All Good Things Must Come To An End

Alright fellow followers of my travels, this is the last update of my Semester at Sea blog. I may update it again with a "Now that I'm back, what the hell do I do?" entry when I get home, but we will see. I need to get a new computer obviously so it may be a little while if that entry happens. As you know, my Japan entry will not be up because it was lost on my computer during "the death", as I call the event. If I am ever able to recover it, I will post if for the hell of it. It would be a shame for you to not be able to read about my most favorite place in the world, and my most favorite city in the world, Tokyo. I have been thinking about this specific "last" entry since the day I started this blog. I thought about all the sentimental things I would say, like how this experience has changed me and how it will be hard to leave this family, and this beautiful ship I call "home" behind. I dont think I understood the gravity of what I would be writing until this exact moment when I am typing this. There are three days left in this voyage. All my finals are done, all my schoolwork handed in, and all my souvenirs are packed and ready to go. Has it hit me yet? It is starting to. It really began to hit me when we pulled into Hawaii a few days ago on Saturday. I of course had service on my regular cell phone, so I called my parents. Mind you we werent allowed to get off the ship in Hawaii, which absolutley killed me. Hawaii is a place I have been trying to get to since as long as I can remember, and we were docked within arms reach of Aloha Tower in downtown Honolulu, and it hurt pretty bad just to stare at it. It is ok, I have decided to come back in December for my 21st birthday, and anyone who wants to join, party on. So, while I was talking to my parents we were talking about how it was all over, and it was almost time for me to come home. That is when it started to hit me. Talking about it on the ship is a normal thing, just ship talk while we go about our daily routine. But, when I was talking to my parents, it made me realize that the end is here, and the magnitude of what I have accomplished in the past 100 days is inconceivable. I was mindblown. I said to my parents that I was starting to realize that I couldnt conceive everything I have seen and done in the past 4 months. My Mom told me, "Mike, you have experienced more in the past 100 days than most people will ever experience in their lives. Unfortunately, all good things must come to and end." Even though she is right, I dont want it to. I dont want to leave this ship. I dont want to leave this family. I dont want to leave my home.

Friday morning of the 28th will roll around, and we will begin the debarkation process in San Diego. My "sea" is the second to last to get off the ship, which doesnt bother me. The longer I get to hang around and say goodbye to people the better. When I get off I will most likely head to one final dinner with some friends, and then a red eye on jetBlue takes me back to JFK overnight, and then to Syracuse where I will arrive at 11am on the next day, Saturday the 29th. The minute I step off this ship will be the end of my voyage. It will be the end of a great experience, a great story, and a great life. I accept that this will end, but I wish like hell it would start back up again in the fall. I am considering the Summer 2007 voyage throughout Latin America, but that it is another story. I plan to remain close with a number of people with whom I consider some of the most amazing and genuine people I have ever met. I traveled the globe with 700 of the brightest and most outgoing students in the United States and the world. What more could I have asked for? This voyage will by far go down in my memory as the greatest and most significant thing I have, and most likely will ever do in my life.

Since day one, we have heard throughout the voyage that Semester at Sea is a "changing experience". If I could descibe Semester at Sea, I wouldnt be able to think of a better choice of words. On this ship, I have changed. I dont feel changed when I am here, but when I think about home, I know I have changed. I know that when I return home, I will be putting things into perspective. Many of my views on life and the world have changed on this voyage. I have seen things that will forever change my views on certain subjects. I believe that when I get home, my mind will be spinning while I calculate everything I have seen and what it means. How do I know this? When I think about life at home, and I compare it to the life I have been living, plus the lifestyles of everyone else in the world, I view everything differently than when I left the U.S. I dont know a better way to describe my new views and revelations, all I can say is that I can tell I am a different person than when I left. I am not only a different person, I am a better person.

A part of me will always remain with this ship and the people I became close with. I believe that more of a part of me will remain in all the places I have set foot in throughout the past 4 months. Each of these places left a lasting effect on me. I am grateful for the chance I have had to experience this world. I could not think of a better way of spending 4 months other than traveling the world and experiencing cultures and places that have left a lasting impression on me. I need to thank Semester at Sea for having this program. Without this program, younger generations like myself would not have the opportunity to see the world in such a fantastic way. Thank you Semester at Sea for the amazing opportunity that has been given to me, and every other past voyager. More importantly, I need to thank my parents. Without their financial and moral support, these past four months would have been spent back in the cold of Connecticut and Syracuse. Mom and Dad, I owe you everything. I dont know how I can ever repay you for the experience you have given me. I am forever grateful, and I love you very much.

Wow, how do I end this entry. I think I have exhausted all this sentimental stuff, so I will throw in a little humor here. A good friend on the ship told me quote I will never forget. She heard this quote from a past voyager, and I couldnt agree more with it. So here it is:

"Semester at Sea is like sex, and everything else is just like smoking a cigarette."

Amen. Thank you everyone for following along with me, I hope you had as much fun reading my experiences and adventures as I had sharing them with you. Once again, all good things must come to an end, and this was a damn good thing.

