China's Great Armada JULY 2005 Feature Main Page Photo Gallery On Assignment Learn More Map Forum Multimedia In some cases these accounts are edited versions of a spoken interview. They have not been researched and may differ from the printed article. Photograph by Mark Thiessen China's Armada Click to View Field Notes From Author Frank Viviano Field Notes From Photographer Michael Yamashita     I'm an Asia specialist and work mostly in the China Sea area, but for this story I got to travel all the way down the Arabian coast. For the first time, I photographed in places like Africa, Oman, and Yemen, where I was pleasantly surprised. In the United States, Yemen is one of those places that conjures up a dark image because of the U.S.S. Cole bombing. But when I visited Aden, the area where the bombing occurred, I found the people to be quite open and friendly toward me even though I was an American.       I was also fascinated by Yemen's Islamic culture and got the feeling that it hasn't changed much in the past 600 years. I felt as if I was seeing the same things Zheng He might have witnessed in his day.      The tsunami that hit Southeast Asia in December 2004 came as a great shock because I spent time in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka for this story. It was difficult for me to comprehend the destruction the tsunami caused in coastal areas I had just visited.     During Ramadan in Yemen, dinner is not the time to socialize. A few minutes before sunset, people rushed into restaurants and poised themselves to eat because they had been fasting all day. Then someone at the mosque would come over a loudspeaker and give the OK to eat. Immediately, everyone would start to chow down, and in about five minutes all of the food was gone. Top