cardon. Campo Alegre, Willemstad.
Who would have thought, your thread will morph from seafaring experiences of the past to close encounters of the 3rd kind. ?
The world works in mysterious ways.
Since you recognized Saigon and the old Majestic Hotel, here is another famous Saigon hotel, Continental Palace:
A favourit place to spend their time for many of the War Correspondents that covered the Vietnam war from here. The terrace bar, popularly known as the “Continental shelf” (above), were a popular place to get the “inside stories”, with a minimum of risk to the correspondents.
More battles were won and more heroic acts recounted here than anywhere else in Saigon in the late-1960s and early-70s.
Now the Continental Saigon Hotel:
I am obligated to make a confession.
It’s not me who recognised Saigon but google photo search.
Was in Vietnam 2-3 times but it was so fast and so uneventfull, that I do not even remember the name of the port. But it accomodated 3500 teu and bigger vessels.
Although on my first call in bad visibility I felt lost for the first time.in my life and had to turn the ship around and begun approach to pilot stn again from known and reliable position.
Pilot was yapping about delay so I shut him up suggesting ,they could at least install one or more racons on one or two of their little islands for position fixing , otherwise he should stop saving on fuel and go out further at sea to meet the vessel as indicated on the effing chart while GPS goes nuts in the area.
Pissed me off the little prick.
As a Yankee I have lots of memories of Saigon. While on the President Monroe (C3-P) in 1964 we brought three river boats up as deck cargo. Relaxing in the Majestic, listening to the artillery and gunfire in the distance, sipping on my gin and tonic thinking this hotel is really something till I found a finger nail at the bottom of my glass and many other big and small adventures!
We went to restaurant in Malta and CE ate 1kilogram stake. And appetizers before and dessert after, of cause.