Goodbye and Godbless,
Michael

Bustling Hong Kong, Snowy Beijing, and Quiet Qingdao

Alright, I am combining all 3 of these Chinese cities into one, because they are all in China. Well, Hong Kong isn’t technically part of mainland China, but for the sake of this blog it is. We ported in Hong Kong first. Many people spent one day in Hong Kong then traveled to Beijing, which is what I did. While people traveled to Beijing, the ship left Hong Kong and went to Qingdao. After Beijing, we met the ship in Qingdao, instead of flying back to Hong Kong. As I am writing this, we are on our way home. We just left Japan. We only had two days at sea in between China and Japan, so I wasn’t able to get this entry up until now. The seas are rough today, the roughest they gave ever been. Swells are between 14 and 20 feet, and classes were cancelled. Things are flying around my room and I am struggling to hold on to my laptop as I write this.

So back to China. I had a wonderful and interesting experience traveling around China. It was everything I expected it to be and more. I mean seriously, what can be better than standing on top of The Great Wall of China, roaming around Tiananmen Square, or bypassing a Starbucks in the Forbidden City? China fascinated me. It was safe, beautiful, and packed full of cultural goodness. I really hope to go back sometime; maybe to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing….

We arrived in Hong Kong at around 8am on April 3rd. The travel to the port was cool. Hong Kong is practically built into a mountain range, and it was amazing to see a huge city with skyscrapers built into the mountains. It definitely did not resemble any city back home. It actually reminded me a little bit of Rio. We were off the ship at around 11 and Ryan, Grant, Mark and I walked around the port area. We were docked in a mall, no joke. Our gangway was actually connected to a building which was a first for us. It was like an airplane gangway. We walked off the gangway and the first step off I was in a mall. It is hard to describe but it was an actual mall. I was standing in front of a Birkenstock store and I knew this was going to be trouble. We walked around the port mall for a while and then took the ferry to Hong Kong Island. Hong Kong is a series of islands, and our ship was docked in Kowloon, so we had to take the ferry to Hong Kong Island. When we got there we just began walking through the bustling city of Hong Kong. It was really cool. We had gone from a third world country to a first world country in one port, and it was crazy being thrown back into a civilization we hadn’t seen in a while. We were drooling over the Ferraris, Mercedes, Maseratis, and BMW’s we were seeing. We walked into a number of buildings, and they were all malls. It seems that every building we walked into in Hong Kong was a mall. We spent a few hours in the malls. I bought a new digital camera because my old one bit the dust. It is a Canon Digital Ixus 55. I love it, it takes amazing pictures. After that I bought the most comfortable pair of sandals in the Rockport Store that I have ever worn. Once we finished touring the malls, that we decided were so incredibly expensive we couldn’t even look at them, we went to lunch. We ate a Chinese restaurant in the bottom of the Bank of America building. I finally had to buckle down and learn how to use chopsticks, something I had been dreading for a long time. The food we had was amazing, even though we weren’t sure what all of it was. After lunch, we walked around the city some more and then went back to Kowloon. Ryan and Grant went to go get some shirts tailored, and Mark and I went to a Haagen Daz, which was heaven to us because it has been long time since we have seen normal ice cream. This was no normal Haagen Daz; the way they do it in China is it is like a restaurant. They sit you down and you can order all kinds of crazy concoctions from a menu. While we were enjoying our ice cream we saw the Captain of the Explorer walking down the street past the window, and he had on a bright orange polo shirt with the collar popped. Gotta love the Cap. After ice cream we went back to the ship, waited for some people to get back from some SAS field programs, and then Grant, Ryan, Quinn, and I set out to take the tram up to the top of Victoria’s Peak to see a panoramic view of Hong Kong at night. We walked about 15 minutes to the tram, and it climbed almost vertically up the mountain, it was crazy. When we reached the top, there were panoramic views of Hong Kong. It was all lit up and beautiful. It was a little hazy due to all the pollution, but it still looked really cool. We found one of our friends Heath up there, and then we all went to dinner at the top of the mountain. The place we ate at ran out of egg rolls and fried rice. We were laughing because how can a restaurant in China run out of those two items. Regardless, we had a fun dinner, then you guessed it, went back to Haagen Daz. We ate our ice cream and watched a shooting water display and then took the tram back down. We went back to the ship, and I packed my bag for my early morning trip to Beijing in mainland China.

I woke up at 6:30am, and went to go meet for my SAS trip to Beijing I had signed up for. We left around 7:30am, and we went to the airport to check in. Hong Kong airport is insane, it is a huge mall, big surprise, and it was a big change from the Vietnam and Cambodia airports we had been in the week before. The flight was long, about 3 hours, and we arrived in Beijing around 2pm.We cleared customs, and then walked out of the airport into a blast of cold weather. It was about 40 degrees, and we were freezing. You may think I am complaining too much, but try living in 90-100 degree weather for three and a half months straight every day, and then one day being thrown into almost freezing weather with no gradual change over time. It was quite a shock. We boarded the buses to go to the summer palace. The summer palace was built as a retreat for the imperial heads during the Qing dynasty. It was burnt down but then rebuilt in 1888. The summer palace was cool; it was a series of temples and gardens right on the water. It was interesting to see the Chinese architecture, but there were an incredible amount of tourists there. After that we went and checked into our hotel in downtown Beijing, which was one of the nicest hotels I have ever stayed in. We had about an hour of rest time and then we headed to a Peking duck restaurant for dinner. This was my first experience eating roast duck, and I am not a fan. It is a weird meat. It tastes a little like chicken, but not as good. It was funny though because everyone at my table was trying to figure out how to eat the mysterious foods placed in front of us. After that we returned the hotel, and I was exhausted so I went to bed.

