Semester At Sea 2006

Japan

2006-04-18T04:26:00.000-07:00

Japan April 11th – April 15th

April 11th Day 1 in Japan
We were told the night before that we wouldn’t be getting off the ship until noon at the earliest so I slept in. Because of the late time we were getting off the ship we had to change our travel plans all around. I decided that today I would go to Tokyo. My travel buddies were Ariel, Nicole, and Dustin. In China I bought a ticket to ride the bullet train so that I could travel anywhere in Japan I wanted. The bullet trains were located in the Shin-Kobe Station. To get there I first had to take a monorail leaving the port terminal. It cost 200 yen to ride. Keep in mind that the exchange rate is 118 yen to the dollar. The monorail took us to the Sanomiya Station. By the time I got there there was already a huge line at the JR ticket counter to exchange our rail pass receipts in for real passes. I was told by a travel agent that we could do this at the next station so we rode the subway to the Shin-Kobe Station. This cost another 200 yen. Once we arrived there we found out that the only place to get our tickets was at the station we were just at. How frustrating. We had to buy another subway ticket and go back to the other station. By this time the long line had tripled in length and we found ourselves at the end of it. Dustin and Nicole went out in search for a money exchange while Ariel and I waited in line. We waited and waited and waited. Finally my friends came back and Ariel and I wondered around for a bit. After a good 15 minutes we were finally able to find an ATM that took our cards. I even had enough time to stop and use the phone before getting back in line. Altogether I think we stood in line for at least an hour and a half. We finally got our tickets and headed back to the other station, which required buying another subway ticket for another 200 yen.
Our train to Tokyo picked us up at around 4:30. We had a three and a half hour ride ahead of us. The train was really nice inside. The chairs reclined back and there were even fold down trays we could use on the seats in front of us. There was lots of leg room too. I tried to take a nap but it was too uncomfortable. I didn’t really bring anything to do which was a bad move on my part. We stopped at a lot of towns along the way but only long enough for people to get on or off the train. The train had two kinds of bathrooms; a Western and a Japanese. The Japanese bathroom was just like any other squat toilet I had seen. A man ended up sitting down next to Ariel and he started eating a dried fish snack. It smelled really bad and I’m glad I didn’t have to sit next to him.
We got into Tokyo around 8pm. It was raining outside and I had forgotten my umbrella on the ship. We decided to walk down the streets anyways because we really had nothing else to do. We stopped into a sushi place for dinner. I decided not to eat because it was too weird and too expensive. Dustin and Nicole ended up getting a mixture of sushi. The price was way too much for what they got. Then we went back to the station to try and make reservations for a hotel room. We had heard that all the hotels in Tokyo were pretty much booked due to the blooming of the cherry blossom trees. In Ariel’s Lonely Planet book we found a cool place to stay where you can sleep in capsules in the wall. Apparently there are only two hotels like this in Tokyo that allow women to stay in them. We booked our rooms and then rode the subway to another section of town called Akuska. The hotel was supposed to be right outside the station but it took us awhile to find it because its entrance was in the rear of the building. When we stepped through the door we had to immediately remove our shoes. We put them into lockers and were given green slippers. To pay for our room we had to insert money into a vending machine. It cost us around $25 each. Ariel, Nicole, and I were put on the 8th floor because it was an all women’s floor. There was a little changing area with lockers for our stuff and a bathroom and sink room. Inside the lockers was a pajama outfit. Then we checked out where we would be sleeping. The room was pretty big and had about 20 capsules. My capsule was on the bottom. It was big enough to fit a mattress inside. It also had a small TV hanging form the ceiling as well as a radio and an alarm clock. The TV was all in Japanese but the radio played mostly English music.
Ariel and I still hadn’t eaten dinner yet so we went back out onto the rainy streets. We went to a little fast food type Japanese restaurant. The waiter was actually from Bangladesh but he spoke really good English. We were given hot green tea with our meal. It really needed some sugar so Nicole ran next door to Starbucks and grabbed us a few sugar packets. The waiter just laughed at us we he saw what we were doing. We stayed there for awhile and then went back to our capsules. We put on our pajama set and attempted to go to sleep. There wasn’t an actual door on the capsule but a thick curtain that pulled down. I could hear everything going on outside my capsule. The bed was rock hard and I didn’t sleep well at all.

April 12th Tokyo Day 2 in Japan

We woke up at 7:45 because Dustin wanted to meet us in the lobby by 8am. We got all packed up and were ready to go. We met Dustin in the lobby but he told us to come back in an hour because he wanted to sleep more. That kind of made us angry because we had wanted to go places but now we had to stay around the hotel. It was still raining outside but we found that the hotel owner had a bunch of umbrellas we could borrow. Once out in the streets we found a donut shop and had coffee and donuts for breakfast. Then we walked around some allies that were filled with little shops. It was about 9 by then so we walked back to the hotel. We sat in the lobby for over 45 minutes before Dustin came down. We were a little angry.
We walked over to the bus station and jumped on a bus heading to Ueno. Once we got there we walked through a park filled with cherry blossoms. They were beautiful and a bright pink color. Then we went to the National Museum. Outside of the museum was a bunch of racks for umbrellas. There were a bunch of slots and once you put your umbrella into one you could lock it and take the key. I found this really funny. It must rain here a lot. Inside the museum there were lots of paintings and sculptures. There was nothing too exciting. Then we saw some Samurai swords and some old tribal warrior outfits. After that we jumped on another bus and headed to another part of town to try and find a market. Instead we ended up finding ourselves on Takeshita Street. This street was full of shops and restaurants. All the shops were mostly clothes and hip hop oriented. There were people everywhere. It was very entertaining to see the fashionable Japanese teens walk by. They wear the weirdest things. The girls would wear platform shoes with long striped socks. Many of them wore lots of layers of clothing. They seemed to like Disney stuff and would also have colorful hair that was styled so it spiked up. The guys were also big on having long hair that they spiked up and dyed bright colors. I could have sat and watched them walk by all day long. We ended up spending most of the afternoon here. Dustin was no longer with us because he didn’t want to hang around shopping with us.
Then we went back to the main station and took a train to the downtown area of Tokyo. We walked a few blocks to the Sony Building. We had read that inside we could check out all their new products and play the new video games. There were about four different levels of products. We checked them all out and were disappointed to find out that the game room was under renovation and we couldn’t play any of the games. After that we just walked around the streets before heading back to the station to get on our train back to Kobe. Nicole and I stopped and ate at a little Sushi place in the terminal and it was pretty good. Then we got on our train and happily looked forward to our three and a half hour ride back. Every now and then a lady would walk down the aisles pushing a cart with food and drinks on it. We hit her up every train ride we took after that. When we arrived back in Kobe we had to take a subway to the other station and then get on the monorail to go back to the ship. We had decided that to save money we would just sleep on the ship every night instead of staying in hotels.

April 13th Day 3 in Japan
Today we decided to go to Hiroshima. The earliest train we could get wasn’t until 10:49. This train was a lot different then the ones we rode before. Inside the seats were larger and comfier. Instead of seating three to a row they only sat two. This time the ride was only an hour and a half. When we arrived we took a street car to the Peace Memorial Park. As you probably could have guessed a huge part of Hiroshima is dedicated to peace from the result of the atomic bomb. The first monument we went to was the A-bomb dome. When they dropped the bomb it detonated 600 meters above this building. It was mostly destroyed but the structure was still standing. We walked around the park and passed many memorials and statues. There were cherry blossom trees everywhere. Then we came to the children’s memorial. It had a huge statue with a crane on the top. It was built for Suduko who built 1000 paper cranes when she found out she had leukemia from the effects of the radiation. The story has it that if you make enough cranes then your wish will come true. Her classmates wanted to help and they all began making cranes for all the children who had been affected by the bombing and its aftermath. The memorial contained quite a few glass cases with thousands of miniature paper cranes inside.
Then we went inside the museum. It was a very good museum and wasn’t biased at all. It showed pictures and clips of the before and after. It also explained why the bomb was dropped and how the decision was made. There was a big model of the city both before and after the bomb. It was amazing to see all the destruction it caused. The grossest part of the museum was the radiation section. They showed many pictures of burnt victims. There were also lots of fingernail clippings from people whose fingernails had been poisoned by radiation. There was even a person’s tongue. Yuck. The part I found most interesting was all the articles and bits of pieces of clothes and lunch boxes that were left behind after the bomb. There was even a little girl’s tricycle that was charred to the crisp. The little girl was riding it when the bomb went off.
By the time we left the museum it was already 3pm and I was starving. I think we walked in the complete opposite direction of all the restaurants because we couldn’t find one to save our lives. As we were walking I saw the coolest thing. We passed a gas station but the pumps were up on the ceiling. When a car pulled up the nozzle would lower down so they could get gas. I didn’t get an up close look at it so I don’t know exactly how they chose to pay but I thought it was pretty cool. We ended up eating at a restaurant that didn’t exactly look too good but it was better then nothing. To order we put our money into a vending machine and selected what food we wanted. Without knowing it we all ordered the same thing. We got breaded pork over a bowl of rice. It would have been good except there was a raw egg poured over the whole thing. Japanese people eat raw egg with everything. Since the food was so hot the egg ended up cooking and I was able to just peel it off. After a delicious lunch we decided to go back to the station when we passed a street full of people. We decided to check it out. We shopped for awhile but everything was too expensive to buy. We found an internet café but in order to use it we had to become members. If anyone ever needs to use a computer in Japan I will gladly share my membership card with you.
Our train back to Kobe left at 7:10. This time instead of sitting in the normal section we got a private room with a table. I had brought cards and I taught Ariel and Nicole how to play rummy. We snacked on pocky the whole time. Pocky is delicious. It is like a pretzel stick with chocolate coated on it. I ended up buying quite a few boxes of coconut pocky to bring home. Anyhow, we played rummy the whole time and the ride went by pretty fast. We then did our usual routine of riding the subway and monorail to get back to the ship. By this time we had figured out ways to avoid paying for the subway. We would buy child tickets which were only half the price. To get into the subway area you only had to swipe your ticket. On the way out you would swipe your ticket again and if it was invalid then the gates would close on you and an alarm would sound. With the child tickets we were supposed to go through a special exit but no one ever noticed. By this time if there wasn’t a person manning the entrances then I wouldn’t even bother buying a ticket and just run through the closed gates. I felt like I had already given the system plenty of money and if I didn’t pay a few times they weren’t losing anything.

April 14th 4th day in Japan

Today our plan was to go to Kyoto. Since it was only a 30 minute bullet train ride away from Kobe we decided to sleep in a little. That didn’t work out because the crew had a lifeboat drill early in the morning and alarms kept sounding over the intercoms. It really wasn’t a nice thing to wake up to. We got up just late enough to miss breakfast on the ship so we decided we would grab a bite to eat in the station before heading to Kyoto. This would be the day I stopped paying for subway tickets and just ran through the gates really fast hoping to go unnoticed. Inside the station was a long hallway filled with restaurants. We picked one out and went in and sat down. There were two ladies serving the food and cleaning the tables. They were running around everywhere doing things a mile a minute. We got our food pretty fast. I got shrimp tempura and it was delicious!
The ride to Kyoto was really fast. We left Nicole in charge of being the “map” girl and planning out our day. We took turns doing this. (I was the map girl in Hiroshima). Nicole wanted to go to Ryoan’ji which was a temple/garden. We had to take a street car to get there which was just like a bus. It was packed with people and we all had to stand. I was eventually able to get a seat which made the ride much better. We got off the bus about 35 minutes later. We got dropped off at the entrance of a different temple. Ariel and Nicole didn’t want to pay the money to go inside so we headed in the direction of Ryoan’ji. It was freezing cold outside. Because it was warm yesterday I decided to leave my sweatshirt and hat on the ship and just wear my shell. That was a bad idea. I was forced to buy hot chocolate out of the vending machines along the road. Vending machines are all over the place but they never have snacks in them like in the US. Instead they have sodas and beer. That’s right, beer. I don’t know if there is an actual drinking age in Japan seeing that anyone could buy beer from the vending machine. The vending machines also sell cigarettes.
Anyhow, after a long walk up a hill we finally made it to Ryoan’ji. The area was beautiful. Inside were dozens of cherry blossom trees in full bloom. The cherry blossoms will start to die after we leave so we were seeing them at their peak time and they were gorgeous. We were led down a path until we came upon a large wooden building that was acting as the temple. We had to take off our shoes to enter. Inside was a large Zen rock garden. When I first saw it I though it was a joke. Here were all these people just staring at a bunch of rocks in amazement. Nicole had learned about it in her class on the ship so she was able to tell me why it was so special. It was a big rectangular area with a rock border all around. Inside the border were little pebbles raked in lines and spirals. Inside the spirals were boulders with moss on them. There is no real meaning to the garden but you are supposed to sit there and figure out what it means to you. I guess I didn’t sit there long enough because I never figured it out. It was like a shrine to rocks. We walked through the rest of the garden and then went to a bus stop to figure out where to go next.
There was only one bus stop so we figured it would take us to where we would want to go. We were headed to Geon Center to see the geishas. When the bus came it was already full and we found ourselves standing in the back. Nicole and I were able to grab seats after a few stops. The ride was fine until Ariel pointed out the man across the aisle form me was picking his nose. It was so gross. He picked his nose the whole ride. This is going to get gross but I feel like I need to share it with everyone. The guy had a bloody tissue from picking his nose so hard that he just threw down on the ground underneath his seat. He kept picking and then just wiped everything onto the seat. It was disgusting. I kept making loud comments about how gross it was hoping that he would stop but he obviously didn’t speak any English. Ariel finally got a seat in front of the guy. A little while later she fell asleep and I started throwing wads of paper at her just to bug her. The nose picker thought I wanted her attention so he patted her on the back with his boogery hand. That was pretty funny to me and Nicole. The bus ride never seemed to end. We rode that stupid bus for over an hour and a half but it eventually took us exactly where we wanted to go.
Geon Center was a long street with shops and restaurants scattered down it. We started checking it out when we saw two geishas walking down the street. They were dressed up in traditional kimonos and were even wearing the small platform flip flop shoes. They also had their faces painted white and had their hair tied up with decorations pinned in it. As they crossed the street every single person around them whipped out a camera and bombarded them. I felt bad but they must be used to it. We left Nicole with the job of getting pictures of them since she is really sneaky about taking pictures of people without them knowing it. By now it was getting to be dinner time and we ended up going in a restaurant that served Japanese style pizza. I chose not to order. We were seated at a table with two other Japanese girls. They were mannequins that were dressed up. There was at least one at every table. Why I don’t know. Hanging from the ceiling were little naked dolls and hanging on the walls were plaques with cartoon sexual pictures on them. It was a really funky place. I made no connection with why all the sexual stuff was in there but it was pretty funny. The pizzas were not the best so I hear. They looked like tacos in a soft shell. Inside was a raw egg, something green, and little chunks of goop. I don’t know how my friends managed to eat those and I am very glad I didn’t order one because I wouldn’t have been able to eat more then half a bite.
We wanted to go to a Japanese traditional show so we had to go to Geon Corner by 6:30 to get tickets. The show was expensive but it was supposed to be a mixture of things from dancing to a tea ceremony. We also thought that we would see geishas in the show. We got pretty good seats right in the front but we were on the side. The first part of the show was the tea ceremony. It was shown way over on the other side and we couldn’t see at all. That sucked. Next up was two ladies playing instruments that looked like harps lying on the ground. While the music played another lady made a flower arrangement. It was stupid. She took a pot and basically put 3 ferns and some un-bloomed flowers in it. Was I supposed to get excited about that? Next was a man dressed up in an orange outfit that was supposed to be a dancer. It was supposed to be a traditional dance but he hardly moved. A geisha finally came on the stage. She was all fancied up and I found it sorta entertaining. The one thing I did like was a little skit that three guys did. They spoke all in Japanese but there was an English storyline in the program so I knew what was going on. The next part was the worst but the most entertaining at the same time. It was a puppet show. The puppet was of a girl that was about 4 feet high. Holding her up were three guys wearing all black robes with black pointy hoods on. They resembled the KKK but were all dressed in black. One guy was at each arm and another controlled the feet. It was really funny to us that these guys were standing there making her move. Why not have strings from the ceiling or hide behind a wall? They made the puppet run across the stage and that’s when it did it for us. Ariel and I started laughing uncontrollably. We just couldn’t stop because we were laughing off each other. What made it worse was that Ariel would gasp for breath and make a really loud noise when she did so. She couldn’t stop laughing and people kept turning around and looking at us. The puppet show kept going on and on and on. Finally it ended and Ariel had tears all down her face from laughing so hard. The show was pretty terrible but at least we got that one good laugh out of it. Afterwards we walked through the rest of the Geon Corner. It was a bunch of houses for the geishas. It was like a little Geisha village.
There was nothing left for us to do in Geisha land so we hopped on a subway and went back to the main station to get on a train back to Kobe.

April 15th Last day in Japan Last day of my trip in a foreign country

The plan this morning was to go to Osaka which was only a 15 minute ride away. The reason I wanted to go there was because there was a park there that had benches to “people watch” on. All the Japanese teens are supposed to hang out there in their trendy clothes. I was looking forward to this. We also wanted to go to a baseball game and since the game started at 1pm we had to nix going to Osaka. I was a little bummed. The weather outside was really gloomy but we figured that since baseball is so big in Japan that they might have a covered stadium. We dilly dallied around for a while before getting on a subway and heading to the Skymark Stadium. It was located on the other side of Kobe and it took a long time to get there. When we arrived we had hardly taken more then five steps when we saw other SAS kids. They told us that the game had been rained out. What a bummer. We were really set on watching a game and were disappointed that it was cancelled. We didn’t want to go to Osaka anymore either because it was raining so “people watching” at the park wouldn’t have been fun. We were left with nothing to do on the last day in Japan.
We really wanted to try and find some Kobe beef to eat even though it is really expensive. I heard that Kobe beef is basically spoiled cows that are served sake and get massages all day long. I would say lucky cows but they eventually get killed and are eaten so they aren’t that lucky. We searched and searched for it but all we managed to find were posters advertising it. As we were walking around a bunch of Japanese people dressed in fancy clothes rushed by us. We decided to follow them. I didn’t mind walking in the rain because I had my cool leopard print umbrella with me. Thanks mom!
The people led us to a roped off area with a model of a temple in it. We stood along the outside of the ropes and waited for the show to begin. We had no idea what was going on but we were pretty entertained. First a bunch of guys holding bright red dragons did a dragon dance in the middle of the street. Little kids eventually “killed” the dragons. Then a huge troop of guys came through carrying a much bigger temple on wooden boards. They set it down and then sat on the street. Over to the side some old men were praying to another temple. This went on for some time. Then the men hoisted up the boards and said some chants. Then they tossed the temple into the air and caught it again. Once they almost dropped it. Then a huge group of really small children came. They were dressed in fancy costumes and carried away the littler temple. They all walked away down the street with a band procession following them in a truck. I was really glad that we happened to stumble upon the show even though I still don’t know exactly what it was for.
Then we really didn’t have anything to do so we headed back to the ship. After dropping off our stuff we went back inside the ship terminal. There was one shop in the whole thing and we all bought a bunch of beer from it. We took our beer and Nicole’s laptop and sat down in a corner to listen to music and play drinking games. We ended up recruiting a few people and sat there until dinner time. I know you might be thinking that this was a waste of my last hours spent in Japan but we really had nothing to do and it was miserable outside. We had to be back on the ship by 8pm anyways.

Truthfully I am traveled out. I never thought this would happen but I have been traveling so much that I feel like I need a break. I think including school work into the traveling is what made me so traveled out. I am really glad to be coming home even though I don’t want my trip to end. It is hard that the only thing I have to look forward to at the moment is being on the ship for the next two weeks. That is a long time to be stuck on the ship.
The night we left Japan was the worst weather we have been through yet. All night long the ship banged back and forth. A few times I could feel that whole ship slam into the waves. Our drawers flew open all night and everything in our room rattled. In the morning it was still really bad. They ended up canceling morning classes because the weather was too rough for people to move around. Plus when you have to sit in the front of the ship while in class you start to feel really sea sick. I am very glad I don’t get sea sick although the ship was so rocky that I would almost feel nauseous just sitting up. It calmed down by the late afternoon but it is now three days later and I have still not seen the sun again.
Wow, that last paragraph made me sound a little miserable. Well I am not at all and I have had an unbelievable time on this voyage. I would do it again in a heartbeat and I have made some really great friends who I am really going to miss once this is all over.

