Last Port: Hawaii!
Hawaii
At 6am, the administrative and academic deans sang “I Feel Good” over the loud speaker to wake us up. The reason for the early wake-up call is that we arrived in Hawaii early since we had to all go through immigration and they wanted us to have enough time to do things on our only day in Hawaii. After an early breakfast, going through the immigration process, and waiting for the ship to clear, I finally stepped back onto U.S. soil after being away for almost three months.
I went to the Pearl Harbor museum with a few friends, which was about an hour-long bus ride outside Honolulu. I was looking forward to the monument, since we had just come from Japan where I saw the Hiroshima peace memorial, and I was interested in seeing how the two compared. We started by watching a ½ hour-long film giving a brief history of Pearl Harbor and the attacks of December 7th. Following the movie, we got onto little boats, which took us out to the memorial. The memorial was to the Arizona, which was a battleship that sank, bringing down over 1,000 U.S. Navy soldiers with it. It was a long white building built literally on top of the sunken battleship, and parts of the ship were actually sticking out of the water. It was a really beautiful and powerful memorial.
One thing that struck me was that, unlike Hiroshima’s peace memorial, the Arizona memorial was more of a war memorial. In Hiroshima, the museum was a call for peace, for the global disarmament of nuclear weapons. They showed the atrocities committed by America against innocent Japanese citizens, many of which were women and children. In the end though, it conveyed a positive message of world peace. It looked back on the past as a lesson for the future. The Pearl Harbor memorial had a very different feeling to it. The memorial and museum looked back at the atrocities committed by the Japanese. It asks visitors to remember of one of the worst days in American history, to remember the Americans who died for their country. Even so, the memorial did not have any overarching positive message, such as world peace, or any form of peace for that matter. This does not discredit the memorial in any way. It is extremely beautiful, moving, and important. I just find it interesting to see the differences in how these two nations deal with tragedy and how they wish to remember their pasts. It says a great deal about how these two nations view the opposite notions of war and peace. Hiroshima was the beginning of the Japanese’s empire’s decline, which led to the eventual dismantling of their army, which remains in effect today. Pearl Harbor was one of the beginnings of the American War Machine, which remains in strong force to this day…
On the bus ride back to Honolulu, two random people started conversations with me, which was extremely interesting. I learned more about Hawaiian local politics than I ever could have imagined! This is why I love public transportation and have tried taking it as much as possible on this voyage. You meet people and learn things you never could have otherwise.
We hoped to find a beach but didn’t have much luck. Instead, we found a cliff of big rocks, which the Pacific Ocean ran into, which was beautiful. We stayed there for a few hours while we watched the sun set. I know I don’t need to say that Hawaii is beautiful, but it really is. While literally almost every SAS kid was at Waikiki, a famous beach in Honolulu, there were no other SAS kids where we were, which was great! We then ate dinner at a restaurant not far from the street. Following dinner we hung out a little on a near-by balcony, after which we walked back to the ship and got on the M.V. Explorer for the very last time. This was an extremely emotional and difficult task for my friends and I, and we all had a massive group hug afterwards.
It is so hard to believe that this voyage is coming to an end. It feels like the trip only started last week, yet at the same time it feels like this trip began a few years ago! All that I have left is finals and packing, and I will be home before I know it. No words can summarize everything I have seen and experienced. I hope these few posts have been able to express 1/10th of everything I want to say. Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading my blog. It has really been a pleasure sharing my experiences with you and hearing comments in response. Writing everything out has really helped me reflect back and process everything I have seen and experienced. I can honestly say that almost every single day has been one of the best days of my life.
I <3 Japan
I don’t know if anyone still reads the blog, since I haven’t gotten any comments in a long time, but here goes the second to last post just in case there is someone out there! If there are people still reading, I apologize for being such a slacker when it comes to posting pictures. It is impossible on the ship since Internet is horribly slow and terribly expensive, and I haven’t had my computer out in port anytime recently to actually upload them up onto Flickr. If interested, I will be sure to show anyone the 1,000+ pictures I currently have when I come home in the next few weeks!
Japan: Day 1
Like I have done at almost every port so far, I woke up extremely early to watch the sun rise as we pulled into Kobe, Japan. Unfortunately, it was rainy, cold, and cloudy, so I ended up going back to sleep for a while. Japan is really weird when it comes to letting people into the country. The day before we arrived, we had to have our temperatures taken to make sure we weren’t sick. Then the morning we arrived we had to walk past this “thermoscan” machine that read our body temperature just to make sure. SAS advised that if we did have a little fever to take Tylenol and stand outside in the cold for a few minutes before having your temperature checked, because people would literally be quarantined if they had even a slight fever. Contrary to what the name suggests, the thermoscan wasn’t actually awesome as I was predicting, and in fact was horribly anticlimactic.
The ship was given the most amazing welcome upon arriving in Kobe. Not only was there a fire-boat helping us into the harbor which sprayed our water in a little water show and a band out by the port while we actually pulled in, but we had a whole welcome reception! The Kobe tourism board organized a whole ordeal, including an amazing percussion performance!
After the ship was cleared by customs, I went to walk around Kobe for the day with a few friends. We had no plan for the morning so we just wandered. The first thing I noticed was that although the city was packed with people, the streets were almost silent. I could talk at a normal volume, and even that was almost too loud. Everyone had somewhere to be and they were being courteous while getting there, something I have never experienced before. I found some crazy/awesome stores such as one which just had many many crane machines, each with crazy crazy prizes (honestly, how can someone expect to win a playstation 3 from a crane machine?!) After walking around for a few hours we went back to the ship for a welcome reception with Japanese students.
All of the other welcome receptions (Puerto Rico, India, & Malaysia) were visits to other universities, but the one in Kobe was held on the MV Explorer. There were about 70 Japanese students present from a few universities in the area. There was a little program, which involved SAS students and Japanese students performing for each other. Afterwards we were given some time to mingle with the students while they taught us how to do Japanese calligraphy and origami. I gave a few students a brief tour of the ship, which was fun (albeit slightly difficult considering the language barrier, seeing as only one of the students I walked around with spoke limited English). A few of the students I met offered to take my friends and me out for Karaoke later that night, which we were thrilled about!
After a brief dinner on the ship, we went out to meet the two Japanese girls who we met at the welcome reception. We ended up going to this huge karaoke bar in the center of Kobe. We were given our own little room and sang karaoke for about two hours! It was so incredibly fun and so incredibly Japanese! According to our new friends, they did karaoke pretty often. There was a nice combination of Japanese pop songs, bad American songs, and some awesome classic rock such as Bon Jovi and Journey! After karaoke our Japanese friends gave us all little presents (candy and packs of chopsticks) which was so incredibly nice!
On the metro ride back to the ship we ended up talking to really nice old businessmen, which was a really cool experience. Even in America I couldn’t have started a conversation with random people on the train, and there we speak the same language! People in Japan are truly the nicest, friendliest people I have ever met!
Japan: Day 2
I had to wake up at 5:30am on Thursday to get ready for my SAS trip to Hiroshima that left at 6am!!! To take the bullet train there it would have cost over $200, but through this trip it was half the price (the catch: a five-hour bus ride both ways!) There were about 40 people on the trip including students and about six professors. On the way to Hiroshima, we stopped at two different rest-stops for bathroom/food breaks, Unlike most in America, these rest stops were extremely nice! Walking through them was an experience all in itself.
After a few rest stops and a few mini-naps we finally arrived in Hiroshima at around 11am. Our first stop was the A-Bomb Dome, which is one of the few buildings that partially survived the atomic bomb explosion on August 6, 1945. Our guide explained that since the building was almost directly under the explosion, it somehow avoided a majority of the energy created by the A-Bomb. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has since been slightly renovated to ensure that it remains stable, but otherwise it is just as it was after the morning of the bomb,
Next we went to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which truly was the best museum/memorial I have ever been to. I cannot even explain some of the images I saw. Mushroom clouds, burned clothes, pictures of melted skin, and images of shadows that were burned into the ground. There was a pocket watch, which died at exactly 8:15am, the same exact moment the bomb exploded. Even though there were such horrible images and tales of atrocious acts committed by the U.S. government, I surprisingly did not leave the museum feeling completely depressed and overwhelmed. The museum had an incredibly positive message of peace, of ridding the world of nuclear weapons forever. Hiroshima has overcome the most devastating tragedy I could ever imagine; yet they have overcome and are now urging everyone who visits to work to prevent such an unimaginably horrible event from happening again. I left the museum not feeling paralyzed by my emotions as I predicted; rather, I left feeling motivated to continue working for peace and the betterment of life for everyone.
