Asean in Love

Subadar and his daughter also attended the unusual wedding of Venice with the sea, when the representative of Venice traditionally throws a golden ring into the sea."It's so romantic!", the dowager queen of Bali was amazed."It is for the protection and defense of the city.My dear daughter, don't you see that it is an important symbolic event to ask the Sea Gods not to create terrible storms and tsunamis and of course to protect the ships, gondolas and galleys and especially the sailors and all the citizens of the Republic of Venice who live on this sea lagoon of the Adriatic Sea.""If we ever regain the territories of the Song Dynasty, I will marry the sea in the Song Dynasty to protect our sailors and fleets," his daughter told him."Now that's hard, but why don't you marry the emperor of Majapahit, the sea surrounding the empire is much more likely within your reach?It is possible that we have a secret protector around, too.A masked knight with a black cloak has been following us all day, look behind us," said Subadar."Father, he heard what we were talking about.""Don't worry, it's definitely local, nobody here knows our dialect!Now watch me take his mask off with my kung fu skills in one fell swoop.First, let's step away from the crowd of people who came out to the festival.Pretend not to notice him from behind.Now is the time for action," he said, and with one movement he tore off the mask from the unknown figure behind them."It is a woman," Subadar was surprised."Why you follow us?", he asked"Well, that's Rina from the personal guard of the Majapahit emperor", the queen dowager of Bali told him."So, she was following us the whole time, I can't believe we didn't notice her earlier!""I've been away for a while, I just arrived in Venice today and noticed you at this ceremony", Rina explained."And why are you masked if it's not a secret?""I was afraid that you would think I was following you, but I am on a mission like you to find a new and shorter trade corridor to Venice. There are four ancient routes which are certainly known, and which were used to transport goods in ancient times, you went along the Nile River, I came along the Euphrates River and there is another route a little south of where you started, it is called Wadi Hammamat and that the canal flows into the Nile River.The latter route is much further south and leads to Antilla and the mysterious islands of the Seven Golden Cities, however that sea route is much longer, and our goal is to shorten the trade route as much as possible. Our ships also traveled to Mogadishu then goods would be transferred by land or canals for further distribution, there are possibilities of even more, but they are only used by locals as needed or they close and lock the canals to foreigners."We were also thinking of traveling by a different route on our way back and shortening the journey via the city of Alexandria.Earlier civilizations were much more advanced than we know, they traded with other peoples and sailed the oceans along the routes they wrote on their maps, but many routes were destroyed due to war conflicts or natural disasters such as floods and swamps, so we must re-explore them and rebuild them.Of course, Subadar said, during the Song Dynasty we used water navigation pound locks in the construction of man-made artificial canals, and even earlier Ptolemy II for the Pharaonic canal.The Romans built canals on the tops of some viaducts, but that would have been too much of an investment, it is much simpler to restore the embankments of the canals that have collapsed and cover the bottom with clay or concrete."Well, then our ships could sail together, that's what the emperor of Majapahit ordered, because when the Venetian fleets sail there are 30 ships each in the fleet due to the danger of pirates, it's not good for one ship to sail alone. said Rina who had been promoted to admiral earlier by the emperor.Let's put Majapahit flags on both ships", she added.Subadar and the Queen Dowager of the Bali Kingdom looked at each other, Subadar said:"We have already put up our flagpole before.""Yes, but the emperor decided that we use a special flag with an emblem for the navy.Here is the new flag, and you see the queen of the Bali kingdom is responsible for us having this new flag - if you look closely this emblem looks like a sun compass for navigation on sea routes."