China April 2nd-8th

2006-04-09T20:38:00.000-07:00

Hong Kong April 2nd

This morning we got off the ship at 10 am. I actually got to sleep in a little because there wasn’t a diplomatic briefing nor did I have to wait in line to exchange money. Since I haven’t mentioned what a diplomatic briefing is I will tell you. Important people from the countries, usually Americans, come on the ship and give a little speech about the countries history, what’s going on, and what we should do. Usually they are really boring so I was glad when it was cancelled.
The gangway off the ship was very different then any other time. We were given a walkway sort of like in ET that led right into a mall. The mall was huge and once we entered into it it took us quite some time to figure out how to get out. We ported in the island of Kowloon. It was right across from the main Hong Kong Island so we had to take a ferry to get there. The ferry was called the Star Ferry and it was only about a 10 minute ride. It cost us about 30 cents to ride it. Looking at Hong Kong from out on the water was amazing. It is nothing but skyscrapers. The skyscrapers all had something in common. More then half of them were all electronic companies. There were huge signs on the outside of the buildings. I saw Samsung, Panasonic, Epson, Cannon, Sony, Kodak, and many more just facing the waterfront. It made me realize that if I wanted to I could buy probably any electronic gadget I wanted for a cheaper price then in the US. I didn’t though because although they were cheaper they were still really expensive. Besides electronics there were hundreds of designer buildings. In the radius of one block there was a Louis Vuiton store, a Gucci store, a Tiffany’s and so on. They were everywhere but I never went in because I was happy with the fake knock offs in the markets.
I started my adventures in Hong Kong with just Ariel and Nicole. We had no idea what we wanted to do there. We decided that we would try and find a place to use the internet first. It is really hard to go from using the internet every day back home to only using it a few times a week here. I didn’t realize how dependant I was on it. We never found a place to use the internet so we started looking around for semi English speaking people to give us directions. Everybody gave us terrible directions and we found ourselves lost in the same section of Hong Kong for a few hours. I thought it was very appropriate when I bought an “I am lost in Hong Kong” tee-shirt. Finally we ended up at the city hall were we were able to use the computers. After that we ate lunch at a place called the Coral Café. It was packed with people and because everything was in Chinese I ordered from a picture and ended up getting duck on a plate of rice. I had not yet ordered any kind of bird on my trip so far because I was attempting to stay away from bird flu. I didn’t realize until I got my food that duck could also carry bird flu. I was a pansy and just ate my rice.
Outside on the streets there were lots and lots of crosswalks. There must be a lot of blind people in Hong Kong because every crosswalk was built for blind people. There was a big speaker on the pole with the walk/don’t walk sign. When you couldn’t walk it would make a beeping noise that sounded worse then an alarm clock. Then, when it was safe to walk it would make a long beeping noise. It was pretty annoying because they were everywhere and it was impossible to escape the noise.
We decided that we would try and go to Ocean Adventure Park. It seemed better then trying to go to Disneyland. We ran into a guy named Bob who was by himself and he decided to come with us. We found the bus station and tried to find a bus to take us there. We would have had to switch buses along the way and we decided that it would be easier to just take a taxi. The ride was fairly long because the park was on the opposite side of the island. To get in we had to pay about $20. It was worth it though. We walked around the first half of the park which contained the panda exhibit and some kid learning centers. The panda exhibit had two large pandas in it. We had to walk up a really long windy path just to get there. Along the path were TV screens showing one of the pandas. It was lying on its side on a log and it looked dead. It was funny that they were broadcasting it when it didn’t even look alive. Inside the exhibit the panda was indeed just chillin sideways on the log. There was another panda cage and we walked over there to see him instead. It was right up at the front of the cage eating bamboo. It just sat there and didn’t seem to care that we were there. It looked so cuddly and soft and it was hard to think of it as a bear. I could have watched it for a long time but Bob was getting antsy so we had to leave. Stupid Bob.
No one wanted to check out the learning exhibits so we decided to go to the other half of the park. The park was built on a mountain and the other half was on the other side of the mountain. We had to take a cable car to get there. The cable car was a little bubble that fit about 5 people. We rode in the car for about 15 minutes. It was like a tram. There was an amazing view but it was a scary ride. At one point we were dangling way up high over a cliff with the China Sea below us. It was a little scary once we thought about what would happen if our bubble broke off the cable. Once we got to the other side all Bob wanted to do was go on the rides. Stupid Bob. Ariel and I said that would be fine as long as we stopped in the exhibits along the way. The first place was the aquarium. We got to walk through a little section that had the fish swimming above us. There were sharks, swordfish, manta rays, and a fish with a saw looking nose. It was really cool but we were on a moving escalator and we had to keep running back to the beginning because we would move too fast. Then a huge group of Asian tourists came through so we could no longer stay in there. We walked to a huge aquarium that was filled with all kinds of sea life. There were giant turtles and even bigger manta rays. There were tropical fish as well as gigantic fish. We got to view the aquarium from three different levels; the top, the middle, and from down below. Along the side walls were little tanks with very interesting creatures in them. There were seahorses that were covered in plants and they looked just like a plant. It was kind of like a stick bug but a plant fish. It was so cool. I could have stayed in the aquarium all day but stupid Bob wanted to go on the rides. Along the way to the rides we passed a huge arena with a dolphin and seal show going on. It was packed full so we didn’t stay very long because we couldn’t really see anything.
The first ride was the roller coaster. The only roller coaster I have ever been on was way back in the day at the Space Needle. It was hardly a roller coaster though and I was really little. This was going to be my first time on a real roller coaster. It even went upside down! We waited in line for a while. We got some good people watching time in. There was a guy and his girlfriend across from us and the guy had nails that were about a half inch long. It was gross. We got on the roller coaster and I was definitely nervous. It was a short ride but because it was my first time I will admit that I was scared. The ride had a few turns and it went upside down three times. It even rode over the South China Sea. It was fun but the end of the ride was really jerky. The next ride we went on was a log water ride. I called the front seat of the log. The line was really long and the Chinese people kept trying to cut us. Finally it was our turn. The ride was really lame and at one point we went over a little bump and a pile of water got poured onto my lap. I didn’t want my bag to get all wet so I put it behind my back between me and Nicole. At the end of the ride there was a big drop that was supposed to soak everyone in the log. It was almost a vertical drop and it was scary being in the front. We got splashed hard core. I was soaked and so was my bag. We all exited the log and as we were walking away I noticed that my hands were dyed blue and green. My bag, which I had bought in Myanmar, got so wet that all the dye came off onto my hands as well as the back of my white shirt. So for the rest of the day I walked around with blue hands. The other ride was closed and there really wasn’t anything else to do. We walked for a long time on a path that eventually led nowhere. That’s when we realized that there were escalators to take you around the park. We rode the series of about 4 escalators back up to the cable car. There were large bunches of Asian tourists riding down and they would blatantly stare at us. One guy even took pictures of us when we were right next to him. At least when we do that we try not to make it too obvious. I also noticed that there really weren’t too many kids here but rather lots and lots of adults. I thought that was rather strange. By the time we made it back to the cable car the park was closing and we had to take the car to the other side. Instead of taking a taxi back to the ferry area we jumped on a shuttle bus because we figured it would be cheaper. It was actually around the same price and it dropped us off far away from where we wanted to go.
Bob was supposed to meet his friends at 7 and since we wanted to ditch him we practically ran back to the ferry terminal. Once we got there he decided he wanted to stay with us so that sucked. We decided that we would walk around and look in the little market areas before getting dinner. We were looking for a flag but never found one and every time we asked they would think we were saying fan and show us fans. We finally gave up on that and ate dinner. Then we took the ferry back to the ship to drop off our stuff and get ready to go out. Nicole had made plans to hang out with one of the waiters, which is actually not allowed. The crew is not allowed to hang out with us at all which is kind of stupid but understandable. He told us to get on a ferry and he would jump on a little while later. Well he never came and we ended up going to some random island and not knowing what to do. It was funny though because about 20 other crew members were also going to that island. We attempted to follow them but it didn’t work out. Instead we browsed around in a seven 11. We sat around for a while and then just decided to go back to Kowloon. I used the phone outside and then decided I would go back to the ship and pack for my trip to Beijing.

Beijing April 3rd – 6th

April 3rd 2nd day in China

My trip was supposed to leave the ship at 8:30am but nobody bothered telling me and Ariel that it didn’t actually leave until 9:45. We had gotten up early for nothing. When we finally signed in for our trip we were given souvenirs. They were little 8 balls with semester at sea on them. We thought they were pretty cheesy but cool anyways. I took them back to our room so we wouldn’t have to carry them around the whole time. When I came back Ariel told me to grab another one because it turns out they were supposed to be gifts for the Chinese students we were going to meet. Oops!
Once we got to the airport we still had a while before our flight left. We looked everywhere for a Hong Kong flag but not a single shop had one. There were lots of fancy stores inside the airport. I guess designer shops can make a lot of money here. Our flight was about 2 ½ hours long and I was lucky enough to get a window seat. I had been getting stuck with the middle seat on my last 2 flights. The girl next to me switched seats so that Ariel and I could sit together. The plane was pretty big. I hadn’t been on one this size since I flew to Hawaii 6 years ago. Lunch on the plane really wasn’t that bad. We got pork and a roll and a salad that I gave to Ariel. Then after lunch was cleaned up we were served chocolate Hagan Daz ice cream cups! It was delicious. The vegetarians didn’t get any because in China vegetarians don’t eat ice-cream. Sucks for them because it was delicious. Looking out my window I was surprised at how much rural area there was so close to the big city. Most of it just looked like dust. Then all the skyscrapers appeared and I knew we had made it to Beijing.
The bathroom in the airport was of course different then in the US. They provided toilet paper but you had to get it first before going into the stall. The airport was the only place I went that provided the toilet paper. Also, there was a choice of a squat toilet, which are the ones like a hole in the ground, or a sit toilet like in the US. And that’s my China bathroom shpeel.
My trip was a University based trip and we were headed to Peking University to check into our guest house. The university was huge with about 46,000 students. There were a lot of American students there too. Our guest house was pretty basic and not the best. None of the staff spoke English and there were Raid traps in our rooms for bugs. Ariel was my roommate and our rooms were separated from the main front desk building.
As we were waiting to check into our rooms we had to stand outside in the cold. Our trip leader was one of the resident directors on board and his girlfriend was the other leader. They both had shaved heads that they dyed a gross yellow blonde color. They looked identical. He was wearing neon orange track pants. While we were standing there waiting for our keys Ariel made a comment that his pants looked plastic. I busted out laughing which in turn made her laugh and pretty soon we were laughing so hard we were crying. Jason and his girlfriend kept asking us what was so funny which only made us laugh harder. Luckily we got our key and could run away from them.
We walked a little ways over to a dining hall to eat dinner. We sat at big round tables which sat 10 people each. In the middle of the table was a large lazy susan maybe 3 feet wide. We were given chopsticks and teacups and a small teacup sized plate. Waiters brought out dish after dish of food until there was absolutely no more room to put anything. It was really difficult to get food because everyone kept spinning the dam lazy susan. Some of the dishes were really strange. At one meal we were served jello looking strips that we decided were collagen. There was a lot of tofu and always a big bowl of rice. Pork and chicken were usually served and I gave in to the bird flu because if I didn’t eat the chicken I would have gone hungry. Lots of the foods were really greasy, even the vegetables. Even though the food never looked that appetizing I always ended up getting really full. Dessert was always some kind of fruit and to drink we were always served Coke or Sprite. It was difficult to eat with the little itty bitty plates because they really didn’t fit much food. And if you didn’t like something you had to leave it on your plate which just took up a lot of space because I didn’t like a lot of things. Chinese food is much different then Chinese food in the US. In fact after eating in China I don’t even think you can call Chinese food in the US Chinese food. It isn’t even close to anything we ate.
After our first meal we walked to the Exchange Center on campus to meet PKU students. We were put into a conference room and some students came in and sat in the back. One student sat next to me and Ariel. She looked kind of dorky and she was in fact dorky. We thought her name was Charlie but it turns out her name was Cookie. All the students have Chinese names but they give themselves American names. They either make up their names or have their friends make up one up for them. Cookie gave us a little tour of campus but it was really dark outside so we really couldn’t see much. We walked through the trees along side a lake. She took us to one of the campus entrances that was apparently famous for some reason. Then she took us to look around the student store. The door to go in was the strips of plastic stuff you would see in the butcher area of a grocery store. They had these all over campus and I guess the reason is that it keeps out the cold. I don’t know why they don’t just shut the actual doors and then they wouldn’t have that problem. Anyhow, inside the store they sold food, jewelry, electronics, clothes, shoes, movies, and random stuff. We were looking through the movies and Ariel dropped the first season collection of the Godfather on me. The corner of the box hit me right in the temple and boy did that hurt. There was a bakery inside and Cookie told us that after 9pm you can buy two cakes and get one for free. Since there were three of us we all decided to get a piece of cake. We asked Cookie which one she liked and she pointed it out. Ariel and I kept looking and then we turned around to see that Cookie was asking for three pieces of the one she liked to be wrapped up. We figured that she just picked out the pieces for us. She went up to pay and I ran up and insisted paying for them. That’s when I realized that she wasn’t sharing but instead she was getting all three pieces for herself. No wonder her name is Cookie. I felt really embarrassed when I realized what was going on. Both the cakes Ariel and I ended up getting were gross. We then said goodbye to Cookie and went back to our room. We both tried to take showers and it was pretty difficult. The shower head wasn’t attached to the wall at a very good spot and the water sprayed out in a horizontal line. If we were any shorter we would have been squirted right in the face.

April 5th Day 3 in China

We didn’t get a wake up call like we were supposed to but luckily got up just in time to go eat breakfast. We had to walk over to the dining hall and it was freezing outside. Breakfast was quite strange. There was a bunch of random things and nothing looked too good including the scrambled eggs which were more of a greenish brown color. I had some fried breads and pineapple and that pretty much consisted of my breakfast. Then we all clambered on the bus. One girl on our trip was sick and we had to take her to the campus health center. We sat on the bus for around 40 minutes while they took care of her. Then we headed to the Jade factory. On every SAS trip they always take us to some expensive factory and this time it was the Jade factory. We were given an hour and a half here to look around. We got a quick tour which lasted a whole 5 minutes. Everything in the store was beyond belief expensive and within 20 minutes we were done looking around. There were a few rich girls who stayed in the store shopping. I think all of us sat on the bus for about 45 minutes while a few girls bought stuff. What a waste of time. Then we went to the Ming tombs. We didn’t actually go to the tombs though because I guess other trips thought it was too boring. Instead we walked through a pathway with stone statues on either side. The statues were built around the 1400’s. There were some mythological animals, camels, elephants, horses, lions, and some stone people. To have some fun I decided that at each different animal I would make up funny poses and take a picture. It was pretty fun but it would have been funner if I could have crawled on the animals but seeing that they were really old I decided that wouldn’t be a great idea. After that we went to a restaurant to have lunch. It was the exact same as dinner last night with a few different dishes. Then we went to the Great Wall!
The section of wall that we went to wasn’t what I thought it would be. Instead of being a long stretch of wall it formed one giant circle. Apparently there are four different passes of wall like this. The circle was split into a semicircle with a bridge over the highway splitting the middle. We were given 2 ½ hours to climb the wall. Since the wall is located in the mountains we had to do a lot of uphill stair climbing and I mean a lot. I didn’t even know that so many stairs existed on the wall. The stairs were a range of sizes anywhere from two feet high to only half a foot high. Some of the stairs were really worn down from people walking on them. There was a railing on both sides but it was pretty pointless. The railing hardly ever came up past our knees so holding onto it was almost impossible. Along the hike up were about 8 towers. Each tower gave us a place to rest and catch our breaths. I was really disappointed to see that there was a store on the wall selling novelty crap. It kinda ruined the whole “I’m on the Great Wall in the middle of nowhere experience.” The saying goes that if you can make it up to the top then you are a hero. Many people quit at the first tower. I will admit it was a hard climb but it’s the Great Wall for crying out loud. The hike up was freezing cold. The weather was in the fifties or sixties but the wind chill made it miserable. For the trip all I packed was a thin long sleeved shirt and my fleece vest. It definitely didn’t keep me warm enough. The hike up took about an hour. Once we made it to the top it really wasn’t anything too special. The view wasn’t pretty because everything looked dead. The hills were all brown but had ridges across them.
Going down was actually harder then going up. The stairs were really really steep. About 1/3 of the way down my legs and knees started to shake whenever I stopped. Ariel came up with all sorts of ways to climb down easier. She tried sliding down the railing but it was too close to the stairs. Walking down backwards was the easiest way. Right as we were really close to the end was the steepest part. It was almost vertical. At the bottom of that I actually got to walk on a flat part. I had almost given up hope that flat parts even existed. By the time we reached the bottom of the semicircle we only had an hour left to explore. That wasn’t enough time to hike up the other side so we decided to look around instead. There were a bunch of statues of warriors off to one corner so we decided to take some funny pictures. The statues were broken and I took a hand as a souvenir and Ariel took a thumb. I forgot to actually take a piece of the wall. Oops. There were stores lined up and we decided to check them out. I got really happy when I saw a Great Wall sweatshirt. I was freezing cold and I wanted it really bad. The lady wouldn’t take the price that Ariel and I were offering and we walked away sad. We got to the end of the stores when I realized that we were only offering to pay $3 for a hooded sweatshirt. We laughed and then went back and ended up buying them for $6.50. I wore it the whole rest of the trip.
We went back to Peking University for dinner and a “party.” Our party was with the Chinese students and it was pretty childish. We played games like limbo and we actually did the hokey pokey. All the Chinese students were dorky and Cookie wouldn’t even participate. When we were supposed to get partners all the SAS kids would group up when really we were supposed to involve the Chinese students. Ariel and I tried rounding them all up and getting them to participate but most of them decided to just sit and watch. When it came time to give our gifts away I gave mine to a Chinese guy. Before he even looked at it he jumped up and ran away. I thought it was a little strange but he came back a few minutes later with a PKU t-shirt for me. After the fun party we went back to our rooms and called it a night.

April 6th Day 4 in China

I skipped breakfast this morning and ate my box of cheerios I brought from the ship. Our first destination was Tian’anmen Square. It was a huge open square with important buildings on all sides. We were given two hours to wander around. It was really cold out again. First Ariel and I went to the People’s Hall. We had to go across the street and check our bags. Then we had to wait outside in a line with about 100 Asian people. A huge chunk of people were let in at once so we didn’t have to wait long. Inside the building was Mao’s body. It was in a casket but we could see his face and outline of his body. He was really short. We all shuffled through in a line to get a peak at Mao. Then we were led right back outside. It started to rain and then hail. That’s right, it hailed. I have been used to weather in the 90’s so hail was quite a surprise. We were given bright blue ponchos and we decided to sport them. We looked like idiot tourists but at least we weren’t getting wet. Then we went inside the Museum. First we looked through an artifact exhibit. It was pretty boring. Then we went inside the wax museum. It contained maybe 50 different wax people. Most of them were Chinese but there were a few white people. There was a sports section that had Pele, Michael Jordan, Yao (the tall Chinese b-ball player), and David Beckham. We had a good time posing for pictures in front of them. Yao was huge. They made him gigantic especially compared to Michael Jordan. There was a scientist and star section as well. Marilyn Munroe was terrible. It didn’t look like her at all and her skin was all yellow. They had Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Pablo Picasso. The last wax person really surprised me. It was Bill Gates.
We ran out of time to visit the rest of the museum and had to go meet our group at the large flagpole. Then we walked over to a restaurant to eat lunch. After lunch we went into the Forbidden City. Instead of having a tour guide walk around with us we were each given an audio translator. It was an electronic map of the city with headphones. Each time you reached a certain part a voice would come on and tell you about where you were. It really didn’t work too well because it had too much information and I didn’t want to walk that slow. I ended up just turning it off and walking around without it. Most of the city was under renovation and there really wasn’t too much to look at. Each temple looked the exact same as the one before it. The trim below the roofs were all painted bright blue with colorful designs on them. It was still freezing out so I bought a cup of tea at a vender shop. The tea badly needed sugar. We got to the exit of the city with plenty of time left over so we decided to jump in a cab and go to the Silk Street market. We found two guys that also wanted to do this so we all split a cab. It took a while to get a taxi. The ones on the street wouldn’t stop and the ones parked in front of us didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with us. Finally we got one and headed to the market. It took around 20 minutes to get there because of all the traffic. We only got to shop for a half an hour before we had to leave again. The market was huge and I really wanted to buy stuff but I didn’t have time.
By the time we got a cab we were pushing the time that we were supposed to meet our group. The ride back was much faster, maybe only 5 minutes. We got there just in time to see our group enter into the park. We walked through the park really fast. I guess we were supposed to hike up something but because it was so cold we nixed that idea. From here we met up with our bus again and went to dinner. Tonight the specialty was Peking roast duck. The roast duck is a very special meal in China. We were served lots of other food as well but the duck was the main dish. It was served on two plates, one contained the head cut into two slices so you could see both sides of its face. It was also served with thin dough tortillas, a sauce, cucumbers, and onions. We dipped the duck into the sauce and then wrapped it up in the tortilla with the cucumber and onions. I left out the onions. It was pretty good but the sauce could have been better. Then we went to the Chaoyang Theatre to watch a Chinese acrobatic show.
I was very excited to watch the show and I pushed my way to the front to get the best seat I could. I was pretty close to the front and on the aisle so nobody’s head was in my way. The performance was amazing. It opened up with a bunch of people tumbling and making pyramids. Then there was a bongo board performance. A man stood on a bongo board with two girls wrapped around him while resting a platform on his forehead. On this platform was another man who was also on a bongo board. He would place cups at the end of his board and then flip the board so they would land on his head. He got up to around 8 cups and then finished with a spoon. He was pretty high off the ground and the whole time the guy below him was balancing. It was amazing!
The next routine was a girl who balanced a candle holder looking thing with 6 cups on it on her head. She stood on top of a long pole that was balanced on a guy’s head. The guy then held two ladders at his side and proceeded to climb up them. Then he let go of one of the ladders and was balancing on just one ladder while the girl was about 10 feet above him still balancing the cups. It was so cool! There was also a guy who walked across the tight rope. He did crazy stuff as well. He was thrown a unicycle and I was going to be impressed if he just rode it on the rope but instead he did a hand stand on it and rode it around with his hands! He also was given a ladder which he balanced on the rope and climbed up. I don’t get how they do these things. My favorite was a bunch of guys who would leap through hoops. The would do back flips through rotating hoops and even leaped through hoops at least 10 feet up in the air. The finale was a bunch of girls riding on bicycles. They rode around and around in circles doing tricks. At one point 10 girls made a pyramid on one bicycle. The things they did seemed so impossible. I loved it and was glad I video taped it so I can watch it over and over and over again.
We went back to our hotel after a long day of touring around. Ariel and I wanted to use the internet so we trekked over to the library. Once there we found out we couldn’t go in without passes and the offices that give out passes were already closed. An English speaking Chinese girl was coming out of the library as we were trying to figure out how to get in and she told us of another place we could try. She walked us over to a little internet café but it was packed with people. Outside was a building that had lots of big thermoses set outside its door. Hot water is not available in the rooms but the students can bring thermoses here and get water to haul back to their rooms. We thanked the girl for trying to help us and then walked back to our room without getting anything accomplished.

April 7th Last Day in Beijing

We got our 7am wake up call but didn’t drag ourselves out of our rock hard beds until around 8. We had packed our stuff up the night before and were all ready to check out. While we were waiting to leave we found out that our guest house had a few computers with internet. We were stupid not to have looked there first last night. Around 9:30 we hauled our crap on the bus and headed to the Summer Palace. It was very near the University and only took a little while to get there. It was placed around a lake but besides that it looked a lot like the Forbidden City. It was made of a bunch of different courtyards but all the paint jobs were identical to the Forbidden City. We looked around here for awhile and then signed out of our group. Ariel and I wanted to go back to the market because we didn’t spend much time there before. We walked out onto the street to find a cab but everyone we asked tried to make us pay double the amount. We ended up jumping into a cab without asking the price and just showed the driver a piece of paper with the name of the market on it. We were driving for around 45 minutes before we finally got there. The whole time we were contemplating whether we were even headed in the right direction or not. We ended up paying a good price.
The market was 5 stories tall and had all sorts of things from paintings to electronics to clothes and shoes. My big purchases were a Mountain Hardware coat and a sweet North Face backpack. They were knock offs but still pretty nice. We shopped around for a few hours before leaving to meet up with our group outside the Temple of Heaven. The market was really near there and we timed it so that we showed up before the time we were supposed to. We waited outside the Temple’s gate for around 20 minutes before realizing that our group wasn’t coming. We needed tickets to get inside and we didn’t know what to do. We had told our trip leader that we were going to meet them there and we didn’t understand where they were. Luckily we had a sheet of paper with the guides phone numbers on it. We borrowed a cell phone from a local who didn’t speak any English. We got a hold of one of our guides and she agreed to meet us at the gate. Apparently our leader thought we were going to meet up with them after the Temple. Also they got there around 20 minutes early so that’s why we couldn’t find them anywhere. We still had plenty of time to look around even though we were waiting outside for so long. I forgot to mention that today was actually warm out. In fact I was even walking around in just a t-shirt. The sky even looked blue under the gray haze of pollution.
The temple of Heaven contained some interesting things. The first was an echo hall. At the center of a circle platform there was a smooth spot to stand. If you stand here your voice is supposed to loudly project. I tried it out but I think it was loud because I was yelling. The echo wall encircled the whole thing. There was a semicircle carved out of the cement on the ground that carried your voice along the wall. I am not sure if it really worked because you really couldn’t get far enough away from the person you were taking to to tell if you could hear their echo or just their voice. We walked through a pretty forest area and then sat down on a bench to wait for our departure time. My legs were pretty sore from climbing the wall and it felt good to relax. Also I was carrying around my huge new backpack along with all the other stuff I had bought.
Once the bus came we loaded up and headed to the airport. There was a mix up with our tickets and we had to sit around the ticket counter for what seemed like forever. I got a window seat again close to the front of the plane. I tried to board right away because I knew there was going to be trouble fitting all our carry ons on the plane. People bought a lot of stuff. I was seated in the exit row and wasn’t able to even put a bag under my seat but I got on soon enough to fit my bags in the overhead compartment. The flight was only an hour and went by pretty fast. We were served a snack which consisted of bread, bread, and more bread. Seriously. We were given a roll, a piece of pound cake, and bread cookies/crackers. What a great meal.
There were a few SAS trips on our flight and it was going to be a race back to the ship to see who could get on first. Nobody wanted to wait in line to have our bags checked. We were ahead of a few buses and going steady when our bus came to a complete stop in the middle of the road. The bus either hit a car or the car hit the bus. The car’s driver side mirror was ripped off and there was a huge white smudge mark along the bus. As we sat there the other busses passed us. Then our driver jumped into a taxi and left. We were just sitting there. About 10 minutes later we started to move again. I guess the driver had returned and nobody noticed. When we got back to the ship there was a huge line. We had to stand there for about 35 minutes carrying all of our crap. Since it was almost 10 pm we had missed dinner and the crew had box lunches ready for us. I went to my room to drop off my stuff and check out my dinner. It looked really unappetizing. Then I got a phone call and was told they were serving pizza in the dining hall. I ran upstairs and had to wait in yet another long line. The pizzas had only 6 pieces and it would be all gone by the time 3 people got their food. I waited there for awhile but eventually got some pizza. It was good. I was ready for some American food after eating all the Chinese food.