After the museum we went to Shukkeien Garden, which is a beautiful little garden not far away. The garden was originally built in 1620 but the A-Bomb destroyed it; only one tree survived and it is there to this day. Since then, the city has restored the garden to its condition prior to the bomb. Visiting the garden was a perfect way to follow up the museum. I was still overwhelmed by what I saw and the garden was a beautiful, peaceful place for me to think over everything. Not only that, I saw the garden as a testament to the city of Hiroshima and their ability to overcome in the face of absolute despair. Only one tree survived the bomb blast, which is still there to this day. Everything else has been replanted, just as the city had to rebuild itself, and it is now just as beautiful as it was before.
After visiting Shukkeien Garden we got back on the bus for another five-hour ride back to the ship. We stopped at two rest stops again, but this time we got dinner at the second. Instead of sitting at a table and having a waiter or waitress take our order, we walked up to these machines and pushed a button that corresponded with the dish we wanted, and put money in to pay. Then a ticket would come out, which we would take to the food counter. There they would take our ticket and put together our meal. A pretty crazy yet efficient way to serve food! I ordered udon noodles, which were so good! After dinner we had our last stretch of bus ride before finally reaching the ship, where I quickly fell asleep!
Japan: Day 3
I took an hour-long train ride from Kobe to Kyoto with my roommate Kyle and a few other friends. I had heard that Kyoto was the prettiest city in Japan, filled with ridiculously old temples and beautiful gardens. It is also home to eleven UNESCO World Heritage sites, so I was pretty excited to see some interesting places. We started off by walking to one garden and two temples that were within walking distance of the Kyoto train station. We didn’t walk into the garden but just looked briefly from the outside. The first temple was under construction, but we were able to walk through the second temple, which was nice. After these first few stops we wandered around for a while looking for lunch. We eventually found a place where I had ridiculously delicious eel!
After lunch we took a train ride to the southwest part of Kyoto where there were supposedly temples and gardens all around. We found this one place that had four major temples in one area, so we walked around there for a few hours. They were all beautiful, but by the end we were pretty templed-out, since they are all very similar architecturally. We then walked a while to Gian, an old district in the city. On the way we found this beautiful massive shrine that we walked around in for a little while. The main purpose for walking through Gian was to go “geisha hunting” as we described it, since Kyle was set on finding at least one Geisha while in Kyoto (since they supposedly can only be found in Kyoto and very small parts of Tokyo. Geisha supposedly only come out at dusk, so we were right on time and were hoping to see at least one! We walked around for a while with no success, but after we turned a random corner we ended up seeing at least five geisha inside three minutes!
Following a successful geisha hunt (exclaimer: no geisha were hurt in the geisha hunt) we finally got down to downtown Kyoto and went to find dinner in this crazy outside/indoor mall thingey that seemed like it went down this one road forever. After dinner we found a Baskin Robins and got ice cream. They had all kinds of different flavors like green tea and cherry blossom ice cream! (the prior was surprisingly bad, the latter surprisingly good) We then walked around this crazy arcade which was even crazier than I imagined! DDR, pachinko, and other wild things filled a seven-story arcade! After walking around the city for a few hours we decided to try to find a place to sleep. We ended up at a manga café (manga are Japanese graphic novels, and these cafes have massive libraries of manga and tons of computers. They have private rooms that can be rented out for the night, with a cushioned floor and your own computer and TV to use for the night. They also have free drinks, soft serve ice cream, and showers to use. They are ridiculously awesome!) I split a room with Mark, so we only had to pay about $15 each for a place to stay for the night and unlimited internet, even though we barely used the computer since we were so exhausted from a day of walking around.
Japan: Day 4
Saturday was probably the busiest/craziest day of my entire life! We woke up in the manga café and went to get breakfast at a little pastry shop. We then went to Nijo-Jo castle, which is a few hundred years old. The castle was beautiful and had a great garden on the outside. The coolest part was the floors, which were called nightingale floors. They were designed to squeak whenever they were walked on to inform people if someone was trying to sneak in. We could have easily spent a week around Kyoto looking at all of the temples, shrines, and gardens but we decided we saw a good amount already and wanted to see some other cities.
We took a train to Nara, which was only about ½ an hour away. Nara is an amazing city because they have deer walking around everywhere! Literally everywhere! We walked to the main park in the city and you could walk up to a group of ten deer easily. They are so used to humans that you can just walk right up to them and pet them, which we did a lot of. It was so cool! Never did I ever expect to actually pet a deer, let alone pet numerous deer inside a few minutes. You could buy food to feed them, which we didn’t do, but we saw plenty of people feeding them. One deer walked right up to a small boy and started eating chips right out of a bag in his hand! The other main attraction in Nara besides the deer was a massive Buddha statue, which was so incredible/beautiful/huge! After walking around the Buddha statue for a while we visited a few other temples in the area. One was a long hike up a hill, but was well worth it because you could see all of Nara in the distance, and the mountain range that was behind that.
The original plan was to head back to the ship Saturday night after Kyoto and Nara, but Kyle and I really wanted to stay in a capsule hotel, and we couldn’t find any outside of Osaka. Osaka was on the way back to Kobe, so we decided to head to Osaka for the night. We took a train ride there and walked around to find the capsule hotel that we read about in our guidebook. We finally found the hotel, which was crazy! Capsule hotels are only for men, and were created to be a cheap place for businessmen to crash for the night. They are literally rows upon rows of these tiny pods, which could fit a single person. The door looks like the door to a washing machine, and when you climb in it is a mattress and a TV above. There really is no room to sit up, let alone move around in at all. Laying in one, I’m assuming, is similar to one lying in a spacious coffin (minus the creepiness). After checking into the hotel we went back out to find some dinner. After meeting up with some friends and walking around for a horribly long time, we finally found somewhere to eat. Following dinner we walked around Osaka, which is supposedly similar to Tokyo at night. At around 11:30pm we decided to head back to the capsule hotel and get to bed. The hotel had robes for us, so we wore they awesome Japanese robes to bed. Sleeping in the pod was surprisingly awesome and incredibly comfortable! It was truly one of the most odd experiences of my life but it was great and so much fun! Best of all, it was ridiculously cheap to sleep there for the night. The hotel offered a sauna and Thai massages, but we opted out of those options for many reasons. I crashed pretty quickly since it was the longest day ever! I woke up in a manga café, traveled through three completely different cities in Japan, and fell asleep in a capsule. That’s a pretty successful day if I do say so myself!
Japan: Day 5
I haven’t slept as well as I did in the capsule in the longest time! When I woke I just started laughing at how silly/awesome it was. It was surprisingly incredibly comfortable and not weird at all! We got breakfast at this amazing café with delicious pastries before catching a train back to Kobe. We spent the rest of the day walking around Kobe and just hanging out. We were all ridiculously exhausted from the few days before and didn’t have enough energy to do much else. I got sushi for dinner, since I had yet to eat sushi in Japan up until then. Usually in the States I am pretty cautious about the sushi I eat, and rarely do I try raw or odd things. Here I went all out and tried almost everything they brought, and mostly things were pretty delicious! After dinner we went to this place that had crazy ice cream desserts. I split this almost two-foot tall tower of ice cream with a few people, which was so delicious!
I was so incredibly sad to leave Japan. Not only was it easily my favorite port (and probably my favorite country in the entire world now) but it was also our last real port. All we have left is a few hours in Hawaii and then we will be home. Although I can’t wait to get home, this trip is coming to an end way too quickly and it is mind-boggling to look back at everything I have seen/done. Puerto Rico seems like years ago, yet it was barely three months ago. We have over a week of sailing to Hawaii, one day in Hawaii, and then about a week sailing to San Diego. Supposedly the seas are going to be really rough from here on in, so I will likely get sea sick over the next two weeks ☹
Hong Kong & China!!!
Hong Kong
I only had one day in Hong Kong, since I flew out to Beijing the following day. I was one of the first ones off the ship in Hong Kong since I had an early trip planned for the day. I went with SAS to the Chinese Cuisine Training Institute, which is supposedly one of the best culinary schools in the country. This was one of the trips I had been looking forward to the most and it was everything I was hoping and more.
When we first arrived we were given a brief tour of the school. We were then led into the large demonstration kitchen. There, the master chef showed us how to prepare sweet and sour pork and peppered beef. After he made each of the dishes we were allowed to try it, and it truly was the best Chinese food I have ever had. After the demonstration, which lasted about twenty minutes, we broke into groups of two and were led to our own workstations in the kitchen and were assigned one of the students from the school who was to help us out. We started by making the sweet and sour pork, which involved deep drying the meat, making the sauce, and mixing the two together. A lot of the prep work was done for us (such as cutting the meat and veggies) so the process was relatively simple. The dish was amazing, and tasted pretty similar to the master chef’s, so I was pleased. We then moved onto the peppered beef, which involved the same process as the sweet and sour pork (fried the meat, made the sauce, mixed) except with different ingredients. This too was delicious. We had some extra time and ingredients left afterwards, so my partner and I decided to invent a new dish: sweet and sour peppered pork. Surprisingly, it was actually really good! The cooking class was absolutely amazing! There should be one or two pictures up online of me cooking in my fancy white chefs jacket. I was taught how to handle the massive wok, including the awesome flipping of the food that real chefs do (admittedly, my food only went up an inch or two, but at least it left the wok!)