The next morning I woke up, had breakfast, and then we left at 8:30am to go to the great wall. The section we were going to was about 2 hours away, but our guide told us it was the most beautiful and quiet section. We took the two hour bus ride and arrived at the bottom of a large mountain. While we were driving I could only see parts of the wall for a few seconds, then they would disappear between the mountains. Our guide told us that we wouldn’t see it until we started climbing up the mountain to get to the wall. Before the steps started, there were all kinds of vendors at the bottom selling t-shirts and touristy souvenirs. We started climbing the 2000 steps to the wall. It took some people a while, but it only took me and a couple of my friends about 15 minutes. When we reached the wall, it was breathtaking. The Great Wall stretched on forever, and it was an amazing feeling to actually be standing on top of it. It really was liberating, and it made me reflect back on everything I have done on this voyage and the significance of it all. I called my parents and told them I was on the top of the Great Wall, and my mom was really excited. About 10 minutes before me and some people were to head back down to meet back at the buses, it began to snow. It made the scenery much more beautiful. A snowy day on the Great Wall of China, it can’t get any better on that. By the time I went to head back down, it had stopped snowing. Me and some people took a luge back to the bottom. I actually got on a little luge and went town a luge track to the bottom. It was a lot of fun. When I reached the bottom I bought a touristy “I climbed the great wall” t-shirt, and then we got back on the buses. We drove the two hours back to the city center of Beijing, and we visited two markets. They were both inside, which was good because it was freezing out. The first one was a little boring, but the second one was pretty cool. It was pretty funny because the markets are a huge tourist trap, and the vendors think they can sell you their products at outrageous prices because they think we are regular tourists that don’t know any better. My friend Sheila tried on a knock-off Spyder ski jacket, and wanted to buy it. The lady told her it was $350 US dollars! Sheila laughed at her and said you have got to be kidding. The lady then said $320. I went up to the lady and said, “Listen, we are not the regular tourist you think we are. We have been bargaining for the past 3 and a half months straight in 8 countries. I know, and you know, that that jacket isn’t worth a quarter of that. Nice try, but we aren’t who you think we are.” Sheila got the jacket for $45. See what I mean? This may be a problem when I get back to the states. I am going to walk into Target and say, “$10 for a CD? I will give you $1.” Then they will probably throw me out. Anyways, I was looking for some more bootleg DVD’s to expand my collection since Vietnam. There were guys standing by the doors of the markets who would just keep saying, “DVD?” over and over again. After I couldn’t find any in the market, I finally started talking to one of the shady guys. Here is how the conversation went:
“You want DVD?” – Guy
“Where?” – Me
“Follow me” – Guy
“No, where?” – Me
“Just follow me” – Guy
“Not until you tell me where we have to go” – Me
“No problem, I show you DVD’s. Please, follow me.” – Guy
“Whatever” – Me
So, me and my friend Katie followed this guy out of the markets and down the street for 10 minutes. After a while I was getting mad because it was really far, and I had to be back at the buses soon. The guy finally turned and headed into a building. I looked at the building and it was a steak restaurant. We went in and he took us into the back of the restaurant and sat us down at a table. All these guys came in with suitcases and started pulling tons of bootleg DVD’s out of the suitcases and placing them in front of us. This was how the next conversation went:
“How much are these?” – Me
“Don’t worry about it” – Guy
“No, how much are they each?” – Me
“We talk about it later” – Guy
“Listen, I am not going to sit here and look through all these if you are going to charge me more than a dollar for each one, because that is what I am paying.” – Me
“Please, just look.” – Guy

I found 5 DVD’s I wanted to buy. The guy wanted 7 dollars for the 5 of them, and I told him that I told him before I was paying a dollar each, and he kept saying 7. I put the DVD’s on the table, and started to walk out. As soon as I hit the door, he agreed to 5 dollars. It works every time! So, after the restaurant/DVD deal and the markets, we returned to the hotel. We had the evening at our leisure. I went out and grabbed some food and ice cream with a few people. When we got back to the hotel, I wanted to find out what hotel the other SAS Beijing trip was staying in, because Quinn, Leah, and Jess were on the other trip. I asked around and finally found out which hotel it was, and it was only 4 blocks down from ours. I walked down there and asked at the desk which room was theirs. I knocked on the door, got no answer, so I left them a note, went back to my hotel, and got a hold of Quinn on her cell. We figured out that they gave me the wrong room number. I didn’t feel like walking back down there in the cold, so we made plans to get together the next night.

