Happy New Year!

Can't believe it's 2025!

For me, 2024 was a challenging year, but came out with some positives: I did a lot more walking than the year before and a bit more swimming. Pilates class is something I am enjoying a lot, where once a week for an hour I get to challenge my muscles and core in a fun way and entertained with dad jokes from our instructor.

I finally got a family doctor and was given a clean bill of health which is a relief, after not having had any comprehensive check-up in years.

This year was great professionally, writing more stories and being able to interview people from around the world.

On the travel front, I was able to fly to Hong Kong and Singapore to catch up with friends and family and had such a memorable trip. I also went on an Alaska cruise for the first time and seeing icebergs and glaciers, and even black bears! I also went to San Francisco to see extended family, and an annual trip to Palm Springs.

I hope to be able to travel again in the new year.

Wishing good health and happiness to everyone in 2025! 

Fact of the Day: Cruising Record Numbers

Cruise season has ended with record number of passengers

The last cruise ship set sail yesterday, marking the end of the cruise season in Vancouver, and 2024 was a record-breaking year.

According to the Port of Vancouver, 327 cruise ships docked in the city and carried 1.32 million passengers between March 11 and October 29, breaking last year's record by more than 80,000 or 7 percent increase year-on-year.

An Economic Impact Study released earlier this year by the port authority found that passengers, crew and cruise lines spend more than C$1.1 billion locally annually, which includes passengers spending an average of $450 each on hotels, restaurants, shopping, tours and local attractions.

Meanwhile cruise lines spend as much as $660 million a year on goods and services, as many passengers embark from Canada Place in downtown Vancouver for cruises to Alaska, while the ships get re-stocked, re-fueled and maintained between trips.

That works out to each cruise ship injecting an average of $3 million into the local economy.

Vancouver has been a home port for Alaska for more than 30 years, but can the Port of Vancouver do something about the disembarking experience? Getting to the cruise ship is a great experience, but when about 3,000 passengers with their luggage stream off the cruise ship with no orderly process to get taxis or Uber, it's absolute chaos as I have experienced this first hand in June!

Another thing for the city to fix are the homeless and drug addicts wandering around Gastown and Chinatown who make it a terrifying experience for tourists... 

Picture of the Day: Eagles in Ketchikan

An eagle greets visitors in Ketchikan, Alaska

One more post on Alaska.

In Ketchikan, near the pier where the cruise ships dock, is a giant wooden statue of an eagle with its wings stretched upwards and the body aiming down as if about to land.

That's because Ketchikan comes from the Tlingit word "kitsdhk-hin" which means "the spread wings of an eagle". 

Our tour guide quipped that the eagle looks like it's mooning people... 

Live Like a Local Alaskan

Blasphemous Bill's tagline is "Rest in Pieces"

As I signed up for some excursions as part of my Alaska cruise, the tour guides tried to give us a sense of what life is like where they live and gave suggestions of where to hang out in our precious few hours in each port.

The towns of Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan are very small, with populations of a few thousand people each, but the numbers double when cruise season starts; students and young people with a yearning for adventure come to Alaska to earn money (though food and lodging can be expensive) and have a few good stories to tell their friends and family back home.

Spruce tip soda is among four flavours

Our rainforest tour guide from Montana asked us to write a Google review of our visit and to mention her name so that her mom could see her daughter was still alive and well in Ketchikan.

The guide who took us kayaking also asked us to review the excursion on Google too and if their name was mentioned they would get US$10 extra from his employer. What an incentive.

One of our guides who took us around Skagway was decades older, but it seems he enjoys the lifestyle in Alaska too much. He is happy to take tourists around to see mountains and glaciers from May to October, and after that he and his dog decamp to San Diego and enjoy the sun in the winter.

He suggested that we go to the Skaguay News Depot & Books to get a copy of The Skagway News for US$2 where we can read the section called "Police and Fire Blotter". 

It lists the police reports of what happened in a two-week period. Some are mundane like someone losing a mobile phone or a credit card was found in a store and reunited with its owner. Some involve passengers on cruise ships like losing their ship identification badge, or a medical emergency on the ship.

Colourful donuts assembled upon ordering

Others are more bizarre, like the one about a suspicious pill found on the floor of a bar and was turned over to the police. It turns out it was arthritis medication.

Someone called the police asking about the legalities of standing next to the Alaska sign dressed up as a bigfoot, or how about a person asking the cops to do a welfare check on a friend; the friend was fine but wanted to be left alone...

Another guide in Ketchikan suggested getting a salmon donut (US$10) from Jellyfish Donuts near where the Ruby Princess was docked. He also suggested trying spruce tip beer, bitters and even gin. We could get spruce tip soda from Blasphemous Bill's. 

