So I know i haven't wrote about Costa Rica yet (which was awesome) but I wanted to let you all know that the MV Explorer (our ship) will be passing through the Panama Canal tomorrow (Tuesday, May 6th, 2008). We will be going through at 7:40am and will be leaving around 6:40pm. There are web cams setup online to allow people to watch ships pass though. I haven’t checked out the website but they tell us that you just go to this url:

http://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html

Then look for where we are. Below are the times they’ve given us for when we’re going through each part of the canal. All times are Central

Mira Flores locks: Arriving 0740 Departing 0850

Pedro Miguel: Arriving 1000, Departing 1040

Passing Gamboa 1330 (1:30pm)

Gatun locks: Arriving 1450 (2:50pm), Departing 1710 (5:10pm)ETD

Cristobal 1840 (6:40pm)

Just thought that some of you might be interested in watching us pass though :) I look forward to seeing you all soon!

Day 90 – Hawaii

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2008

We ended up getting into Hawaii really early in the morning, earlier than any other port that we’ve been to. We’re basically only stopping here to refuel but they’re being nice and letting us off for a day. Anyway, we were able to get off the ship shortly after 9am this morning. The first thing I did was call Verizon to reactivate my phone. For some reason they had some extensive troubles with that and it took like an hour, but I didn’t really care because I was able to use my phone for the rest of the day! (this was really exciting for pretty much everyone on the ship). We then got some internet at a nearby Starbucks for about an hour. Our ship docked in the port of Honolulu, which is in Oahu Island and really close to Waikiki beach.

After getting internet we headed to the Waikiki beach area to get some food. We ate at a place called Dukes which we soon learned was a famous restaurant in the area. We split a couple orders of delicious nachos and I had a bacon cheeseburger which was ‘oh so tasty’. Hah.

After filling up with food we headed down the beach a little ways to where we had scheduled some surfing lessons. None of us had ever been surfing before so we were all pretty excited about catching some waves in Hawaii. We had a good teacher (Keny) and I was able to get up on my first wave – very exciting! The hardest part about surfing (after our first time) is probably just getting up to speed with the waves by paddling. All of our arms were dead tired by the end of the day. I caught at least 5 different waves and rode them for a while. There was also another girl from the company that we went through that took some great pictures of us out there and on the waves so I’m excited to show you all those. Waikiki beach is a really pretty area, I wish we would have had a couple days to relax here. One day isn’t nearly enough! For the rest of the day we just hung out on the beach with some other SAS people that we ran into.

For dinner we wanted to check out a local sports bar to watch some baseball and just hang out, and we found a great place, but they wouldn’t let anyone under 21 in the bar and of the 10 of us, Jim still has a month to go until he’s 21 so we had to leave. Somehow though we found another place nearby that served some awesome pizza. Before we knew it we had to rush back to the ship so we didn’t receive dock time for being late. Customs in Hawaii is worse than any other port though, they make us go through two very tough security checks. It was like we were going into airport security every time we wanted to go back to the ship. This caused some really long lines about 30 minutes before on-ship time at 9pm. Thankfully, our dean came outside to tell us that we wouldn’t receive dock time as long as we were in line. I made it on the ship with a few minutes to spare though, just to be safe. I’ll definitely be coming back to Hawaii. One day is just a tease!

Day 82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89 – Back on the ship

I’m just going to bunch all of these days at sea together since not a whole lot new and exciting happens and I’m sure you would rather read about my adventures in our ports than my adventures on our ship.



We started our journey across the Pacific with crossing the International dateline, so we had two April 15th’s back to back. At the same time I jumped from being 14 hours ahead of CST to 10 hours behind CST. It was kind of depressing knowing that we had to repeat a day, but what can ya do.

After gaining an entire day, we lost an hour each day for 5 days in a row. Let me tell you, that REALLY messes up any sleep schedule you might have had before. I can’t say I’ve really had much of a sleep schedule on this trip anyway since we’ve been constantly losing hours. The only bad part of going around the world this way is that we lose hours of sleep constantly instead of gaining them if we would have went around the world the other way. I’m not complaining though! I think our itinerary was the best of any SAS trip that I’ve seen.

I basically have all of my school work for the rest of the semester assigned to me by now so I’m going to try to get as much done ahead of time as I can. That way I can just sit back and relax for the rest of this trip. We’ll see how that goes though, studying on a ship with 700 other students isn’t exactly an easy task.

We set up a ‘Specialty Dinner’ on the second April 15th that we had to celebrate a couple people’s birthdays and just to have a good meal for once. You have to pay extra for it, but they serve you a 4 course meal and you get to pick what you want off of a menu. The food is also different than our regular dining hall food too so that’s always a plus. I never considered myself a picky eater but when they serve you the same general thing every day it’s hard not to get sick of it.

On our one day off from classes we had a Gay Pride day that started off with a BBQ on the 7th deck aft that was amazing. Probably some of the best food that I’ve had on this trip yet (besides taco day of course). The day ended with a fashion show put on by the GLBT group on board. It was pretty funny.

Nights are still filled with a variety of different games. Lately it’s been a lot of poker, but they have a lot of board games that we can rent out and I’ve learned about 10 new card games to play. To say the least, we find stuff to keep us busy.

One day over this long stretch I took a bridge tour of the control room of the ship. It was pretty cool. The bridge actually wasn’t too big but it still had a lot of stuff in it to help navigate the ship. We’re currently on some smooth open waters so the ship is on autopilot. It also has by far the best view from the front of the ship looking out into the ocean. I could sit up there all day and just watch us cut through the ocean.

We’ve had a long heated debate for pretty much the entire voyage as to whether or not there are guns on the ship. The crew tells us that there aren’t any guns on the ship and when we go through pirate infested waters we just crank up the speed because we’re faster than any pirate ship out there. We also have some powerful water hoses that we would shoot at them if they tried to come on board. Pirates typically don’t attack cruise ships either. However, if they were to come onboard (according to them) we would have no defenses against them. So I think that they do have guns somewhere on the ship and they just don’t tell us but some other people insist that they don’t have any guns anywhere on the ship. What do you all think?



Ok, on a side topic I just wanted to let you all know that I’m going to be reorganizing all of my pictures on Flickr when I get home so they’re easier to look at and navigate through. There’s special ways to customize my collections so I think I’ll spend some extra time when I return to do that. There’s also a very slim chance that I’m going to be able to upload any more pictures before I return to the states so be sure to check back for updates when I get home if you want to see pictures! I’ve got lots and lots!

Day 81 – Japan Day 4 – Hiroshima and Kobe

Not everyone wanted to head to Hiroshima today so just Jim and I took the Shinkansen from Kyoto to Hiroshima. We had to take a connecting train in Shin-Osaka to get to Hiroshima. Little did we know, that train actually goes through and stops in Shin-Kobe, where our ship is docked. Had we known this before we would have just headed back to the ship last night to sleep there then head to Hiroshima.