As if the two courses of food I had already had wasn’t enough, we then moved over to the restaurant that the school runs for lunch. This was no small snack to fill us up after the massive amount of food we had already eaten; no, this lunch was a full-blown eight-course meal of its own! There was soup, fried rice, a few different shrimp dishes, and some other things I have no clue what they were, but they were incredibly delicious. They had an amazing jasmine tea that the waiters would refill after every single sip, even if it the cup was still 99% full! For dessert, there was this squishy ball covered in peanuts and filled with this black sesame goo. It was incredibly odd but awesome nonetheless. After the meal we were presented with certificates. I am now officially a “Culinary Ambassador.” I plan on having the certificate framed since the role of Culinary Ambassador is something to be proud of!
After the cooking class we returned to the ship. I went for a walk by myself in an attempt to find a bank that would exchange my U.S. money into Chinese money. Although I found five banks, and stood five different long and slow-moving lines, no bank would do it without a service charge that was larger than the amount I wanted to exchange in the first place! I gave up after a while and walked around the ridiculously nice mall, which is right outside the ship.
My friend, Amy, has a sister who lives in Hong Kong since she plays French horn for the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, so I went to her apartment with a few other friends. A number of her friends from the Orchestra came over, most of which were British, which was great. There we just hung out, eating crackers and cheese, and listening to classical music. They asked many questions about life on the ship, and likewise we asked questions about life working for the orchestra. They were all extremely nice (and extremely British). Some of the people were younger than me, and were
China: Day 1
The trip I had been looking forward to the most finally came and it was better than I could have ever imagined! The MV Explorer was to spend two days in Hong Kong, and then sail for two days to mainland China, Qingdao. Only about seventy students stayed on the ship for these two days, the rest went on numerous trips up to Beijing. My trip was to Tsinghua University in Beijing, the same trip that most of my friends signed up for as well. The group had about 70 students in total, which is a huge group to be traveling with, but it turned out to not be as bad as I predicted. It was about an hour drive to the airport from the ship, and then a three hour flight up to Beijing from there. Then we had another hour-long bus ride before we finally arrived at the University. We weren’t really told what our accommodations were to be like, but they turned out nicer than I could have ever imagined. We stayed in a guesthouse on campus, which was basically like a hotel. My roommate in the guesthouse was Kyle, the same roommate form the ship.
After dropping off our bags we had to quickly return to the lobby for a tour of the campus. We broke off into groups of four and were led around by two University students. I had two guys who were about my age and were really cool. Tsinghua University is incredibly beautiful!!! It is HUGE, probably the size of College Park, but has tons of open space, ponds, and even a small river running through the campus. They even had two peacocks, one of which was spreading its feathers open when we walked by. The weather in China was absolutely beautiful. It was the first time we haven’t been in horribly hot weather since we are finally well above the equator for the first time since before Brazil! After the tour we went back to the guesthouse for dinner at the restaurant there. We sat with two other college kids who were both very friendly. Similar to my meal in Hong Kong (and every meal that was to follow in China) food was brought out non-stop for almost an hour. The main course was Peking duck, which was incredible (I expected nothing less, since Peking duck originated in Beijing!) There was an incredible variety of food, but the most interesting had to be the fried salad. It was basically lettuce and some other veggies fried into a little patty. So odd! That day was my friend James’ birthday, so the University baked a cake for him that my table ate. They originally gave us these tiny plastic spiky things to eat the cake with (not quite forks…) which proved to be quite difficult After a few minutes the University students started using their chop sticks to eat the cake with, so we followed suit. I won’t lie, eating birthday cake with chop sticks was awesome.
After dinner, a professor from the University gave us a lecture on all of the places we were to visit over the next few days. He talked about the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and the Summer Palace. While I knew very little about all of these places, it was great learning more since I was going to all of these places! It is one thing learning about the Great Wall in middle school, when I never imagined I would be going there, and learning about it 12 hours before I left to go there! After the lecture, we met up with some University students and walked around campus for a few hours. They were extremely nice and very interested in us. We ended up sitting in this pagoda when a graduate student from Tsinghua asked us to tell ghost stories! After a few futile attempts at telling scary stories, we gave up and started talking about school. We ended up going to bed relatively early since we knew we had a HUGE day ahead of us!
China: Day 2
I woke up at 7am on Thursday since the University was holding a Tai Chi lesson for us. The lesson was really fun, even though we ended up repeating the same exact motion for almost half an hour. After the lesson we went to the restaurant in the guesthouse for breakfast. I had never had a Chinese breakfast before and was unsure what exactly to expect. It was mostly different vegetables, an odd bread I think was steamed instead of baked, and most importantly these really awesome sesame cookies. In the end I mainly ate the cookies. I have been pretty good about trying new and unique foods on this journey, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to eating cold stewed vegetables for breakfast!
After breakfast we took a 1½-hour bus ride to the Great Wall. There are numerous places where visitors can visit the Wall (since it is over 2,000 kilometers long!), and we visited the most famous section at Badaling. Never did I ever imagine myself going to the Great Wall. It was always one of those amazing places I never thought I would make it to in my lifetime. We had about two hours to walk around the Wall, which was absolutely incredible! Words can’t explain how cool of an experience it was walking on the Great Wall of China. I will be sure to post some pictures of it online ASAP. The wall went on for miles and miles and it seemed like it never ends. Badaling is very mountainous and so I had to walk up and down extremely steep steps the entire time. At the top of any given hill you could see just how massive the wall truly is, and I only saw an incredibly small percentage of the entire thing!
After the visit to the Great Wall, we drove back to Beijing for lunch. We went to the restaurant that served Mongolian Hot Pot, which is kind of similar to fondue in that we were each given a pot of boiling vegetable broth in which we cooked raw meats and vegetables. There was what I believe was mutton, lots of different veggies, tofu, and these amazing fresh noodles. Lunch was really fun and truly a unique experience.
Following lunch, we went to the Beijing zoo to see the giant pandas. Now, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but when I heard the term “giant” I was hoping for pandas that were at least 80 feet tall. Needless to say, this was far from the case. Even so the pandas were really cute. They truly looked like people in bear costumes, which was hilarious. After watching the pandas for some time, I walked around trying to find the kangaroos, but had no luck. After a short time at the zoo we went back to the campus. We then went a few blocks off campus where there was basketball and volleyball courts set up for us to play with the University students. Anyone that knows me knows that I am the farthest thing from athletic, so instead of basketball or volleyball, I ended up playing a weird Chinese version of tag (which involved screaming “I’m a cat!” to avoid being tagged…) that one of the students taught us. After that we taught the students how to play Red Rover, which clearly ruled. After the game, of the guys asked me if the game was how we trained for football in the states, to which I replied “No. We play this game in kindergarten!”
After a few hours of playing and socializing with the Tsinghua students, we all walked to a local pizza restaurant for dinner. Even though they don’t eat much pizza, as the students explained, I guess they wanted to make us feel at home (which I wasn’t complaining about since I missed pizza more than words could say!) I was able to talk with a number of college students for a few hours which was truly great. Semester at Sea and Tsinghua have a tradition where the students have exchanged t-shirts in the past. At dinner, I gave one of the students a Semester at Sea shirt, and in return I was given a Tsinghua University t-shirt, which is awesome! A number of students from both SAS and Tsinghua sang songs or performed which was fun (for some reason, every restaurant we went to had a stage, go figure!) After dinner we went back to the guesthouse. Some friends went out for karaoke, but I decided to just walk around with some friends. We went down some crazy back roads in Beijing, which was really fun. There was not much going on in the neighborhoods around Tsinghua so we decided to head back to campus. After getting slightly lost on campus, we finally found the guesthouse and went to bed.
China: Day 3
In order slept in for a few extra minutes. I decided to skip Friday’s tai chi class. I woke up to get breakfast, which consisted solely of sesame cookies. After breakfast we took the bus to Tiananmen Square. While Tiananmen Square is the largest public area in the world, that is not what made it famous world-wide. Unfortunately, we were not able to actually discuss the massacre that occurred there in 1989 (it is only referred to as “the event” and is not allowed to be discussed any further). Unfortunately, the Mao Zedong Memorial Hall, where Mao’s embalmed body is kept, was under construction, so we could not go there. There was not enough time to go to the Great Hall of the People or the National Museum of China since it took so long to walk across the Square, because I had to get to the Forbidden City, which is the main attraction.