So after my tour ended and dropped us back at the pier, I walked back to Blasphemous Bill's to get the spruce tip soda. I had to ask for it because I couldn't find it but it was in a small bar fridge near the cashier. 

Having tried pickled spruce tips that taste like capers, I was hoping the soda would have a pine-like smell or taste. Instead it was more of a lemon-lime soda that was quite sweet.

Salmon and maple bacon donuts

Then I hit Jellyfish Donuts and it's a small quaint shop and the donuts are actually brioche buns with creative toppings like sour patch kid and peanut butter and jelly. The signature one is salmon which I had to try. It's actually a smoked salmon spread with a few chopped spring onions on top. 

It's actually pretty good, fluffy donut that's a bit sweet and balanced with the savouriness of the salmon. I also tried maple bacon with actual bacon bits on the glazed donut, but it was more on the sweet side with a lot of icing on top.

Nevertheless, it was fun just to try these items even if they are a bit of a touristy gimmick!

Spotting Black Bears in the Ketchikan Rainforest

Looking up at the many trees in the rainforest

This morning we arrived in Ketchikan, Alaska, the last port of call on our cruise. It's known as the salmon capital of the world because five species of salmon can be found here: chum, sockeye, king, silver and pink. Apparently chum is nicknamed "dog salmon" because it's only good for mushing dogs to eat.

And we are one month away from the start of the salmon run, where the fish return to their birthplace to spawn and then sadly die... 

Black vertical bear claw marks

The town is also known for having the most totem poles in the world and you do see them around town, though they seem to be much smaller than the ones found in Vancouver. They are made of cedar too, the wood of choice for carving.

Ketchikan's population is around 8,000, while the entire island is 14,000. When it's tourist season the population doubles to service thousands of tourists who come daily. That's right. Today there were five cruise ships docked in Ketchikan. 

I signed up for a walk in a rainforest, named the Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary, which was about a 20-minute ride from the pier. Both our drivers to and from the sanctuary were funny and entertaining with their stories of living in the town. Almost all the young people I've encountered here are in Alaska to earn money, but also some genuinely love the outdoors and the lifestyle. 

Our guide for the rainforest walk wasn't a local but from Montana. Nevertheless, she seemed to know what she was doing as she took a dozen of us on a 1 mile walk around the trail. We were told this area gets 13-16ft of rain per year, which compares to Seattle at 5-7ft of rain. In addition Ketchikan only gets 2-3ft of snow per year, so it's more wet than cold.

The rainforest, which is part of the Tongass National Forest, reminded me of Pacific Spirit Park but with a lot more moss and narrower trails. The guide told us interesting facts about things we saw along the way, such as skunk cabbage grown on the ground are eaten by bears as a laxative, and there are berries grown here such as salmonberry, huckleberry, and blackberry. The blackberry's leaves have medicinal uses too.

A tree that grew from a nurse log

She told us 90 percent of this rainforest's trees are either the western hemlock or the sitka spruce. How can you tell the difference between the two? The western hemlock has stripey bark like bacon, whereas the sitka spruce's bark are shaped like fish scales. 

The forest floor is not deep when it comes to soil, so the roots spread out, or in some cases, young trees will gain its nutrients from fallen or dead trees called nurse logs. They can have up to 100 years' worth of nutrients stored up for "baby" trees. 

Our guide showed us a tiny sapling and explained it was 5-7 years old, and a "teenager" was about 50 years old. A mature tree could be up to 500 years old or even 1,000 years old. And the moss hanging on many of the trees? They are called "old man beards" and they are sterile enough to be used to bandage wounds; I was told a while ago that they make good toilet paper!

She also showed us a tree trunk that had bear claw marks on it, as the bear had climbed up the tree!

Not long after we saw a live black bear in front of us which was quite the excitement. Our guide advised us to wait for a few minutes to give the bear some space to leave. And to our left we could see two cubs running around in the forest. 

See the young bear in the stream in the middle?

We spotted the bear again this time under the wooden elevated walkway we were on, and then further in the distance in a grassy area in low tide. There is a stream that leads to the salmon hatchery and this is where the bears are waiting for the salmon to return. The area gets high tide and low tide twice a day which is an interesting fact. 

There were also two bald eagles in the distance circling around in the sky. Hope they didn't think we were lunch...

All of us on the tour were so thrilled to see the black bears, while our guide was probably relieved nothing happened! She added we were so lucky to have blue skies as it had been raining for three weeks straight!

Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary

4085 Tongass Avenue

Ketchikan, Alaska

Traversing the Endicott Arm

Lots of tiny icebergs floating in the Endicott Arm

This morning we woke up to the ship moving at a slow pace because it was in the Endicott Arm, a narrow fjord, about 85km southeast of Juneau, Alaska. The scenery constantly changes, with some areas showing lots of trees, others a deep crevasse that reveals a waterfall from the melting snow above.

The mountains have been eroded by glaciers

After breakfast we wandered to the front of the ship on deck 15 and there were many people standing there taking in the sights. It was so warm outside, around 16 degrees and sunglasses were a must. Floating in the aquamarine-coloured water were small icebergs and if we were lucky we saw some seals sunbathing!

However, as the ship approached they quickly slipped under the water. This happened a few times along the way. No one seemed to spot any wildlife, like black or brown bears, deer, or mountain goats. The Endicott Arm is still part of the Tongass National Forest, one of the largest protected areas in the United States.

The Dawes Glacier in the distance

Then at a certain point, the ship began to slowly turn around, and that's when we saw the Dawes Glacier. However we didn't get close to the glacier, nor could we see any chunks of ice falling into the water, which is called glacier calving. 

When we finished lunch, I had a good walk around the deck and once in a while we could see whales in the distance -- far far distance! They did not jump up, but rather came up for air and went back down again. Nevertheless it was still really cool to see them, if only just a bit of them!

Yesterday I managed to see a very cute five-week old puppy that will grow up to train for Iditarod racing. Two puppies were brought on board the cruise ship to meet some passengers. This female puppy looked very shy, and is a mix of husky, border collie, setter and hound. While huskies are best known, mutts can also run fast too! 

A cute future Iditarod racer

Apparently when full size and racing, these dogs can consume as much as 10,000 to 12,000 calories a day!

Klondike Prospectors Paved the Way for Tourists

There isn't normally this much snow on the mountains now

Our ship the Ruby Princess arrived in Skagway, Alaska this morning, but the captain announced at 7am that the ship could not dock -- the water was too shallow and added other ships would not budge either! There are at least three other cruise ships along the same route as us.

As a result, our ship had to stop away from the dock and set up tenders (small shuttle boats) to shore. This plan was scrambled very quickly and kudos to the staff for making it happen relatively fast.

Even the tour operators in Skagway were shocked to see the cruise ship floating around in the water -- our tour guide Paul said in the 18 years he was a tour guide here he had never seen it like that before... but apparently there is a 17-feet difference in the water levels here...

Pitchfork Falls on the left, next to a pipeline

As a result, our tour at 10.15am started a bit late because the previous tour at 8.30am was delayed by this change in logistics.

Nevertheless, Paul was fun and accommodating -- he can drive a bus of 21 tourists, drive and tell us about the history of the gold rush in Alaska in the 1890s! He even uses a drum stick to point to various areas on the map above him!

As we drove along the Klondike Highway, we had stunning views of the mountains that still had snow on them. Paul said usually at this time of year -- June -- just the caps of the mountains would have snow on them. But because this year was particularly cold, the snow was still around. Perhaps it's a good thing considering there isn't much snow in general on the mountains?

He explained in 1896 gold was discovered, but word didn't get out until a year later. People from all over went from Seattle, Vancouver and Victoria by ship to Alaska -- in some boats it was literally standing room only -- and it was an arduous trek with lots of provisions on their backs.

Stunning views and gorgeous weather to boot!

Horses were badly treated, overwhelmed by the weight of the stuff they had to carry and over treacherous terrain that some 3,000 of them died... is it any wonder one of the roads was nicknamed Dead Horse Trail?

Paul also reminded us in the Victorian era, these prospectors didn't have Gore-tex or North Face jackets -- they had wool and it was very heavy and would get wet easily. The women wore dresses. It's amazing they even survived.

But by the time these prospectors made it to Alaska and survived the frigid winters, there was hardly any gold left in 1898 and either called it quits or stayed anyway. 

Paul gave some shocking statistics:

- 100,000 went to Seattle, Vancouver and Victoria in the hopes of getting to Alaska;

- 40,000 made it to Alaska

- 20,000 looked for gold

- 4,000 found gold

- 1,000 found enough gold to live on. One was John W Nordstrom, a Swedish immigrant who used the money he made from gold and set up a shoe store.

The highways we went on to see the magnificent sights were because of the gold rush, and now who benefits? Us tourists.

In 1972 the first ship brought some 200 tourists. Today it's 15,000 a year.

The season lasts from late April to October. On the last day of the cruise season, some of the locals will get together on the dock to give a send off to the last batch of tourists -- they moon them!