The train wasn’t too long, a little less than two hours. Learning from our earlier mistakes and being limited for time, we headed straight for the tourist information center to figure out how to get to the Hiroshima Peace Park. It actually ended up being really easy, we can just take a trolly there from the train station. I thought I was going to lose Jim for a few minutes while we were in the train station because they were showing the Yankees – Red Sox game live on TV. Since it was the morning in Japan, we were able to watch Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN. Luckily I was able to pull him away from the TV and we were able to get to the Peace Park. The trolly is a great idea other than the fact that I moves at a pace near 2mph.

Right when we got off of the trolly we were at the A-Bomb Dome, a building that somehow survived the blast even though it was located near the epicenter of the explosion. After that there’s a beautiful park to walk through with a bunch of different monuments dedicated to different causes related to the bomb on Hiroshima, including the flame that won’t be put out until all nuclear weapons are dismantled and the children’s memorial. All very powerful

Next we went into the a-bomb museum located in the park. The museum is centered on peace, not about how terrible the Americans were for dropping the bomb. In a couple exhibits they even say that the Japanese did some pretty terrible things during the war, so I never got the feeling of a one-sided museum like I did in Japan. The two hours we spent in the museum wasn’t nearly enough. We started out going through the museum and stopping to read everything, then had to pick up the pace because we were running out of time. I think we could have easily spent 5+ hours in the museum, not even counting the surrounding park area. Overall an excellent museum and dedication to the people of Hiroshima and the atrocities that come from a nuclear attack and war in general. They did a great job of putting everything together in an appropriate manner to get their message across. It was so powerful. I would have to say that my feelings surrounding the decision to drop the bomb definitely changed after walking through there.

Being very short on time now, we walked through the rest of the park (which was very beautiful) then grabbed a taxi back to the train station. We both concluded that the trolly would definitely get us there too late. Being so short on time we had to suck it up and eat at a McDonalds. I really don’t like to do that just because we’re in Japan I think we should experience Japanese food. However, the McDonalds tasted so good. All of the McDonalds in Japan advertise this ‘Mega Mac’ which is essentially a double Big Mac. Two patties instead of one, so I decided that I had to try it. It was good, but I think I was expecting better. You know the difference between a cheeseburger and a double cheeseburger? This wasn’t even close to that. It just tasted like a big Big Mac, which isn’t bad by any means. We were able to make it to our train just in time, we had less than 5 minutes to spare before it left.

Having not spent any time in Kobe where our ship was docked, we wanted to go out to dinner for some Kobe Beef, supposedly the best beef in the world. While it was relatively expensive I would have to agree that it was the best steak I’ve ever had, hands down. Well worth the money we had to spend on it. We ate at this restaurant where they cook everything right in front of you (I forget what those restaurants are called). It was so tasty it’s hard for me to talk about it right now because I’m hungry and that was probably the best meal I’ve ever had in my life. It even beats the Peking Duck in Beijing.

After dinner we just headed back to the ship in just enough time to get on the ship. Luckily we didn’t have any bags so we could skip that part of the security check.

Japan is awesome. I would have to put it at #2 on the list of countries we visited. I just wish we had more time here!

Day 80 – Japan day 3 – Kyoto

This morning we woke up and headed straight for the train station to grab a Shinkansen to Kyoto for the day. All of us have heard nothing but good things about Kyoto so we really wanted to check it out even though we didn’t get to do everything that we wanted to in Tokyo. First order of business was to find a place to stay for the night. Now I’ve came to the conclusion that looking at a Lonely Planet book at the last second to figure out where to stay isn’t the best idea, but I guess some of the guys that I’m with haven’t figured that out yet. So we search the city for a good hour trying to find this place the book suggests to us. Once we finally find it they tell us that they’re out of rooms. Trying not to repeat our mistakes from yesterday of walking around a city looking for a place to stay while carrying our backpacks, we headed back to the train station to put our bags into a locker for the time being. While we were there we found this tourist information center hidden away on the top floor that had a ton of suggestions for where we could stay as well as things that we could do for our day in Kyoto. It was great. We should have stopped here to figure things out right away. It would have saved us over an hour. Anyway, they gave us a ton of useful information and pointed us in the direction that we wanted to go to experience Kyoto. Our final conclusion was that if we don’t find a place to stay for cheap tonight then we would stay at an Internet Café for the night. I know all of you are thinking that that’s just weird, but apparently a lot of people do it in Japan. It’s not an internet café like you would think of in the states. Everyone has their own cubicle type thing with a really comfortable chair, tv, and computer . Then you just pay them for however many hours you want to stay there. Some of the more expensive plans include a couch and blankets to sleep with. It’ll be an experience that’s for sure!

Next stop was lunch, since we were all starving. By the way, our group of 6 that we started with is now down to 4. David and Garret wanted to stay in Tokyo for the day so they could catch a big soccer game that was happening tonight. We’ve had pretty good luck picking out restaurants by just walking around and looking inside then at a menu before sitting down. We ran into the same luck today. Possibly one of the best meals we’ve had on this trip so far. It’s kind of hard to describe but basically we sat at this table with an iron hot plate in the middle. Then when our food comes they just put it on the hot plate to continue cooking and keep the food hot. I had some noodle and chicken combination that was amazing. I would have to say that so far Japan has had the best food of any country we’ve been to. With the exception of Peking Duck in Beijing, this could have been one of the best meals I’ve ever had. I officially love Japanese food.

On our quest to conquer every mode of transportation available in Japan, we took a city bus the the main part of the city. Kyoto is a very busy place. There were tons of younger Japanese people everywhere in the area that we were at. All dressed up in their crazy clothes and wild hair. I could easily get a sense that the young population in Japan is very fashionable. Soon after getting off of the bus it started sprinkling/raining off and on. This could continue throughout the night.

Even though it was raining we still wanted to check out this Buddhist temple nearby. I can’t remember the name of it but it was relatively close and is known for how lit up it is at night. As we got there the rain picked up a bit so we all had to buy umbrella’s to walk through this beautiful garden/shrine area. The area was relatively big and took an hour or so to get through it all. Very cool nonetheless.

Chris and Jim are pretty big sushi fans and they’ve been really wanting to have some sushi while in Japan so our next stop was at a random sushi place that the tourist information desk at the train station recommended to us. Like I’ve said before, I’ve never been a big fan of sushi but at the same time I’ve never had good sushi. This place served great sushi and may have turned me into a sushi fan in general. I’m not really sure what I ordered (seems to be a pattern here) but Chris gave me some suggestions that turned out great. The place was cheap as well, so double plus.

The rain seems to have put a damper on the liveliness of the area of Kyoto that we’re in. When we first got here it was happenin but ever since it started raining and night came there’s a lot less people in the streets. This could also be because it’s a Sunday night, oh well. While we were walking around we found this place that sold stuffed crepes. Randi had told me about how awesome this place was and just by looking at one we all instantly knew that we wanted one. It’s basically the same thing as a regular crepe, except it’s stuffed with goodness like ice cream and fruit. They had a variety of different things to put into the crepes, but most of it was desert-oriented. I got one filled with strawberry and vanilla ice cream with real strawberries, bananas, and pears. This thing was so good. They closed shortly after we got one otherwise I might have gotten two.