April 8th First day in Quingdao / Last day in China

I got up in time to eat breakfast and then slowly got ready to leave the ship. The only real thing I had to do today was buy a Japan rail pass. We left the ship around 10. It was really cold outside again. The walk from the ship to the entry gate was a good 15 minutes away. It was cold and not fun. Once we got to the gate we jumped into a cab and headed to the Crown Plaza to buy rail passes. Once we got there Ariel realized she forgot her credit card and had to go all the way back to the ship to get it. The rail passes were really expensive but a must if we wanted to travel in Japan. While we were waiting for Ariel to come back we went next door and looked around the mall. First we walked through a huge grocery store. All the shops in the mall were really expensive and I got sick of being in there pretty fast. We went back to the hotel and met Ariel. Then we went out to lunch. We ate at a Korean restaurant. Then we went to use the internet. You might be wondering why I want to use the internet so much. It is because I have to do research for my classes on the ship. It sucks. The internet place we found was a gamer heaven for the Chinese. Each computer had a leather chair and some even had basket chairs hanging down from the ceiling. We were put in our own room downstairs. We got a couch to sit on and there was a beaded curtain to close the room off. Although I didn’t want to think about it the room we were in seemed like it was for lonely guys to go jack off to computer porn in. After using the internet we decided to go to a market close to the ship. We got in a cab and showed the driver where we wanted to go on a map. He agreed and then said something about a TV station. We thought he was describing the building in front of us. Ariel, Nicole, and I fell asleep in the back seat and woke up to realize we were driving up a windy wooded path. Ryan was in the front and we didn’t get why he hadn’t woke us up when he realized we were obviously going to the wrong place. The driver had taken us to a large tower, the TV tower. We corrected him and a little while later got dropped off on the corner in front of a mall. It wasn’t where we wanted to go at all but we got out anyways. We found ourselves in yet another grocery store. We decided to walk down the street and brave the wind. At one point the wind was so strong that we couldn’t physically move forward. We also kept getting chunks of dust in our eyes. The stores were all crappy on the streets. We passed two or three shops selling sea shells and stuff made out of sea shells. They stunk and we had to run by them. We also passed a restaurant with tanks of sea creatures outside. They even had a plate with a full sting ray on it. We walked around some more until we ran out of stores to look around in. We had to get back to the ship by 6pm to turn in our passports. We found another cab and went back to the ship.
I unpacked all my stuff and then relaxed by watching a movie. I was exhausted from the past 8 days of traveling and “sight thinking.” Before I went to bed I had to secure all the stuff in my room because the seas were supposed to be really rough.

My thoughts on China:
I enjoyed going to the Great Wall and watching the acrobatic show. Those were my China highlights. Other then that I don’t think I liked China. The pollution was terrible and I don’t understand how China expects to bring hundreds of athletes there for the Olympics. They won’t be able to breath! There wasn’t anything too great about China. The people weren’t very friendly. China was definitely my least favorite country.

VIETNAM

2006-04-02T22:36:00.000-07:00

Good Morning Vietnam!
March 26th First Day in Vietnam

We pulled into Ho Chi Minh City and got off the ship around 10:30. We were ported right downtown so we didn’t have to travel for miles to get to the city. We did have to take a 5 minutes shuttle bus ride into town though so that the taxi drivers wouldn’t congregate around the port area. The shuttle dropped us off outside the Rex Hotel. The city was full of tall hotels like the Sheraton for example. After getting dropped off we just headed forward down the street. Right away we had to risk our lives at attempting to cross the streets. Vietnam has traffic laws but nobody really follows them. The vehicles are mostly all motorcycles with a few cars, bikes, and cyclos here and there. The intersections are wide and there are only stop lights at some of them. To walk across you have to simply step out into the traffic. The plan is that the motorcyclists will simply go around you. As you walk you can not stall but have to glide across no matter if it seems that you will be hit or not. For the most part crossing the street was fine but I had some scary moments. Once I found myself crossing diagonally through the bikes and I was definitely a little nervous.
We found our way to the Ben Than Market and dove in to see what we could possibly buy. The market was in a huge building and the only light was that which came down through windows in the ceiling. Since it wasn’t a very sunny day it was very dark inside. The shop owners had little lanterns that they set by their goods but it was still really hard to see. It was a heater in there. Within about 30 seconds I bought a cheap fan because the heat was unbearable. The market was full of shoes and clothes. Every time one of us would approach one of these shops the people would look at us and say “too big’ and shoe us away. Everything was so small. Anything I did buy ended up being at least an Extra Large.
Our original plan for the day was to take the fabric that we bought in India to a tailor shop to be made into dresses. We turned our fabric into the ship laundry guys three days before and had still not gotten it back. The laundry we had was from before India. That is a lot of stinky clothes that we had to store in our rooms. Anyhow, we couldn’t go to a tailor shop without fabric so we roamed around the streets and then went to the Rex Hotel for massages. My massage was pretty weak and I was disappointed that the girl didn’t walk on my back. I thought they all did that. The nice thing was that there was a shower in the room so I got to take a shower afterwards. We then took a taxi over to the Renaissance River Hotel to meet up with Morgan and her parents. (SAS had a parent trip to Vietnam and about 50 parents came to meet their kids.) I guess I am not special enough for my parents to come see me. Just Kidding!
Morgan’s parents and her older brother came to visit her in Vietnam with her. Her father fought in the Vietnam War and this was his first time returning to Vietnam. Morgan introduced all of us to her parents but forgot to tell us their names. Ariel asked what her mom’s name was and she replied, “you can call me Mrs. Wright.” That was not a reply we were expecting and we actually all felt really awkward afterwards. I haven’t been asked to call anybody by their last name in a long time especially someone else’s parents. Oh well I guess it’s just what they do. Morgan’s dad wasn’t feeling too good so he stayed behind with her brother while we went out to dinner. We went to a really fancy restaurant. For a starter I ordered a pineapple seafood salad. I was served a full pineapple that was cut so the upper half came off. It was carved out in the inside so the salad could have a bowl. It definitely looked way better then it tasted. For dinner I ordered coconut beef. I was served a full coconut carved out with beef soup inside. There was a ring of gooey stuff around the outside that the waiter lit on fire. It made a fire ring around the coconut to warm up the soup inside. Mrs. Wright ended up paying for our whole meal which was very generous of her. After dessert of banana flambé we headed back to the hotel. There were a few other SAS kids there with their parents so we all went up to the casino to hang out for a little while. I wasted $3 on foreign gambling. Oh well. Next to the casino was a bar. There were about 10 of us sitting down on a couch when a parade of about 20 Vietnamese girls came walking through. They were all wearing skin tight short dresses and appeared to be on the prowl for men. A few of them were already sitting down at the bar next to older foreign men. They were definitely hookers. They walked to the other end of the bar and then headed down a flight of stairs. Ariel and I decided to follow them down the stairs. Two flights down was another bar and all the girls were sanding in a big semi circle around the bar. It was really weird. We went back upstairs because we weren’t allowed in. Then about 5 minutes later all the girls came parading through again. After seeing the way prostitution was done in Myanmar I really wasn’t expecting anything like this. Since I had experienced it in Myanmar I was really curious about the Vietnam way. I was really tempted to ask a few of them some questions but I couldn’t figure out how to phrase them right so I gave up. As we were leaving the bar we passed an old guy paying one of the girls for the “good time.” The bar was on the second floor of the hotel and we had to talk an elevator to get to the first floor. This elevator was unlike any I have ever seen. It was about 20 feet long and had about 4 couches in it along with neon lights and posters. At first I didn’t even realize I was in an elevator.
By this time it was getting late so we headed back to the ship via a taxi. As we pulled up at the gate I noticed a man standing in the middle of the traffic spread eagle yelling at the motorcyclists. I recognized him right away as my cabin steward. (He cleans my room every day and he is always in my hallway.) He is from the Philippines and doesn’t speak English very well so he never really talks to us much. Well I yelled his name and he came stumbling over and greeted us. It was hilarious to see him drunk. He not only talked in full sentences to us but he also gave us high fives and took a picture of us on his cell phone. What a funny guy.

March 27th Day 2 in Vietnam
My friends and I had planned a trip yesterday to go to the Mekong Delta, a more rural area of Vietnam. There were 7 of us and we got picked up outside the ship at 8 am. The drive to the Mekong Delta area took around 2 hours. The ride went by pretty fast though because there was so much to look at out the windows.
Things I found interesting out the window:
Girls on motorcycles wearing doctor masks and prom gloves. The masks are for two reasons. The first is because of all the pollution. The reason they wear the mask and the gloves is to protect their skin and keep it white. Girls with whiter skin have an easier job finding a husband. The masks aren’t just the ordinary masks either. They have patterns and designs and some cover over half of their faces. It is funny to me that in our culture we are always trying to get tan but here being white is attractive. At one of the spas I noticed they had a whitening treatment kind of like how we go fake and baking. I wonder how that works.

The power lines. I have never seen such a mess of power lines in my life. It must be impossible to repair them if something goes wrong. The fact that there are about 100 wires hanging together isn’t the most shocking part. It is that there are jumbles and knots of wires hanging down around the poles. I have a picture of this that I can’t wait to show to people.

3. Traffic patterns. Like I said earlier nobody really follows the traffic rules. Some of
the intersections resemble the ones in Missoula where there are about 6 different directions of traffic coming together at one spot. I was amazed by how patient the drivers were. They wait their turn even when there is no light and they all seem to know exactly what they are doing. Apparently 1000 people die a month from the road accidents but I never saw anything. (A SAS bus did come upon a guy getting in a motorcycle accident and splatting his head open on the ground though. And one of the kitchen staff got hit while crossing the street but I never saw anything to this extent).

People with missing limbs. In lots of the countries I traveled to I saw people on the streets with missing legs and disabled body parts but Vietnam was by far the worst. What I wanted to know was if most of the amputations had been from the war and land mines. I never asked anybody though because that probably isn’t something they would want to talk about. A lot of the disabled and mutated I am also assuming is from Agent Orange. Agent Orange can last up through 7 generations of people and many are suffering from its effects. I never saw any women with missing body parts though, only older men.

5. Motorcycle ramps leading into every store. Since motorcycles are everywhere all
the shop owners have ramps that allow the people to park their bikes inside.

We got dropped off in a town I can’t remember the name of and walked over to our boat. Along the way we bought the Vietnamese triangle shaped hats. They were embroidered and had colorful ribbons to tie under your neck. On the hat the word Saigon was written and underneath that was something in Vietnamese. Turns out it said tourist so I felt really stupid wearing a hat around that said “Saigon Tourist” on it. By the way Saigon was the old name for Ho Chi Minh City but everyone still uses it. In fact I never heard anybody once say Ho Chi Minh City the whole time I was there. It was just known as Saigon.
We climbed into our boat and took off for Unicorn Island. This island has many orchards and we got to walk through and then taste all the fruit. The only one I liked was the pineapple but I still tried them all. The pineapple wasn’t eaten plain but dipped into a mixture of salt and chili powder. I preferred it plain. There was also a fruit I can’t remember the name of but I thought it was called sarsaparilla which and it was a yellowish orange color and really mushy. The dragon fruit was my least favorite but it looked really cool. It had a pink rind and the fruit itself was white with tiny little black seeds all over. I also ate a few little bananas after brushing the ants off of them. Yummy! While we were eating two musicians and a few singers came over to perform for us. You will never guess what song they sang. They sang “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands” in Vietnamese. I laughed at that one. I can’t believe they have even heard of that song before. One of the musicians was playing a very strange instrument. It looked like a big pipe on the end but was played like a violin. I tried to play it but all that came out was a bunch of high pitched squeaks that weren’t too pleasing to the ears.
We got up and walked over to another area to taste something else. We were served honey tea and banana whiskey. We were all poured shots of the whiskey. It was disgusting! I got a kick out of everyones faces though and I actually recorded it so you can all see our funny reactions. The honey tea was delicious. We got a big glob of honey in the bottom of a cup with hot water poured over it. Then we added squeezed lime and pollen. The pollen melted into the mixture. It was delicious and really sweet. I was told the pollen is for calories but I don’t know its other purposes were. As we were tasting our drinks we noticed that there was a big snake cage behind us. Inside was a 6 foot long python. I got to hold it. It was really heavy and as I was trying to take a picture its tail crawled partway up my shorts. I didn’t hold it for too long because although I am not afraid of snakes (obviously) I kind of get nervous when their heads move around and come near me.
We left the island and got to row down a narrow river in little canoes. I have always wanted to do this. I felt like a real Vietnamese wearing my pointy hat and rowing down the river. I didn’t actually get to row though but there were two old ladies in the front and back doing the rowing. We hung out for awhile in these little canoes before transferring to a bigger motor boat to take us to another area. We were on our way to taste coconut candy. We got dropped off and walked up a little path before getting to a hut where three women were making candy form coconuts. Somehow they take the milk and coconut and mush it up and pour it into a big pot. Then they add lots and lots of sugar and let it boil. They end up with something like really thin cookie dough. They chop up the pieces and wrap them in rice paper to be sold. We got to taste test and they were delicious. We then headed over to a little outside restaurant to have lunch. Our lunch was quite the show. We were served two big elephant ear fish propped up with their whole bodies intact and decorated. With the fish they wrapped up egg noodles and lettuce in rice paper. We were also served pork strips, spring rolls, onion rings, and some kind of crunchy rice bread. It was really good. This was the end of our trip and we headed back to our bus. On the way back I noticed there was a DVD player in the bus. The driver put on some Vietnamese music videos for us. They were pretty funny. Then he changed it up and put Top Gun on. I wish he wouldn’t have done this because I stopped looking out the window to watch the movie. It made the ride go fast though. Before we were dropped off we stopped at a handicapped lacer ware factory. We were shown how they make things out of lacer and the process was very tedious. We were taken to the showroom but nobody bought anything because the prices were way jacked up. The stuff was probably worth that amount from all the hard work but when they sell the same thing at the market for about 1/16 the price why would you buy it for more money? We headed back to the ship, organized our stuff, and then headed for town.
My digital camera was still broken from Mauritius and I desperately wanted to get it fixed. I had seen a bunch of camera shops on the streets so I figured somebody must be able to fix it. I got denied at about 4 different shops before finding one that would try and fix it. They told me to come back in an hour. An hour later I returned and found that they hadn’t even touched it yet. I was a little frustrated and they told me to leave it overnight and come back tomorrow at 11. I was a little hesitant but decided to leave it because I figured if they ripped me off I would just steal a brand new camera from them and run. I decided to look around in their store and ended up making a great purchase. I bought all 10 seasons of “Friends” for the price of just one season back in the US. And yes they all work. I was stoked about that.
For dinner we went to a little café and ordered some real good American food. I know I should be eating Vietnamese food but the food on the ship really isn’t that great and sometimes I get cravings for the food back home. The café had a wide selection of desserts so I was really disappointed when I happened to pick out the grossest one there. After dinner we went back home for some rest. That’s right, the ship is now being called my home.

March 28th Day 3 in Vietnam

Since it was already the third day in Vietnam we desperately needed to get our fabric to a tailor shop. I was really frustrated when our laundry was still not given back to us. I wasn’t angry about wearing the exact same pair of shorts and socks for the third day in a row or that I had to buy tee-shirts off the street to have fresh shirts (I was stupid enough to wash all my skirts and shorts and tee-shirts leaving me with nothing to wear in the heat) I was angry that our fabric was still not returned. I asked our steward why we hadn’t gotten it back yet and he said that because of the bad water in Vietnam they stopped doing laundry and we wouldn’t be getting it back until after Vietnam. I explained our fabric situation and he said there was nothing he could do. I sent him down to the laundry room twice to look for it. He told us there were about 400 bags stacked in piles and there would be no way to find it. I begged him to let us go look for it but he said he already asked and it wasn’t allowed. I wasn’t going to give up and went to the Purser’s desk to see if I could talk to the supervisor myself. It wasn’t that we needed it washed, we just needed it back. Well right as the supervisor got on the phone Joseph came up to me and told me he had found it. I was so grateful. And get this, it had already been washed and had just been sitting down there that whole time.
Now that we had our fabric we headed towards a tailor shop. We found a cheap one with good quality stuff inside. We all got measured and described what we wanted and were told to return on Thursday. It was close to 11 so I headed over to the camera place to pick up my camera. I was excited to see what they had done. Turns out they never touched it. I will admit I got a little angry. They told me I needed to come back at 4. I said no and kept asking them why they weren’t fixing it when it should take 10 minutes at the most to fix. They told me they didn’t have the piece and were looking all over for it. I complained some more and then after making them promise me it would get fixed I agreed to coming back at 4. I was supposed to meet my friends on the other side of the street but I couldn’t find them. I wondered around by myself for awhile. A Vietnamese man came up to me and started preaching to me in Vietnamese. He asked where I was from and then started preaching to me in English. Then he started going off about New York city and rambled on about all the places you can visit there. The locals around me were laughing. I couldn’t get away from the guy and he was all up in my face. Finally he shook my hand and said goodbye. Shortly after that I found my friends and we went shopping some more. After eating lunch we went to visit the Reunification Hall / Old Palace.
We walked around the palace for over an hour peering into all the rooms. Every room we saw was for sitting whether it was for a meeting or just to relax. The furniture and the paintings were very unique and pretty but other then that the place wasn’t very spectacular. The coolest part was going down in the basement. There were lots of rooms filled with maps marking out war strategies. We also got to see the kitchen. Everything in the kitchen was ginormous size. The mixer was even taller then me. At the end of the tour we were led into a little room to watch a film about the war. It was way too long and I ended up getting really restless. By this time it was past four and I needed to go get my camera. I was actually surprised that it was done. I have to admit that they did the shittiest job ever but the camera works so I can’t really complain. They made a new piece for me that doesn’t exactly fit. I told them that I wasn’t willing to pay the $10 and they ended up giving it to me for free. Now it doesn’t matter that it is shitty since I didn’t have to pay for it.
We took the shuttle bus back to the ship to drop off our days purchases and then headed back out for dinner. Our tour guide at the Palace told us that tonight there was going to be a National Youth Concert that is celebrated every five years. There was a huge stage set up blocking off one of the streets. There were people everywhere and huge blue strobe lights flashing in the sky. We tried to walk up closer to the stage but the security guards wouldn’t let us in. We were really confused because we were told it was for the public and anyone could come. We were also told there would be music and dancing. There was a huge screen above us projecting the stage. On the screen were people dressed up in nice suits talking. I started to realize that this wasn’t a youth celebration at all. We couldn’t find anyone who spoke English to explain to us what was going on and why we weren’t allowed in. Finally we found a girl our age who tried to explain to us that it was a government function having something to do with their independence. After hearing this I felt like I really didn’t belong and wanted to leave. My friends were still too curious and they continued to ask people about it. They found an old lady who told us the reason we weren’t allowed was because we don’t understand and we are not involved in their government. This made perfect sense and made me want to leave even more.
We walked down the street not knowing what to do now that our night of dancing and music didn’t exist. We went to a java place and got coffees and dessert. Again my dessert was terrible. I decided I wouldn’t even bother ordering dessert from then on out while in Vietnam. On the way back to the ship we passed a few SAS girls who informed us of another market that we didn’t even know existed. I am so glad I found somewhere else to spend money…not.

March 29th Day 4 in Vietnam

We got up before 8 again and headed to the War Remnants Museum. The shuttle bus wasn’t running yet so we decided we would take motorcycles. Ariel, Nicole, and I got on the back of motorcycles and rode off. At first we didn’t really know what we were supposed to hold on to but then realized we didn’t even really have to hold on. The ride was a lot of fun as we swerved in and out of the other traffic. We got there in no time. The museum was split into 7 different parts, each showing a different topic. The worst section by far was the one about Agent Orange. It showed picture after picture of people with birth defects and missing limbs. There was even a glass tank with 2 fetuses inside. It was pretty disturbing. The museum really made me realize how awful the American’s were to the Vietnamese people during the war. But then I am sure that if the museum was in America I would be thinking the exact opposite.
After the museum we walked a couple of blocks to the Notre Dame Cathedral. It was huge and had a lot of really pretty stained glass inside. As we walked in we passed a newly married bride. I think I have seen a bride in almost every country. Across from the cathedral was the Post Office. The Post Office was a very cool building. It was huge and inside it had over 35 stations of doing things. After viewing the Post Office we set off in search for the Saigon Center to do more shopping. We found it pretty easily.
We didn’t really know what to do so we just started walking down the street. We stopped at a local spot to have drinks along the side of the road. I got a Number 1 and it was really gross. It was some sort of soda that kind of tasted like Red Bull but grosser. It was really warm too so that didn’t really help much. Since we didn’t know what to do we went over to the Diamond Plaza to go bowling. We actually had to pay money for the shoes and we even had to buy socks. I had a great time but bowled terribly. Bowling next to us were a few locals and we made plans to meet them later for dinner. After they left a white man, a Vietnamese woman, and an old Vietnamese man walked up.
Seeing that the white man was American we started talking to him. He was from Alabama and was about 30 and a big dork. He told us that he had just been married to the girl next to him. She spoke absolutely no English. The old man was their translator. Pretty screwy situation if you ask me. We were all pretty amazed by this and started asking how he ended up marrying this girl who can’t even communicate with him. He told us that he knows her uncle in Alabama and through him they started writing letters. He flew down here and they got married. He said they were in love. I asked him how he felt marrying her, seeing as he was….he said fat…I said American. Then I asked if he was going to give her a better life. He said yes. He walked away and I got a chance to talk to the translator about how the girl felt about the whole thing. He told me it was simple. She married him simply to get out of this country. After five years of marriage she will divorce him and be able to stay in the US and do as she pleases. I found this very interesting.
The locals had returned and so we left the bowling ally with me not even getting a score above 100. The guy was going to take us out to dinner, then coffee, and then to the bars. For dinner we went to a local place on the street. We all got some sort of shrimp noodle soup except for Ariel because she is deathly allergic to seafood. The food wasn’t bad. Then we went over to a coffee place. Vietnam has really good strong coffee. Ariel started feeling bad because her food had been touched by the seafood and her lips started to swell up. It wasn’t anything huge as it had happened to her at about every meal we ate here. The waiters don’t seem to understand that she could die if seafood touches her plate. We went back to the ship which I am glad we did because my whole dinner came right back up. Yum…glad I got to experience eating street food!