The next morning I had breakfast, and then we headed out to the famous Tiananmen Square. We arrived in Tiananmen, and the square was packed. Everyone goes there to hang out, and it was really cool because it was lively. Tiananmen Square is the largest public square in the world. It is famous because of the student rallies that took place and the massacre in 1989. We hung out in the square for about an hour, took a group photo, and then walked to the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City covers 250 acres, contains 800 palaces, halls, shrines, and pavilions. It was the home of the emperor of the Ming Dynasty in 1407, and was ruled later by 24 more emperors. There is actually a Starbucks in the Forbidden City, which is ridiculous, but it is pretty famous. So after the Forbidden City we went to have lunch at a restaurant which had a dance show. After lunch we went to the Llama temple. I don’t know why it is called the Llama temple, but it wasn’t anything special. It is another temple, and to be honest with you, I am templed out at this point. We returned to the hotel for some rest, and I walked down the street to a bakery I had noticed the day before. I bought all kinds of crazy pastries, cakes, and cookies, and brought them back to hotel. We then went out to dinner. After dinner we went to an acrobatics show. It was unbelievable. It was a lot like Cirque Du Soleil or however you spell it. There were so many crazy acrobatics being performed it blew my mind. When we got back, I grabbed all my stuff I had bought at the bakery and headed down to see Quinn, Leah and Jess. We hung out all night at their hotel, and I just crashed there because once again, I didn’t feel like walking back in the cold. I don’t like cold weather. That’s why I’m heading south in a couple years…

The next morning we had breakfast and checked out of the hotel. We visited the Temple of Heaven. The emperor of the 15th century would only go there twice a year, but it was built with advanced principles of mechanics and geometry. After the Temple of Heaven we ate a buffet lunch, and then went to the airport for a flight to Qingdao, where the ship had sailed to while we were in Beijing. We arrived in Qingdao at around 3, and we drove an hour to the port from the airport. While we were driving, I was looking out the window for things to do. Restaurants, bars, parks, museums, and malls were non-existent. All I saw was a city of rubble. I became very disappointed that SAS decided to port here, but I will get in to that later. We were trying to ask the tour guide on the bus if there was anywhere to go to eat or drink that night, and he said we should stay on the ship. We tried to convince him that we live on a ship for 100 days, and staying on the ship for an entire evening while in port is not an option. He wouldn’t listen to us and told us that there really isn’t anything to do in Qingdao, and that we should come back another time. It made no sense, but he was right that there was nothing to do. I did in fact end up staying on the ship that night, because I had no one to go out with because all the flights were delayed coming out of Beijing except for us, so all my friends did not get back to the ship until really late. We went out early the next morning. We planned to spend the day in Qingdao and hopefully find something to do, and go back to the ship in the evening before we left for Japan. Ryan, Grant, Mark, Kerri, and I went out around 9am. We began walking around the city looking for interesting things. We walked and walked and walked, and saw nothing. There was just some office building and residential plazas. It really was a city of rubble, and I was very disappointed that Qingdao was added to our itinerary instead of extending our stay in Hong Kong, or giving us a day in Hawaii later on in the voyage. This was SAS’s first stop in Qingdao, and for the sake of the experience of future voyagers, I hope it is the last. Anyways, we walked for hours just trying to find a decent restaurant to eat in. We eventually found a local café and ate there. The food was good, and after lunch we tried to figure out something else to do. We began walking around some more. We walked down by the water, and Grand and Ryan bought a kite from some guy on the beach. After that we headed back to the ship. Ryan, Quinn, Leah, Jess, Kerri and I decided to go out and try to find a restaurant to eat in. We asked some cab drivers to take us to a couple hotels we had written down, because we figured that a hotel might have a nice restaurant. The drivers had no idea where the places were, so the hotels we found had nothing in them. Not one person in Qingdao spoke English. That doesn’t make me upset, because I would expect that. We are in a foreign country, and I don’t expect people to know English, but when a couple people in the city know English, it helps. In Qingdao, we didn’t meet one person that knew English. It wasn’t a bad thing; it just made it more difficult than it usually is, and that didn’t help our view of the city. So, we walked for about an hour, found nothing but a KFC, so we ate there. After that, the only people that wanted to stay out and have a drink were Ryan, Kerri, and I. So, once again we walked, and walked, and walked. There were no bars. I don’t know if it is something in the Chinese culture, but I think it is just the fact that Qingdao is a city of rubble, because Beijing had lots of bars. After about 2 hours of walking, we found a bar. It led down underground. When we got down there, the lady led us to a private room. As we were walking to the room, we walked through a line of Chinese women on either side of this. I said, “Ryan, this is definitely a hooker bar.” He said, “Really?”, and I said I was pretty sure. We were led into the room, and it was really awkward. We were the only customers there. The lady came in and asked us if we wanted anything to drink. We each ordered a beer, and the lady left. It was quiet except for a TV in our room that was playing weird music videos. The lady came back, gave us our drinks, and then said, “Do you want Chinese women?” I was right, and Ryan and I looked at each other, Kerri started laughing, and we politely declined. We decided to finish our beers and then pay and leave, but when the lady came back in with a box of tissues and a trash can, we decided to leave then. We paid, took our beers, and grabbed a cab back to the ship. What an experience. I got on the ship, called my parents before we set sail, and then the ship left around 10pm on the night of April 8th, destined for our final port of Kobe, Japan.