The Forbidden City, which was the palace to both the Ming and Qing dynasties, was extremely beautiful and large. It is “forbidden” because people used to not be able to enter it for hundreds of years, except for the emperor and his government officials. There were countless rooms each extravagantly decorated and filled with old artifacts. Unfortunately, two of the main buildings were under construction but we were still able to see a large majority of the city. The best part was the imperial garden in the very back of the city, which was beautiful. I had remembered hearing a few years back about the controversy surrounding the building of a Starbucks in the Forbidden City, and unfortunately it actually exists. It is “hidden” in the sense that there are no signs or advertisements for it, but it is easy to follow the trail of Semester at Sea students drinking Frappuccinos. I, needless to say, did not go to the Starbucks. After a few hours at the Forbidden City, we went to a local hotel for lunch. Lunch was served in a similar fashion as our previous meals, with tons of food being endlessly delivered, and it too was delicious.
After lunch we went to the Temple of Heaven, which is over 600 years old. The Temple of Heaven was beautiful, and it is no surprise that it is considered “one of the greatest architectural structures in the world” as it was described to us. Surrounding the Temple was a circular wall known as the Echo Wall. Here you could supposedly talk straight into and someone could hear you from across the way. Unfortunately, my friends and I couldn’t figure it out! After walking around the Temple for a while, we drove to the Silk Market. I was expecting a huge outdoor market, but unfortunately it was basically an indoor mall. I walked around the market by myself and bought a few small things here and there. I tried finding some good, local Chinese food for lunch but surprisingly there was none in the area! Unfortunately, I had to settle for Subway for dinner, but I will admit that it was nice to have familiar food for the first time in a while!
Following the market, we drove to a local theatre where we watched an Chinese acrobatics performance. I had been pretty excited for the show but I had no clue just how great it would be. Most of the performers were young children, and they all could do the most amazing things I have ever seen, such as tap dancing while juggling at a ridiculous speed, balancing numerous umbrellas from every imaginable point on the body, and fitting 25 people onto a single bicycle! After the performance, we finally went back to the guesthouse after being gone all day, only to go right back out again. My friends and I found an Internet café, which turned out to be one of the craziest places I have ever seen. It was in this basement filled with a few hundred computers, each of which was filled (most of the people were playing Warcraft III). I finally was able to squeeze into a computer and check my mail for a little while. After that we caught a taxi ride back to Tsinghua University. Although our cab driver said he knew where it was, we found this to not be the case after we drove around for about 20 minutes (it only took us about 3 minutes to get there) and he kept stopping to ask fellow taxi drivers! We eventually made it back to campus and I crashed since the day was truly non-stop.
China: Day 4
I woke up a little early to pack since we had to be checked out of the guesthouse before we left in the morning. After packing I had yet another cookie breakfast before getting on the bus. We went to the Summer Palace, which was huge and absolutely beautiful! We had about 2½ hours to walk around, but it would have required literally all day to see the entire place. It was built by the Qing Dynasty a few hundred years ago, and has since been rebuilt after it was destroyed in the 1800s. I walked up to the top of a large tower where there was a big Buddha statue and I could see the entire Palace and most of the city, which was truly incredible. After wandering for a little while I had to get back to the bus. We were then taken to a local restaurant for lunch. As always, there was tons of food, but this time they gave us two dishes that stuck out in my mind: fried pineapples and fried apples, each of which was covered in this ridiculously sweet honey/sugar concoction. So good!
After lunch we had to drive to the airport to get our flight, which left at 4:45pm. The flight was horribly turbulent, and I kept playing “worst-case scenario” in my mind. Thankfully, though, we landed safely and went back to the ship. I spent the rest of the night unpacking and cleaning up since I was too tired to go out and check out Qingdao after the four non-stop days I just had.
The Beijing trip was truly incredible. It was easily the highlight of my entire trip so far. There was not one bad moment the entire time. They days were packed with amazing trips and I was able to interact with college students a few times almost every day. I was truly dreading coming back to the ship since I knew I had a horrible amount of work to get done before reaching Japan!
China: Day 5
I wasn’t too sure what to expect from Qingdao. While pulling up to the ship on the bus from the airport it looked like there was absolutely nothing around us! The ship was docked in this massive industrial pier and we were far from the city center. I went out with a few friends and took a 15 minute cab ride to an area that supposedly had a lot of shops and restaurants. I spent a majority of the morning in this cute little coffee shop we found. We had amazing jasmine tea, and the coffee shop had a bunch of guitars sitting around so I ended up playing around for a while, which was great! After a few hours there we went to search for lunch. We ended up at this dumpling restaurant but were at a loss as to what/how to order since everything was in Mandarin. After standing there in a state of pure confusion for a few minutes, a guy who spoke English came up to us and offered to help! He ordered food for us and told us what to do from there. We asked how many orders of dumplings we should get for five people, but he didn’t tell us just how much food we ordered. We ended up with four MASSIVE plates filled with dumplings of many different varieties. They were all delicious, but we couldn’t even come close to finishing the meal. The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around the ridiculously crowded streets and shops. There truly wasn’t much else to do in Qingdao which was slightly disappointed, but it was ok since Beijing was so incredible. I came back to the ship in the late afternoon and got started on all of the work I had to get done over the next two days before reaching Japan! It is crazy/sad that there are only 1½ ports left! (Japan, and Hawaii is only a ½ because it is Hawaii, and because we are only there for a few hours!) I wasn’t able to upload any pictures from China, so hopefully I’ll have that ability in Japan!
Vietnam
The night after we left Malaysia, the “Jew Crew” on the ship had a Passover Seder. I went with a few friends and had a really great time. Although they served many dishes that weren’t kosher for Passover (since we were basically served the same food as the rest of the ship) they did have matzah ball soup that was surprisingly incredible. Never have I missed home as much as I did during the Passover Seder. The next morning I woke up at 5:45 am to get seats for the Easter sunrise service that was led by Archbishop Tutu. The service was beautiful, and it was incredible seeing Tutu in his famous purple Archbishop outfit actually leading the service.
Vietnam: Day 1
I had heard that pulling into Vietnam was one of the best ports to wake up for so I woke up early on Monday morning. At about 6:45am the MV Explorer sailed into the Saigon River, which it cruised through for the next three hours. Seeing our massive cruise ship sailing down a river was incredible. You could see rise patties, fields, and mountains for miles since land was right next to us on both sides. After watching this for a few hours I went to eat breakfast and get ready for my day’s adventure in Ho Chi Minh City!
I had nothing planned for the first day, so three friends and I started wandering around as soon as we were cleared through customs. We have shuttle busses that take us from the ship to the center of the city, which is an extremely convenient luxury after having to deal with the tender boats of Malaysia! My friend Dorothy has a book that lists the 1,000 places one must go before they die, and in the book was a restaurant in Ho Chi Minh, so we started walking trying to find the place. After walking for about an hour, we finally arrived at Pho Huo, which is a small Vietnamese restaurant, which serves exclusively pho (a famous Vietnamese dish comprising of rice noodles in soup). I had never had Vietnamese food or pho (pronounced fu) before, so I was unsure what to expect. We ordered our food inside a minute of sitting down (we had the choice between beef pho, chicken pho, or veggie pho, so we didn’t need long) and literally inside 45 seconds of ordering our bowls of soup were on the table. Although it took a few minutes to get the hang of eating noodles with chopsticks, the pho was absolutely incredible!! The bowl was so huge I couldn’t even finish my lunch. The best part is that you are actually supposed to slurp the noodles, since it is a sign that you like the food! While I had heard that Vietnamese food was cheap, I was still surprised to find that the massively delicious bowl of noodles plus a drink only cost about $1.50! Not only that, but we were the only non-locals in the place, which is always great! After the incredible lunch we set off to find the War Remnants museum, with a few stops in some small shops on the way.
We entered what we thought to be the War Remnants museum but it actually turned out to be the Ho Chi Minh City museum (granted, it had a huge tank in front of the building…and we can’t speak Vietnamese, so it was a fair mistake!) Even though it was not where we planned to go, the museum turned out to be really great. They had a lot of beautiful pottery and old artifacts. Upstairs they had a whole section dedicated to the Vietnam War (or the American War, as they call it). It was extremely interesting seeing their side of the conflict, since this is something we are never taught in school. It was weird seeing the U.S. being described as “the enemy” all of the time, but the exhibit was really great. After some time in the Ho Chi Minh City museum we decided to go to the actual War Remnants museum, which was only two blocks away.
The War Remnants museum was really great, but very difficult to get through. The museum is dedicated to the war crimes committed by the U.S. against Vietnam. There were mostly images in the exhibits, many of which were the most disturbing pictures I have ever seen. There were images of Agent Orange victims, horribly injured people, and countless corpses. We spent some time here, but after seeing some of the pictures, we weren’t looking to spend a long time at the museum. I am really glad we went since I know it is an important to see the other side of our nation’s history – one that is more often than not a horribly ugly history.