March 30th Last Day in Vietnam

I got up at 6:45 so that I could go use the phone before going on our trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels. I was slowly getting my stuff together when I decided I should check my trip sheet to see where our trip was meeting at. That’s when I realized that our trip was leaving at 7 and not 8. It was ten till seven by this time and I woke up Ariel and then phoned my friend Nicole’s room. We tried calling Annie’s room and even tried banging on the door a couple times but nobody answered. We rushed off the ship and jumped on the bus and guess who was there…Annie. She had felt un-included at bowling last night and so to get back at us she was seriously not going to wake us up. Talk about a bitchy thing to do. It was a good thing I decided to get up early otherwise we would have missed the trip and I would have been really pissed off.
It was an hour and a half bus ride to the tunnels. First we were given a little introduction talk and then walked around. We stopped at one of the entrances to the tunnels. It was a little rectangular hole covered up by a metal top with leaves all over it. The guide demonstrated how to climb down into it. It was amazing that he could fit through such a small hole. I really wanted to try but I knew I would get stuck and didn’t feel like embarrassing myself. There were air holes for the tunnels all over the place. To disguise the openings they built fake termite hills in between trees that had openings for air. Then we got to bigger entrances that I could actually fit through so we could crawl through the tunnels. There were exits every forty feet for those who were too scared. My friends ended up wimping out so I just crawled through by myself. They were tall enough for me to be able to walk hunched over. I thought they would be much smaller. I had my flashlight so I could see otherwise it would have been pitch black. At one point the tunnel got really skinny and sloped down. I had to lay on my back and inch my way through. The ground was really wet and muddy and I got really dirty. I was almost out when I saw a huge spider. The thought never even crossed my mind that there were big spiders in the tunnels. I ran by it and right out the exit. I was dripping in sweat when I got out of the tunnels. I didn’t realize how hot it was in there. I was also really pumped up and just full of adrenaline. I didn’t realize this until I looked at pictures of myself and my eyes are all bugged out and I look like I have eaten handfuls of sugar! There was one small section of tunnels left to go through. Right before I went in them Ariel found a scorpion inside. The guide came and smashed it but I will admit that I ran through that tunnel pretty darn fast. I couldn’t imagine living in the tunnels. Around 16,000 people lived in the 150 miles of underground tunnels. That’s crazy. We walked around some more and I stopped at a big pile of leaves because they were smoking. Underneath the leaves was the chimney from the kitchen. The kitchen itself was about 50 yards away and the chimney was over here to throw off the American soldiers. We also saw underground bomb shelters and a small kitchen area. I never did find out how they went to the bathroom because I would imagine that that would stink up the whole place.
The best part of going to the Cu Chi Tunnels was being able to shoot guns. I got to shoot an AK47. I had never shot a gun before and was stoked that my first time would be with an AK47. The gun didn’t have any kick back and the shells shot off to the side as I shot. The noise was really really loud. I bought five bullets but I didn’t hit the target once. It was actually cooler that I missed because then the dirt would poof up everywhere. I also could have shot an M16 but I didn’t have enough money to buy the bullets. Then we were shown examples of some of the booby traps the Viet Cong used during the war. They looked so painful. Most of them involved metal spikes that would dig into your feet or sides. We never got to see what land mines looked like which was rather disappointing because since they were a huge part of the war I figured they would be on display somewhere.
We then left the tunnels and headed to the War Cemetery. I expected to see something grand and well maintained. It wasn’t like that at all. The tombstones were all made of white cement and the ground was all cement. There wasn’t a grass tuft anywhere in sight. It wasn’t very clean either. There was a big statue in the center of a mother crying holding a soldier. It was a goldish color and really big. There were flowers in pots spread around. They had to be in pots because the ground was all cement.
The ride back to the ship was really slow. I think one of the reasons it seemed like forever was because I was so hungry because I missed breakfast. I was looking out the window when I saw the coolest thing so far. There were four men playing badmitten on the side of the street. They were using their feet though. The birdie was longer then normal. One guy would toss the birdie to his teammate who would kick it over the net. Then the other guys would kick it back over and so on. It was really cool to watch.
We got to the ship, scarfed down some food, and headed out to get fitted for our dresses. Everything turned out pretty good. After getting fitted we were told to come back in an hour to try them on again with the new adjustments. Ariel and I wanted to go get a massage while we were waiting. We had a brochure from a place close by and we were trying to find it when a French man approached us. He asked us what we were looking for and we told him. He has lived in Vietnam for 2 years and is an intern for the French consulate. We figured he was a pretty legit guy. He told us of a much better massage place where they give traditional Vietnamese massages for a third the price of the hotels. He said it was like a school where they practice acupuncture, massage, and even Tai Chi. He really talked it up so we decided to give it a try. We took a taxi to the place which turned out to be across from the War Remnants Museum. It looked a little shady and it definitely was. And that’s all I’m gonna write about that experience…
We took motorcycles back to the tailor to meet up with our friends and retry on our dresses. They still weren’t quite finished and we were told to come back a few hours later. We went out to get dinner while we were waiting. We decided that it would be fun to try Vietnam fast food. We went to a place called Lotteria which kind of resembled a McDonalds. Right away we noticed that there was a delivery bicycle parked inside. We ordered burger meals and then went upstairs to sit down. The food didn’t have much flavor but it was a cheap meal and it was pretty filling. After a good meal we headed back to the tailor to buy our dresses. Then we went to a coffee shop. We were in the café for around 45 minutes and the whole time they played the Shania Twain “That Don’t Impress Me Much” song on repeat. We headed back to the ship after this. I decided to use the phone one last time. (Sorry I didn’t call you again mom but it was 4:30 in the morning your time and I didn’t want to wake you up). I had four thousand Dong leftover and I walked down the street until I found something cheap enough to buy with it. By the way the currency is called Dong and around 15,500 Dong is equal to $1.
On the ship I threw my stuff in my cabin and then went up to the union where there was a special Vietnamese dance program organized for us. They performed around 10 different dances and all had bright colorful costumes. It was a really good show. I couldn’t believe that we were already leaving Vietnam. It just flew by. We didn’t actually pull out of port until the next morning but we all had to be on the ship tonight.

Here are some of the great sayings we used in Vietnam:
That’s a whole lot of Dong!
Cu Chi Tunnel
Happy Endings
Scooter Hookers

Myanmar

2006-03-22T03:49:00.000-08:00

Yangon, Myanmar March 16th – 21st

March 16th
Today around 4:30pm we had fully crossed the Bay of Bengal and arrived in Myanmar (pronounced Me-an-mar.) The water was no longer blue but brown and murky. It looked like chocolate milk except it is fatal if you drink it. Now I know why we can no longer bring water on the ship because there is no clean water anywhere. We floated slowly up a river and then pulled alongside the bank right smack in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town, Yangon, is about an hour drive away. So here we were, in Myanmar, but we couldn’t get off the ship because there was nowhere to go. Instead we had to sit it out and wait until morning to get off.

March 17th First Real day in Myanmar
Most people decided to go on trips to other cities with SAS. My friend Nicole and I decided that we didn’t want to hassle with all the unsafe traveling and decided to hang out in the city of Yangon for the next 5 days. There were shuttle buses running every other hour that took us from the ship to the Traders Hotel in the city. We boarded the bus at 10 and set off for Yangon. The ride was very long because the roads were not exactly our standards of a highway, although we did travel very fast. Looking out the window I saw straw huts and brown fields. The ground looked dead and dry but there were green trees everywhere. It was nice not to see piles of garbage everywhere too. We made it to the hotel and then set off walking down the street having no idea where we were going. We were stopped by a man who asked us if we wanted to exchange money. We did and followed him into a little office. We got 1100 Kyat (pronounced chat) for $1. This is illegal. The government rate is only 6 Kyat for $1. We would have been stupid to exchange at that rate though.
Since most of you know nothing about Myanmar I will give you a quick blurb about it and its awful government. The government is terrible to the people. They don’t have very many freedoms at all. For example, if four or more people are congregating together then they can get arrested because they could be talking about overpowering the government. Or if people are heard talking about politics then they can get arrested. If you take pictures of any government buildings or structures you can get arrested. Once you are arrested, getting out is near impossible. I guarantee that there will be some stupid SAS kids that get arrested. Basically the government is terrible but no one told us this until the day before we got here.
Back to my adventures…Nicole and I set off to find the market. I guess we found it because we were immersed with shops all around us. Myanmar sells two main things; gems and textiles. The gems are very cheap compared to what they sell them for in the US but still too expensive for me to want to buy them. Walking through the markets was a sweat factory. I was wearing pants and a tee-shirt because we were told we had to be covered from ankles to shoulders. Well I got too hot and had to zip my pants off into shorts and no one seemed to care. I ended up buying lots of little things and then hit up an art shop. I bought three large paintings. One of them is probably 4 feet by 3 feet. I wanted the frame so I had to carry them around. I have yet to figure out how I will get them home. We then found a restaurant called Café Colours. I had pork and rice and it was very good. My meal cost only 4 dollars. Then we found a cab to take us to the Na Gar glass factory. The factory was in the middle of nowhere. The buildings were all made out of bamboo and there were glasses and vases in piles all over the place. They were all covered in dust and dirt as they had been lying around for quite some time. We were given a quick little tour and then shown a demonstration of the glass blowing. We were shown how to make a fish vase and a few mugs. They made them really fast and it was very cool to watch. Then Nicole and I dug around in the piles to find stuff we wanted to buy. The people packaged our things up and put them in a box for us. Our next stop was the Chaukhtatgyu Pagoda which is a large reclining Buddha. It was HUGE! I was taken aback by how large it was. I was probably the size of its mouth. It was pretty tacky looking but then that is how most of the Buddhas look. There were lots of people praying here and I felt awkward standing around taking pictures. This was the first place of many that I had to remove my shoes at. I am not sure why shoes are not allowed but it’s what they do. We left here and then made a stop at a nearby park before heading over to the Shwedagon Pagoda, which is the most sacred of all Buddhist sites in the country. We had to pay a fee to enter and then of course we had to remove our shoes. It is hard to explain exactly what the area looked like surrounding the Pagoda. It had a North, South, East, and West entrance. There were different temple buildings all around. There must have been thousands of Buddha statues all over the place. We walked around for a while and waited for the sun to set. We met a man who turned into our tour guide to tell us more about the Pagoda. When one of the Buddhas died the people did not know what to build for him. They sat underneath a tree and prayed to Buddha for a sign. A leaf fell from the tree and from this the shape of the Pagoda was built. The tree was brought to Myanmar from India and was planted by the South entrance. Surrounding the pagoda were 7 water statues, one for each day of the week. I was born on a Saturday so I found the Saturday statue and went through a process to “cleanse my planet.” Since I am 20 years old I had to pour 20 cups of water on certain things. I poured 5 cups on a Buddha statue, 5 on another statue, 5 on my planet Saturn, and 5 on my animal the dragon. Then I poured one extra cup on the Buddha statue. Then I made a wish and I became cleansed. Next we walked over to a bell and rang it 5 times but I didn’t know why because I sort of stopped listening by this time. I was really tired and we had already been there for 2 hours and I didn’t like the idea of our cab driver waiting outside with all of our stuff. Then we went over to Buddha’s footprint. It had a puddle of water in it. With the water I placed a drop on my forehead, drops on my cheeks, a drop on my mouth, and two drops on my shoulders. This was supposed to rid me of all disease and keep me healthy for the future. We’ll see how that works out. Since the sun had gone down the Pagoda was really shiny. It is layered in real gold and was glowing all over the place. From a certain spot I was even able to see the diamond on top of the pagoda. It is about 7 inches wide. We finally left the Pagoda and got dropped off at the Traders Hotel. We walked around the corner to get a bite to eat before heading back to the ship. My whole dinner meal only cost me $4 and it was such a big helping that I could only eat half of it.

March 18th Day 2 in Myanmar

At 9 am I had a trip with SAS to go to the Sultoo Pan Orphanage. It was really more like a school then an orphanage. There were probably 50 kids there of which only 15 were orphans and actually lived there. The rest lived in the surrounding village. Again we were in the middle of nowhere. We walked into a building and sat down to watch the end of their Tai kwon do practice. All the kids were lined up and wearing white shirts and blue Adidas shorts. They all had yellow paste on their faces too. The paste is worn by all Myanmar women but I guess children wear it too. I asked people what it was for and got different answers every time. Some said it was makeup, some said it was sunscreen, some said it was to cool your face down, and others said it was like a skin cream. Whatever it was it really wasn’t very attractive. Some people had it in round circles on their cheeks while others had it layered on their whole face. Anyhow, we sat down and watched the kids who were of the ages of 5 to 11. They were all very disciplined. Then they were given playtime and we went out to a field and ran around with them. Next we went into their classroom which was just an empty building. They all had to sit down and meditate for a short while. I was surprised that all the kids were focusing because of how young they were. Then they sang their ABC song for us. It was about two minutes long compared to ours which is barely 30 seconds. Next we went to watch them have lunch. Since this place is sort of like a monastery training center the kids eat like the monks do which is only once a day. After they go home they are given another meal though. Watching the kids eat shocked me. They each had huge heaping piles of rice on their plates with pork and chickpeas. Within a matter of minutes many of the kids were getting seconds. I was thinking about little kids back in the US and how little they eat. They wouldn’t have even been able to finish half of the serving let along gobble down seconds. The kids were not served drinks with their meal but had to wait until they were finished to get water. We were also served some snacks at this time. Nothing was very good and I decided not to even try the dried fish because the smell alone was enough to make me want to puke. Then we said goodbye and went back to the ship.
Nicole and I had to wait around for two hours to take the next shuttle into town. Our destination was the zoo. It was a huge zoo and had lots of animals I had never even heard of before. I had a few incidents with the animals. First was with an elephant. The elephants were on a cement platform with their legs chained to the ground. There was one elephant close to where we were standing and it was reaching it’s trunk out at me. I reached my arm out in return. I was almost touching its trunk when it swung its trunk back and then heaved it at me in full force. I screamed and turned my head and just missed getting slapped across the face by the elephant by a matter of inches. There is no doubt in my mind that if I would have been hit I would have been knocked flat on my ass. I have never seen an elephant do that before. The next incident was with the monkeys. There were about four monkeys in a cage of which two were very young. One of the young ones was at the edge of the cage and I decided to take a picture of it. I was leaning way in so that I could get an up close shot when out of nowhere the bigger monkey ran up to the bars, stuck out his arm, and grabbed my finger. I didn’t even see it coming because I was looking just at the little monkey. I of course let out a loud scream which scared away the monkey and I dropped my camera to the ground. Everyone was looking at me and I felt like an idiot. When I picked up my camera my water bottle fell out of my backpack. I couldn’t pick up my water bottle because each time I bent down the monkey would run up to the bars again and I didn’t want it to grab me again. A little girl ended up reaching under the fence to get it for me. From then on out I decided to no longer get close to the animals. After walking around for a few hours we went back to the Traders Hotel. We strolled along the streets nearby and bought random things. I got a Nike tank top for only $1. Then we went to the Central Hotel to get massages. For 1 hour a massage only cost $4! Nicole and I were put in the same room and served tea. It was a dry massage so there was no need to remove any of our clothes. For the most part it felt really good. They really like to use their elbows and that kind of hurt especially when she dug into my thighs. The lady actually stood up on the bed and walked on my legs and back. I have always wanted a massage where they do that. I felt really bad for the masseuse because after a long day in the sun I really didn’t smell too good. Near the end she bent me in weird positions and massaged/stretched me. I felt pretty good afterwards except for a big bruise on one of my thighs from her elbow. By the time our massages were over we only had about 45 minutes before the last shuttle went back to the bus. We went to a little restaurant called Vegas Time and ordered some burgers. We ate them within a matter of minutes and the workers were laughing at us while we inhaled our food. Then we took the shuttle back to our home and called it a night.

March 19th Day 3 in Myanmar

Today I got up around 7 am for my SAS trip to Bago. It was a 2 ½ hour bus ride to get there even though it was only 50 miles away. That just goes to show you how bad the roads are. We had a good tour guide though and he told us lots of information on the way there. For instance, the people in Myanmar drive on the right side of the road like us but their steering wheels are also on the right side making it impossible to see around vehicles in front of them. Apparently when they got their freedom from the British they decided to move to the other side of the road so as not to be like the British. They still all drove the cars built for driving on the left. The reason they don’t have cars with the steering wheel on the left is because they are too expensive to buy. It would be a pain in the ass to drive like they do because passing someone is really dangerous. Another funny thing I noticed was what the people sit on. There are tea shops everywhere with little tables and chairs outside for the people to sit on. All the tables and chairs were little kid sized made of brightly colored plastic. It was funny that they used these.
We finally got to Bago and our first stop was a monastery to see the final meal for the monks. At 10:45 the monks started a procession into the dining hall. There were so many of them and they kept coming and coming. Lots of people were taking pictures but I felt way too awkward to do that. I felt like paparazzi or something. They were carrying big dishes which they got rice scooped into. The rice was donated by families. Then they all sat down on the floor and ate their meal. We weren’t allowed to wear shoes here either. We got a chance to go into the monk’s living area and see where they sleep. There are about 7 monks to a room and they each had a straw mat and a little book shelf. One guy even had sports posters pinned to the wall which seemed really out of place. These monks are learning monks and not meditation monks so they are allowed to talk to each other. They can have families but have to sleep alone at the monastery. We left here after the meal was over and went to a restaurant to have lunch.
The way the meal was served was different then I had ever seen. Instead of having a big buffet the food was served in little plates and then set on the table. This way food isn’t really wasted and you can choose what you want without having to get up. I attempted to eat a variety of things but they were all really spicy and I ended up sticking to the rice. Our next adventure took us to the Shwemawdaw Pagoda. It was just like the one in Yangon except it didn’t nearly have as many things surrounding it. It might have been a little taller but not as decorative. We had to remove our shoes and because it was the middle of the afternoon the tiles on the ground were burning hot. It was quite difficult to walk around. I ended up sitting by the entrance stairs for awhile so I wouldn’t have to burn my feet. There were two sets of stairs; an up set and a down set. At the top were two military guards. I was watching a man walk up the down stairs and when he got to the top the officers called him over to them. They yelled at him and then directed him back down the stairs. As he walked past them the officer hit him really hard across the back of the head. The man just kept walking and he never came back. I have no idea why that happened. Other people proceeded to walk up the wrong stairs so that couldn’t have been the reason. I felt really bad for the man. Obviously he must have done something wrong worth getting hit for. But as I said the government is terrible to the people so it might have been something minor.
Next we went to the reclining Buddha. There were two of them here. They were just like the one in Yangon but not as colorful. There were shops surrounding the Buddha so I had something to do. Our next place of interest was a local village. I am not sure why we came here. We walked into the village and went to a little house where two ladies were weaving thread into cotton. It was interesting to see them work but we left within 10 minutes. There were hardly any grownups there but there were a lot of children. Most of the little girls all had their hair cut the same way. Their whole head would be shaved except for a little tuft in the front. It was a very interesting style. After the village we went to an outside market. It was full of flip flops, fabric, and plastic crap. As we walked through it turned into a food market. It smelled terrible. Dried fish is a big thing here and the smell was way overpowering. I even saw freshly butchered chicken chunks. That surprised me because bird flu is very prominent here and I was shocked to see it in the market. To add to the smell we walked by a little boy puking. We got out of there pretty fast. We all got back on the bus and headed back to Yangon. Along the way we stopped at a WWII war cemetery. It was built mostly for the British soldiers but there were many races involved. The cemetery itself was beautiful and kept up very well. In between each grave was a flower bush. There were large pillars and a big wall with all 27,000 soldiers names on it. There were lots of unnamed graves as well. Most of the soldiers were not much older then me. All the British graves were in the front and the other races were on the sides or in the back. There were huge gardenia trees there and pathways made out of vines. It was really pretty.
Once we got to Yangon a few of us got dropped off at a park to meet up with our SAS group for a dinner and dancing show. The restaurant was in a large decorated building in the shape of a boat on the water. The people there were dressed up in many colorful costumes to greet us. Since we were early we got front row seats. Dinner was served just like how it was at lunch. Little plates of everything were set around us. The food wasn’t that great and again I ate mostly rice. Dessert was watermelon and pineapple in the shape of hearts. The dance show was entertaining. There were about 10 different dances in all. The last one was a water splash dance. People came around and poured water on our shoulders. We got up and danced with the people and they kept spraying us with water. The cold water felt really good because the place was super hot inside. I had a good time but was ready to go back when it was over.

March 20th Day 4 in Myanmar

I slept in a little today because Nicole and I had pretty much done everything we wanted to do in Yangon. We took the noon shuttle into town. Since we were at the Traders hotel we decided to use the internet. Hotmail is blocked in Myanmar because the government doesn’t want people sending messages back and forth so unfortunately I couldn’t check my mail but I took care of a few other things. After using the internet Nicole and I headed back to Scott’s Market. Somehow I seemed to have spent a lot of money even though everything I bought was really cheap. We stayed here as long as we could. We only left because all the shops were closing. We still needed to buy stickers so we went on a hunt to find them. Along the way we passed a CD store and we decided to take a look around. I bought Adobe Photoshop for only 50 cents. It is a couple hundred dollar program and I got it for only 50 cents! It works perfectly too. Well after going to many shops we finally found an actual sticker store. We had the men custom make us stickers that said Myanmar in their language. Happy with our purchase we then went back to the Central Hotel for foot reflexology. Since the massages were so great we thought we might as well try out the foot massage. This time we were seated in leather reclining chairs. Two girls our age were the ones giving the massage and they were very giggling and talkative the whole time. First they soaked my feet and then rubbed lotion all over. It was more of an all over leg massage then a foot massage. Some of it was really painful like when she kept digging into my calves. I knew it would feel good later though so I toughed it out. The girls found it really funny to say random words to us in their language. We were really confused the whole time and did not know what they were saying. We paid our 4 dollars and then went back to the Traders Hotel to meet up with Ariel and Annie. This is when the night got interesting.
We met the girls around 9 and went out in search of a place to eat dinner. The only restaurant still open in walking distance closed right when we got there. Three of the workers decided to take us to a different restaurant. We ended up at a place a little farther away. The guys sat down with us and we ordered dinner. The place was really weird and we were the only girl customers there. There was a big stage with girls walking around on it. It looked like a fashion show. We asked one of the guys what they were doing and he explained it to us. Apparently we were at some sort of hooker club. I really don’t know what else to call it. The girls walk around the stage and if the men like them then they buy them flowers. They have the choice of buying a flower wreath, bouquet, or basket. They do this repeatedly for a few days and after maybe the fifth time the girl is theirs for the night. They pay them around $15 and take the girl to a hotel room. Well it was a little weird that this was the place they took us to but the food was great so I have no complaints. After we were done eating Nicole and Annie wanted to go back to the ship but Ariel and I wanted to stay out longer because this was our last night in Myanmar. The guys said that there was a club we could go to with music and dancing. It sounded fun so we went with the guys. The entrance to the club was a little sketchy. We had to go in a dark underground parking garage. Now you might be thinking I am stupid for going somewhere like this but it was actually really safe and I was interested in seeing what it was like inside. The main door was right inside the garage. Ariel and I had to pay a foreigner fee before being let in. Once we got inside we realized we were not at a dance club. I would call it more of a brothel. It was sort of like the place we were just at but without the restaurant part. There was a full bar in the back and booths of couches facing the stage. We found seats and watched the show. It was exactly like what a strip club looks like but without the stripping and big boobed girls. There were way more girls here though. About 15 would line up on the stage and then walk forward in different patterns. They would walk to the front, turn around, and then walk back. They continued this for about five minutes and then a whole new line of girls would come on the stage. All the girls kept solemn face and I asked why and the guys said they found it more exotic if they looked that way. All the girls were super skinny. They were dressed in clothes that were normal in the US but were pretty risqué for Myanmar. They were wearing tank tops, skirts, tight pants, dresses…usual US clothing. The girls would get the flower wreaths right away. Then when they got off the stage they would go sit with the men that bought them the flowers. At one point I went to use the restroom and was shocked to see that their changing room was part of the crappy little bathroom. I just couldn’t believe that there were so many young girls in this profession. They were all happy and seemed to like what they do. We decided to leave once we got propositioned by some old Asian guy. I jokingly told him okay if he paid Ariel and me five million Kyat. He agreed so we immediately walked away and found a cab to go back to the ship. I was laughing about how much money that would have been but then realized that only transferred to 5,000 US dollars, not the 500,000 I was thinking. The cab driver agreed to a cheap price and we started our journey home. About halfway back as we were driving over a huge one lane bridge the car died. The driver’s friend and I got out and pushed the car the rest of the way off the bridge. As we were pushing about 3 taxis with SAS kids pulled up behind us and were laughing hysterically and taking pictures. Once we got off the bridge they passed us and none of them offered to help. Real nice huh? Turns out the car was overheated and luckily there was a little police check off booth right there to get water at to poor into the engine. Well about 5 officers came up to us and started asking for our cameras because they saw the flash from the SAS kids taking pictures. The bridge is one of the places where photography is not allowed and yes, you can get arrested for it. So they handcuffed me and Ariel and threw us into the corner of their booth to wait for a car to haul us off to the jail. We were really scared because once you’re in jail there’s no getting out. No I’m just kidding! That didn’t happen. We told them it wasn’t us taking the pictures and they left us alone. The taxi made it all the way back to the ship but we got dropped off at the entrance gate and had to walk about 10 minutes to get to the ship. I had a great night and was glad to learn about the interesting ways of hookerdom in Myanmar.