Arcades seem to be a big thing around Japan so we decided to check one out. This isn’t anything like your stereotypical mall arcade, and there’s a ton of them everywhere so we just picked one. We wanted to just chill and play some pool but they had some ridiculous prices and we’re all broke at this point. They wanted to charge us per person and per table. So we couldn’t rent out one pool table for an hour and just rotate between the 4 of us, we would each have to pay separately. Pretty bogus if you ask me. Anyway, Jim and Kev decided to play a few games while Chris and I checked out the rest of this huge arcade. They had bowling on the top two floors and about every game you could think of on the rest of the floors. After a few hours here we headed to the internet café to turn in for the night. I was on the internet for so long before I decided to go to sleep that I ran out of things to do. Granted I would have had more to do if I was on my own computer. Sad, I know. Being deprived of the internet for 3.5 months when you’re used to spending all day on it isn’t easy! Haha, anyway I got some sleep so we could wake up early to catch an early train to Hiroshima. Sleeping here also saved us each a nice chunk of money so that’s always a plus. All in all, Kyoto is a pretty awesome place to visit. Too bad we don’t have more time in Japan because there’s a ton to do here that we weren’t able to do.

Day 80 Japan day 2 - Tokyo

After waking up from an uncomfortable sleep in a pod, we headed to the sumo stadium. We can get anywhere that we want via Tokyo by train for free with our rail pass, so we don’t have to worry about taking a taxi everywhere. That’s such a good feeling after having to worry about taxi’s as our only mode of transportation for the past 3 months. The first sumo place that we stopped was the main, huge stadium. It’s not really ‘sumo season’ right now though and there was another event going on so we couldn’t go inside. There lady at the ticket office who spoke perfect English pointed us to the location of a few stables where we could find the sumo guys practicing and living. They weren’t too far away so we decided to check those out. The first sumo place we got to was open but nobody was inside. It was basically just a small gym but instead of a boxing ring they had a sumo circle. It was weird how the whole place was open but nobody was inside of it. We felt like we were intruding so we left to go to another one nearby. The second place we found the guy at the door stopped us from coming in because the guys were resting. I didn’t see them but Kev said he saw like 10 huge sumo guys just lying on the floor. I guess we’ve already missed the time to watch them practice. Early morning is the best time to see them and it was already noon.

We ate lunch at a random little restaurant that looked good from the outside. I couldn’t really tell you what I had, something with vegetables and chicken that was REALLY good.

Next stop was the Tokyo Dome to get tickets for the baseball game tonight. Japanese baseball is kind of funny because a lot of the teams have very similar jerseys to American baseball teams. Tokyo’s baseball team is called the Yomiuri Giants (apparently Yomiuri is their sponsor) and tonight they’re playing the Yakult Swallows, another team based near Tokyo. The prices of tickets were relatively the same as in the US. That’s kind of been the case for everything in Japan thus far. We consider it expensive though because we’re used to being able to get everything for cheap in the countries we’ve been to lately.

We still had a few hours before the game started so we decided to head to Shinjuku, another area in Tokyo that was recommended to us. We all had been carrying our bags around all day so we really wanted to find somewhere to stay for the night that we could leave our bags at. That’s easier said than done though. We ended up walking around for 2+ hours trying to find a place to stay. All of the big hotels in the area were booked or somewhere we really didn’t want to stay. Finally we found a hotel that could accommodate for 6 people. It’s interesting how in Japan they don’t let you squeeze a bunch of people into a room. We wanted to fit 6 people into a single room with 3 beds but they knew that we had 6 people so we had to get two rooms with 3 beds for a ridiculous price. We were pretty desperate by this time though and decided to just go with it. The game had already started and we didn’t want to miss any more of it. So we got a room at the Hotel Kent, the most expensive cheap hotel I’ve ever stayed in then headed to the Tokyo Dome.

The game was great. The Tokyo Dome is similar to the Metrodome but about half the size. If you’ve ever watched a soccer game in a foreign country, where the entire crowd is into it and there are chants constantly going, that’s what this game was like. The atmosphere wasn’t at all like a Major League game. There were two sections of the stadium that lead the cheers for both of the teams and the cheers went constantly the entire game. When the Giants were up to bat, they would have the right to cheer then when the Swallows were up it would be their turn to cheer. Pretty sweet if you ask me. The Giants ended up losing however.

After the game we headed back to Shinjuku then tried to find an ATM before going out. Finding an international ATM in Japan was harder than any other country we’ve been to. There are tons of ATM’s around but they’re all for local credit cards. Finally, after searching for probably an hour we found a Citibank building that would take international cards.

Shinjuku seemed like a little busier of an area than Shibuya but we still didn’t have a whole lot of plans for the night. It also started raining while we were walking around so we had to find something quickly. We ended up going into this building that had all night bowling. The place was actually relatively full for how late it was. Even though none of us are any good at bowling it was still a good time.

Day 79 Japan Day 1 – Kobe to Tokyo

Japan customs took a really long time to clear the ship this morning. Everyone on the ship had to get their temperature checked and have a ‘face-to-face’ with a Japanese customs official. This didn’t consist of too much though other than going up to the faculty/staff lounge and getting our passport, showing it to them, and then walking in front of a camera that shows them our body temperature. The ship finally cleared around 2pm. Everyone had pretty much the same itinerary for when the first got off of the ship: go redeem our Japan Railways (JR) Rail Pass. What I got before in Vietnam was actually just a voucher for a 7 day JR rail pass, we have to go to an actual ticket office in Japan to redeem our rail pass for when we want to use it. Almost everyone on the ship got a rail pass, so the line was really long. This was expected though.
The JR rail pass covers us for all JR lines like the Shinkansen which is a bullet train that has lines going all over the country. The only line we’re not allowed on is the Nozomi, which is just a little faster than the regular lines. The pass also covers us on the extensive train system in Tokyo. So basically, we’re good to go anywhere we want in the country without having to pay anymore, which I think is pretty sweet. It’s definitely a must get for any traveler who wants to travel around Japan

Once we finally got our pass we found out that the next rain to Tokyo leaves in less than an hour (the trains all run pretty frequently) so we went and got ready to board for a few days in Tokyo.
I got some great tips from Randi Williams who spent a semester in Japan on things to do in Japan. If it wasn’t for her suggestions we would have been lost. Thanks Randi!!
Once we got into Tokyo we headed over to Shibuya which is just a neighborhood in Tokyo where there’s lots of stuff to do. With a little luck we were able to find our way there relatively quickly from the main Tokyo train station. Our first order of business was to find somewhere to sleep it was the weekend again so this turned our trickier than originally expected. We ended up staying in what they call a capsule. Basically there’s just this room with a bunch of holes in the wall, about twice the size of a coffin or so. Each capsule consists of an uncomfortable mattress and pillow, TV, Radio, and headphones. At the foot of your capsule there’s a screen that you can put down so people don’t bother you. It was quite the experience. There were lockers on the first floor where we had to put our shoes in (you can’t wear your shoes around the building), then there are more lockers on the 2nd floor that are bigger where we can put some of our bigger personal belongings, like our backpacks and such. I think there are also some public showers or a spa or something on one of the floors but I never ventured there. Another interesting thing about this place, we ordered our room through a machine.. like a vending machine thing located in the lobby. Everything on it was written in Japanese but the guy at the front desk helped us out so that was nice. You can’t check into your capsule until 5pm and you have to check out by 10am. If you wish to stay multiple nights, you have to leave and come back at 5pm. So yup.. that’s what a capsule is like in Japan. Each capsule costs right around $35/night.