After the second museum visit, we walked a few blocks until we reached the Ben Thanh market, a famous market in the city, which was absolutely huge. We walked around the market for about an hour. I didn’t buy anything, but we all ate some jackfruit, lychee, and mangostein, each of which was delicious and unlike any fruit I’ve ever had in the States. After the market closed, we took the shuttle back to the ship to have a small snack before going back out for the night.
We found a really nice Vietnamese restaurant called Blue Ginger a few blocks from the ship. Unfortunately, it was packed with SAS kids, but it was incredibly nice and delicious. I ordered a bowl of pho, since I discovered just how delicious it is at lunch and it was excellent. Right next to our tables were two women playing a traditional Vietnamese instrument I have never seen or heard before, but it was supposedly “traditional” music and was really great. I also tried some Vietnamese spring rolls, which were ridiculously good! After dinner, a few of us went to a coffee shop down the street for a few minutes before catching the last shuttle back to the ship. I didn’t know what to expect from Vietnam, but after the first day I fell in love. Ho Chi Minh city is incredible and I had an incredible time walking around the first day. One of the best parts of Vietnam is crossing the street. The roads are packed with motorcycles, bikes, cars, trucks and busses, and rarely are there crosswalks with stoplights. What one must do is simply walk slowly across the street while everyone drives around you. The trick is to walk at a slow, constant pace so everyone can judge your speed. Then they will just simply drive around you while you continue to walk. It is such an incredible system! Although my brain told me numerous times not to walk since it seemed like apparent suicide, it works extremely well and I haven’t been hurt (yet) at all!
Vietnam: Day 2
For my second day in Vietnam, I had an SAS trip planned to the Mekong Delta. The river is about two hours outside Ho Chi Minh, but on the way we stopped at a Cao Dai temple and a local market. I don’t fully understand Cao Daism, but it was explained as a religion/philosophy based on a man who said he saw the spirit of Victor Hugo and two Vietnamese freedom fighters, and the spirits told him to create a religion uniting all of Vietnam (even though the creator of Cao Daism admitted from the start that he made up the story of the spirits?) Either way, the temple was pretty and the market was crazy/exciting. After these two unannounced stops, we finally reached the river where we immediately got onto large boats. These boats took us to a small island, where they had plates of tropical fruit set out for us. There was jackfruit, pineapple, something I think was called pommela (that tasted and looked similar to a grapefruit), and mango. They were delicious of course. There were also traditional Vietnamese folk musicians playing while we ate which was great. There were some of the same instruments that I saw at the restaurant the night before. After the performance, the musicians let us play the instruments, which was great.
After all of this, we got onto small boats, which were like canoes, to go down the Mekong Delta. There were four students per boat and then two Vietnamese women paddling, one up front and one in the back. The trip down the Delta was truly one of the best experiences of the entire trip so far. It was incredibly beautiful and peaceful. It was such an odd experience though, since only a few decades ago this same area was one of the main fighting spots for the Vietcong against the Americans. The boat ride lasted about half an hour, after which the little boats took us to slightly larger boats. These new boats took us to yet another island off the Delta. Here they were making coconut candy, which they gave to us right after it came out of the oven so it was still warm and delicious. We then sat down for a cup of tea made with honey and cumquat juice, which was amazing. After few cups of tea and many pieces of coconut candy, we got back on the boat for yet another stop. This time, thankfully, it was to the restaurant for lunch!
The restaurant was a small outdoors seafood restaurant. They sat us down and brought out a huge fried tilapia (that they called the “elephant ear fish”) to each table, the entire fish complete with scales, eyes, and the works. A woman came to the table and prepared these amazing rolls with pieces of the fish, rice noodles, and veggies wrapped in rice paper. After the fish, they brought out spring rolls that had a bunch of unknown ingredients in them, but they too were delicious. Then came a plate of fried potatoes and beef. Then came a plate of fried noodles, followed by bowls of fried rice. Then came the main meal, which was a hot pot of fish soup with rice noodles. Then for dessert they brought out pieces of watermelon cut out in the shape of arrows. They literally were bringing food out to our table non-stop for the hour and a half we were there and everything was absolutely incredible. The meal was honestly one of the best I have ever had. Vietnamese food is so good! After lunch we took the boats back to the bus, where we got on for the two-hour drive back to the ship.
I had a small dinner on the ship since I was still stuffed from lunch a few hours before and then went out for a little in the night. I brought my laptop to a local coffee shop and used their free wireless Internet for a while I drank some tea. After hanging out for a little while, I returned back to the ship to get to bed early since I knew I had a huge day ahead of me the next morning…
Vietnam: Day 3
On Wednesday I had an SAS trip to visit a Cao Dai temple and the Cu Chi tunnels that I was very excited for. Only twelve people including myself showed up for the trip, which was great since I was starting to get annoyed with the large SAS trips, which usually have 20-60 people, depending on the trip. The temple was a three-hour drive away from Ho Chi Minh, but we made two stops on the way. The first was to a factory where victims and family members of victims of the war worked to make crafts and bottle water. We saw them making some beautiful crafts, which was nice, but I’m convinced the only reason we stopped there was so that we could walk through the gift shop. The next stop on the way to the temple was this woman’s house where she made rice paper in her backyard. This was interesting to see, but we were only there for a few minutes. After a few naps on the bus we finally arrived at the Cao Dai temple, one of the biggest temples in South East Asia.
The temple was massive and beautiful. As I learned some the day before, Cao Daism was created in 1926 and was meant to unite all the different religions and is unique to Vietnam. Since it is a synthesis of many different religions, we saw images on the Buddha, Confucius, and even Jesus in the temple (not to mention Victor Hugo…still can’t figure that one out…) After walking around the temple for about half an hour we were led upstairs so we could watch down on the noon prayer session. All of the followers wore all white to pray, while the monks wore red, blue, or yellow. The color represented the religion they adhered to: red for Confucianism, blue for Taoism, and yellow for Buddhism -- I’m not too sure how they pick which religion they identify themselves with over the others. There was no head person leading the prayer; rather, everyone was kneeling and praying themselves with musicians and choir in the background.
After the visit to the temple we stopped at an incredibly nice restaurant for lunch. Similar to the lunch I had the day before on the Mekong Delta, the waiters kept bringing out plates full of food for almost an hour. We had pho, noodles, fried prawns, peppered beef, rice, and fresh pineapple. Some of the people at my table weren’t huge fans of the food, so I made sure we didn’t have any leftovers and ate it all. I love Vietnamese food. After lunch, we stopped by the American War Memorial for a few minutes on the way to the Cu Chi Tunnels where there are about 8,000 Vietnamese soldiers’ graves.
After another two hours on the bus we finally reached the Cu Chi tunnels. Cu Chi was a major battleground during the war since the Americans needed the city to help protect Saigon (which is now Ho Chi Minh city). The Vietnamese first built a small tunnel system during the war with the French and continued to expand upon it in preparation for the war against the U.S. When we first arrived we were led into a tiny steaming hot room where we were given a brief description of the tunnels and were shown a short documentary/piece of propaganda. The video was extremely one-sided in favor of Vietnam, which was to be expected, which was extremely interesting to watch. After the video, we walked through the woods on top of the tunnel system and were shown the many ways in which the Vietnamese hid from the American soldiers. While we were walking we heard incredibly loud gunshots, which freaked me out at first (I literally jumped at least a foot in the air) until I learned that there was an actual firing range at the tunnels. In the middle of the tour we were given the chance to buy bullets and fire them from real guns, including an AK-47. I was absolutely disgusted by this idea for so many reasons, but many in my group did not feel the same way. After waiting around for people to fulfill their urge to fire a weapon used by the Vietnamese to kill Americans we continued on the tour. At this time we were given a chance to actually go down into one of the tunnel’s corridors. It was extremely cramped, dark, and hot down there, and it was hard to walk through. It was such a crazy/intense experience walking through the tunnels and it was hard to imagine people having to do this actually to save their lives.
After the tunnels we got back on the bus for a 2-hour ride back to the ship. After a small dinner in the dining room, I went out with two friends to walk around the city. We ended up in a jazz club where one of the Lifelong Learners from SAS was playing guitar. We only stayed for a little bit since we were all tired, so we went back to the ship to watch a movie before falling asleep.