March 21st Leaving Myanmar
We started our engines up at about 12:30 and started the long process of turning the ship around against the current. There was a lot of rattling going on but we made it. Vietnam, here I come!

Pictures

2006-03-19T23:23:00.000-08:00

Here I am at the Taj Mahal in India
This is me at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar

Snake Charmer

2006-03-16T01:44:00.000-08:00

2006-03-16T01:40:00.000-08:00

Chennai, India March 9th – 13th

March 13th Day 1

It took us forever to get off the ship because immigration had to see each and every one of us face to face. We got off at 1pm and by that time I had already exchanged my money and was ready to go. The clothing I had to wear had to cover my shoulders and my knees as that is the custom for Indian women and it would be strange to see us walking around in shorts and tank tops. As we walked out of the gates there were a bunch of men with rickshaws waiting for us. Rickshaws are buggies pulled by bicycles. We were told that the rickshaws would be cheaper the farther down we walked but we all just stood there not really knowing what to do. I was in a large group but I ended up with just two of my friends because we could only fit three in a rickshaw. Our driver only had one arm (just thought I’d add that in there.) We wanted to go the silk shops which were a long ways away. Our driver ended up stopping and ditched us into an auto rickshaw. This was like a little buggy car. We were given this driver for the whole day. Usually, what the drivers do is take you where they want to go. They get commission if they bring people to certain stores. Since our driver was taking us so far away we decided to agree to stopping at one store along the way. It was a terrible store and we didn’t buy anything. We were able to escape because another SAS group of kids arrived and we snuck out. The drive was very entertaining. There were people everywhere. We passed over a few bridges and smelled some of the worst smells of our lives. India is quite a smelly place and it really isn’t possible to breathe sometimes. The drive itself was insane. There are lanes in the road but no one actually uses them. For the most part they stay on their own side, unlike in Mauritius. The streets were full of rickshaws, buses, motorbikes, and a few cars. The vehicles constantly passed each other and drove in curvy lines down the street. They use their horns constantly. I actually got so used to hearing the horns that they didn’t bother me at all. People get cut off all the time but surprisingly the amount of accidents is low. One thing that I found impressive was how the women sat on the back of the motorbikes. They would sit side saddle holding on with just one hand. A lot of them would sit like this holding babies too. I guess they have had years of practice but with all the turning and abrupt stopping I would have easily fallen off. Our driver took us to Panagal Park where the Nali silk shop was. He parked the rickshaw but in order to get to the store we had to cross the street. This was quite difficult because there was traffic everywhere. He slowly led us across while vehicles zoomed around us. They don’t stop for anything and lots of people have died just trying to cross the street. We made it though. The reason we were going to this particular store was to buy fabric so that we could have dresses made it Vietnam. The store was full of fabric and it took me awhile to pick something out because I really no hardly anything about fabric. I hope I made some good choices. When we were done we found our driver and then proceeded on to our next shopping stop. We really had no clue where we were because the area all looked the same. The streets were full of garbage and stray dogs. Every now and then we would come across a group of cows just chillin in the road or eating the trash on the sidewalks. Cows are sacred here because of the Hindu religion and the people see it fit that they are allowed to roam around and do what they want. Something that I saw a lot was men peeing on the side of the streets. There are no actual bathrooms anywhere that I saw and so basically they went wherever they wanted. I actually saw someone peeing inside a building once. Another thing that I thought was strange was that everything was in English. I had just assumed that Indian’s didn’t speak English at all. I never even thought about the fact that it used to be a British colony. There were billboards all over the place and every single one of them was in English. Even the signs on the store were in English. Most of the locals it seemed didn’t speak English so I was confused as to how they were able to read all the signs. Anyhow, we went to our next store where my friends and I all bought hookahs. (You can’t go to India without buying a hookah.) We were told that hookahs were strictly forbidden on the ship so we rushed to the post office to ship them home. The post office was pretty large. We had to stand in line to get our packages wrapped. This was a pretty cool process. As we were standing in line a man cut in front of us who was helping out a SAS guy. We were all like “hell no, get to the back of the line.” We were sort of kidding but at the same time we had been standing there for a while and weren’t about to let some guy cut in front of us. He then told us why he cut us. In India the women are not treated very well or wanted at all. Most baby girls are killed right after they are born by their mothers. When a girl is at an age ready for marriage, say 15, her parents have to give a dowry to the boy’s family. Most families can’t afford to pay this money so they don’t want to have girls. In Africa it is the opposite where the men pay the women’s family. Basically women are not wanted and men are higher up the ladder then them in society. We were embarrassed after realizing why the man was cutting us. He ended up letting us go first though. Our packages were wrapped up in a cotton piece of pink cloth. Then they were handed to a woman who started sewing it shut. She sewed the whole package so it couldn’t be opened. Then, with a special pen and red ink a man wrote the address on it in curvy letters. It was by far the best package I have ever seen. I just hope it arrives okay. This whole process took quite some time and we had to return to our ship for the welcome reception.
The welcome reception was held outside of a hotel in a big grassy area. When I got off the bus a woman placed a wreath of flowers over my head and two other women put a yellow and red dot on my forehead. I don’t know what these dots meant but when Indian women have a red dot on their forehead it means they are married. The wreath of flowers smelled very good and each individual flower was strung through a piece of string. There were a few things set up for us to do. There was a henna tattoo booth where about 6 women were drawing tattoos on people’s hands. I got different designs going up each of my fingers on my left hand. They prefer the left hand which is funny because that is the hand that Indian people see as dirty and you aren’t supposed to use it for eating or anything, well except for toilet paper occasionally. There was also a shop set up selling jewelry and skirts and shawls. It was all way overpriced so I didn’t buy anything. We were served a big buffet of food but I didn’t know what anything was. There were rice cakes that came with sauce to dip them in and then some fried stuff and more sauces. All the sauces were way to spicy for me and the rice cakes really tasted like nothing without anything on them so I didn’t really enjoy the dinner that much. The dessert was okay though. It was a round thing like a donut hole but it was soaked in something like a caramel sauce. It was almost too sweet to eat but I managed to eat the whole thing! While we were eating there was a little show. A couple people were playing the drums while a lady sang. Another lady was doing a dance that was telling a story. I have never seen so many facial expressions used in a dance before. I wanted to talk to some locals but after I finished eating it seemed like all the girls had already left. A couple of guys said hello to me and then asked a few questions. Their space bubbles really aren’t that big because they were talking to me right up in my face. It was weird and kind of awkward. The reception pretty much ended after that and all 450 of us packed back on the bus to go back to the ship. India doesn’t really have a night life so we ended up staying on the ship to pack for our trips the next day.

March 10th Day 2

I woke up at 6am to get some breaky before jumping on the bus to go to the airport. I was doing a SAS trip to the Taj Mahal. On the ride there I kept falling asleep but was constantly waken up by the horns from other drivers. Once we got to the airport we had to stand outside forever because our tour guides didn’t have our boarding passes yet. It was soooo hot outside. Finally we were allowed to go inside. The airlines don’t allow anyone to take batteries of any kind on the plane so I had to give all my double A’s and my video camera batteries to my trip leader so they could check them. To go through security we put our bags on the little conveyor belt but then had to wait to be searched behind a cloth. The guys didn’t have to do this and were allowed to go straight through. I was up next but about 6 Indian women just shoved past me like I didn’t even exist. It is very strange how the women do things. For the most part I found them friendly but they seem to have no concept of lines or waiting for their turn. I finally went through and got patted down and then had my ticket stamped. I picked up my bags on the other side and then proceeded to the one gate that existed in the airport. One girl who went through security had her bag jacked while she was getting patted down. It was actually caught on tape somebody running up and stealing her bag. She lost quite a few things but luckily had her passport on her. My plane was delayed for an hour and there was nothing to look around at in the airport. I found some newspapers though and found them pretty entertaining because they were written in English. I ended up using the bathroom here and that was pretty interesting. There was no toilet but rather a porcelain dish thing that led into a whole. If the Indian people actually sit down on this then that would be absolutely disgusting because it would be like sitting down on the floor in a pile of well grossness. There was a hose in there too but I wasn’t really quite sure what that was for.
To get on the plane we were shuttled out onto the runway by a bus. Every country I’ve been to seems to use this bus transport system. The plane was just like every other plane I have been on but it sucked because I got stuck in the middle seat for the 2 ½ hour flight to Delhi. We were served lunch on the plane and got a whole bunch of food. There was a main hot dish that I sort of picked at. There was a little sandwich but I didn’t even touch that. The best part was the dessert and I really have no idea what it was. I was served tea with my lunch and that was pretty good. I was also given a small bottle of water but I was a little afraid to drink it. The water in India is terrible to drink and a lot of times the water sold in sealed water bottles aren’t exactly filtered. I assumed it was alright though because it was airplane water. The ride became very bumpy halfway through. My stomach dropped quite a few times but we managed to land safely. We had arrived in the capital of India, New Delhi.
New Delhi is known as the greenest capital in the world. When the British lived there they couldn’t handle the heat so they lined all the streets with trees that could survive in all weather. There was still a lot of garbage everywhere but the farther away from the airport we got the greener it became. Delhi was so much different then Chennai. The streets weren’t nearly as crowded with vehicles and it was definitely not as dirty. We were transferred to Hotel Ashak for lunch. It was a very expensive hotel and our buffet was huge. This time the food had labels so I could actually pick out what I wanted. I was told by my uncle not to eat the food at all and I had really planned on doing that. But the fact that we were in this ritzy hotel I figured the food would be okay. Plus they really didn’t have very spicy food because they figured that most of us can’t handle that. The best part of this meal was also the dessert. (It sounds like I eat dessert a lot but that’s just because it was the highlight of my meals and there really wasn’t much else I liked.) The ice cream was a creamy flavor with caramel toffee pieces in it. Man was it good! We were rushed through lunch because we had to go to the train station to catch our train to Agra. On the way we passed by a very rich neighborhood. The houses were at least 4 stories high and were huge. The reason they are so big was pretty understandable. When a couple has children the children live with them their whole life. When they get married their spouses come live with them too. Well that is the case only if you have boys, not girls. When the wife moves in another level of the house is built on so that they have their own level. The house only contains one kitchen though because that way everyone can eat together. This gives the rich a very good social security system because the older parents can live with their children and they get taken care of very well. We got to the train station and were told that we would be riding in second class because the express train tickets had already been sold out. The station was a madhouse of people. As we walked down to our platform a train had pulled up. There was a pile of men surrounding the door. They wanted on so bad that they actually ripped off the bars on the outside of the window and were jumping through as people inside tried to shove them out. I’m guessing that was the free section and it only fit so many people so everyone was trying to get on. The trains here run on the largest railways in the world, transporting 30 million people a day. I hadn’t really ever been on a train before except once when I was very little and I didn’t have any idea what to expect. The train was a sleeper train. It had an aisle down the middle with booths on one side. There were two bench seats fitting four people facing each other. Above that was a bench on both sides that could be used as a bed. On the other side of the aisle was a bench that ran the same way as the train did with another one on top of it for sleeping. I was sitting in a booth with all girls and one guy slept above us. Next to me across the aisle were four Indian men. Walking up and down the aisles were people selling soup and random things like socks. There were also a lot of little kids running around. The train ride was going to last 3 ½ hours and it went by very slowly. I ended up talking to them men next to me for a majority of the trip. I tried to ask them about the population and how the people were going to survive since the population was still growing. They answered my questions pretty well but they didn’t think there was a problem at all. They told me that most of India is rural country that is all agriculture based and that there is plenty of food to feed everyone in the future. I sure hope he is right because India can’t really handle anymore people if you ask me. They told me that India is the land of God and they wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. After hearing this I found it rather strange that they had never been to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal. This was going to be their first time. They all had college degrees and were going to Agra for training for their jobs. They worked for a telecommunications and technology company. India is rapidly becoming advanced as far as technology and medical things are concerned. One of the guys moved over to my bench and told us a bunch of brain teasers. He always had to tell them a bunch of times because sometimes he was hard to understand. He let me listen to some of his India music in exchange for listening to our music. All this definitely made the ride go much faster but it was still slower then ever. We finally made it and the train station in Agra looked just like the one in Delhi; full of people. There seemed to be a lot of legless people wondering around. One guy had one leg that was right in length but was extremely skinny. I am guessing this was polio of some sort but it was creepy because he kind of crawled around us begging for money. We got on another bus and headed for our hotel, the Clark Shiraz. This was another very ritzy hotel. These hotels were actually the nicest I have every stayed in except for last Thanksgiving in the Four Seasons in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. No wonder the trip cost so much, it was because the hotel was so fancy. I was given a roommate, a girl named Mauris from Rhode Island. I hadn’t met her yet but we got along fine. After eating another huge buffet of dinner I went to my room, showered, and passed out. This was a long day of traveling and I was ready to sleep.

March 11th Day 3

I got a 5am wake up call and had to be down at the bus by 5:30 for our trip to the Taj Mahal. We wanted to see it at sunrise but it was really cloudy and there wasn’t a good view of the sky at all. We were dropped off by our bus and had to walk down a long road to get to the Taj Mahal security gate. It was still dark out and hard to see everything around us. Because it was so early there was hardly anyone else there. Outside the security gate were two buildings with domes on the top but I don’t know what they were for. To get through we had to stand in a long line. The boys were allowed to go straight through but the girls had to wait to get padded down by a security guard. Since there are so many SAS girls this process took forever. The gate itself was beautifully built out of red sandstone. It had colorful stones imprinted in it in floral designs. After I got through this entrance I had to walk a little farther to go through another entrance and then standing before me was the Taj Mahal. I don’t even know how to describe it because I was just in awe the whole time. Pictures do not do the Taj justice because it has to be seen to understand how beautiful it is. Leading up to it was a long pool with walkways and gardens on either side. Once I got to the base I was given white booties that I had to place over my shoes. Every part of the Taj Mahal is made out of white marble that changes color as the day progresses. As it was still not very light out the colors were creamy. The stairs leading up were huge and widely spread apart. The stairs led right to the main entrance. The entrance was a big arch that seemed to point as it reached the top. There were arches surrounding it as well. Above the main arch were the colorful stones in the same floral design as were on the entrance gate. Surrounding that was verses of the holy Quaran inscribed in the Indian language. It was all very beautiful. Lower to the ground, flowers had been carved out of the marble. I kept running my hands along the outside just totally amazed by every little thing. I walked inside the entrance and there encircled by a fence were the caskets of the Emperor Shah Jahan and one of his wives, Mumtaz Mahal. The Emperor built the Taj Mahal for his wife after she died giving birth to their 14th child. The Taj stands for a symbol of eternal love and beauty. The only thing not symmetrical about it is that the Emperor’s casket is on the left side of his wives. This was a detail added later on and that is why they don’t split the center. Outside of the Taj are four buildings, two on each side, built out of the red sandstone. There were a whole bunch of monkeys running around these buildings. I walked to the back to see the view from the other side. The Taj is built alongside the bank of the Yamuna River. There was green grass right up to the river and then a fence. On the other side of the fence were piles of garbage. It was a real downer to have this beautiful structure face out at piles upon piles of garbage. The river itself wasn’t very pretty either. We only spent around an hour at the Taj Mahal before heading back to our hotel for breakfast.
After breakfast we took an hour bus ride to the deserted royal city Fatehpur Sikri. It was a Mughal city back in 1584 but due to a shortage of water the people moved out and it has been a ghost city ever since. Everything in the city was built out of red sandstone and bricks. Lots of the buildings had chunks missing but they were all beautifully crafted. There were lots of arches and different carvings in the walls. The buildings here also had the stones inlaid into the walls. As I was looking around a man came up to me and started showing me where I should stand to take pictures. I ended up following him around because the places he told me to stand ended up being good for picture taking. Finally I left him but had to give him a few coins which equaled like 5 cents in American money. My tour guide was very rushed and I didn’t learn very much because it was hard to follow what he was saying. We left here around 1pm and headed back to the hotel for lunch. Lunch lasted awhile so I ended up spending some time shopping around the hotel and buying lots of things. I had to check out by this time so I had to lug my backpack around which was getting quite heavy from all the purchases I had made. Our next place of interest was the Agra Fort. It was exciting to walk up to the fort because we were mobbed by people selling all sorts of junk. The first half of the fort was built out of red sandstone which really didn’t surprise me because so far everything had been built out of it. Through the archways of the fort I could see the Taj Mahal. It was far away but still huge and there was nothing surrounding it. Inside the fort the walls all of a sudden turned to marble because this was where the King’s palace was. His family lived inside the fort, or so I think. After the fort we drove back to the Taj Mahal. Since it was in the middle of the day now, the area outside the Taj was packed full of people. The people trying to sell stuff would not leave us alone and I had a little girl follow me for about 5 minutes trying to get me to buy some glass pens. I had to wait in line to go through security for around a half an hour. There were lots of Indian women in line and they were pushy. The lady behind me had her hands on my back and would constantly push me even though there was nowhere I could go. It was really annoying. As I was waiting in line I bought a cheap Taj Mahal figurine. When I went through security I was told that I wasn’t allowed to bring anything inside that I had purchased outside. I wasn’t about to leave my figurine behind so I took it out of the box and then hid it behind my back and walked through. Since it wasn’t in the box anymore I ended up breaking lots of the pieces off but was able to glue them back together later. Inside the Taj Mahal there were at least 5,000 people if not more. They were everywhere. I walked around again and then sat on a bench and just stared at the Taj Mahal. I never wanted to leave and let it out of my sight. We were supposed to stay for the sunset but ended up leaving like 20 minutes before it set. It was still really cloudy so it wouldn’t have been anything special.
For dinner we were supposed to get box lunches from the hotel but the thought of India food packaged into a box didn’t sound appealing to anyone so we went to Pizza Hut instead. That’s right, Pizza Hut. The mascot even put on his outfit and was running around. The mascot is a huge dog by the way. I picked everything off the pizza and just ate it as cheese. I am glad I did this because about 6 people got some major food poisoning from it. We then headed back to the train station to go back to Delhi. This time we were going to ride the express train. The express train had individual seats with trays that reclined back. It was much more comfortable and about an hour less of a ride then before. I made sure I didn’t have to use the bathroom on the train because it was rather gross. It was like the one in the airport but the hole emptied right out onto the tracks. Also, just like the airport one, it didn’t have any toilet paper. I am not sure what the locals do because I never saw any of them walking around carrying tp. If they really use their left hand then that is really gross because it’s not like there were any sinks on the train. We returned to the hotel that we had eaten lunch at the previous day. It was even fancier then the one we stayed at the night before. The doormen were dressed up in little suits so they looked like toy soldiers. I was all the way up on the 7th floor the farthest away from the elevator as possible. My room had two twin beds but some rooms had king size beds in them. The key was hooked to a big heavy metal thing and it was a pain to carry around. This hotel also had shops that sold things for pretty reasonable prices.

March 12th Day 4

We were allowed to sleep in until 8am before eating breakfast and loading the bus for a town tour. Delhi has lots of big historical buildings that we drove by. The tour sucked though because we didn’t really stop anywhere to look at the buildings but just drove right on by. I could hardly even take a picture through my window before the building was out of sight. One very interesting place we went to was the Gandhi Museum. It was the place where Gandhi used to stay and was killed. Inside was a little courtyard that had a statue of Gandhi with two children and a little shrine for him. There were words of inspiration printed onto boulders placed around the courtyard. Inside the museum was pretty interesting. There were lots of pictures of him as well as the history of India at the time. One thing that really freaked me out was when I walked into a room to find Gandhi and his wife meditating. They were wax people but they looked completely real. I will admit that I was tricked by the wax. Heading back to the bus we walked upon a snake charmer. I really didn’t think I would see an actual snake charmer in India. Well I sat down beside him and he wrapped a snake around my neck. I held on by its head so it wouldn’t crawl all over me. There was a cobra inside a basket with its head sticking straight up and he gave me that to hold in my other hand. He continued playing music the whole time so that the cobra wouldn’t move around. I have never held a snake before and I felt pretty brave for doing that.
We went back to the hotel to check out and then drove very slowly to the airport. We had to sit in the bus for about 45 minutes waiting for our airplane tickets. There was one girl on the bus who was puking from food poisoning and another one from being hung over. At first they wouldn’t let them off the bus but I am glad that they did. We got on the plane right away and took off for Chennai. The ride seemed like it took forever. I had nothing to do and because I was stuck in the middle seat again I couldn’t sleep very comfortably. By the time we finally made it back to the ship I wasn’t feeling very well. My stomach was hurting and I felt really out of it but I ended up being all right.

March 13th Last Day in India

I woke up early so that I could go use the phones so that I would be calling home at a decent hour. I talked for awhile and then went back to the ship to meet up with Morgan so we could go shopping. Our destination was Spencer Plaza. This was a big mall but it was filled with shops you would find in a market. I didn’t buy too many things but we went in plenty of stores. All the stores were sort of the same. We both had to be back to the ship by 12:30 to go on trips for our classes. Mine was to the food market. I really wasn’t feeling very good and was dreading spending five hours at a food market. Luckily it was only 3 ½ hours long. There were about 12 of us and the drive there took about 45 minutes. The only reason I was doing this is because one of my classes involves going to the markets and seeing what kinds of food they consume and sell. First we walked through the flower market. It was jam packed with people. It was in a building that was sort of outside and inside so it had plenty of light and fresh air (well I don’t know if India air is exactly what I would call fresh…) There were all different kinds of flowers. There were ladies stringing the flowers to make leis just like the one I got at the Welcome reception. They also strung jasmine flowers to wear in their hair. The ground was covered in leaves and I was very thankful to be wearing tennis shoes. Then we moved on to the food market. We walked by rows and rows of vegetables and fruits. Our tour guide kept moving ahead and there were lots of things that I didn’t know what they were but I had no one to ask about them. That made the trip kind of pointless. Halfway through I really started feeling like shit and my whole body started aching. I just pretended I was fine though. I wanted to buy a watermelon but I wouldn’t have been able to take it back on the ship. The food was very cheap. A whole watermelon only cost 35 rupees which is equal to about 80 cents. A bunch of red bananas were only 50 cents and a foot long papaya was only 20 cents. All the oranges were either green or yellow. Another strange thing was what they did with pumpkins. Pumpkins were sold so that people could paint faces on them to “caste away the evil eye.” Well after this marvelous trip we headed back to the ship where I ran to my room and didn’t want to get up again. My head was super hot so I am pretty sure I had a fever. It sucked because all my friends were going out one last time to eat an Indian dinner and I couldn’t go. As the night went on the fever went away and I turned out just fine. I am not sure what was really wrong with me but as long as it doesn’t come back I am happy.

