I was able to find some free internet really close to the ship to download my email and check the latest tournament scores before getting back to the ship for the last time. We weren’t able to leave at our initial departure time of 11pm because the tide was too low in the area that we were anchored. It was kind of interesting because there was a heavy current in the area as well, so even though we were anchored and on the ship, the ship still moved with the free rope from the anchor. They’ve told us that even though we won’t be able to leave until the early morning, we’ll still reach Vietnam in time, we’ll just go a little faster. David had a good point while we were in Langkawi on the last day of Malaysia. The difference between a tourist and a traveler is that a tourist does everything through a tour agency and a traveler figures it out for themselves. I never want to be considered a tourist. It’s WAY cheaper to do it on your own. A tour agency is going to take a commission, they’re not going to search for the cheapest prices, and you’re going to be stuck to a schedule. Traveling independently is much more fun as well.
Malaysia was awesome; I definitely want to come back to the area and visit KL (again), Singapore, Bangkok, and some of the other surrounding cities. I would have to say it’s probably my 2nd favorite stop so far, after South Africa. A lot of people were worried that they were going to get sick on this trip from eating some bad food somewhere. Fortunately, I haven’t run into any problems yet (knock on wood). Most everything I’ve ate has been nothing short of delicious.
I was able to mail out half of my postcards before leaving Malaysia. I ran out of stamps so I wasn’t able to mail all of them. I’ll be sure to try and get as many as I can out while we’re in Vietnam.
Photos up to India have been uploaded so far. I did upload some from India but was reluctant because I haven’t put captions on them yet, so I’ll go back and put captions on them at a later time. Enjoy the pictures! Most of them are in order, but there were some problems so you’ll probably notice a few out of order. Sorry about that.
I overheard a faculty member saying that they’ve never actually had a case of Malaria on SAS. This surprised me at first, but when I thought about it they do give us constant reminders to take our Malaria medicine and wear our sunscreen with DEET whenever we go to a place that could have malaria.
We’ve been passing a lot of islands and ships on our way to Singapore today. You can also feel the ship turn at times to maneuver between the islands. I guess I never really thought about it, but Malaysia is scattered with a ton of different islands.
We spent about 12 hours bunkered in Singapore to “take advantage of some lower fuel prices.” We just anchored again in an area that had a lot of other ships anchored. We weren’t able to get off the ship though and still had to attend classes, which kind of stinks since we’re not moving anywhere, but oh well. I didn’t actually see this but apparently some planes from the Singapore Air Force were flying over this morning and saw a bunch of people laying out on the back decks so they started doing some tricks for them and basically just showing off, which was pretty cool. I wish I saw it. At one point they put their smoke on and 3 planes made a heart with an arrow through it, pretty hilarious.
So since this is the most travel intense part of our trip we only have 3 days between ports. This means that we have pre-port the day after we return, which is awesome. We also have an interport lecturer and student to give us tips/pointers for Vietnam which have been really helpful. We’ve had these people come on the ship before but they’re not always that helpful, these were probably some of the best at giving us the important information.
I have no idea how this works since we’re still going East, but we set our clocks forward one hour before reaching Vietnam. They actually say our cocks need to be “retarded” one hour. (WHAT?!) I’ve never heard that term used for setting your clocks forward, but they used the term multiple times and it shows that on our TV as well. Weird.
The night before we docked in Vietnam 10 of us guys got together to have a fantasy baseball draft, which went pretty well if you ask me. I feel confident with my current team, although I may need to pick up or trade for one or two better relievers.
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