Vietnam: Day 4
Having accomplishing everything I had expected to do in Vietnam in the first three days I had no plans for Thursday. My roommate and I decided to just walk around Ho Chi Minh and see where the day took us. After walking around all morning we met up with some other friends and got some pho for lunch, which was delicious. After lunch we visited numerous bootleg DVD stores, since they are all over. I ended up buying the entire series of West Wing (7 seasons) for only $20! The best part is that the DVDs actually work! My friend had seen a large market the day before so we set off trying to find that, but after a few hours of wondering around we gave up. By mid-afternoon, the group had split into two. Some friends went to the War Remnants museum (which I could not go back to since it was too difficult the first time), so my roommate Kyle, Rick, and I decided to walk around some more. We ended up at the Saigon zoo, which was pretty fun. They had all the typical animals one would find in any zoo (elephants, lions, giraffes, tigers, etc), except all of the animals happened to be sleeping while we were there, or just lazy, so we didn’t see much. We did see two bears get into a fight, which was slightly thrilling (although I’m sure they were just playing around, a fight makes for a better story). After the zoo we went back to the ship for a late dinner. After dinner I just went to the Internet café down the street for a while and came back to the room to relax, since I was exhausted from the day filled with nothing but walking.
Vietnam: Day 5
I woke up for an early breakfast before I started walking around Ho Chi Minh with some. We didn’t have any plans for the day so we just started walking. Eventually we ended up at the Independence Palace, which used to be the center of the Vietnamese government before the French and U.S. wars. I had seen the building in pictures before, since there was a famous incident there when a tank ran through the front gate, so it was really interesting to walk through. The best part was the bunkers in the basement, which were actually used when the French bombed the building during their war against Vietnam.
After the Palace we started walking towards the Natural History museum to watch a water puppet show, which was right next to the zoo. On the way we stopped at a random restaurant that was packed with young businessmen and women. They randomly started bringing us food and drinks without us ordering, which was nothing short of confusing. The meal was only 18,000 dong (there are about 16,500 dong to the dollar…most confusing conversion rate ever!), which is dirt-cheap so it didn’t matter in the end. After lunch we walked to the History museum. The water puppet show didn’t start for a while so we walked around and looked at all of the artifacts, which were incredible. The water puppets, which are supposedly only found in Vietnam, started at around 2:00pm. It was entertaining and kind of silly, but was really great nonetheless. Following the performance we walked for a while until we reached the Ben Thanh market. After finishing some shopping and walking around I went back to the ship to shower and for a late dinner. More so than any other port, I am really sad to leave Vietnam. I expected it to be a good port, but Ho Chi Minh City was absolutely amazing and was probably my favorite place so far. I am beginning to realize how quickly this trip is coming to an end, which is extremely depressing. I will have a n extremely busy three days until we get to Hong Kong, but after that I will be done with school work for a while until after China.
Update from Malaysia & New Pictures!!!
Malaysia: Day 1
Malaysia is both the geographic and cultural stepping-stone of our journey in that it that has strong southern Indian and Chinese influences, both of which I saw much on the first day. A few friends and I did not have any trips planned, so we decided to spend the morning walking around Penang. Unlike at every other port we have been to so far, we couldn’t dock normally. For whatever reason (water depth or lack of infrastructure maybe?) we had to anchor out in the middle of the bay and take the lifeboats back and forth. During the day, the tender boats come and go about every half-hour, but after midnight they only come ever hour. This process, while cool the first time, is quickly becoming annoying and difficult. At least I get to ride inside the lifeboat! (something I’ve always wanted to try, but not under the normal circumstances in which one rides them)
We wandered around Penang for a while in the heat for a while until we found an Internet café. There I tried making a few phone calls home (that didn’t work) so I spent the next hour online, which cost less than a dollar! (Sure beats the $0.40 a minute on the ship!) After the Internet café, we found a Chinese restaurant (since we were in the Chinese district) across the street, which was amazing. I got ginger chicken with rice, which was so delicious. By far the best food I have had in any port so far. After a long lunch, we went for another walk through town when we ran into the Indian district. Within two blocks it felt like we entered a completely different country. I tried buying a few Bollywood films, since the ones I actually bought in India didn’t work, but neither did these! We then decided to try to make our way back to the ship to get ready for the Welcome reception and Shadow Puppet performance later that night. While we thought we were lost at first and were looking forward to an adventure getting back to the ship, we came to realize that we were actually no more than 2 blocks away from the MV Explorer. We missed a tender boat by only a few minutes so we had to wait about 20 minute before being picked up to be taken back to the ship.
After dinner on the ship, I went to the Welcome Reception at the University of Malaysia, which was amazing! There have been two welcome receptions so far (Puerto Rico & India) and they have never been anything short of great. We were about an hour late due to complications with the tender boats (they wanted to fill our bus, which had four open seats, so they waited for the boat to go back, pick people up, and drop them off). We finally made it to the University, where some of the students performed a shadow puppet show!!! Following the performance, that lasted about 45 minutes, we were invited on stage where the students showed us the “behind the scenes” of the puppets and instruments. I was taught how to be a shadow puppeteer!! I don’t want to say that I put the Malay students to shame but…I was a pretty awesome shadow puppeteer! We were then led outside for amazing food & tea, and we were able to talk with the students some more, each of which was extremely nice and spoke English incredibly well. We then took the bus back to the ship…
But the night did not end there unfortunately. They filled up one of the tender boats literally right before I got there, so I had to wait around for about an hour for the boat to come back for some reason. My friends and I passed the time by playing Frisbee in pitch-black. Finally the tender boat came, but instead of taking us to the ship, the crew decided to wait another 30-45 minutes just to see if any other students would come (which they didn’t!) So almost two hours after first getting to the dock I finally made it to the ship. One day down and I already hated those tender boats!
Malaysia: Day 2
On Tuesday I went on an SAS trip to a tropical fruit farm and a tropical spice garden, which was great! The trip started with about an hour-long bus ride to the fruit farm. Our tour guide was this amazing old Chinese man named Kahl (but he preferred to go by “Paul” since Americans always butcher his name somehow?) Paul was the most hilarious man ever! He know the most random information about the city, including but not limited to the names of owners of almost every building we drove past and the price of the building. Just when I thought we had the craziest tour guide ever we arrived at the fruit farm. Our guide was absolutely insane and kept making inappropriate jokes. It has hilarious. I cannot even begin to explain how crazy (and probably drunk) this guy was. Every few minutes he would make up some absurd story that was clearly not true, such as when Bill Clinton supposedly visited the farm with Monica Lewinski. When we would laugh, he would get angry and tell at us for not believing “the truth.” Either way, he knew a lot about all the fruit on the farm (over 200 different types) and was extremely informative. After the tour through the farm we tried all kinds of different fruits and were given fresh fruit juices. Some of them were absolutely delicious, but some things like the jackfruit were too odd for me to enjoy.
After the fruit farm we took a short drive to the tropical spice garden which was absolutely beautiful. We saw all kinds of herbs and spices including: ginger, pepper, aloe, cinnamon, cardamom, and tons of others. Supposedly they have over 500 different varieties in the garden. We walked through for a little over an hour and then we were fed an incredible lunch at the garden’s restaurant called the Spice Café followed by equally incredible tea. Every meal I have had so far in Malaysia has been so amazing and incredibly cheap. Possibly the best food of all the places I have been so far.
We returned back to the harbor after the spice garden and walked around the city for a while. I was excited to see a tender boat pulling up right to the dock as I was walking up. Not surprisingly, though, they said they weren’t going to go back to the ship for at least 30 minutes (for no real reason). I then returned to the ship for shower and dinner. I stayed on the ship to relax for the rest of the night because the last thing I wanted to do was to deal with those tender boats again…
Malaysia: Day 3
On Wednesday I was planning on going to the Botanical Gardens and the Butterfly Garden in Penang with some friends, but I found a free ticket for an SAS trip called “Religions of Malaysia” (there is a box where people can drop off unwanted tickets if they can’t sell them). The trip went to an Anglican church, a Taoist temple, a Hindu temple, a mosque, and a Buddhist temple, which sounded like it would be a good experience so I decided to go. The church was a church, nothing too special aesthetically, and it was closed so we could not walk around inside. The Taoist temple was pretty, but I had already seen it on the first day while I was walking around the city. The Hindu temple was closed so we could only see it from the outside. Next was the mosque, which was beautiful. We were shown around inside and discussed contemporary issues surrounding Islam with our guide of the mosque, which was great. We were supposed to go to the state-run mosque, but supposedly they wouldn’t let us inside so we just drove by, which was unfortunate. I was excited to go to the state-run mosque since the close relationship between the government and religion is so very different than what we are used to in the States.
After all of those visits, which surprisingly only took about an hour, we went to the Buddhist temple. The temple, Kek Lok Si, is one of the largest Buddhist temples in Southeat Asia, and was truly beautiful. There is a huge pagoda in the center, which is supposedly seven-stories tall. We took a lift to the top of the temple where these was a HUGE statue of a goddess. Easily 100-feet tall made out of brass. It was breath-taking to say the least. The first part of the trip was disappointing (it didn’t help that most things were closed) but the Buddhist temple made up for it by far!