All in all I had a great time in India. All my clothes stunk by the time we left and I had to wash my shoes and hang them outside on the deck to dry to get whatever they touched off. Since we didn’t have a laundry day between India and Myanmar I had to wash all my clothes myself because they stunk so badly. We were told to keep them in a separate bag from everything else due to what gross things could possibly be on them. (one of the girls across the hall from me actually found a huge cockroach in her clothes a few days after Mauritius.) It took me forever and a day to wash them all but I plan on wearing the exact same clothes in Myanmar as I did in India so it had to be done. I wasn’t supposed to do this because we are having a water shortage. But since I take navy showers to conserve water I figured I could spare some to clean my clothes. I know that the ship is going to run out of water very soon. I am doing my part to try and make this not happen but there are lots of people who use water way too much. I mean my roommate in India would shower at night and in the morning. I really don’t think that is necessary. There are just as many rich high maintenance girls, and boys, on this trip that I feel like the water will be gone before Vietnam. Oh by the way the reason we can’t get any more water is because there is no clean water in the countries we are going to to supply the ship with.

Hiking Table Mountain in South Africa

2006-03-05T01:43:00.000-08:00

2006-03-05T01:41:00.000-08:00

Sea Olympics March 4th

On the ship the cabins are split into seas. There are seven seas and I am a member of the Baltic Sea. The Sea Olympics consist of the seas competing in activities. The winner gets to get off the ship first in San Diego which is a big deal. The competitions are a mixture of things. In the morning there is a big Opening ceremony followed by the first event. The events are: synchronized swimming, flip cup, board games, orange neck pass, orange roll, relay race, twister, wet clothes relay, big hair, scavenger hunt, hula hoop, water drop, chubby bunny, tug-o-war, dodge ball, belly flop contest, and karaoke.
My sea’s mascot is the Viking. For the opening ceremony we are judged on spirit so we made a banner. The banner is a big blue poster with tinfoil letters spelling out Vikings. There is a big white helmet on top of the poster that comes out the bottom. I spelled the word Baltic on the bottom of the helmet and Skol down the top. We pasted a little Viking dude on the poster too. Ariel and Nicole made a bunch of weapons. They made two axes and a chain ball. We also made a hammer. Using plastic cups and tin foil we made 50 sets of Viking horns. We are going to look awesome.

We met in our hallway at 8:30 this morning pumped up for the Olympics. I wore a blue tee shirt and shorts and braided blue plastic into my hair. We all put blue stripes down our faces using blue sparkly lipstick. Everyone wore their horns and we looked awesome. Last night we made shields and gave them to our mascots. There were three guys wearing blue garbage bag loin cloths over their shorts with painting on their stomachs. They each had big drums. At 9 we marched from the 3rd floor and into the Union on the 6th floor for the spirit contest. I led the way carrying the banner. On the walk we chanted the song from The Wizard of Oz that goes “oh e oh whoa, oh e oh whoa…” Everyone was stunned when we entered the Union. When it was our turn we all stood in the center and said our cheers. The first cheer I made up and it goes along to the tune of the “league of their own” song.

We are the members of the Baltic Sea Vikings
We come from the third floor on the port side
We’ve got more strength then you
And we’re gonna win
We’re one for all
We’re all for one
And we’re gonns kick your ass!

Our second cheer is from the Minnesota Vikings NFL team with a few words changed.

Skol Vikings
Honor thy name
Skol Vikings
Let’s win this game
Let’s win this round
And pound them to the ground
Rock’em Sock’em
Fight Fight Fight!

We also chanted “go Vikings go Viking go” over and over again. I am pretty positive that we won the spirit contest. The first event was the synchronized swimming. I only got to watch three seas compete but they were pretty funny. I am not sure how we placed in that. Next up was my event which was an orange relay. There was an orange in one leg of a pantyhose. With the pantyhose tied around your waist you had to swing the orange and roll another orange on the deck. My teammate, Ryan, rolled it across the deck and I rolled it back. It was harder to go back because the ship was angled down. We ended up winning the race by a long shot. It took us 40 seconds. It took the second place team a whole minute. Next was the orange pass which consisted of 8 people passing an orange around in their necks in a circle 5 times using no hands. We were in the lead and on the last round when someone dropped the orange and we had to start all over again. We ended up getting last. There was another relay race happening earlier involving an egg carry and wheelbarrow race. We got third in that. There was also a swim contest involving 4 people changing into a workers overalls and swimming across the pool. We won that contest too. The last event before lunch was board games. I am not sure how we did. With half the events over our Sea is in 2nd place with 22 points. First place is only 2 ahead of us.
We started out the afternoon with a friendly competition of Flip Cup. Flip cup is actually a drinking game but we changed it around a bit. 6 of our team members lined up at the ping pong table with cups full of lemonade in front of them. The first person chugs their drink and then places the cup on the edge of the table and flips it so it lands top down. We got out in the first round. We also got out in the first round in dodge ball and tug o war. Chubby Bunny was next and it was pretty entertaining. For those of you who don’t know how to play…you stuff a marshmallow in your mouth and say Chubby Bunny. Then you stick another one in your mouth and say it again. You keep going until you can’t say the words anymore, can’t fit anymore in your mouth, or spit it out. We didn’t have marshmallows out here in the middle of the Indian Ocean so we used pieces of cake. The cake was about 2 inch by 2 inch. The winner I think fit 14 pieces in his mouth. It looked disgusting. Our team member only got 8 but at the time that seemed like a lot. One guy packed it in his cheeks and he looked like an obese hamster. The next two competitions were limbo and twister which we both took 1st in. Then there was the Big Hair contest. We were given 10 minutes to make the biggest hair using any hair supplies. Nicole has really curly hair and when she blow-dried it it became huge. We won that event too with a very stylish updo. By the end of all this we were in 1st place overall by 3 points. The last event was karaoke. Ariel and I were planning on doing a choreographed dance to the “Bad Touch” song by the Bloodhound Gang while Ryan sung the lyrics. We were picked to go last in the event and were the finale. Let’s just put it this way…It started off great and then somewhere along the line it wasn’t so great. Whatever, so what if we never wanna show our faces again we still ended up getting third place in the Sea Olympics which is pretty awesome!
Go Baltic Sea Viking!!!!!!!!!

Mauritius 2/28 - 3/1

2006-03-03T05:33:00.000-08:00

February 27th

We actually got off the ship early this time and I was standing on the island of Mauritius by 9:30. Right next to our ship were huge tanks filled with molasses. The smell was everywhere. We were ported on the other side of the city and had to take a water taxi ride across the harbor. The ride only cost $1 and was only about 4 minutes long. When I got off the water taxi I was at the waterfront. I got off the boat and was immediately led through a building full of tourists shops. Outside was a big open area with scattered shops and restaraunts. The traffic was very intense and in order to cross the street I had to go through a tunnel under the road. There were money exchanges and a post office right on the waterfront which was very handy. The money used here are called rupees and are not the same as India rupees. 30 rupees were equal to 1 US dollar. I walked through the markets with my friends and they were set up the way that all the markets I had seen so far had been. The only difference was that in most parts of this market the smells were almost unbearable. There would be stands selling dried fish and octopus with flies everywhere and they reeked. The people obviously didn’t care too much about hygeine because most of them gave off that sweet delicious smell of really bad BO. The people in Mauritius are very different then what I expected. I hardly saw any Africans even though Mauritius is part of Africa. Back in the day when slavery was abolished over 200,000 Indians were brought to the island to serve as laborers. The island was full of people from India. The women all had the dots on their foreheads and wore the custom India outfits. The day before we docked the people had a huge festival and I saw the signs and banners everywhere regarding the Hindu religion.
The markets were not very interesting and we decided to go to the North of the island to Pomplemousse to check out the botanical gardens. We walked to a bus station which was a big outside area filled with maybe 50 or so busses. We had no idea which one to get on but we asked a local and were pointed in the right direction. The buses looked a little crappy on the outside but were roomy and comfortable on the inside. The gardens were about a 25 minute bus ride away and it only cost us 60 cents each. The drivers here are crazy. People pass each other all the time no matter if there is a corner ahead or not. Buses are constantly stopping so traffic just drives in the other lane regardless if there is oncoming traffic. Basically all they do is lay on their horns to warn the other cars that they’re in the wrong lane. The gardens were very pretty and for some dumb reason we decided against getting a guide. It was filled mostly with different kinds of trees but did have some bright flowers. The coolest part was a giant rectangular pond filled with humongous Lilly pads. The Lilly pads must have at least been 3 feet wide. The other cool thing about the gardens was that it had giant turtles. They were in fenced off areas but I had never seen turtles that big before.
We rode the bus back to the waterfront to meet one of our friends and stopped to get a bite to eat at a local restaurant. The food here was very diverse. It not only conatined Indian food, but also american and lots of chinese. After eating we walked back to the bus station and headed South to the beaches of Flic and Flac. To find the right bus I asked a young guy and he led us to the bus and then got on after us. He was probably about 15. He just sat across from us and stared and smiled. We laughed the whole time because it was so weird. He rode the bus with us all the way until the first stop and then got off so he wouldn’t have t pay. He stood outside our window and continued staring and smiling. We waved and he waved back. This is when we noticed that all his fingers were only half as long as they should be. It was such a funny experience. The ride to Flic and Flac seemed to last forever. This beach is the most popular and stretches for miles. Along the way we picked up a bottle of the local rum, Green Island, which cost us less then five dollars. When we arrived at the beach it was already past 4:30 but it was still hot out. We set our stuff down on the sand, which had coral mixed in with it. It was so hot that we got in the water right away. The whole island is surroundeed by coral reef and it was tricky to walk out into the water. We went a ways out but the water was still only up to our waists. There were two kinds of fish swimming around us and we used an underwater camera to see in the water by looking through the lens. After awhile we were smart enough to put our shoes on so that the coral and the sea urchins hiding within wouldn’t hurt our feet. It was raining earlier and a big rainbow started to appear in the sky. Within a few minutes it was a double full rainbow. It was gorgeous. The sun started to set not too long after and it was beautiful. We then headed to a pizza place and ate dinner with some locals before finding a cab to take us back to the waterfront. The buses stopped running at six so we had to take a cab. The cab cost us 100 rupees each versus the 18 for the bus. Still, only paying 3 dollars for a 30 minute cab ride ain’t bad. In the cab ride home I was trying to fix my camera, which is broken on the bottom where the battery holder is. As I opened the battery thing the gold piece which reacts to the batteries and makes them work popped out. I searched everywhere for that stupid thing and was unable to find it anywhere. I looked all over the cab, in all of our bags, and even in my shoes. So…My camera is broken and I can no longer use it. That majorly sucks. Luckily I have my video camera which also takes pics but it is too big to carry around all the time. One of my friends has an extra one that she is willing to let me borrow until I get hopefully get a new one. Sucks huh?

February 28th

I had to get up at 7 this morning to get ready for my trip to Adventure Park. It was pooring rain outside. I was on the trip with only 8 other people so it was pretty spacious on the bus to sleep. Our first stop was the Flic and Flac beach. It was the exact same spot that I had gone to the day before. I walked along the waters edge for awhile picking up seashells and then layed out on the beach. I was covered in sand because I didn’t have a bag to carry my towel in. (I still can’t believe I left my backpack at home) After about an hour on the beach we drove a ways until we were driving through lush palm trees and green plants. I have no idea exactly where on the island this was. We arrived at a reception office and were all given lunch which consisted of a baguette with a rubbery salmon fillet inside. It was actually pretty good. Then we were given harnesses to start our adventure. On the harness was two ropes with two carabeeners connected to them. The harness was uncomfortable at first but I got used to it. The rain stopped right when we headed outside but evrything was really slippery and muddy. Why was I wearing a white tank top when it was muddy out I don’t know. The first part of the “adventure” consisted of walking across wooden bridges high off the ground in the trees. We would hook the carabeeners onto cables above the bridge and then walk across. This was fairly easy but I had to pay attention to what I was doing because the planks were spaced far apart and falling through would probably hurt. This part lasted quite some time and finally I reached the hard part. It was a like a giant obstacle course. It started out with abridge but the planks were spaced very far apart and I had to jump to get to the next one. This is where the slipperyness of the mud played a key part. Next was a giant net turned upside down so that the top was closed in and the bottom was open. The first girl to go across was a discrace to all girls. She barely made it a few steps before she was shaking and stuck. Apparently she had no arm strangth whatsoever. A guy tried to hepl her across and it was actually pretty entertaining. At one point she was riding on his back because she couldn’t pull herself up. I felt bad for him because he could hardly lift her and stay on the net himslef. When I finally got to go I zipped right through it although it was kinda hard on the arms. Next was the funnest of all. It was a series of about 15 logs on ropes like swings. I had to jump from swing to swing. That one girl went first again and totally wiped out by the thrid log. The guide had to come unhook her carabeeners and pull her off the logs. Finally she was out of the way. This was the hardest as far as slipperyness goes. I actually slipped off a log ner the end and had to pull myslef back up from a dangling position. Next was the hardest. It was a rope net strung straight across. The reason it was so hard was because every time I moved my foot the net would go limp and the only thing holding me up was my arms. Good thing I am so strong! After that was the zip line. It was probably no less then 30 feet across. I hooked myslef onto the cable and then took a giant leap into the air. I was going too fast and smacked into the blue paded mat at the other end and shot backwards. It made a really loud noise but didn’t hurt at all. I had to run in place to get back to the side to get down. The last obstacle was four ropes made into a bridge. This was hard because the ropes were loose and there was no way to keep my balance. It took me awhile to get across but I made it. Afterwards my legs and shoes were covered in mud and my white tank top had blotches of mud all over it. We took the bus back to the ship whre I showered and changed and then packed my bags for the night.
My friends and I decided we were going to go North of port Louis and stay the night at Grand Bay. Our plan was to just find a hotel once we got there. It ws about a half an hour cab ride to the town. It was dark by this time and we couldn’t really see the beach. The town was small. Our driver took us to a real shady hotel which we all said no to. He then made a phone call and took us to another hotel. This one was just four rooms and was pitch black. A guy drove up behind us to go unlcok the doors. We found it a little strange that it was all dark and the doors had to be unlocked to let us in. Some of the girls I was with were to scared to stay here and wanted to stay at a fancier hotel. I personally did not want to spend $50 each on a hotel room. The dirver was getting angry so I gave in and we went looking for the expensive hotels. They were about 10 minutes away from the twon which sucked. Luckily all four that we tried were booked and we ended up returning to the dark hotel. Nicole and I went inside and checked it out and it wasn’t bad at all. I have stayed in some shady hotels (like the one in Mexico) and this was 5 star compared to that. It was very spacious and had a little ktchen and balcony. There was only a double and twin bed but we got it anyways and ended up paying only $8 each. A little while latter we went searching for our other friends and found them at a restaurant. We hooked up with them and then headed to a bar called B52. We stayed here for a couple hours and then walked over to the Banana Club. This bar had live music and the floors were all sand. The exact moment we walked in they started playing “Sweet Home Alabama” and I was with a friend from Alabama so we were all excited. We stayed here for a while and then walked across the street to the waters edge. There were a bunch of boats docked in front of us and there was a rock wall seperating the water from us. One of my drunk friends decided she wanted to go swimming. She swam out to a puny little boat, climbed in it, and put on a little show for us. It was pretty entertaining. We went back to our room around 2:30 and I passed out right away. The sleeping situation really wasn’t that comfotable. Me and another girl woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of the drunk swimmer girl puking. That was fun to clean up! Luckily she only got it on the bed, herself, the dresser, the floor, and my friend’s shoes. It could have been much worse.

March 1st

We woke up around 9, packed up our stuff, and then headed outside for our complimentary breakfast. Our breakfast was OJ and toast, that’s it. After a filling meal, we walked into town and got on a glass bottom boat to go snorkeling. We went out a waya into the bay and then dropped anchor in an area filled with fish and coral. There was a big herd of fish around us and a bunch of long skinny silver fish at least three feet long. We were allowed to snorkle for an hour. I saw lots of fish. When I was younger I used to have a mobile of tropical fish and I swear that I saw every fish that was on that mobile. This was the best snorkeling that I have ever done. The bottom of the bay was only about 15 feet deep in the deepest parts. After snorkeling we layed out on the beach for awhile and then headed to the shopping area. From here we took a bus back to Port Louis. We missed the express bus by like 5 seconds and had to take a slower bus back. Once back at the waterfront we walked through the markets again and went to a grocery store. We returned and ate dinner right outside the water taxis after using the internet café. It was sad that we had to leave this relaxing paradise island. I wasn’t ready to go back to school work, which I really do have a lot of.

2006-03-01T06:00:00.000-08:00

South Africa

2006-02-24T04:50:00.000-08:00

February 23rd
I am now halfway around the world from Homer, Alaska and can’t possibly get any farther away from home.

Cape Town, South Africa
February 14th – 20th

Arriving in Cape Town

The night before we got into Cape Town everyone thought it would be a great idea to sleep out on the deck. The view into Cape Town was supposed to be amazing and we all wanted to wake up to it. We set up beds on top of lounge chairs and I bundled up in sweats, sleeping bags, winter hats, and smartwools. It was freezing outside. I only lasted until 12:45 before going back inside. I am very glad I went inside because it poured rain that night. We woke up at 5:45 to go check out the sunrise. The decks were soaking wet and the ship was surrounded by a thick wet fog. It was miserable and nasty out. The sun finally rose at 6:30 and the fog seemed like it was going to go away. As the sun rose we all gasped as a giant mountain appeared right in front of us. It had been there the whole time but nobody could see it. I went right back to bed after I got pictures of the sunrise. I awoke about an hour later just to find out that the fog returned and the ship could not move into port due to no visibility. So we anchored while everyone groaned. I was staring out the window into the fog looking at absolutely nothing when the fog lifted. Right in front of me was the whole city of Cape Town with Table Mountain in the background. Soon after, the fog lifted enough for our ship to move into port. We were all able to get off the ship around 2:30 pm. I was signed up for a trip at that time and immediately hopped on a bus after getting off the ship.

Khayaletsha Township:

South Africa has a major problem with poverty. There are multiple townships, which are large areas where the people live in shacks. Of the 4 million people living in the Cape Town area, 1.2 million live in just the Khayaletsha Township. On the bus ride there, we passed townships that were built right up to the edge of the highway. All you could see were rows and rows of tattered shacks. Each shack was built differently out of sheet metal, wood, or random scraps. It was pretty depressing to see how these people were living. Our first stop was next to the township. It was a small college for the people of the townships. We didn’t see much and were taken right to the little craft store that the students made. In the store were big posters explaining what went on in the townships and how hard life had been during apartheid. For those of you who don’t know, apartheid is basically the separation of races in every way. The blacks and coloreds were forced to carry around passbooks which allowed them to be in certain places at certain times. It was a shitty system for them.
When we pulled into the township I felt really out of place being in a large bus. The roads were all very small and made of dirt. We were told by our tour leader that the people were very glad that we were there and weren’t ashamed at all. He was right. Getting off the bus I was greeted by smiling children who had run from every direction to see us. What they were excited most about was getting their pictures taken. The kids would stand smiling ready for a picture and never got tired of it. They want chant “take my picture” or “shoot me.” Their favorite part was being able to see themselves in the picture after we took it. We had a purpose here and that was to visit Vicki’s B&B. Vicki is known all over the world for her hospitality in the townships. She invites people from all over to stay in her home. We were allowed to tour her B&B and it looked just like any small house would. In the inside she had plastic looking wood panels to resemble logs. I didn’t find this all that interesting and went back out onto the street where the children were. As I walked back towards the bus I passed a group of adults sitting on stumps. They all said hello and were just as excited to see us as the children were.
Our next stop was to another B&B in a better neighborhood. This area of the township wasn’t built out of shacks but instead had little houses. They were only big enough for a few rooms but they would be better to live in then the shacks. At this B&B we all sat down at a big table and were served tea and cakes. The food was pretty good and there was plenty of it. This lady, same as Vicki, had enough money to go elsewhere but she loved the people in the townships and didn’t want to leave them.
The people of the townships have lives much different then any of us. Each day is a struggle. Children roam free while the parents work. There is a feeling of safety within the community. Although the shacks don’t even have doors, people don’t steal from each other. They live under Ubuntu. Ubuntu is Africa’s way of life and a community spirit. It is defined as what it is to be human and what is necessary for human growth. In order to be a person you have to be a person through persons. Under Ubuntu the township people have a big sense of community and respect for each other. It was obvious to me that they lived in this spirit by how warm a welcome I received coming into their township.

My 20th Birthday!!!

For the sake of everyone I will leave out parts of this night but I just had to write about it a little because you only turn 20 once. On the last night we where on the ship before South Africa my friends surprised me with a chocolate ice cream cake after dinner. They had one of the waiters bring it to me and they all sang. The cake was delicious and I ate way too much of it but it was melting so I had to! I celebrated my birthday the night of the 14th because my friends where all going to be gone on safari the next day. For dinner we took a taxi to Long Street which contained all the bars and good restaurants. Most of the fancy restaurants were packed for Valentines Day so the restaurant we picked was a burger place called Royal. It was delicious and by far the best food I ate the whole time I was in Cape Town. After dinner, which I was treated to, we went to a dance club called Cool Runnings. It was more of a Jamaica club if you couldn’t already guess that from the name. We stayed here for a while and ordered quite a few drinks before moving on. Lots of SAS kids had arrived and the place got pretty packed so we decided to find somewhere else to celebrate. We went into a place called Mama Africas. It had a live band and when we arrived we were the only students there. We found our way up to the bar and ordered more drinks. My friends all took turns ordering us rounds, as I was treated all night. The place was pretty cool inside. It was lined with bamboo on all walls and the ceilings. We got a huge kick out of some three foot wine bottles they had. We soon became good friends with the bouncer and bartender and when 12:00 rolled around they brought me a free birthday drink. It was called a Flaming Ox Wagon and was probably the strongest drink I have ever drinken. It was a dish filled with many different kinds of alcohol. The bartender handed me a straw and told me to suck. Before I even knew it he lit the drink on fire and poured a shot of peppermint into it before I gulped it down. The flames turned from orange to a bright bluish green as I swallowed it. My face instantly was burning hot as I had just swallowed fire. The bartender then told my friends that this would probably knock me over the edge and I would be set for the night. Well it was my birthday and I was nowhere near done drinking! Pretty soon more SAS kids arrived and people were dancing and having a great time. To cool off I went outside where I saw two poorer African men staring in the window. I went right up to them and we started having a great conversation about who knows what. I think I brought up Ubuntu with them because the next thing I knew one of the old men gave me a hug. I instantly walked away after that, pulled out my hand sanitizer, and rubbed it all over my shoulders and arms. I don’t remember doing that but apparently I did. The rest of the night was told to me the next day but it sounded pretty funny. On our cab ride home I was given the front while the other 5 of my friends crammed into the back. In Africa you drive on the opposite side of the street and I was getting a huge kick out of this. I kept telling the driver he was on the wrong side and eventually I got him to drive on the other side even though that was really the wrong side. Getting back on the ship was evidently the funniest part. Once on the ship I decided I wanted to go back out and use the phone to call Mikee. Once off the ship we had to go by a security hut. Well I went right into the hut and started up a conversation with some more people. Then as I left the security guards “gave” me one of their wands/metal detectors. Not knowing what to do with it I hid it in the bushes. I used the phones and then returned back to the ship. This time I had a little more trouble getting back on but I made it safely back to my room. Ariel had to get up an hour later and so we set the alarm clock for her and I passed out.