We randomly ran into some other Americans staying at the same capsules that night. Two guys who at first told us they were here teaching English to Japanese students about 30 miles away. As the night went on they eventually admitted to us that they were from the US Navy and couldn’t tell us that at first due to security concerns. They’re stationed about an hour away from Tokyo. Last week some sailor from the US killed a Japan taxi driver, so tensions are still high in the area. They were nice guys though, they showed us around the area and where we could go for a nice cheap dinner and even some English pubs in the area. Dinner at this random restaurant that we found was pretty amazing. We split up for dinner though because Chris, Kev and Garret decided that Wendy’s sounded better than some authentic Japanese food. (don’t ask me how they came up with that reasoning).
Luckily, by the end of the night we were all so tired that we didn’t care how uncomfortable the capsules were. Another thing about the capsules though, there is no ventilation in there once you close your shade so eventually the capsule gets really hot, which just makes it more uncomfortable. It was quite the experience! Shibuya is a pretty sweet area of town to hang out in. The streets are all very lively with lots of things to do.

Day 76, 78 – the quick ride to Japan

There’s not a whole lot to report on back from the ship. We lost another hour before reaching Japan, which puts us 14 hours ahead of CST for those of you keeping track (ha). We only have two days between China and Japan which makes it really hard to get back into the swing of things as far as classes go. We have one A and one B day, then we’re in Japan. I’m not too worried about it though, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to ‘get back into it’ during our journey across the Pacific Ocean.

Day 74 Beijing Great Wall - Shanghai

Monday, April 7th, 2008
So the park that I was talking about yesterday is called Jingshan Park. I had to look back at my ticket to remember the name. It has some interesting history behind it though, the hill located in the middle of the park overlooking the Forbidden City was actually man made by the dirt extracted from the moats.
We woke up early this morning so we could leave our hotel by 7:30am. On the agenda for this morning: The Great Wall of China. It’s about a two hour car ride there from Beijing, but then we go to the airport on the way back. We hit some serious traffic leaving Beijing this morning. Apparently the traffic is always that bad during the week, we just haven’t seen it because it’s been the weekend the only days we’ve been there. Even though we were a little stretched for time, our guide said that we had to stop at this brass craft place and get a tour. We didn’t have to buy anything but they give her some commission for bringing all of us to this place. She said we had to do it so she could keep her prices low, which they were, and she was a nice lady so we just went ahead with it. The place was actually really cool, they took us through a tour of how they make these hand crafted brass pots from start to finish. We still hurried through the whole thing so we could have more time on the wall.

We had heard some terrible things from people who climbed the hills/mountain up to the Great Wall so we decided to take the lift to the top. It was basically the exact same thing as a ski lift, I felt like I had to get my snowboard ready when we were about to get off. Anyway, we made it to the top in pretty good time and ended up having a little less than an hour and a half on the actual wall which was enough time to make it to quite a few of the towers. The Great Wall of China is pretty great! It’s huge and never ending. Not to mention that it’s located along the top of these mountains so it wasn’t easy to make.

On the way down we decided to take this shoot thing down, I can’t think of the name of it right now but it’s basically this long, winding tin slide. You sit on this little seat that lets you control how fast or slow you go as you’re sliding down. It’s really fun and you make it down in pretty good time. It’s bothering the heck out of me that I can’t think of what it’s called.

There was a small market at the bottom of the hill leading up to the wall where we could buy a variety of souvenirs. Either I’m getting really good at bargaining after our last few countries, or bargaining with them was really easy. Like getting “I climbed the Great Wall” shirts for $1USD. Can’t argue too much with that price.

Next stop was the Beijing airport for our flight to Shanghai. The Beijing airport is easily the largest airport that I’ve ever been in absolutely huge. We ended up getting dropped off at one terminal and had to take a free shuttle to a different terminal, but the second terminal that we went to was even bigger. It was kind of insane. Lucky us, once we got there our flight was delayed two hours. I would have loved to spend those two extra hours on the Great Wall instead of sitting in an airport, but there’s not much you can do about that. For the first time since I got off the plane in the Bahamas, I was actually able to walk onto the plane through the terminal. No bus or runway to walk onto. Needless to say, I was kinda pumped about it. We also had another in-flight meal that was pretty good, marking that two in a row.
So we got back to the ship later than we had originally planned, but the ship actually came into Shanghai 12 hours later than expected because of the fog. I’m SO happy that I wasn’t one of those people who stayed on the ship between Hong Kong and Shanghai. By the time we got to the ship people were just finishing getting off of it. So had we arrived in Shanghai on time, we would have had to wait for the ship to come in.
For our first night in Shanghai we decided to go all out in our suits that we got from Vietnam. David, Kevin, Jim, Chris and I all got nice and dressed up in our new suits and headed to the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Shanghai, which is apparently the world’s tallest hotel. We took the elevator to the top floor, the 87th floor where there was a nice restaurant. Unfortunately, it was all cloudy up there so we didn’t have a view of anything. I’m not sure that the sun ever shines anywhere in China, at least not during this part of the season. It’s kind of depressing! Anyway, as expected, the restaurant was really nice. We had to take 3 elevators just to get to the 87th floor. Also, when I say nice that I also imply that it was super expensive. We enjoyed living the high class for an hour, talking all sophisticated with our cover as ‘a group of venture capitalists from the US looking at purchasing a local software firm’ but everything was way out of our price range so we only stayed for about an hour. When we were leaving the ship people kept asking what we were so dressed up for so we told them that we had a business conference that we were going to attend. We started saying this jokingly, but I think some people actually believed us. It ended up being pretty hilarious. Afterwards, we walked around the area for a while, just checking out the nightlife then headed back to the ship. So much traveling really takes a lot out of you!

Day 73 – Beijing - How many things can you do in a single day in Beijing?

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

We woke up early this morning to meet Mr. Godfrey, our interport lecturer in the lobby of his hotel which was about a 5 minute cab ride from our hotel. The original plan was to meet up with him there, then have him give us a nice little tour of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Godfrey said he has been coming to China a couple times a year for a while now. He almost (?) had a masters in Chinese history and culture at one point so he knows a lot about the history of everything and the best ways to get around. When we met up with him 5 other people from SAS decided to do the same thing, so now we have like 15 people as a group that are going to try and travel together. One very important lesson that I learned quickly on this trip was that the larger the group you try to travel with, the harder it is. If your group can’t fit into one taxi then there’s a very good chance that you’re going to be split up. Godfrey knew this. Once he realized how many people were in our group he instantly said ‘’well now this is going to create quite the logistics problem.’’ He gave us the entire plan for the day then we proceeded to try and get 4 taxi’s to take us where we wanted to go. We got lucky by getting 4 taxi’s at the same time outside of his hotel, but that proved not to go too far. Godfrey got into the first car, which turned left, then the second car (that I was in) turned right and the following two cars followed the second car. So now our leader has been separated from ¾ of our group in the middle of Beijing. He told them all where we wanted to go and wrote it in Mandarin to clarify, but our driver spoke pretty good English and decided to go on his own.