At night, my friends and I found this amazing Thai restaurant where I got the best Pad Thai I have ever had. Food in Malaysia is so cheap, so it only cost about $2 for the entire meal. So awesome. After dinner, we just walked around the Chinese District for a while before heading back to the ship at around midnight. I had an early trip the next day so I needed some sleep!
Malaysia: Day 4
I woke up early for a trip to the Cheshire House, which is a house for the mentally and physically handicapped, with ages ranging from 13-50. It was a really good trip but there were too many SAS kids there, so I feel that the people living there were slightly overwhelmed. I drew with some kids and threw a ball back and forth with this guy for a few hours. It was really great to get out of the city for a little while in the morning for the service project. All-in-all we spent about three hours at the Cheshire House and I think that everyone had a great time!
We went back to the ship only to come right back out to find some lunch. We ended up at the mall and ate AMAZING Sate Chicken, which is a famous Malay dish. I am now sitting in the Starbucks in the mall, using their free wireless internet so I could finally update the blog and post pictures from the past few ports! I will be heading back to the ship later this afternoon, and we set sail for Vietnam by the end of the night!
Check my flickr site to see a few pictures! There should be ones from South Africa, India, and Malaysia up there. I apologize that they aren't too organized. I will work on that sometime...
India: Part Deux
India: Day 1
Arriving in India this time was incredibly different than when I flied into Delhi in December. Lat time, I took a 20-hour flight (not including the layover in Italy), after which my group took a bus ride to our hotel in the middle of the night, only to step out inside a crowd of possibly rabid dogs. This time, I went to bed in my “home” for the semester, slept in, and was able to watch the MV Explorer pull into Chennai while I ate my breakfast over a cup of tea (although it was Lipton, so it wasn’t real tea). In December, I was a part of a crowd of 20 who were just as scared as me, who had no clue what they were getting themselves into. Now in the end of March, I was apart of a group of around 700 students, and I was one of the very few who weren’t freaking out from all the stories they had heard. I had already gone through the culture shock of entering India, so I was simply excited whereas everyone I knew was scared out of his or her minds! I was incredibly excited to go back to India, even though I had been there less than two months before. My few weeks prior had been all around the north, and Chennai is in the south, which is supposedly very different.
The first day I was originally going to walk around Chennai with my friends and go shopping. They all wanted to go to Fabindia, a store I had gone to while in Mumbai, so I wasn’t too thrilled about that. That day, there was a service visit planned to a Dalit village (an untouchables village) that I didn’t sign up for but really wanted to go to. Instead of shopping with friends, I decided to try to get on the service visit. Thankfully a few people didn’t show so there was room for me to go on. The trip wasn’t actually to a village I were to find out; rather, it was to a school for untouchables children in the north of Chennai. There, we were going to help the school’s staff paint the walls of the building, both inside and out. We arrived by bus to a tiny marching band, kids and parents waving and cheering, and a big banner saying “Welcome Semester at Sea Students!” It was truly an odd and unexpected experience. It was somewhat uncomfortable and very uncalled for, but as our tour guide explained, most Indians refuse to come into the Dalit parts of town, let alone visit them, play with the children, and help them out. For thousands of years the Dalits have been victims of discrimination to an unheard of amount. While untouchability has been outlawed over the years, society has been slow to change. That is why when we as foreigners came in, they were so excited and appreciative. These are people who are normally ignored by everyone around then, and they rarely if ever receive outside help.
The children sang some songs and danced for us when we first arrived at the school. After that, we broke up into smaller groups and were handed buckets of paint and paintbrushes. I was assigned to paint some of the outside walls of the school. Little did I know how much I was going to “learn” about painting in those few short hours! Every few minutes a different guy would come by and try to explain to me in Tamil/broken English how I was doing it wrong and showed me the “right” way to paint. I would use my newfound technique for a few minutes before a different guy would come by, express how wrong I was in my painting techniques, and show me a different way! This would continue to happen until the first guy would come back, and the cycle began again! It was extremely hilarious, to say the least. The guys helping kept laughing at me, and it was all in good fun. By the end of the afternoon I ended up COVERED in paint! In my hair, on my face, on my shirt, on my pants, on my shoes, on the outside of my sunglasses, and even the inside of my sunglasses! This was my first real service visit of the trip and it was a great experience. I know that twenty kids painting a school won’t make a big difference in the end, but I know that the kids and the school’s staff were extremely appreciative of us showing up and helping out. As they explained, it showed solidarity with the poor of India, something many Indians fail to do themselves.
After returning to the ship and scrubbing off all the paint from my body in the shower, I got ready to go to the Welcome Reception they were holding for the SAS kids. It was in this field somewhere in the middle of the city outside a nice hotel. They had delicious food and an amazing performance with music and “traditional” southern Indian dance. Unfortunately, I did not meet any Indian college students like I was planning, like happened at the Puerto Rican Welcome Reception, but I still had a great time!
India: Day 2
I woke up at 6:00am because I wanted to try to get on a trip to Kancheepuram and Mamallapuram, two cities a few hours outside of Chennai that are famous for their Hindu temples and shrines. I showed up half an hour early in an attempt to get on the waiting list, since I didn’t have a ticket. Thankfully a few people didn’t show up so I was able to get on. We first went to Kancheepuram, which was about two-hours away. We went to three different temples (whose names I failed to write down), which were all beautiful, and each was very different from the others. At the first temple, they had a mango tree that was supposedly 3,500 years old! We then went to a place where they wove silk saris by hand on a loom, which was really cool to see. We then went to the shop where they sold said saris for a few minutes, although I surprisingly walked away empty-handed. After the sari shop, we went to a restaurant in a near-by hotel, which was included with the price of the ticket. The food was AMAZING! Food in the south really is different from the Punjabi food I had in the north (and that I have in the States). After stuffing myself in the buffet line with delicious south Indian food, we took 1 ½ hour bus ride to Mamallapuram where we visit a few other Hindu temples and shrines. One was a large open area that had amazing carvings in the side of giant rocks. There was also a massive boulder! More importantly though, there were a TON of monkeys who were awesome and cute. Our last stop for the day was at Shore Temple, which, as the name suggests, was a temple on the shore. After that, we had another two-hour bus ride back to the ship! We arrived back at the MV Explorer twelve hours after we originally left. The day was awesome but was also extremely tiring!
As expected, my time in India has been very different from my first trip. I am glad that I am able to get outside of the city and see some of rural India first-hand. While traveling from Delhi, to Agra, to Lucknow, to Kolkatta, to Mumbai, it is easy to forget that a majority of the population actually lives outside of the cities! The south is different from the north, but not as dissimilar as I was expecting. The major difference I can see so far is that in the North there is a much larger Muslim influence and population, but since the Mughals never made it as far as Tamil (the state Chennai is in) there is little to no Muslim influence in the traditions, architecture, ect. I cannot wait for the Dalit village overnight in a few days! It is bound to be an extremely challenging but rewarding experience!
India: Day 3
The plan for Tuesday was to relax and walk around Chennai. Half of my friends were going on a service trip to Missionaries of Charity, an orphanage established by Mother Theresa. While I wanted to go on this trip, it sold out and I was not able to get on originally through SAS. Instead, the few of us who weren’t going on the trip decided to find a market to walk around and shop in for the morning. On the way out of the ship, we started talking to the woman in charge of organizing all the field programs and we explained how we were upset that we weren’t able to go to visit the Missionaries of Charity today. She said how we could go that morning and show up to volunteer, which was excellent news! After an over-priced auto-rickshaw ride, we arrived at the orphanage. Upon entering the gate we were greeted by a few nuns. Initially they were confused and thought we were the SAS group who was coming later that the afternoon. After explaining how that trip filled up and that we wanted to volunteer on our own, they were more than happy to take us inside.
I cannot even begin to explain everything that I saw and felt that morning. There were about 80 orphans there, almost all of who were physical and mental challenged. The nuns explained how most either had polio or cerebral palsy. We were led to a room with seven children who were physically paralyzed and had little to no mental function. We sat there for over an hour literally rubbing them and giving them massages. As one of the volunteers explained, these children are rarely touched by anyone since it is difficult to provide undivided attention to one child in a house of 80. Knowing that I was helping these children by simply touching them, children who rarely experience human contact, was so heartbreaking yet very powerful at the same time. I realized that my just sitting there with them, swatting the flies away from their bodies and out of their mouths meant more than I could ever imagine. After sitting there for over an hour, the nuns brought us dishes of what resembled oatmeal for us to feed the children. This was a time consuming and difficult process seeing as they could not move for themselves, let alone swallow food on their own. After we fed the kids, I walked around and found a baby boy who I held and played with the rest of the time. What I saw and what I felt cannot be transcribed onto paper (or the computer screen for that matter). I broke into tears numerous times throughout the morning from seeing the terrible conditions, the pain, that these children have to live through. We left the Missionaries of Charity after two hours and returned back to the ship in silence.
