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...