We ended up at a park just north of the Forbidden City. The park was actually really fascinating. There were people EVERYWHERE in little group singing, dancing, writing calligraphy on the walkways, playing jump rope, the Chinese version of hackie sack, and doing numerous other things. The park was very large but it was full of people doing a number of different things. All of the active people in the park seemed to be adults, which was kind of interesting. Also, the groups of people who joined together to sing were singing just for the pure joy of it, not asking for any money or anything in return. I thought this was really unique and awesome. I have never seen a park so full of people (and adults for that matter) doing such a variety of things just for the pure joy of it. The reason for this goes back to the Chinese culture. As a baby and growing up they never had a lot of toys and games to play with, so now that China is growing up and developing the adults can go out and enjoy life’s simple pleasures. I’m sure that part of the reason the park was so full was because it was a Sunday as well, but still great to see nonetheless. In the middle of the park was a large hill with a temple at the top of it. Or at least I think it was a temple. There was a big, colorful building with a large Buddha inside of it. From the top of there, you could look down on the Forbidden City and see all of the groups of people singing and dancing in the park below. China in general has proven to be a pretty hazy country. The winds from the Jacobi Desert brings over a lot of dust, then that combines with the extensive pollution in China to made for some hazy days in China. You could still see a majority of the Forbidden City from the top of this hill, but you couldn’t see Tiananmen Square from there. Still really cool. I wish there were parks like this in the US that people would go to dance and sing just for the pure joy of it. It was a nice site to see (and I never expected to see). So for anyone who visits Beijing, be sure to check out the park just North of the Forbidden City!
After relaxing for an hour or so at the park, we began the walk through the Forbidden City, which isn’t actually called the Forbidden City anymore. The Chinese refer to it as the ‘Palace Museum.’ Built over 600 years ago, it served as the home for the Chinese Emperor and the center of Chinese government for hundreds of years. It’s a huge area, with a lot of different buildings that have different meanings, but once you see a few buildings you’ve pretty much seen them all because they all look very similar. There are some special houses likes the ones for peace, worship, ect. Along with some immense architecture and stone carvings that are cool to see. It’s just too bad we didn’t have Godfrey with us to explain the significance of some of the buildings and perhaps some stories about them.
So continuing to walk South through the Forbidden City we reached the actual front gate, which was much more extravagant than the north gate that we came through. The entrance was lined with Chinese military guards, and there was a huge picture of Mao (?) at the top of the entrance.
Right outside the gate some woman randomly walked up to me and asked if she could take us on any tours tomorrow. Lucky for us (and her) we did. So she set us up with a big van to take us all to the Great Wall tomorrow morning, leaving at 8am. She also gave us a good price, so lucky us because prior to this we didn’t really have a plan for getting there then to the airport.
Just south of the Forbidden City is Tiananmen Square, the location of the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. There wasn’t anything too extravagant for the thousands that died that day; after all we are still in Communist China and there is still disagreement about the number of people that died that day. There were groups of Chinese military soldiers patrolling the streets, walking in perfect formation through the streets. It was interesting to see them walk into a crowd of people on the sidewalk and see the crowd just split instantly to let them through. It was clear that the guards weren’t about to stop for anyone in their way. The groups of soldiers were probably 10-15 but there were numerous groups marching all around the Tiananmen Square area.
Our next stop was to get some food. We rarely have a plan on where we’re going to eat, we usually just walk around until we find somewhere that looks unique and cultural. We found this place that fit just that description. Apparently they call it a mixing pot or stew or something like that. So we sit at this round table with a pot in the middle that has one half boiling water and one half boiling water with sauce in it. Then they serve us thin slices of raw meat on a plate that we in turn dip into the boiling stuff for about 10 seconds until it’s all cooked, then eat it. There’s also some vegetables and potatoes that go along with this. Keep in mind that all of this has to be done with chop sticks and none of us would consider ourselves experts in that art. There was this group of older Chinese people at the table next to us just laughing and making fun of us while we attempted to do this. I’m sure the same thing would happen if they came to the US and had a weird meal for the first time. I have no idea what that meal would consist of though. Anyway, the meal was alright. Nothing too special or filling. So we continued our journey walking south to the Temple of Heaven.
Like I said before, Beijing is a very spread out city and if you see something ‘close’ to you on a map that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s close. Well this detail seemed to slip our mind as we started to walk south to the Temple of Heaven. We didn’t really know how to get there but looking on a map it was just south of where we were at. After walking for half an hour or so and getting a little lost we finally made it there. Some pretty gardens surrounded the area then in the middle was the main building for the Temple of Heaven at the top of some stairs. My pictures will show how cool the buildings in this area were. So much detail was put into every inch of this building, it really was remarkable to see.

One thing I haven’t really pointed out yet was how crowded every place that we go was because it was the weekend. All of these Chinese people were here to see these sights as well but they all were in tour groups. Each group had their own color of hats and a leader who held up a sign high in the air for the people to follow him. I even saw one guy with a whistle to make sure his group was following him. It was kind of funny to see all of these different groups with their distinctive hats following each other and staying close like sheep in a herd. You’ll see them in my pictures, it was funny.
The next stop for us was the Olympic Village area set for the Summer 2008 Olympics. For whatever reason Jim, Chris, and Todd didn’t have a whole lot of interest in seeing it so David and I split off to go grab a cab over to that part of the city. Again, we had a problem when saying to a taxi ‘Olympic Stadium’ but I picked up a tour guide from someone along the way that had a picture of the Bird Nest (the main Olympic stadium) and when we showed that to a taxi driver he knew immediately where to take us. If you haven’t seen any pictures of this stadium yet, Google ‘Beijing Bird Nest’ and you’ll see it. The architecture of this stadium (actually named ‘Beijing National Stadium’) is like no other stadium that I’ve ever seen. You’ll also be able to see my pictures of it once I post them, but it doesn’t look like I’ll get a chance to do that until I get back to the states. We kind of expected this, but the area is all closed down for security reasons. The fact that China and Tibet haven’t been getting along at all lately just makes it all worse. We couldn’t get anywhere closer than the street to the stadium. They still have A LOT of work to do before they’re ready for the Olympics. Hopefully 5 months is enough for them, there were a lot of people working while we were walking around though (and this was on a Sunday). There’s a hotel located right next to the stadium that just opened up, it even had the smell of newness in it. So David and I decided to go in there since it seemed like it would have a great view of the stadium, being that it is located on the same block as the stadium. We didn’t have a whole lot of luck because the wing of the hotel closest to the stadium was still under heavy construction, but we were able to get a decent view from above of the stadium. So cool. I love modern architecture like this (if you couldn’t tell by how much I enjoyed seeing the PETRONAS Towers in Kuala Lumpur). After checking out the view from the hotel of the Bird Nest we walked around the rest of the area to check out the other stadiums. The main entrances to anywhere for the Olympics was heavily guarded, but we were still able to see from a distance where everything is going to be going on, which was pretty cool.
Once done here we headed back to the hotel where we very luckily ran into Kev, Rachel, and Rudy (the three who were in the first car with Godfrey at the beginning of the day before we got separated) who were on their way out as we were coming in to meet up with Godfrey again to get some Peking Duck. Beijing is known for its Peking Duck and Godfrey said that he knew ‘The Best’ place in Beijing to get it, so we were pretty excited that we ran into them. I have no idea what this place was called because everything was in Mandarin but Godfrey was right. I would say this was one of my top 3 best meals in my entire life. They actually serve you a whole duck, then come to your table and cut it up for you into little pieces that you can either eat or roll into a very thin pancake type thing to make it into a spring roll. Then there was some sauce that you were suppose to dip it in that added all that much more goodness to the meal. Peking Duck = delicious.
Talk about a full day! Godfrey said that we saw pretty much everything possible for one day in Beijing besides the ‘Back Lakes’ area which is basically just another area of Beijing with a few (very) small lakes that have bars and restaurants lined around it. We figured we might as well, since you’re only in Beijing once. We can sleep when we’re on the ship. He was right, the area was really cool. Beautiful lake area with a lot of night life. We hung out on the rooftop of one of the restaurants for a little while before deciding to call it a night. We were all exhausted.