After lunch, my friend Dorothy (who I call Dot) and I decided to take an auto-rickshaw to Spencer Plaza, which is a large market/bazaar/mall about 20 minutes away from the ship. We got onto the rickshaw planning to bargain hard. Originally the rickshaw-wallah said he would take us for 20 rupees (less than ½ a dollar) to Spencers Plaza (normally it costd about 60-100 rupees!) but after driving a few blocks he pulled to the side of the road and said that he would drop the price to 10 rupees if we would let him take us to two stores and walk around for a few minutes. He explained how he got a commission just for taking us, even if we did not buy anything. Since we weren’t in a rush, Dorothy and I decided to go for it. Oh how I’ve missed driving in rickshaws through the crowded Indian streets! The craziest experience ever, yet I have never felt safer. So we went to the two stores, walked around, and didn’t buy anything, and got to Spencer Plaza for only 10 rupees. It was awesome. We walked around the plaza for a few hours, which was fun. I bought a watch for 200 rupees to replace the one that was stolen during Carnival in Brazil. I also bought Lagaan (an amazing Bollywood film about imperialism and cricket. How awesome?!) for only 120 rupees! I wasn’t sure if it would work in my laptop since it is an Indian DVD but it does and its amazing. After our amazing deal on an auto-rickshaw to Spencer Plaza, Dot and I were determined to get a good price for the ride back to the ship. Unfortunately, every rickshaw-wallah laughed at our offers for 20 and 30 rupees for a direct ride back, and said that it would cost 100 rupees. Finally we found someone who would take us back for 10, but again we had to visit two stores for a few minutes each. When we got into the rickshaw, the driver asked if we liked music. After responding in the affirmative, he flipped a switch that turned on the MASSIVE speaker on the ceiling of the rickshaw that we failed to originally notice! Dot and I spent the rest of the ride home dancing to bad American 90’s pop and it ruled. Best 10 rupee auto-rickshaw ride ever by far.
India: Day 4
The trip I had been looking forward to for months finally came, the Dalit village overnight trip. During my last trip to India, I stayed in cities the entire time. The only opportunity I had to see rural villages was while passing by them quickly through a train window. After a two-hour bus ride we finally arrived at the Delta School of Nursing, a school established to help empower and educate Dalit women. We were given a warm welcome, including the performance of a number of songs, dances, and a skit. Afterwards, we were given an opportunity to talk directly with the young women, whose ages ranged between 18 and 23. We asked them questions, but was even more interesting were they questions they asked us. The women wondered why we weren’t married by the age of 20 and if our parents were mad that we “disobeyed” them by going to study abroad. These questions showed me just how different our cultures truly were.
After talking for about an hour we were served lunch, which was amazing and delicious. They gave us both Southern Indian food and some other things, such as pasta and flan. At the end of the meal, the leader of the school gave a speech about the history of the Untouchables in India and the current state of Dalits, which was extremely interesting and informative. We were then given a few hours off to just hang out around the school and to talk to the nursing students. Before we left the school, at around 5pm, we were given some chai (it took me four days to finally have a cup of tea!), which was delicious. Following teatime we took a five-minute bus ride to the Dalit village. There we were given a tour of the village and were greeted by the people. The village was truly the most impoverished place I have ever seen. The houses were made of straw and mud, and lacked running water. Surprisingly, though, a number of the houses had electricity. After being shown around the village, being led by a “marching band” of drummers, we got back on the busses and went to the village’s school where we would be spending the night.
At the school, we saw countless performances including dancing, singing, people in horse costumes & stilts, fire-breathing, etc. While it was entertaining, it lasted a good 2 ½ hours. I would have much rather preferred talking with the community members instead, but it was still nice. After the performance that I thought might never end, we got together for a meditation session that lasted about half-an-hour. This time was actually very beneficial, since I hadn’t had time to fully process everything I had seen that day. Taking in everything was really challenging. These Dalits are ignored by society, ignored by the government, and denied the opportunity to better themselves and the lives of their families, ignore these people. Even so, they opened up their community and their homes to us with extreme generosity and kindness.
After the meditation we ate our boxed lunches that were provided by the ship, since the community did not have enough food to feed themselves, let alone 30+ guests. The boxed lunch was everything my parent’s wouldn’t let me eat for dinner as a kid: cookies, cake, oreos, and Capri sun. It was awesome. Following dinner, I attempted to fall asleep in the burning hot classroom on the rock hard floor of the school. Overall, I probably got 3-4 good hours of sleep throughout the entire night. I woke up numerous times to the sound of dogs barking and fighting literally right outside the school, which was crazy/hilarious.
India: Day 5
I woke up at around 6:30am, had some cereal I brought for breakfast and hung out for about an hour. At 7:30am we returned to the Dalit village and walked around for another hour or so. People let us into their houses and showed us around, which was incredibly kind. Although they have next to nothing compared to our standards, they seemed very proud of what they did have. Before we left, a few villagers made chai for us, which was extremely kind and delicious. We then got back on the busses and drove back to Chennai.
The rest of the day I spent walking around Chennai with some friends and shopping. We retuned to Spencer’s Plaza and I bought some tea so than I can drink something besides Lipton on the ship! For dinner, we went to Pizza Hut, which was absolutely delicious. While I originally planned on getting an “Indian” pizza that they have, such as Panneer Tikka pizza, I settled on a plain double-cheese pizza. I felt somewhat guilty, but I had been craving pizza for WEEKS! I haven’t gone this long without pizza, probably in my entire life, so it was a wonderful dinner.
I wish I could better describe everything I saw and felt during the Dalit village overnight, but it would be truly impossible to express my feelings through typing. The village was both similar to what I was expecting and extremely different. Although we did not sleep in the actual village since they did not have the infrastructure or ability to support our large group, it was still an amazing experience that provided an insight into the lives of the Dalits in India.
We set sail for Malaysia, and get these after three days at sea. From this point on, my schedule is going to get crazy. I only have four days of classes between India and Japan (since we are in port most of the time, and I only have classes every other day to begin with). After Malaysia comes Vietnam and then Hong Kong, each within a few days of one another.
Update from Mauritius & New Pictures!!
Mauritius!
We arrived in Mauritius Thursday morning a few hours late. My friends and I rented a villa for our time here, which I was extremely excited about. Mauritius is our “spring break” since the week in between South Africa and Mauritius was HORRIBLE! I had two tests, three papers, and two journals to write so I was extremely busy. On top of that, the ocean was going INSANE. I was terribly sea sick most of the time, which made getting work done and classes terribly difficult. There was a cyclone over Mauritius the day before we got there but thankfully it missed the ship on it’s way to Madagascar.
We took an hour-long public bus ride to Tamarin Bay where our villa was. After getting terribly lost, walking through extremely sketchy neighborhoods, and not being able to call the villa, we finally made it there safely. The villa was BEAUTIFUL. There were 13 of us staying, and it was only $10 a night for a 2 floor, 2 bathroom, three bedroom house. It was really great to get away from the boat for a while. At night, I made grilled cheese for everyone, since I missed cooking so much (even though admittedly, I can only cook a few things, grilled cheese being one of them). We got to bed around 2am, and then I had to wake up at 6am to catch the bus back to the boat for a trip I had in the morning,
My trip was to this Marine Science research center, which was fun. It was a trip for my Global Environmental Politics class. After walking around the research center for a few hours we took a glass-bottom boat to this amazing private island called Isle de Deux Cocos. We had a wonderful catered lunch being going back out on the glass bottom boat to snorkel! Snorkeling was wonderful. There were an incredible amount of fish and coral reefs. After snorkeling and hanging around the beach for a while, we went back to the ship.
I was supposed to go back to the villa, but my friends and I were tired so we decided to hang around Port Lois for the night. We went to an Indian restaurant for dinner, which was so good. Oh how I missed chana masala, naan, and lassis. There is no “traditional” Mauritian food since the Dutch were the first mammals to ever be on the island (besides fruit bats). It is an amazing mixture of Indian, African, and Asian populations each living together. Even though I will be in India again in a week, we figured it would be ok to go for Indian food just once since the Indian population is the majority.
Today is the last day in Mauritius and I have just been hanging out. We were told that there was wireless Internet on the ENTIRE ISLAND, which was basically a lie. But thankfully I found this one tiny spot near the boat so I am able to update. Mauritius has been relatively uneventful, but incredibly relaxing which is just what I needed after the long week before. Next stop, Chennai, India!!
I uploaded new pictures from South Africa!! None from Mauritius since I forgot my camera yesterday ☹ I hope all is well at home! I miss everyone so much!