February 15th

This morning I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed. Well that was a total lie. I woke up to no alarm clock and didn’t think at all that I might have missed my 9:00 trip. When I rolled over to check the time it was already ten and I shot right up out of bed. The trip I was supposed to go on was called Operation Hunger. It was all about going to the townships and helping the malnourished people. I was really mad that I missed this trip but was happy to go back to sleep for a few hours. I woke up again around noon. I was in no rush to do anything because all my friends had left for their safaris and I didn’t know what I was going to do. Luckily I was able to join a trip going to Robben Island.

Robben Island

Robben Island is located right off of Cape Town and used to be a prison during the political movements in Africa. During our sail from Brazil to South Africa, a man named Denis Brutus joined us as an interport lecturer. He had been in prison for much of his life and was held in Robben Island for about 6 years. He told us many of his experiences at the prison including working next to Nelson Mandela. I knew a little bit about what to expect going to Robben Island thanks to Denis. I had to board a ferry to get there and the ride lasted around a half an hour. Upon arriving, we were all boarded onto buses to tour the island. Our first stop was to a leper cemetery. People with lepracy were kept on the island so all other people on the mainland would not get lepracy themselves. When they died they were all buried in a cemetery on the island. Our next stop was to the limestone quarry. This quarry held a lot of history just on its own. The quarry wasn’t very big in size but big enough to hold many working prisoners. All the prisoners who were physically able to work in the quarry were brought there every day to crush big rocks into smaller ones. If they chose not to work then they would not be received food all day. The walls of the quarry were a yellowish white. When the sun came out in the day the reflection off the rocks would blind the workers. On one side of the quarry walls was a little cave. This cave was used as a bathroom for the prisoners. Due to the awful stench coming out of the cave the guards kept far away from it. The prisoners used this to their advantage. During their lunch hours they would meet in the cave and hold classes. Some prisoners even went on to get degrees after being let free from the prison.
We finally got off the buses and walked into the prison. We first passed a room where the mail was delivered. The prisoners were allowed to receive 3 pieces of mail a year. The guards would go through this mail and search it for anything that they didn’t want the prisoners to know. On some letters they would completely erase all the words except for the greeting and salutation. Other prisoners would receive newspapers. The guards would only give them the comics and classifieds and they would cut them up just to be cruel. We then entered into a small courtyard. This is where the other workers would sit every day with a hammer breaking big stones into smaller ones. This is where Denis worked because he was shot through the chest and could not handle working in the quarry. On one side of the courtyard was a garden. Nelson Mandela had started this garden and in one small corner under a plant he hid his book A Long Walk to Freedom. The book was kept safe here for many years before being taken away by the guards. Luckily Nelson had another copy. I was able to see Nelson Mandela’s cell. It was very small and made of all cement. On the floor was a skinny mat and a blanket. There was a small barred window. Back in the day the windows did not have any glass and the prisoners would freeze and get rained on during the winter season. The prisoners were not allowed to talk to each other while in their cells. If caught talking they would be sent to solitary confinement. I was then taken into another room that held around 80 prisoners. The room consisted of bunk beds and a small bathroom. The bathroom was by far not big enough to fit all the prisoners and they were forced to wake up very early to just use the bathroom in time before going to work. The prisoners on the island were segregated. The whites were treated better then the blacks and the coloreds. The whites were given jackets and shoes to wear, the blacks were not. The whites also received more food then the blacks. The best part of Robben Island was the penguins. They were all over just waddling around. We were able to walk to one of the edges of the island and see hundreds of penguins.

February 16th
I was forced to wake up and meet my safari group at 3:45 am. Well I pulled the “I am just going to lie in bed for a few minutes longer” and didn’t wake up again until 3:55. I raced my ass out the door and got there just in time to catch a cab to the airport. This was an independent safari and the girl who put it together wanted to make sure we got to the airport at least two hours ahead of time. Well we arrived at about 4:20 and my flight didn’t leave until 7. So I was able to fit a few hours of hanging out in the airport into my schedule. We arrived in Johannesburg in two hours time and then boarded vans for the five hour ride to Kruger Park. The ride was very slow and I slept most of it. Looking out the windows I was very surprised at how green Africa was. Nothing was dry and brown and there were all kinds of crops growing along the side of the road. We finally made it to the Kruger Park. Here we got into big Land Rover Army jeeps. Within two minutes of driving to our camp we saw a rhino. The rhino was about 15 feet from the jeep. From then on out I was completely stoked for the safari. We pulled into our camp which was called Malelane. We were camped right next to another group which just so happened to include my roommate and a few other of my friends. There were about 15 two person tents set up along the border with a long table in the middle. The table was where we were served three meals each day. Immediately we climbed into the jeeps for our first game drive. The first animal we encountered was an impala, which looked like some sort of deer. At first everyone was excited and started taking pictures and then as we drove on down the road we realized that the impalas were everywhere and nothing to get excited about. On this drive I saw elephants, giraffes, zebras, and rhinos. The elephants walked right across the road behind our jeep. It was so awesome to see a whole family right walk by us without even c\caring we were there. The roads we were driving on were little dirt side roads with an occasional paved main road. We would drive down the road until we saw something and then stop to take hundreds of pictures. I loved every minute of it and got real excited every time I pointed out an animal hiding in the bushes. After three hours of driving around we headed back to our camp. The women guides were there waiting with a big dinner prepared for us. After a delicious meal the guides got together and sang songs to us in some African language.

February 17th Safari Day 2
I was awaken at 5 in the morning by one of our guides singing and banging at my tent. It was time to get up for our early morning game drive. I saw most of the same animals as I had the night before. The sun came up rather quickly and it did not seem like I got up that early. We returned to camp for another scrumptious meal before going to check out the visitor center. We got a chance to walk through the exhibits inside the center. They had rhino skulls and a real elephant foot. After that we shopped at the park store and then went to lounge out by a pool. We were dropped off here for three hours. It was miserable because I couldn’t get in the pool because I didn’t bring a suit. Who brings a suit on an African safari? Instead I had to sit out in the hot sun until our guide finally came back to get us. After a quick lunch we were back on another game drive. Not too far from our camp we spotted a leopard in the trees. I could only make it out through binoculars but it was pretty cool to see. My pictures unfortunately turned out as just big yellow masses with black dots. On our way back to camp we passed two baby hyenas and a warthog. On next drive was with the park service and it was a night drive. We loaded up into more of an open bus jeep and headed out. For the first half of the drive the sun was still out and we were easily able to see the animals. We drove by an elephant breeding ground where we saw two whole families of elephants. The babies were very cute and kept trumpeting up into the air. Soon it got dark and we had to use spotlights to look for animals. We had four lights and would flash them over the land looking for the glow of eyes. All of a sudden we stopped and the whole front of the bus leaped up. We had come across a family of lions lying in the middle of the road. There was a male lion lying by himself and two females and four cubs lying right in front of us. It was really hard for me to see because there were so many people in front of me. None of my pictures turned out either because it was so dark. Everyone was excited and pretty loud and within maybe a minute the females and cubs got up and took off into the forest. A few seconds later the male did the same. Our guide really should have told us to stay seated so that we wouldn’t scare them away. I bet no one else has ever been that close to a wild lion before!

February 18th last day of safari
I was awaken again at 5 for one last game drive. This drive was the best one that I had yet. Every animal we saw was super up close. First we came upon three hyenas. The adult walked away but the babies walked right onto the road, touching the tires of our jeep. Then they plopped down right in front of us and fell asleep. They weren’t afraid of much. We got bored with them and moved on. We came right up on an elephant standing in the middle of the road, blocking our way. It was so unbelievably close to our jeep. The elephant proceeded to walk right at us and so we quickly had to back up. This continued for at least 20 minutes until the elephant finally decided to turn into the bush and walk away. We had to back up because otherwise the elephant would become uncomfortable and take us as a threat. Our guides told us that the elephant could and would easily push over our jeep and smash it with us inside. That was a good enough reason for me to want to back up. We continued on our route and soon came upon 8 giraffes right next to the road. They were all eating and couldn’t care less that we were right there watching them. We headed back to the camp to pack up and took off on our long bus ride back to the airport. I got to the airport at 3:30 and wasn’t supposed to leave until 9. Luckily I got on an earlier flight and got back to Cape Town much earlier then I should have.
On the taxi ride back to the ship I was really looking forward to taking a shower and falling asleep. The moment I got back on the ship I ran into my friends who were going out to eat at Mama Africas. I couldn’t pass that up and within 5 minutes I was in another cab headed for Long Street. The food at Mama Africas was very good and had a lot of game to choose from. I ordered a Kudu steak. Kudu is another antelope relative that has stripes all down its body. After dinner I was completely exhausted and went right back to the ship.

February 19th The Longest Day of them all

Table Mountain
If you thought I was going to sleep in today you were way wrong. I got up at 5:30 and put on my tennis shoes to take on Table Mountain. A group of 6 of us planned a long day of adventures and it all started with hiking the mountain that over looks all of Cape Town. The mountain was only 1000 feet high and was supposed to take 2 hours to hike up. Our plan was to hike up and then take a cable car back down. The whole city had lost power and the cable car was not running so we knew we would have to hike back down. We started off in the trail at 6:30. The first part was by far the hardest and steepest. The trail was a bunch of steps leading right up the mountain. After a while and a few breathers we came to a split in the trails. One trail was unmarked, one was marked dangerous, and the other led sideways and not up. We didn’t really want to take the unmarked trail because it seemed to wrap around the mountain and not go up it. I wanted to take the dangerous trail because I knew it wasn’t really dangerous but it said that because we were hiking up a mountain. But the majority overruled and we took the easier trail which went sideways first. We followed this flat path for a ways until it just disappeared. The mountain had just recently had some serious fires and the result was that everything was charred black and the paths were smudged out. Nobody was around so we decided to just go up. We had to climb up some rocks and go through some charred sticks. Our plan was to go up diagonally until we crossed paths with the trail marked dangerous. At least that was the plan. Never again did we see a trail. Ariel and I led the way through bushes and around giant rocks. A few times we actually had to scale the mountain to keep moving up. I admit it was probably dangerous but it sure was fun. A little more then halfway up we realized that we might not reach the flat, table, part of the mountain. From where we were to this flat spot was a huge ravine that would have involved climbing vertically up the mountain. We decided we would keep going up until we couldn’t go anymore. We reached that point very close to the top. We reached a spot that curved around the mountain to the other side so that we could see the view from three sides of the mountain. It was gorgeous and a little scary as we all sat on the edge of the mountain dangling our feet into nothingness. We caught our breathes and drank close to the last of our water supply and then headed down. Going down was almost as bad as the first part of the hike. We couldn’t really go down the way we came up because some of the rocks we climbed were pretty steep. We were forced to slowly step down foot by foot over loose sand and rocks. It was a slow process and very painful on the legs. We had only been trekking down for a few minutes when an intense fog drifted in. It felt really good but it pretty much ruined any visibility we had of what was ahead of us. Ariel and I led the way in front of the others picking out the best paths for them to take. By this time I had very little energy and would walk right into the pokey charred sticks that probably used to be green shrubs. My clothes, arms, and legs were covered in black charcoal smudges. My legs had scratches all over them and were bleeding on my knees and calves. I wasn’t the only one though. Everyone seemed to have dark scratches I just happened to be more careless and therefore had more. We were getting closer and closer to the bottom until we came upon a vertical drop. I decided to go to the right and see if there was a way down and to my surprise I found people and a trail! We made it down in no time after that although the stairs hurt my quads with every step I took. All the people that passed us would just stare at my legs wondering how I had possibly scarred them up so bad. The hike in all took us 4 hours.
We hopped into a cab and headed over to the flee market. We had to meet our wine tour at 1:30 and wanted to go to the market before so we decided to go there first before changing. I had forgotten to put deodorant on that morning so by this time I really smelled but I didn’t care. I was covered in charcoal anyways. On the way to the flee market we had to stop at an ATM to get more money. We were outside of a gas station and I walked up to an ATM while my friend used one about 5 feet away from me. We had all been warned on the ship about people who try and “help” you at ATMS and then steal your money. So far I hadn’t come across that until this very moment. Right after I put my card in the slot a nicely dressed black man came up behind me and pushed a button on my machine. I was confused and didn’t understand what he was doing. I tried to get my card back out. Then there were 4 men around me telling me I had to enter my pin to get my card out. Well there was no way I was going to enter my pin when I couldn’t even read the screen. I kept pushing the cancel button and they kept yelling at me. When I thought they weren’t looking I entered my pin and my card popped out. Immediately one of the guys shoved it back in the machine and pushed the button again. He was pushing the button that put the screen in some African language. I was angry now and told them to leave me alone and knock it off. My friend came and stood next to me to try and help me out while my other friend was oblivious at his own ATM. I entered my pin again and this time grabbed my card before anyone else could. I walked away from the ATM while they kept trying to get me to put my card back in. I just kept saying no until they finally left. It was frustrating having them do that because I wasn’t going to give in and they wouldn’t leave me alone. But I got my money and we headed over to the market. We quickly bought all we could and then went back to the ship where we had 20 minutes to shower and change.

Wine lands
We met our tour guide and climbed into a VW van for a 45 minute drive to the wine lands. Our first stop was Anora. We were given a tour of the cellar and explained the process of wine making. Then we were seated at a table to have a wine and cheese tasting. We tasted 6 different types of cheeses and about 7 types of wine. They were all very good. I bought a bottle for 22 rands. So basically I paid $3 for a bottle of good wine. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with this bottle but I couldn’t resist the cheap price. Next we went to the town of Stellenbach. We toured the town and then went to our next tasting. This was a much more laid back setting and wasn’t as fun as the first one. After the wine tasting we walked over to the cheetah reserve. We were supposed to be able to pet the cheetahs but the handlers weren’t around. We got to see 6 cubs lying right at the fence next to our feet. I stuck my fingers in the cage and pet the cheetahs anyways. I touched a tail and a nose of a baby cheetah. There was an adult but its cage was far away and blocked off so I couldn’t really see it all that well. Then we walked over to the restaurant to eat. It was called Moyo and had a bunch of tables set up into the trees like tree forts. Unfortunately we didn’t get one of these. The food was a giant buffet of everything from wild game to seafood to salad to beans. I filled up on game and then hit up the dessert table. We all got brownies which we hadn’t eaten in forever. They were so good that Nicole and I each wrapped four up in our napkins to take back to the ship. Since we stayed for dinner our tour guide had left us and we had a shuttle bus come pick us up and take us back to Cape Town. I still had my bottle of wine and decided I was going to try and bring it on the ship. Alcohol is strictly forbidden to be brought onboard but I got away with it pretty easily. I put the bottle in my vest pocket and just walked though security dangling my vest by my side. No one even noticed me. Now I just have to get it passed customs in San Diego since I am not 21.

February 20th Last Day in Cape Town
Nicole and I were supposed to go skydiving but somehow our reservations got screwed up and we weren’t able to go. The weather was really shitty too so I was kind of glad we didn’t go. That and I had already spent a lot of money and didn’t need to spend a couple hundred more on falling out of the sky. My legs were so soar from hiking yesterday. The stairs in the ship were killer! We ended up going to another market to spend the last of our rands. We went out to dinner one last time and then went back to the ship to wave goodbye to South Africa.

Me on my safari in Kruger Park

2006-02-21T06:17:00.001-08:00

2006-02-21T06:17:00.000-08:00

Brazil

2006-02-06T15:59:00.000-08:00

February 1st

I made my first steps in the country of Brazil around noon today. From the ship I could tell that Salvador was a huge city. There were big business buildings looming in the sky. On the other half of the city I could see the poor neighborhoods, or favelas. The favelas are huge chunks of land where there are hundreds of square houses built on top of each other. The poor people are allowed to live here. If they live in the same area for five years then the land is given to them and they can build a nicer house.
I was told in a pre-port lecture that Brazil was a dangerous place. We were warned that we would probably get robbed and that dressing in tank tops was a bad idea. Well when we got off the boat it was scorching hot and wearing a tee-shirt was hell and really not necessary. Greeting us at the entrance of our ship were African women dressed in huge poofy dresses. They were representing the Candomble religion. The women tied a blue ribbon around my wrist and knotted it three times. I was supposed to make three wishes, one for every knot, and then when the ribbon fell off my wishes would come true. Throughout the day I got too hot and the ribbon was bugging me and I ended up cutting it off. So much for my wishes. As we began walking into the city I noticed that people were selling these ribbons all over the streets. We had to ward people away so they wouldn’t try and sell us more.
The first place I went into was a big two story yellow market building. Inside were all kinds of crafts. There was everything from jewelry to clothes to drums to plain old crap. I ended up buying a painting. It is a picture of a candomble woman in a big red sparkly dress. She is holding a sword and a cow horn. It is pretty cool. In order to buy something you had to really bargain with the non English speaking sellers. When I bought my painting the asking price was 165 reals. (1 US $ equals about 2.25 reals, pronounced HEY-I) I bargained it down to 40 reals. It took me a while and I had to pretend to walk away a bunch but it was worth it.
We were at the lower city in the market and had to ride an elevator to get into the upper not so sketchy city. AT the bottom of the elevators we met one of my room mates long lost friends who was studying abroad in Brazil. Her name was Leah and Ariel hadn’t seen her in over 10 years. She spoke fluent Portuguese and served as our guide the rest of the afternoon. We went inside one of many Catholic churches and it was gorgeous. Outside on the streets there were lots of little kids running around. Some of them, all under the age of 10, were playing drums and singing in a little band to try and make money. They were actually very good.
At around 6pm we boarded a bus to go to the area of town that Leah lives in. The bus was quite an experience. It was packed full when we got on and had to stand in the aisle surrounded by locals. There were five of us, not including Leah, and we were all dumb struck by how pushy and rude the people were. The whole ride people were shoving past us. We started and stopped a bunch of times and I continuously was rocking back and forth straining to hold on to the filthy bars up ahead. It was a relief when we stepped off twenty minutes later. I immediately applied hand sanitizer and then we headed towards Leah’s friend Everton’s house. All the people on the streets were staring at us wondering why there were so many white girls in their neighborhood. They called us many things like Gringos and filet mignon. Some men would jump out of their seats and touch us really fast and then sit back down. It was as if we were exotic and they just had to touch our skin. When we met Everton he greeted us all with hugs and a kiss on each cheek. This, apparently, is how they greet and say goodbye to each other. We then headed to the supermarket to purchase food to make soup. Every Wednesday night Leah and her friends and another family cook a huge pot of soup and feed it to the homeless people. This was our plan for the night. At the store we bought lots and lots of vegetables, most all found in the US. We bought carrots, cabbage, onions, tomatoes, green peppers, cilantro, chives, garlic, onions, potatoes, abora, and chu chu. Abora is an orange fruit that resembles a pumpkin. It even had pumpkin like seeds. A chu chu is a big green vegetable that when cut in half its two halves have to be rubbed together to remove slimy goo it forms. The food was all very cheap. After buying all the ingredients we went back to the house to cook it up. The front door of the house was a gate locked by a padlock. There was three levels to the house. The bottom floor was not used and the living area was on the second floor. There was a narrow staircase connecting the floors that had very skinny steps. The inside of the house was very empty. In the big room there was a small table and three chairs and a computer. There was a bedroom and a bathroom and then a small kitchen. The kitchen was very empty. It had a small narrow fridge, an old oven, and a sink with a little bit of countertop space. That was it. Somehow we managed to chop up all the food in that little space. The whole process took about an hour and then we had to wait about two hours for the soup to cook. We had also added noodles and ham bones for flavor.
While we were waiting for the soup to be done we went out to eat just around the corner. We all drank the Brazilian soda Guarana which was very good. It was supposed to give us an energy rush but it did no such thing. At dinner I ordered Acai. Acai is a little yellow fruit. The pulp of the fruit was poured into a bowl and had granola on top of it. It was a dark purple color, syrupy, and very cold. It was sweet and very tasty.
After dinner we went and got the soup along with 70 fresh baked rolls and took them over to another house where two women were waiting with another pot of soup. The women greeted us the same way Everton had and then asked us to sit down in their house. Their house was not as empty as Everton’s but still not very full. The women dimmed the lights and then said a prayer in Portuguese. Leah then read a testament translating to us what it said. Next we all drank a sip of water out of plastic cups. It was sort of like a Catholic ritual. When all this was done we carried our supplies out onto the street and began walking. For bowls for the soup the ladies had collected plastic liter soda bottles and cut them in half. we walked for a ways until we came upon a row of men sleeping on the sidewalks. I walked with Everton up to the men to serve them their food. The men were either lying on thin slabs of cardboard or just on the concrete ground. We woke them up and gave them the soup and bread. They were very very thankful. I tried to ask Everton what the word for bread was so I could say it to them as I was tying to hand it to them. The word was Pam or Pom or something like that. To say the word I was supposed to make it sound nasal. Since I didn’t do this I ended up saying a different word entirely. Instead of saying “bread” I was saying “boner”. Oops!!! We all got a good laugh out of that one once I was explained my mistake.
Our next stop was a battered women house where women were given free board but not free food. Along the way we walked by a really old lady who asked for some food. We gladly served it to her even though she seemed really crazy. As we turned to leave she said “You drink, I drink. You shit, I shit. We all shit!” We also got a good laugh out of that one. Our next stop was the park where most of the homeless people hang out. When they saw us coming all the children got really excited and rushed over to us. There were probably around 40 people at this park who hadn’t eaten all day. Most of them were children ages 11 and under. Some of the kids were no more then two years old and there were even some new born babies. I kept smiling at them because that was all I could do. One girl grabbed my hand as if to shake it. We served all the people and then the children came back for seconds or thirds. They were all very thankful. For the number of children running around there were hardly any adults. None of the kids looked really dirty or smelled bad. They weren’t super skinny but you could tell that they lived many days without eating at all. One of the girls asked Leah why we were so shy, not realizing that we didn’t speak her language. She also told Leah that all of us were very beautiful but I was the prettiest one. probably because I couldn’t stop smiling at her. I wanted to play with the kids but was just so overcome by what we were doing that I just stood there and smiled. When we ran out of food we headed back to the house. Two girls gave us all hugs goodbye. These girls, along with their two brothers live in an abandoned warehouse with maybe 20 other people. Their mother works all day and they usually are on their own. They think their house is gorgeous when really it is nothing but concrete and wooden boards. It is very sad to think about.
Back at the house we said bye to the two ladies and got hugs and kisses from both of them. We ended up taking a taxi back to the ship so as not to ride the bus at night. This experience was a wonderful way to see what really goes on in Brazil and it was very eye opening to me.