So our hotel has a decently fast internet connection and I was able to upload all pictures that I have comments on so far, which is about half way through Vietnam. This is probably my last upload before I get back to the states unless we get lucky in Japan, but I most likely still won’t have comments on most of my pictures.
A quick side note about getting around in Beijing, very few people actually speak English. So when we need to go somewhere we first go to the front desk at our hotel and tell them where, then they write out where we need to go in Mandarin on a little business card for us to give to a taxi driver. The business card also has the location of our hotel in Mandarin so we can get back to the hotel without getting too lost. It’s actually a really nice system they’ve got working for them.

Day 72 – Beijing

Saturday, April 05, 2008
We woke up semi-early this morning to make it to our ferry in time. The reason we’re going to Beijing VIA Shenzhen is because the flights from Shenzhen to Beijing are a lot less expensive compared to Hong Kong to Shenzhen. Shenzhen is actually a part of China, so the flight is domestic whereas from HK would be international. The ferry only cost like $20USD as well so it was definitely worth it.
The ferry was pretty much completely empty besides us so we could sit wherever we wanted, which was kind of nice. At first we all sat in the front but as soon as the ship started moving we realized that was a bad idea and moved to the back of the boat where it’s a lot smoother. They showed some movie during the ride but I fell asleep for the entire 1.5 hour ride, definitely a much needed nap.
We had to go through Chinese customs once we reached Shenzhen’s ferry port. They were very skeptical as to why 9 Americans are coming into their country after being to like 9 other countries in the past two months. I’m sure they just have heightened security because of the whole Tibet situation that’s going on, but we had to thoroughly explain our intentions in China, how long we were going to be there, why we visited each of the countries that we just came from, ect. All of these questions even though we already had a Chinese Visa to enter the country. Eventually, we were allowed through customs to where they check passenger’s baggage. I’ve never actually had my bags checked until this security check. All of the airports that I’ve been through on this trip, and the first actual bag search came in China off of a ferry.
Next we took a short, 5 minute, van ride to the Shenzhen airport. The airport was really nice. The first modern airport that I’ve been in since Johannesburg actually. Even the airport in Delhi, the capital of India, was poor and dated. The plane to Beijing was a little over 3 hours. They served us some food, which was nice since we were all starving and the airport café that we ate at in Shenzhen served possibly the worst food ever. Well, not as bad as the ship, but still pretty bad. Another first for me, I’ve never received an actual meal on an airplane. It was decent though.
Upon getting into Beijing we first headed to our hotel, the Beijing News Plaza to check into our room. We had originally wanted to try and check out the Olympic Village area in Beijing but anytime we would say ‘’Olympic Stadium’’ to anyone they would give us a very confused look. We joked that the Chinese government hadn’t told its people that they were hosting the Summer Olympics in a few months, but there were many signs around the city saying ‘Beijing 2008’ so I’m not sure how not one single person understood us.
Next stop on the list was to get some food. We saw some restaurants not far from our hotel so we headed that way, with no idea where we were really going. Just a quick side note, Beijing is a VERY spread out city. The streets are very wide, and anywhere on a map that looks close to where you’re at really isn’t close at all. We ended up finding a little restaurant a few blocks away from our hotel. The food was pretty good. We found out rather quickly though that Chinese food in China is actually a lot fattier and has more bones than Chinese food in America.
After dinner we headed back to our hotel and explored it a little bit. They actually had a pretty sweet pool in the basement of the building. It closed at a really early time though so we never got to going in there. We did get some massages in our hotel though. They weren’t as cheap as in Vietnam, but still not too bad. By this time it was pretty late and the massages put us all in a relaxed state so we just ended up hanging out in the room for a little bit before falling asleep. A lot of travel really wears you out and we planned on waking up early to meet with our interport lecturer early in the morning to go to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.

Day 71 – Hong Kong

Friday, April 4th, 2008

Upon leaving the ship this morning we again tried to find somewhere to stay for the night. We first went to this internet café that is literally a 5 minute walk from the ship. This didn’t help us out much though since we don’t really know the streets and wanted something close to the harbor since we planned on taking the ferry to Shenzhen airport tomorrow morning. One thing we were able to accomplish here was confirming that our flight from Beijing to Shanghai was moved a few hours, giving us time to see the Great Wall on the last day. Despite the pain of using elong.net (where we got the tickets from) they were willing to change our flight for free, which was nice.

After giving up there we decided to find a hostel and check that out. The hostel that we found was in a building that had literally 30 other hostels in it. This was a big building, but the only thing in it was hostels. Kinda weird, but we decided to check it out and took an elevator to the 15th floor then work our way down. None of us have ever actually stayed in a hostel, and we were looking for somewhere for 9 people to sleep. Our main concern was that we wanted to have a safe place to drop off our bags for the night. One thing we did know was that we didn’t want to carry our bags around all night until we went to bed. So after checking a few floors out in this building (each floor had 4-5 hostels in it) we decided to check out the YMCA because David had heard that they have cheap rooms, and it was located only a few blocks away from the harbor that we were leaving from in the morning. Our final ultimatum was that if the YMCA was a bust, then we would come back here and book a room in one of these hostels. The YMCA is actually a really big hotel in HK. They still have floors with exercise equipment and pools and such, but the hotel takes up a majority of the building. They did (luckily) have room in a ‘family suite’ for the night. By this time we were all sick of walking around wasting precious time in HK trying to find a place to stay for the night, so we were all relieved once this was done.