So in conclusion, as always, I had a wonderful time in China, overall. Hong Kong is an awesome city, but I have realized that unless I want to spend more time there, I need to be a millionaire, because everything there is very high class. Beijing is definitely a city I would come back to. It is very interesting because China is the first culture we have been thrown in to that barely speaks English. Before this, enough of the people in the countries spoke it for us to get by, but in China, it was a little more difficult. It was a great experience. Still, we survived, and Beijing is a must see for anyone who gets the chance to visit. On the other hand, Qingdao is the only port I was not impressed with. It was a good thing we only spent a day there, because longer than that would have been bad. It was interesting to be thrown into a full blown non-English town, but the problem with going to such a small place is the lack of things to do.

So, that is all for this entry. I would like to extend a Happy Easter to everyone back home. Like I said before, we just left Japan, and it is April 16th, Easter Day. By the time you read this it will be Easter for you too. I think we are supposed to have an Easter dinner tonight on the ship. Eating cranberry sauce should be fun with all this crazy rocking! Expect my next entry in the next few days. I am going to go post this on my blog right now, head to Easter dinner, and then I am going to write about my favorite place in the world, and the country I fell in love with, Japan.

P.S. – I am a pro at chopsticks now ;-)

Fast-Paced Vietnam And Ancient CambodiaORScooter Hookers In Vietnam and Indiana Jones in Cambodia

Yes, that second title is a joke. During our pre-port meeting the night before docking in Vietnam, our Assistant Executive Dean Tom Jelke, or “The Voice” as he is called due to his many announcements over the PA system, did a presentation on some of the logistics of our debarkation in Ho Chi Minh City. At the end he had some pictures of all these girls on scooters and told us to beware of the scooter hookers. It was hilarious and scooter hookers, or “sco-hos” as we liked to refer to them, became a regular joke between me and my friends throughout our time there. Not to mention, the Vietnamese currency is the “Dong”, and you can only imagine that every time we discussed money it turned into a big joke. “Let me just take out my dong here…” Hahaha, it never gets old…

Anyways, on to Vietnam and Cambodia. What a great country. I had an absolute blast in Vietnam, even though most of my time was spent in the captivating country of Cambodia. Vietnam is crazy, and everyone is so nice there. All the Vietnamese love Americans, which is so surprising given the history of relations between Vietnam and America. The people in Vietnam would come up to us all the time to practice their English and to just learn about us and America. They are very nice, and not everyone tries to sell you something like in the past few countries we have visited. The same goes for the people of Cambodia as well. I am starting to ramble about random things so I am going to start my story so this all flows together…

The morning that we pulled into port I got up early. We had to travel up a river to reach the port of Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as it was formally named. The travel up the river took about 3 hours and it was amazing. Our huge ship barely fit, and the draft was sucking all the water out from the sides of the river and throwing it all back in. It looked like we were creating a tsunami, and I kind of felt bad for the Vietnamese fishermen in their tiny boats holding on for dear life as we passed. We docked around 8am, and several of the parents soon arrived who were on the parent trip to meet the ship. A couple of my friends parents were there and some teary reunions came about. After a couple hours, the ship was cleared for debarkation. I was still debating whether to go to a tailor with everyone. Suits are really cheap in Vietnam, and everyone was going to tailors to get one made. I eventually made the decision not to get one because I had to buy a new camera and buy a rail pass for Japan, and I did not want to load up my credit card with more stuff I didn’t really need. I don’t really need a new suit; I just got one in May. Anyways, Grant had a field trip to go on so we planned to meet him in the afternoon. Ryan, Alex, Mark, Quinn, Natalie, and I went out into the city. There was a shuttle that ran from the ship to the city center, and it only took 10 minutes. As soon as I set off the ship, I started sweating. It was incredibly humid out, and I was soon glad I brought my nalgene bottle in my backpack. We got off the shuttle, and immediately we were hassled by moped drivers and cab drivers for them to take us places. I thought India was bad for this, but in Vietnam they actually grab you and try and pull you on the motorcycle when you’re telling them you want to walk. We eventually realized that we didn’t know where the tailor everyone wanted to go to was, so we got on the back of the mopeds and told them to take us there. Welcome to the scariest and craziest moment of my life. Riding on the back of a motorcycle in Vietnam is the most hair raising experience I have ever had, even crazier than India. The traffic in India is like a moving brick wall. It is all mopeds and bicycles; there are very few cars or trucks. Therefore, there are so many of these and they absolutely FLY down the street. I was on the back of this moped, white knuckled and flying through intersections without even slowing down. I saw my life flash in front of my eyes at every turn and intersection. I looked at my friends on their “scooters”, and they were holding on to their drivers for dear life as we flew to our destination at high speeds narrowly missing other mopeds. I don’t know exactly what to call them; motorcycle, moped, or scooter. I have heard them called cyclos, maybe that’s what they are I don’t know. All I can tell you is they are fast and everyone has one. We seriously would fly right through an intersection without stopping, and all the other scooters coming in the other directions would just fly around us. It was crazy. We also learned before we came to Vietnam how to cross the streets with all the traffic. We were told that once we started crossing, just keep on walking at one pace, and do not stop, or you will get hit. This statement sounded ridiculous to me until I crossed the street for the first time. It was absolutely correct. Once you start crossing, you just keep going. All the traffic just flows around you like water flowing around a rock. If you do stop, which the girls always did, people would honk and slam on their brakes.