February 2nd

I woke up at 4:30 am to go to the airport for my trip to the Iguaçu Falls. Along the way we stopped in two other cities. When we landed in Brasilia we were not brought to a terminal gate. Instead we were dropped off in the middle of the runway area. A bus picked us up from here and we were driven over to our next plane. It was a very interesting way of doing things. During take-off the flight attendants handed out toffee candy. They did this every time and we al loved it! Six hours later and a time change of an hour lost, we arrived in Foz de Iguaçu, or the meetings of the big waters. The plane circled over the falls so we could all look at them from the sky. They were spectacular. The Iguaçu river abruptly ended into the falls. It was as if the ground just disappeared.
We first went to our hotel which was plantation style and built in the 1950’s. It was a first class five star hotel even though it was painted pink. The set up was very confusing and we all continuously got lost going to our rooms. I shared a room with a girl named Kelly. The rooms had a TV, two twin beds and a large bathroom. The bathroom was very funny to me because it had a Dubai. I never used it but it was funny that it was there. After dropping off my stuff I went out to the front of the hotel and saw the falls. There was a trail leading down to most of the falls and I went on a hike with a lot of other people. I saw a lot of lizards and quite a few butterflies. The falls were so amazing and I couldn’t stop taking pictures of them. I was looking out onto the falls from the Brazil side looking at Argentina. Argentina has 250 falls and Brazil only has 25. The tallest fall is Devil’s throat and is 240 feet high. It drops 5,000 gallons of water every minute. During the walk I was constantly sweating. My face was dripping the whole time. I later found out that this was because the temperature was between 100 and 110 degrees! I have never been in temperature that hot and it was a little much.
For dinner we went to a huge barbeque Gaucho Cowboy style. It was a very fancy place and had a huge buffet. There was all kinds of meat and chicken, lots of salads and pastas, lots of random things and a bunch of desserts. It was delicious. After we ate they put on a show for us. Since we were close to the borders of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina the show was music and dances from these countries. The dancers were all wearing very colorful costumes and it was very well put together. The final was a bit strange. Girls came out in shiny tops and thongs. They shook their asses all over the place and I thought it was a little inappropriate. But all in all the show was great.

February 3rd

At 8 am we got on the bus to go visit the falls from the Argentina side. We entered through the National Park and had a walking tour. We walked all throughout the falls. We even walked over some of them. I saw a toucan in one of the trees. It was so hot today that I couldn’t even handle wearing a shirt and wore my swim suit top the whole time. We eventually made it down to where the river was. We put on life jackets and loaded into a big skiff. We had to put all our stuff into waterproof duffle bags so they wouldn’t get soaked. We zoomed off and drove right under one of the falls. It was a blast and we all got soaked. Then we went under two more falls right in front of Devil’s Throat. Then we headed up the river. We got off the boat a few minutes later and hiked up a bunch of stairs to get to our next activity. From here we loaded into huge army jeeps. We were supposed to drive through the forest and see animals but all we saw were trees and plants. This ended our adventures in Argentina.
Back at the hotel I took a long nap and then went out and played in the pool. After that we ate another barbeque buffet for dinner. After dinner all the SAS kids stayed and hung out by the pool and dining area. We ended up getting a bunch of alcohol and just hung out there all night. There were a bunch of German tourists as well that we attempted to communicate with. The quote of the night came from a girl named Brittany who was pretty drunk. She said to the Germans, “I spoke German in high school but now I speak sign language and I get the two confused.” Yea that was a funny one!

February 4th

Today we woke up and drove an hour to the Itaipu Dam that is split between Brazil and Paraguay. It is one of the seven wonders of the modern world and is the biggest dam around. It spits out something like 13,000 watts of power. The damn wasn’t all that exciting because well it is just a damn. Brazil proposed the idea of the dam and had to bribe Paraguay to do it with them. The dam powers 95% of Paraguay and about 25% of Brazil. So if something goes wrong at the dam whole cities, like Rio De Janeiro, can have blackouts. After leaving the dam we went to a bird park. The park was pretty cool. I saw lots and lots of species of birds. Some were in cages and others were in aviaries walking freely around. I saw flamingos, lots of kinds of parrots, owls, vultures, toucans, cranes, and much more. One of the toucans was sitting on a fence post about one foot away from me. It looked completely fake like a stuffed animal but then it blinked so I knew it was real. There was also an area with butterflies in it but they flew around so much it was hard to get a good look at them. After the park we headed to the airport for our flight back to Salvador.

February 5th

Today was my last day in Brazil. I woke up and went to the market again but didn’t end up purchasing anything. Then Ariel and I met up with Leah and her boyfriend Leo. We took them on the ship so they could look around. Leo had never even been on an airplane before and so this was pretty exciting for him. We ate lunch on the ship. Leo had never seen or tried peanut butter before because they don’t have that in Brazil. He ate a peanut butter sandwich and like it a lot. He also tried croutons for the first time.
Around 3:30 I went to a soccer game. It was a big game versus the state of Bahia and Victoria. I was cheering for Bahia because that was the area which we were in. The stadium was packed full of people. Lots of SAS kids had bought jerseys earlier in the day and were all sporting them. We bought beer and were having a great time. At half time we set out to buy jerseys. We finally found a man selling them on the street. The seller had a little son maybe a little younger then two years old. I immediately started playing with him and continued for about 15 minutes. I was flying him around like an airplane and throwing him up in the air after he jumped off the ground. Because I did this I ended up getting my jersey for free which was fine by me. Everyone was jealous. After the game I boarded the ship and we sailed off, leaving Brazil in the distance.

2006-02-05T09:55:00.000-08:00

Neptune Day
The Crossing of the Equator
30th January 200

At 3:00 this morning we crossed the equator for the first time. When it is your first time crossing the equator you have to go through a ritual. AT first we are all Pollywogs. Then after we are initiated we become Scullbacks. I am now a Scullback!
We woke up at 7:30 to start the festivities. After eating breakfast we went back to our rooms to wait for the marching warriors. A bunch of the crew members dressed up and were running through the halls with giant swords and tritans. They were being as loud and noisy as possible to make sure everyone was awake. Then we made our way up to the 7th deck to wait for the King and Queen. All the students were up there and were surrounding the pool. AT the front of the pool were two thrones. They were really just lawnchairs. At 9:30 they arrived. King Neptune and Queen Manerva arrived first with the Royal Barber and Royal Fish Kisser right behind. The King was a girl and the Queen was a man. They were dressed up very funnily. Then the ceremonies started.
The first initiation process was to be covered in fish guts and then clensed in the pool. The fish guts were really a mixture of orange juice and some green stuff, the outside of popcorn kernels, oatmeal, and a bunch of other gross stuff. It was dumped over our heads and tasted disgusting! We then jumped into the pool which was no longer blue but a nasty yellowish green color. The pool was also salt water and didn’t taste much better then the fish guts. I didn’t have a swim suit on and jumped in with my clothes on. Then we climbed out of the pool and had to kiss a fish. It was a real fish but had some sort of coating over the face. We then kissed King Neptune’s ring and were made Scullbacks. My tank top was full of all the crap from the fish guts.
The next part of the process, which I didn’t participate in, was head shaving. Shaving your head is something that is done all over when crossing the equator for the first time. The Captain shaved 5 lucky peoples heads, one of which was a black girl with a huge fro of hair. It surprised me how many girls shaved their heads. Some don’t look too bad but others really aren’t that hot. About a third of the guys shaved their heads. I really expected more would from them because they get their hair back so quickly. A lot of girls didn’t shave their heads but cut their hair really really short. I thought this was stupid. If they were willing to go that far then they might as well have shaved it off. I would have shaved my head but there were a few factors holding me back. First I don’t know what I would have looked like and it could have been bad. Secondly, I will have hundreds of pictures from this tip and I don’t want to have a shaved head in all of them. I mean in 30 years or so I am not going to want to show people pictures of me with a shaved head. The only reason I wanted to do it was to start my hair over and see what it would look like when it was short and shaggy. Guess I’ll never know.
The festivities ended around noon. There were fish guts mixed with hair all over the deck. It was pretty gross. After it was cleaned up about everybody on the ship decided to lay out in the sun. The decks were packed with people. I laid out for less then two hours and ended up burning my legs and stomach. Oh well, it will eventually turn into a tan!

What I Do on the Ship

2006-01-27T16:37:00.000-08:00

Life Aboard the Explorer

I first saw the Explorer on January 19th. The only thing I could think of when I saw it was WOW! I stared at it and realized that this ginormous ship was going to be my home for the next 100 days. How awesome is that?

The ship is comprised of 7 decks. The second through the fourth deks are just rooms. I am located on the third deck in room 3128. The fifth deck is half rooms and half other stuff. It has a dining room with two buffet lines, a big circular office area where we take care of field programs, administration, and the Pursar and Bursar desks. The Bursar takes care of money matters and the Pursar takes care of all our other needs. The sixth floor also contains a dining room that leads out onto a deck. This deck also has two computer labs, a library, two student stores, a snack bar, and the Union. The union is like a lecture hall but with no desks. Instead it has couches and chairs with a few glass tables spread here and there. It is located at the very front of the ship, which is the worse place to be because you feel the most rocking of the boat. There are classrooms spread out all over the 6th deck. Some are in the dining room while others are just beside the hallways. Most classrooms all have clothed chairs and little tables spread around. Only a few have actual desks and chairs used in normal school classrooms. The seventh deck has a large open deck area with lawn chairs and a small swimming pool. It also has an outside snack bar and grill. The spa is located inside the seventh deck. AT the spa you can get haircuts, massages, pedicures, facials, etc. There is also a room with treadmills, ellipticals, bikes, and stair steppers.
Inside the ship are three different sets of stairs that lead from the second floor up to the seventh. Early in the morning I sometimes take the elevator because I get sick of the stairs. That pretty much makes up my home for these 100 days.

What I do Every Day
Days on the ship no longer are known as week days but rather A and B days. We have certain classes on A days and other classes on B days. Every now and then we don’t have classes and those are just other days. Every class day we have to take Global Studies. Global Studies is held in the Union. Only about 450 people fit in the Union and the rest of the students sit in classrooms and watch the lecture via a satellite t.v. Unfortunately they don’t broadcast the lecture onto the tv’s in our cabins. After Global Studies on A days, I don’t have another class until 12:55. This is my History of Africa class. Each class only lasts an hour and fifteen minutes. On B days I have an 8 am class called Anthropology of food. Then I have global studies and then have Biology: Natural Resources at 2:15. I don’t look forward to going to class because there are so many other things I could be doing.
On most mornings I eat breakfast which is served from 7 to 8:30 am. There is always sliced up mixed fruit, yogurt, and those little boxes of cereal. The milk however is disgusting and right out of a box. There are scrambled eggs, and then some other sort of egg dish like an omelet or fried egg. Potatoes are always served at every meal and at breakfast are sliced up real small. It switched from pancakes to french toast to sausage links. There are also mini croissants and muffins.
Lunch and dinner are pretty much the same thing. There is always peanut butter and jelly sitting out. Sometimes they have tuna and sometimes meats. Never ham or turkey lunch meat though. There is always some sort of salad and then a fruit slad or bean salad. Some type of fish is served and the other main meal switched from chicken to beef and pork. Rolls come with both meals as well as potatoes. There is also usually rice or noodles. They have dessert too which I sometimes like to eat! So far I am not sick of this food yet.
Between eating and classes I either work out or do homework. The classes lay on a heavy amount of reading which totally takes away my free time. When the wind is not blowing I will lay out on the deck and read. The temperature is still in the mid 80’s and is hot when the clouds aren’t covering up the sun. Of course I socialize too. There have been Pub nights but I have not gone to those yet. You can call me a loser but lately I haven’t had two free hours to pay $5 for 2 beers or $3.50 for a miniscule amount of wine. Eventually I will probably try it out but for the meantime I don’t think I am missing out on much.
I have a stewart on my deck who cleans my room EVERY day. He makes my bed, vacuums the floor, and cleans the bathroom. His name is Joseph and he is from the Phillipines. He gets up at 5:30 every morning and doesn’t stop cleaning until around 9:00 at night. My room is one of the first in his cleaning section and he always comes to clean my room first. Usually I am still sleeping but he doesn’t know this and opens the door and then runs out real quick. It’s funny because he has done it a lot. Ariel and I finally started locking the door at night so he wouldn’t embarrass himself again. Our doors lock automatically but he has a key and can enter any time unless we lock it form the inside. One day I was changing by the door and he tried to open it. Luckily I was fast enough to slam it shut before he saw me. He kept trying to open it though and I barely got it locked. That was a close one!
At night we always seem to have meetings about one thing or another. I feel like I always have to be some where or get something done. It’s exhausting and I am usually wiped by the end of the day. Well that’s about all I do for now. I am sure things will change once activities get going and what not.
On Sunday we cross the equator and will participate in Neptune Day activities!

2006-01-26T12:18:00.000-08:00

Puerto Rico

January 23rd
The ship docked into the Navy Pier of San Juan, Puerto Rico at 8 am. We were greeted by the Secretary of State who gave us a speech inside the Union Hall. After that we went through customs where I got a Puerto Rico stamp on my passport. The ship was cleared and everyone disembarked at 10 am. I was headed towards Old San Juan with a group of girls I met getting off the ship. The first thing I saw leaving the Pier was a McDonalds. That was disappointing. The walk to get into Old San Juan took us about 25 minutes in the mid 80 degree temperature. Once we got there we ventured up the streets and looked inside the shops. The streets were all one ways and wide enough to fit only one car. The street was cobblestone with blue bricks. The buildings on each side were all about three stories high and painted pastel colors of yellow, pink, and blue. Most of the stores were the same old tourist attractions filled with nothing but junk. The rest were stores with jewelry and carved crafts made in other countries. We found a place to eat where the food was cooked fresh. We knew the place would be good because the Secretary of State was eating there too. I ordered chicken in fried plantain cups with rice and beans. Muy Bueno! I of course drank it down with a Pina Colada. The plaintains were fried and very good dipped in a garlic mayonnaise sauce. After we ate it took us about 45 minutes to get the waiter to bring us our check. We would ask for it and he would pretend to retrieve it and then never come back. It was frustrating. After lunch we went to the office of the Secretary of State to have a tour. We went into the meeting room that contained all the flags of the countries Puerto Rico gets along with. On the back wall was a giant crest of Puerto Rico. On the side wall were all the pictures of the old Secretaries, including three women, one whom is now the Governor. Then we walked around and looked at old pictures of the building. It really wasn’t very exciting.
Next we walked to the very edge of Old San Juan and toured the San Felipe del Morro Fort. It was beautiful there. Leading up to the fort was a giant green lawn. Next to the water on the right hand side was a very old cemetery. All the tombstones were white and it contained many statues and a big white church building. I paid five dollars to enter the fort. It was quite a structure. It included a dungeon, a kitchen area, a spiral staircase, little holes that the archers shot out of, and about 5 cannons. BY this time it was around five o’clock and we were all pretty tired. We got a $2 cab and headed back to the boat to get ready for the Welcome Reception.
Ariel and I went to the Caribbean University for a welcome reception along with 90 other SAS students. We had no idea what to expect. When our bus pulled up the Puerto Rican students were standing outside clapping, singing, and dancing. There were some musicians too. There were two guys on stilts dressed up in silk costumes. It was quite an entrance. We went into a classroom and were given a short presentation. Next we headed out into the courtyard where there was a band waiting. There was a big stage set up with booths all around it. The booths were selling crafts. The first show we watched was a dance by 7 girls on pointe shoes in bright costumes. They all had solos and were very good. I don’t think everyone appreciated it as much as I did. Next we were given a bunch of fried food from fish to chicken to plantains. It was a little much. The next dance was the Bomba dancers. There were 5 women in different colored dresses and 5 men in whites suits. It was amazing. Then the dancers came and grabbed us onto the dance floor. We followed them around dancing. Next we were just allowed to free dance. We were also given presents. In the bags I got a tee-shirt, a water bottle, a calculator, a bobble head pen, a bag of coconut candy(it was gross), and a bunch of papers in spanish. By the time we left the reception I was in a great mood but exhausted. On returning to the ship I went to my room and passed out.

January 24th
I woke up early for my 8 am trip to the Caribbean National Rainforest also known as El Yunque. (Pronounced El – yoon – cay). It was a half hour bus ride to get there. Our driver talked to us the whole way over a microphone spitting out random facts and info about San Juan. For example, did you know there are 78 cities in Puerto Rico? The rainforest was beautiful. Our first stop was an observation tower with 96 steps looking over most of the forest. Next we went to a trailhead to hike to a waterfall. We followed a path right by the creek/river/waterfall for about 45 minutes. The path was made out of cement with large stones put into it. That was a dumb idea because the stones were very slippery, causing me to have to look down most of the hike. There were all sorts of plant and tree life in the forest. Every now and then our guide would stop and explain to us what certain things were. Eventually we made it to the water fall and were given time to relax and get in the water. I wasn’t aware we could go swimming and left my suit on the bus. It was entertaining watching people slip on the rocks and fall into the water soaking their clothes. The hike back to our pickup spot was very steep. I didn’t mind at all. There was a trio of black girls who sang Destiny’s Child songs the whole way up. I swear everywhere I go there they are and they are always singing! That was all the rainforest we got to hike through and so we got back on the buses and headed back to the ship. We made a stop at a tourist strip of stores for some stupid reason. Once back at the ship I could barely keep my eyes open and ended up passing out 2 ½ hours. When I woke up I met up with three girls and we went and visited the other fort to see a dance show. It was similar to the one at the welcome reception. Every time the dance ended, each one lasted at least 15 minutes, they would run off and change costumes. There were men playing drums and singing too.
We went out to eat at the Parrot Club. I ordered the soup of the day which consisted of Flank steak, carrots, and potatoes. It was delicious. After dinner we walked around and then met up with some people at the Sheraton Hotel who had got a room. There I met a boy named Joey who goes to the University of Montana with me. We were very surprised that there were two of us from Missoula. I didn’t know him but I happen to know his girlfriend. What a smell world. We left the Sheraton around ten and went to a salsa club. The club was in an alley and had live Puerto Rican music. Across from the club was a little place selling cheap beers. There were well over 100 SAS students in the 2 places and the alley. It was a great time. In the alley two bums walked through begging for money. One guy was very disgusting. He smelled so bad I couldn’t breathe within 10 feet of him. He was wearing a scruffy hotel robe and had a greaseball dred of hair. He had a bloody bandage on his arm that he actually took off and showed his pussy mess. I have never been so grossed out before.

January 25th
This morning I slept in and didn’t head to town until noon. I walked around with two other girls looking for our last souvenirs. We took a walk in a direction we hadn’t been and took lots of pictures of important buildings. Later in the afternoon Ariel and I went to the beach. We found one about five minutes away from our ship. We had to cross three one way streets with about five lanes each. It was very hard for us to find a break in traffic to run across. Once we got there we immediately got in the water and swam around. The water was very warm. There were no waves because there was a rock barrier farther out. The water had a bunch of pieces of seaweed in it and was very salty. After we got out we went tide pooling and I collected a few shells. After the beach we went out to dinner one last time. I order fried plantains. I really liked those. We had to be back at the boat at nine. Even one minute later and we would have dock time. (you have to stay on the ship at least an hour if not more before getting off at the next port). I waited in line for about 20 minutes to use the phones one last time and was still able to get on the ship in time. We left Puerto Rico at 10:15pm. Brazil here I come!

2006-01-20T14:11:00.000-08:00

January 19th Nassau, Bahamas

I stayed the night at the Towne Hotel in Nassau. (Pronounced Na-saw.)
It was kinda crummy although there were two parrots that met me at the door to say hello. The room was normal and seemed stayable. In the middle of the night I woke to use the bathroom and found a cockroach on the floor. After that I had a hard time sleeping. In the morning I noticed there were little bugs everywhere. Ewww.
I got on a taxi with a few other girls and got dropped off at the docks. we stood in line for almost two hours waiting to get checked in. Every ten minutes or so we had to haul our bags a few feet forward. It sucked. When I made it to the front I gave up my passport and had my bags checked. I saw the ship for the first time and all I thought was “WOW”. It was huge. I climbed aboard and went through some more orientation stations before finding my cabin. It was what I expected pretty much. I went exploring and then met my roommate. Her name is Ariel. I got off the boat and met Ariel’s sisters and boyfriend and walked around the town with them. They wanted to visit the ship and had to wait in yet another line.
When all the visitors left we had our first lifeboat drill. We had to put on life jackets and go to certain areas of the ship. We weren’t allowed to talk for about 20 minutes and it was very hot as we had to wear pants, a long sleeve shirt, and tennis shoes. After that was dinner, which was surprisingly good. We then got introduced to the crew and dean and then had short meetings with our Resident director. I was so tired after all this that I passed out when it was over.
My alarm clock was a little screwy and Ariel and I ended up missing orientation the next morning. Turns out we didn’t miss much. The boat is very rocky. Not what I expected for such a huge ship. It is hard to walk around without stumbling back and forth.
We left the Bahamas around 5:00. There were lots of people standing on the dock to see us off. It was fun standing on the deck waving even though I had no one to wave to. In a few hours it got pitch black out and you couldn’t tell where we were. In the morning I walked out on deck and all I could see was water.

Send Me Mail

2006-01-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

I would love to get mail from you while I am on the trip. You can send me mail at any port I go to as long as you send it by the date included and by airmail. Here are the addresses and dates to send things:

Address mail as follows:

Gretchen Duggar
C/O: Explorer
Arrival Date**
Port Agent Address**

Purto Rico mail by January 9th to:

Cruise Plus Service & Sales
1760 Fernandez Juncos Avenue
San Juan, Puerto Rico 00909

Brazil mail by January 18th to:

Oceanus Agencia Maritima
Av. Estados Unidos, 555
7th Floor/Room 712
40015-010 Salvador, Bahia-Brasil

South Africa mail by January 31st to:

John T. Rennie & Sons
P.O. Box 702
1 Thibault House
8000 Cape Town, South Africa

Mauritius mail by February 11th to:

Ireland Blyth, Ltd.
1 Queen Street
P.O. 53
Port Louis, Mauritius

India mail by February 23rd to:

J.M. Baxi & CO.
3rd Floor, Clive Battery Complex
4 & 4A, Rajaji Salai
Chennai-600 001, India

Myanmar mail by March 2nd to:

Myanmar Port Authority
Sea Horse Agency
347/1st Floor, Mahabandoola Road
Kyauktada, Yangon, Myanmar

Vietnam Mail By March 11th to:

General Forwarding Agency Co., Inc.
5th Floor OSIC Building
8 Nguyen Hue Avenue
Dist. 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Hong Kong mail by March 20th to:

Inchape Shipping Services
(Hong Kong) Ltd.
Units 1802-1805, 18/F
No. 3 Lockart Road
Wanchai, Hong Kong-China

China mail by March 24th to:

Penavico Qingdao
21 Wuxia Road
Quingdao, 266002, P.R. China

Japan mail by March 28th to:

Inchape Shipping Services
Kenryu Building Room 502
6, Kaigan-dori, Chuo-ku
Kobe-shi, Hyogo-ken 650 0024,
Japan

2005-12-03T16:55:00.000-08:00

My Itinerary

2005-12-03T16:35:00.000-08:00

Destination Arrive Day Date Time
Depart

Nassau, Bahamas Depart Thursday 19th Jan 5:00 pm

San Juan, Puerto Rico Arrive Monday 23rd Jan 8:00 am
Depart Wednesday 25th Jan 11:00 pm

Salvador, Brazil Arrive Wednesday 1st Feb 8:00 am
Depart Sunday 5th Feb 11:00 pm

Cape Town, South Africa Arrive Tuesday 14th Feb 8:00 am
Depart Monday 20th Feb 11:00 pm

Port Louis, Mauritius Arrive Monday 27th Feb 8:00 am
Depart Wednesday 1st Mar 11:00 pm

Chennai (Madras), India Arrive Thursday 9th Mar 8:00 am
Depart Monday 13th Mar 11:00 am

Yangon, Myanmar Arrive Thursday 16th Mar 8:00 am
Depart Tuesday 21st Mar 6:00 am

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Arrive Sunday 26th Mar 8:00 am
Depart Friday 31st Mar 6:00 am

Hong Kong Arrive Monday 3rd April 8:00 am
Depart Tuesday 4th April 8:00 pm

Qindao, China Arrive Friday 7th April 8:00 am
Depart Saturday 8th April 11:00 pm

Kobe, Japan Arrive Tuesday 11th April 8:00 am
Depart Saturday 15th April 11:00 pm

San Diego, California Arrive Friday 28th April 8:00 am