After grabbing a quick bite to eat, we headed back over to Hong Kong island. David’s roommate, Kevin, was looking on a map the day we got to HK and found an intersection of two streets – Bowen Drive and Bowen Road. His last name is Bowen, so he really wanted to check it out. (rightfully so, if I found an intersection of Chapman and Chapman in a foreign country, I would definitely want to check it out). We picked up a taxi driver on HK island and showed him on the map where we wanted to go. This guy spoke very little English, so communication was kind of a problem. He either couldn’t figure out how to get to Bowen/Bowen or just didn’t want to drive down a certain street for some reason. So we ended up getting out of the taxi and walking. It was easy to see that the area was very wealthy. Nice landscaping, big houses with big, fenced yards, ect. The walk to Bowen/Bowen ended up being scenic as well, since it was located on the side of a large hill overlooking the city. I was able to get some good pictures from up there, but he fog still hasn’t lifted from the first day so you can’t see very far and the tops of some of the taller buildings are still covered. We did end up making it to the intersection of Bowen Road and Bowen Drive. Kevin had a nice photo shoot, probably took 100 or more pictures before we could leave.

Our next stop was ‘’The Peak’’ on HK island. Everyone there knows where the peak is, so we grabbed a taxi and just said ‘The Peak’ and he knew where to take us. It’s basically just the highest point on HK island overlooking the city. Which is great, except (like I told you before) it was still foggy so we didn’t have the best view. The peak is filled with tourists, but totally random and out of nowhere, I saw a guy wearing a Minnesota Twins jersey. Apparently he’s from Coon Rapids and is just visiting Hong Kong. That made me happy to see a Twins jersey on the complete opposite side of the world. Also made me a little sad that I missed the season opener. Oh well, I’ll just be sure to go next year, as long as I’m not in Hong Kong again ;)

After visiting The Peak we headed to try and find a good sushi place. Chris and Jim are pretty big Sushi fans. I’ve never actually had sushi, but I was willing to give it a try. This part of the world is suppose to have some of the best sushi in the world, so I figured this place is as good as any to try it. After trying to find a place that was recommended to us by some locals that we talked to at Bowen/Bowen we found it, and found out that they wanted like $10 per piece of sushi. It was a REALLY nice restaurant. No way we were going to eat there though so we left and found this little sushi bar across the street.

At the start of this trip, I had never seriously used chop sticks. This gave me quite the challenge when arriving in Hong Kong. I’m getting a lot better though! I can actually function and eat comfortably with only chop sticks. Noodles and rice are a little tricky still, but I get by. Haha. I’m not sure what kind of tea this place was serving, but it was possibly the best tea that I’ve ever had. I really should have asked them what kind it was or if they sold it.
After sushi we found ourselves a little crunched for time. We quickly headed back to the ship to meet up with Rachel, Rudy, and Todd who are coming to Beijing with us. We needed to tell them where we were staying for the night and tell them that they need to get ferry tickets to get to Shenzhen tomorrow. After a quick talk and quickly packing everything I needed, we headed to check into the hotel. Some of Rachel and Todd’s friends from Syracuse are studying abroad in Hong Kong so we met up with them before going out for the night. They showed us a nice strip of restaurants not too far away that we could sit down and get some food at and just chill.

Day 70 – Hong Kong

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

We arrived in Hong Kong this early this morning. For the first time since South Africa, we’re actually docked in a good location relative where everything is. Ever since SA we’ve been in the middle of these big shipyards. We’re docked right in Hong Kong harbor, we actually have to walk through a shopping mall to get outside of our ship area.

Once we cleared customs we took a ferry over to Hong Kong Island. It’s about a 5 minute ride and less than $2HKD, which is like 30 cents USD. Once on the island we walked around for a little bit to get a feel for the area. Unfortunately, it has been really cloudy the since we got into HK. We can’t even see the top of most of the buildings today. Kevin had a Lonely Planet book so we found a park in the area that had a zoo in it. Kind of random to be in the middle of HK, but it was cool. They had a lot of different/strange species of birds and a ton of monkeys, which have been in a majority of the countries that we’ve been in lately.

After the park/zoo we went to meet up with Jim and Chris, who we separated from earlier in the day so Jim could try to find a place to fix his computer. He spilled some water on it between Vietnam and HK and it wouldn’t turn on anymore. We met up with them at the Bank of China building, which has some really cool architecture. It’s not the tallest building in HK, but it probably has the coolest design. We tried going to the top but didn’t have much luck, they only allow visitors to go half way up. That’s probably alright though since it was so cloudy we could barely see anything half way up the building. We did find a little coffee shop on the ground floor of the building and changed our flight from Beijing to Shanghai to later, so we would have more time in Beijing. With our original schedule we were planning on waking up really early, like 4am on the day that we were going to leave to go and see the Great Wall. Now we won’t have to wake up and leave until around 8am.

Next we went to the actual Hong Kong Park, which is a fairly large area with beautiful surroundings. I’ve never been to Central Park in NY, but I would guess that it’s kind of like that. There was a bird garden in the middle of the park. Basically just a large enclosed area with a ton of different bird species in it. Then they have this walkway around in the canopy to walk around and see all of the different bird species. It was pretty cool to see, I’ve never been in anything like that before. Lots of colorful birds and the garden area inside the canopy was amazing. In the park they also had a memorial for the SARS outbreak that happened there in 2003. In the memorial they had a description of the epidemic and head statues of 8 of the doctors who died trying to fight it and find a cure.

Our next stop was this teahouse in the park. It looked like a nice place, but once we saw the menu we found out that they wanted like $5USD for a single glass of tea. There was no way I was about to pay that much, but a couple of the people we were with were willing to give it a try. I had a taste of one of theirs and it definitely wasn’t worth the amount that they paid. Not much flavor at all.

After the park we began our journey back to the ship. We had managed to get pretty far away from where we got off of the ferry. We grabbed some dinner at the ship and then headed back out for the night. First, we wanted to try to find a place to stay the night in HK for tomorrow night, since the ship was leaving for Shanghai at 11 tomorrow and we planned on staying the night in HK and going to Beijing in the morning. We didn’t have much luck at all finding a hotel. Everything was way too expensive for what we could afford. Better luck tomorrow I suppose.

Our next stop was a small night market not far from where our ship was docked. They had a lot of cool stuff, including some artwork that I really liked. I’m pretty sure I have enough artwork now to decorate an entire apartment. Good thing I’ll be looking for one once I get back :)

We’ve had so much practice bargaining in the previous countries that it’s getting really easy. I’ve got my bargaining techniques down now, it’s pretty cool.

So after the night market closed we were all pretty hungry and found this little restaurant that was still open. Needless to say, we stuck out pretty badly. It was good food though!


Couple of side notes about Hong Kong. There are a TON of big name stores on every block. They love their expensive name brands. Almost every block has at least two stores with ridiculously priced clothes. There are also a lot of really nice cars. Poverty isn’t exactly a problem in Hong Kong. BMW, Mercedes, Jaguars are all pretty common cars. You know how some busy crosswalks now have a countdown for how much time you have to walk across the street? Well every crosswalk in HK has this ticker sound signaling how much time you have until you can walk again, then how much time you have left to walk across the street. So there’s this constant ticking sound at every crosswalk. Interesting way to solve the issue.