Apparently this is an annual tradition!

And one year, a group of tourists on a cruise ship mooned the locals back!

Kayaking in Juneau, Alaska

Looking across the bay at Mendenhall Glacier

This morning we arrived in Juneau, Alaska, but by lunchtime it was raining which did not bode well for my kayaking trip. However, by the time we arrived at Auke Bay via a school bus for a 20-minute ride, the rain had tapered off with a slight sprinkle and blue skies opened up.

We got ready with a kayak spray skirt so our trousers wouldn't get soaked, and a life jacket on top. Our guide Michael from Alaska Shore Tours made sure each of us was tightly strapped into our life jackets and then we went to the shore and had a quick lesson on how to kayak even though all of us had kayaked before.

Our kayaks on shore ready for some paddling

Soon after we got into the water and began paddling. Across the bay we could see Mendenhall Glacier, in Tongass National Forest. The glacier is shrinking every year; since 1929 it has retreated 2.82km, and climate change has accelerated its retreat even further. 

In the distance Michael pointed out Admiralty Island where there are a large number of brown and black bears that live there. 

He also told us that we were in high tide so the chances of seeing orcas was slim -- they usually appear in low tide, when the fish and other food are concentrated and easier for the orcas to feed. Two weeks earlier a group of kayakers were able to see a pod of orcas.

The weather cooperated for the most part

Nevertheless, we were able to see three seals in the distance. They can hold their breath for 30 minutes, so if they pop up and then go down, you may not see them again. The same goes for orcas, though they can hold their breaths for an hour.

We also saw a tern, a small white bird with a black-shaped helmet on its head. Michael explained these migratory birds fly as far down as Antarctica. Quite amazing. 

As we made our way back to shore, we encountered sandbars 1ft down and made sure we avoided them -- Michael said if you hear the waves as if they are lapping on the shore, then there are sandbars nearby. Periodically we got sprinkles of rain, but no downpour. We were all so happy the way the weather turned out.

Once we avoided this hurdle we paddled hard to get back to shore. After we took off the life jacket and kayak spray skirt there were some snacks waiting for us, as well as some warm apple cider. Michael kept asking us if we had a good time -- he was eager to have a good review on Google -- and then we got back on the bus.

Beautiful blue skies on our afternoon kayaking

Definitely a memorable trip and a fun arm workout!

Cruising to Alaska with Waves

Dramatic sunset from the bow with clouds gathering above

Yesterday we embarked on a cruise to Alaska and it's been quite the trip so far. We had a glorious departure, sailing out of Burrard Inlet, passing under Lions Gate Bridge and into the Pacific Ocean with blue skies.

Towards evening despite gathering clouds I caught a fantastic sunset at the bow of the Ruby Princess as I got my 10,000 steps in. It was quite windy, but lovely to be out in the open sea.

Seeing Vancouver from the ship before departure

Or I might have spoken too soon. Later in the evening I could feel the rolling waves and went to bed hoping the next day would be fine.

The choppy waves continued pretty much all day and I had to lie down most of the time to keep my dizziness at bay! As a result I didn't have much of an appetite. 

Heard later from my relatives who are traveling with us that at breakfast the waves were so rough early in the morning that people dropped food from their plates, causing quite the mess for staff to clean up. I later saw many people holding white paper sickness bags in case they didn't feel well...!!!

Then around 5.30pm the captain made an announcement that a passenger had a medical emergency and needed surgery -- a helicopter would be arriving in about 1.5 hours to evacuate the person and that no one should go outside at that time. I've been on a few cruises before but have never heard of an instance where a helicopter actually flew to a ship to pick up a patient.

About half an hour later the ship began to slow down and then as if by magic my dizziness dissipated and it was a relief!

About to pass under Lions Gate Bridge

By 7.30pm the captain made another announcement the helicopter was coming soon and requested all hands on deck in terms of the staff to make sure no one was outside, and people in their rooms were advised to keep their balcony doors closed too.

We were told later that the evacuation was successful and the ship began gathering speed again, but this did not cause me to be dizzy again.

It was still bright out at 9pm and caught the last of the sunset. Hopefully the rest of the way to our first port of call, Juneau will be uneventful!

Picture of the Day: Salmonberries Coming Soon

These salmonberries will ripen in about a month

Walking in Pacific Spirit Park I see small fuchsia-coloured flowers popping up which means... salmonberries are coming!

They are native to the west coast of North America, from Alaska down to California. 

The fruits are coming out now and very green, but once they're ripe they have an orangey-red colour that look like raspberries, but are smaller and taste quite tart!