Anyways, after making several stops at crappy tailors we didn’t want, we finally got our drivers to take us to the place we wanted to go to, to find out that it was closed on Sundays. We paid our drivers, who of course wanted more money than we agreed on. They got what we agreed on, and we started walking down one of the main streets of Ho Chi Minh City. We found a tailor and went inside. We spent a couple hours there, I decided not to get a suit, but Mark, Ryan, and Alex did. After that, we went to go meet Grant at the shuttle stop. I figured that we would never find him in the craziness of the city and it would be like finding a needle in a hay stack. Besides, we were fifteen minutes late and I figured he had already left to go do something else. We reached the shuttle stop and I saw the over 6ft Grant towering over all the Vietnamese walking towards us. It was luck, but we found him. After that we decided to go to lunch. We found a place in the center of the city and had a wonderful lunch and a great time. I had a whole pizza, plate of garlic bread, Tiger beer, and coconut cake all for $9.00 U.S. We were at a really nice restaurant too. This was when I first realized how cheap this port was going to be. After lunch we decided to walk to the big market down the street. On the way to the market was all kinds of little cheap stores on the side of the street, so it took us a while to get there. It didn’t really matter because all the shops had most of the same stuff that was in the markets. We spent the day shopping, and I bought a ton of stuff, for so little money. Some items I bought were lots of bootleg DVD’s, t-shirts, and fake Rolex watches. Vietnam is known for its counterfeit items, and what’s great is you can not tell the difference. My bootleg DVD’s cost $1, and they are awesome. My $24 fake Rolex is still ticking, and I am wearing my $2 Tiger beer t-shirt right now. After our day of shopping, we headed back to the ship. We ate dinner and I went to bed early after watching my new “Just Friends” movie because I was exhausted and had to get up for my Cambodia trip the next morning.

I woke up early the second day and met Grant and we went to the union for our Cambodia trip. This was an SAS trip because you are not allowed to travel to Cambodia independently, as you can not travel outside the country we port in, it is prohibited unless on an SAS trip. We all left the ship and boarded the buses for our 1pm flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We arrived at the airport and got on our 40 minute flight. We boarded the buses when we got to Phnom Penh, and we started driving to the Royal Palace. The sites of Phnom Penh surprised me. The cities of Cambodia were much more developed than I thought they would be. When we drove through the rural areas it was how I had pictured it to be, but the cities were much more advanced than I had previously thought. It was really cool. The palace was made up of beautiful landscaped grounds and ornate buildings. It was unbelievably hot there, and I probably drank like 4 bottles of water. After that we went and visited the National Museum. Some of the artifacts were interesting, but you know how I am with museums. After that we went and checked into our hotel, the Phnom Penh Hotel. It was a really nice hotel. I am not sure why, but every hotel I have stayed in outside of the U.S. has a phone next to the toilet. I think Grant and Ryan are sick of getting calls from me on the toilet. There is also an entire control board on the nightstand next to the bed that controls the TV, air conditioning, alarm clock, and lights in the room. It is like the lazy man’s heaven. Anyways, we dropped off our bags, I changed into shorts, and we boarded the buses to head to the river. When we reached the river, we boarded big long boats and took a sunset cruise down the Mekong River. It was really interesting, and we passed all sorts of little river villages, and I got to see what rural life is like in Cambodia. It was fascinating. There was no electricity in the villages, and all the people lived off the land and the river. After the boat ride, we transferred to a restaurant for dinner. There was tons of food, and I knew what none of it was. Jen and I had a fun time trying to figure out what some of the things were. Luckily, a lot of it turned out to have coconut in it, which my favorite. They had coconut ice cream, and I was in heaven. It is rare I see ice cream, let alone my favorite flavor. Jen told me not to get her any, but I did anyways. These girls and not eating junk food, what’s up with that? After enjoying our wonderful ice cream, we went back to the hotel. Grant and I had a beer in the hotel bar, which cost me $3.30, which was odd. In the bar we met an American diplomat who works with the embassy. He was really cool and told us all about his job, and it sounds really interesting. We were to get up early, so I finished my beer and went to bed.

The 7am wake up call did its job, and I showered and met down in the lobby. We first drove to the Toul Sleng museum. Before I talk about my experience at this museum, let me say that Cambodia, and Phnom Penh in particular, has a very dark but recent history. This history is not publicized much, and many people don’t even know about it. I was never taught about it in school, and very few people on our trip knew the full extent of what happened in the mid to late 1970’s. The Khmer Rouge regime could easily be compared to the Nazi party of Germany. In my opinion, what this regime did was just as bad as what the Nazis did, if not worse. Mass genocide was executed by the Khmer Rouge regime against the Cambodian people. The museum we visited was called Toul Sleng, and it used to be a Khmer Rouge prison called S-21. This prison was secret, and it housed many people who opposed the horrible Khmer Rouge. One of the first signs I saw when I entered the prison had a phrase in it that said, “There were over 12,000 prisoners in Toul Sleng from 1975-1978, and out of those 12,000, only a dozen survived. That was when the severity of this conflict actually hit me. I did not take many pictures in this museum, as it was very disturbing. It affected me a lot more than I thought it would have. Several of the rooms that you walk in had nothing in it but a steel bed. On the bed was a torture device, and above the bed was a picture of a dead body on that exact bed with the torture device. It was very simple, yet it said everything. It was incredibly powerful. A lot of people there were crying. What made it more disturbing was that it happened so recently. It was only 30 years ago that this took place. I would have expected it to have happened in the early 1900’s. Other rooms that I went in had walls and walls of pictures of the prisoners who were held there. Some of the pictures were of them alive, and many of them were pictures of them dead. Many of these prisoners were children. We left the museum and I read my pamphlet about it the entire bus ride back. I was blown away that I have never learned about something that had happened only several years before I was born, and it was something that had such an awful impact on the people of Cambodia. I had no idea Cambodia had a history like this, and I was immediately glad I chose this trip. After leaving the museum we went to the killing fields. This is where the Khmer Rouge carried out their genocide. As soon as I walked onto the grounds of the killing fields, I immediately felt like I had entered the remains of a Nazi concentration camp. There were two structures on the killing fields. They were both built to tell the story of what happened. One of these structures was a small pavilion that showed pictures and told the history of what happened at the killing fields. It told how these murders were more brutal than the murders of the Germans. Everyone just sat their silently and read the signs. Right next to that was a tall thin large structure. The structure was made of glass, and it was filled with human skulls. I wasn’t sure what to think. It was disturbing, but at the same time it gave me an understanding of the amount of people that were killed. I will never forget being that close to that many human remains before. I then went and walked around the mass graves of the killing fields. 86 of the 129 mass graves have been unearthed, and there are still over 8,000 people buried in the graves. I wish I could describe to you how bad I felt for these people who suffered and were killed on the grounds I was standing on. No words will describe the feeling of being at that site. I just had no idea…

After the killing fields we drove to the Russian market. Why it is called the Russian market, I have no clue. It is a huge market with all kinds of stuff, most of the same stuff that is in the markets of Vietnam. Grant and I bought some bootleg computer programs. He got $1,000 worth of Adobe software for $7. I bought some DVD authoring programs. After the markets we went to a restaurant. The restaurant was cool, but the food was a little weird. Grant, Jen, and I sat at a table with about 5 other people and there was a big circular plate in the middle of the table that spun. They would bring platters of food and place them on there and we would spin it around and take the food. The food was a little strange, especially the gelatin type desert that was so sticky that it would pick up the plate when you tried to grab it with your fork. After lunch we drove to the airport for our flight to Siem Reap. Siem Reap is another city in Cambodia. It is where Angkor Wat and all the other Angkor temples are located. The main thing I had wanted to do on this entire voyage was see the temple complex of Angkor Wat. So as you can imagine, when we got off the plane I was so excited to go. We boarded the buses and drove to Angkor Wat for sunset. As we approached it I could not see the 3 distinct temples that make up the complex. It wasn’t until I walked through the first stone building that Angkor Wat appeared. It was spectacular and I was so happy to be there. I ran off and explored the entire complex within a half an hour. I was so excited to be there. I felt like Indiana Jones. Angkor Wat was built in 1150, and it was insane walking around in a temple that people had built with their bare hands over 900 years ago. I eventually found a small temple just outside of the complex that was deserted from tourists and SAS’ers, so I sat on it all by myself and watched the sun set behind me and cast its shadows on Angkor Wat. It was so peaceful and I was as happy as can be. When I told my Grandma I was going to try really hard to get to Angkor Wat, she told me I have to go and I can not miss it for anything. She was right. After the sunset, we went to a restaurant where we had Tiger beer, lots of good food that I could tell what it was, and coconut ice cream! There was a cultural dance show which was interesting, and then we went to the Prince D’Angkor hotel to check in. We checked in, and Grant and I were walking around when we found the huge beautiful pool. It was one of the nicest and biggest pools I had ever seen. The scenery all around it was set up so you felt like you were swimming in an ancient temple. So of course, we went swimming with a bunch of other SAS’ers until around midnight, and then I went to bed.

The next morning I awoke at 4:30am to go to an optional sunrise tour of Angkor Wat. It was optional, but who would miss that? Apparently a lot of people went drinking the night before (some things will never change on this voyage) so only about 20 people showed up. The sunrise unfortunately wasn’t that great. It was very cloudy and foggy, and we didn’t see the sun. It was ok though because I got to spend more time at Angkor Wat. After that we went back to the hotel for breakfast. After breakfast we visited Ta Prohm and Preah Khan temples. Both of them were incredible. They were set back in the jungle and they had trees, roots, and vines growing all over them as you climbed through. It really felt like I was in an Indiana Jones movie. After the temples we went back to the hotel for lunch, checked out, and then headed out to another temple of Angkor called Bayon. It was a really cool temple. It wasn’t sent back in the jungle as much as the other ones, but the carvings in the building were amazing. Many of the parts of the temple were carved into large faces, and it was freaky when you turn a corner and there is a huge stone face staring at you. After that we visited many of the terraces and gates of the temples outside of the complex. Right outside of the Bayon temple were a few shops, and I picked up an amazing painting of Angkor Wat from a local artist for $20. Not to mention I had bought many t-shirts as well. After all our temple visits we headed back to the airport. In the airport, I bought lots of candy, and we feasted on mentos, jelly bellys, and all sorts of candy we have missed in the U.S. We flew back to Ho Chi Minh City and arrived back at the ship around 10pm.

I got up the next day around 9am, and Ryan, Quinn, Kelly and I headed out to spend the day in Ho Chi Minh City again. The first day I was in the city before we left for Cambodia, I saw a lot of amazing Vietnamese swords. I had spent the next few days trying to figure out how to get one home if I bought one. I was not allowed to bring it on the ship, which is ridiculous. I want to hang it on my wall, not kill anyone. They wont even store it for you on the ship which I think is awful. So my options of bringing it home on the ship were out. I realized my only other option would be is to ship it. So when we went out in the morning I went to find a Fedex store. We eventually found one after about an hour of searching, and I learned that if I wanted to ship any type of package to the United States, it would cost me at least $130. Seeing as I could buy a sword for under $50, I was not about to spend that much to ship it. So, much to my disappointment, I did not buy a really cool Vietnamese sword. After figuring out that wasn’t possible, we shopped at the market for a bit and then went to a place called “Underground” for lunch. We had awesome food, and Ryan and I played some pool. He won every game. Not playing in 3 months has gotten me rusty. After that, Ryan and Quinn had to go back to the ship for a trip to a museum, so Kelly and I walked around the markets some more and bought tons of bootleg DVD’s. I bought EVERY season of Seinfeld for $24. I am not even going to list the $1 movies I bought, there are so many. I have been watching them and they are awesome. After that we somehow found Grant again at his tailor, and then we just shopped with him until we met Ryan and Quinn again at 4. Ryan went to pick up his suit and then we went to a travel agent we had checked out earlier. We needed to buy our rail passes for Japan. Grant, Ryan and I are going to travel all over Japan together, so we needed to buy a rail pass so we can get to and from the cities we want to go to. The rail pass cost us $323, but it is worth it, and it is our only option. So after buying our rail passes we went back to the ship and dropped all our stuff off. About an hour later, we went out to dinner. We were walking around Ho Chi Minh City trying to figure out where to eat, when we ran into a couple of the adult passengers we knew. They are a really nice couple, and they told us how to get to a restaurant that they just came from. They said that it was a local place and we would be the only white people there, but the food is really good and they both ate dinner for a combined total of $10. On that note we were sold, so we walked a little ways until we found the place. They were right, and we were the only foreigners in the place. It was a crazy experience and I am glad we went there. The place was all open air, and there were hundreds of tables. The place was packed, and there were Vietnamese people drinking, being loud, and having a great time. It was very lively, and we felt so out of place but were having a great time. We had several Vietnamese people just pull a chair up to our table and talk to us. Like I said, they love to talk to Americans. We ordered our food, but apparently the way the restaurant works is you just order food for the table. If we had known that, we wouldn’t each have ordered a meal, because they were huge, we ended up with four huge plates of all kinds of rice and shrimp in front of us. We had more food than we knew what to do with. I ordered rice with pineapple, which I assumed was rice with chunks of pineapple in it. Instead, I was surprised to see them bring to the table an entire pineapple, cut in half, filled with fried rice, and then closed back up. It was hilarious but it tasted so good. In the end, we ended up paying only about $6 each for the massive meal and beer we had. It was a great night, and we decided to go to the Rex Hotel. Apparently the Rex hotel is famous because during the Vietnam War, all the soldiers would drink on top of the hotel as fighting and the war went on in the streets below. Everyone says that having a drink on top of the Rex hotel is something you must do, so we did. We went to the top, and there was a band playing and there were palm trees lit up and it was very lively. We had a drink, hung out for a bit, and then called it a night. On ship time was 11pm, we got back around 10pm, and then I hung out with people and shared pictures until I went to bed.

That is all for Vietnam and Cambodia. I had a great time, and I really hope to come back and visit some day. Maybe next time I can get my sword. Life on the ship has been great. Time between the ports has only been two or three days, so we have been busy between them. We dock in Hong Kong tomorrow. The ship will be there for two days, and then it sails and docks in Qingdao for two days. We are not required to be on the ship during that time, but we must meet the ship in Qingdao on the last day. I will be spending the first day in Hong Kong, then flying to Beijing, spending 3 days there, and then meeting the ship in Qingdao and spending the second day there. In Beijing I will see things such as the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, etc. I can not wait. There is a little under a month left in this voyage. After Hong Kong and Qingdao, all that is left is Japan. I am not ready for it to end. I don’t want it to end…

P.S. – I am still trying to fix my computer. I promise to have it fixed this week and get my Myanmar, Vietnam, and Cambodia pictures up.


Quote of the week:
Me – “The ship is moving so slow, I think a turtle just passed us.”
Quinn – “It was probably just a circular shaped log.”
Me – “Wow that went right over your head…”