Day 68, 69 – Back on the ship

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

So we’re back on the ship for a short trip to Hong Kong. It’s so nice not having such a long distance between ports, this is definitely the best portion of our itinerary. The only down side to having such little time between ports is that we can’t get as prepared for the upcoming port. In these two days we only had Global Studies once, because the other day was filled with a test, and the regular two preports. So basically 3 sessions on China/Hong Kong then we’re there!

We did have enough time to find and book a hotel in Beijing, The Beijing News Plaza Hotel. It sounds like it’s a pretty nice hotel, located near Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, which exactly where we want to be. Our two preport sessions were some of the two best sessions we’ve probably had so far. We had an excellent Chinese interport student who gave us a lot of great information about Hong Kong, Beijing, and traveling throughout the country. We also have a student on the voyage who lives in China, so he gave us some additional insight. Then to top it off, we have an interport lecturer until Hawaii that has visited China 2-3 times per year for a long time, so he gave us some great information on China from a traveler prospective. I would have to say that even though we only had two days between ports, they did a great job of preparing us and giving us as much information as possible about the country.

My professor for my philosophy class was in the Vietnam war, so he took some time out of class to talk about his experience and wanted to know about our experiences while in Vietnam. To my surprise, he didn’t think that the war remnants museum was that done sided, and he wasn’t surprised by anything that he saw there because he was actually there experiencing it. He also noted to us that the guns in the shooting range at the Cu Chi tunnels were very old and didn’t really shoot straight because the barrels were corroded. So there’s a high possibility that those were the same guns that were actually used to fight against American troops during the war. I had never thought of it that way, talk about a weird feeling!

Day 68 – Vietnam Day 5

Monday, March 31st, 2008

This morning we woke up with a plan of everything that we wanted to do, so we headed out to the front gate of our port and negotiated a price with two of the motorbike guys to take us around for the whole day. We had a few errands to run, then we wanted to check out the Cu Chi Tunnels, then back to eat and pick up David’s suit before heading back to the ship. We were able to negotiate a ride for the entire day for $25USD, which I thought was pretty solid.

Our first stop was at our tailor so David could make sure the adjustments to his suit were good, then we actually ordered two tailor made dress shirts that he was could make us before the day was over to go with our suits. Then we went the the Citibank Tower to purchase our Japanese Rail Pass. The pass allows us to go on any train in Japan for a 7 day period, unlimited rides anywhere in Japan. This ends up being a great deal and saving tourists a lot of money (they only sell it to tourists). Since we are planning on doing a lot of traveling in Japan, and train is the primary form of transportation we decided it would definitely be worth it. I would guess that at least half of our ship also is getting a Rail Pass. We purchased ours through a place called ANA Airlines, I’m pretty sure that’s just a Japanese airline or something.

On a side note, I’ve seen a large Citibank building in every single port that we’ve been in. I didn’t realize that the company was so big worldwide! I don’t just see Citi on small signs in places, but the big towers. I’ve also seen more KFC’s than McDonalds since we left the states, which kind of surprised me. I would have never guessed that KFC was so popular across the world. It could also just be the countries that we’re visiting, but definitely more KFC’s than McDonalds. Quite a few Subway’s too. Mmmm. American food :)

Our next stop was at the Cu Chi Tunnels, located about an hour away on motorbike from Ho Chi Minh City. These tunnels are the ones that the Vietkong used against American forces in the Vietnam War. Vietnamese refer to this war as the American War. The tunnels form an elaborate underground system that they could move through without the acknowledgement of American forces. Since the Vietkong were so small, the tunnels could be made really small and could be hidden easily. At one point the US actually built a base on top of one of the tunnels without any idea that they were below. Of course they figured out quickly that this was a bad location for the base! They’ve actually expanded a lot of the tunnels by as much as 3x the original opening to allow for bigger tourists to go through them. They also had an exhibit showing all of the different kinds of traps that they used in the war. These were pretty gruesome to say the least! David and I started going through one of the tunnels, but then quickly realized as the we went away from the light that we forgot our flashlight, so we couldn’t go any further. The spaces are REALLY small though, so I’m kind of glad we only had to experience that little portion of the tunnels to avoid any risk of getting claustrophobic.

There’s a shooting range located in this “tourist” area of the Cu Chi tunnels with a bunch of different guns that were used in the Vietnam war. I’ve never actually shot a gun other than a BB gun or a paint ball gun. So I bought 10 rounds for an AK47 and shot them in the shooting range. AK47’s are LOUD. They didn’t really have any adequate ear protection either, just basically headphones like you would listen to music on. The gun had a lot of kick, but there was a guy there helping to make sure I dug it into my shoulder and was prepared for the kick. David bought an additional 10 rounds for an M60, which lasted all of 2 seconds. It’s amazing how fast 10 rounds goes! My 10 AK47 rounds lasted maybe 20 seconds because I was adjusting to hit the target.

Our next stop was the American War Remnants Museum located in Ho Chi Minh City. The museum was full of American Military equipment like tanks, choppers, planes, guns, bombs, ect. Inside the museum though they had hundreds of very powerful pictures from wars around the world, with probably ¾ of them focusing on the American-Vietnam War. I guess I should have expected this, but the entire museum was very one-sided, only showing the terrible things that the Americans did during the war. Pretty depressing to see all of these pictures with captions below them explaining what happened, or what was the cause of the photo. There was nothing in the museum condemning anything bad done by the Vietkong though. Melissa also said her friend saw something in there from Iowa, I wasn’t able to find anything unexpected from Iowa though. Anyone else know what’s in there from Iowa?

Once we were done with the War Remnants museum we headed back to our tailor for a final time to pick up our shits and David’s remaining suits, then headed back to the ship so we wouldn’t miss on-ship time.

Day 67 – Vietnam Day 4

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

So Semester at Sea gave us all of these warning about NOT taking rides from guys on motorbikes during both of our preports. However, it didn’t take long for people to realize how fun it is to ride them, and not to mention they are a LOT quicker than taking the shuttle bus or a taxi. Traffic in Ho Chi Minh City is pretty terrible at almost all times of the day. At night it’s not bad though. It seemed like almost everyone rode a motorbike, then taxi’s and buses with a few other cars would mix in with them. Motorbikes have the ability to swerve between cars and traffic in places that a car is too big. Bikers also have their own lanes that are always filled up on the street.

So today we decided to take a motorbike to the Ben Than market area and just kind of browse the area. Nothing too exciting, pretty much the same stuff we had been doing the first three days. I did get some internet during lunch and started my download of LOST’s last episode before their break, but I wasn’t able to finish it. Now that I’ve seen the first few I HAVE to see the rest of them.

I found this glossy painting in an arts store that I really liked, so I got it. It’s hard to explain but it’s one big picture split into 4 sections, kind of giving it a modern-type of feel. It has the Gods of Fortune, Wisdom and Happiness on there. In the same store I found 3 square plate type things that you hang on your wall that say life long happiness in Mandarin, which I thought was pretty cool.

I bought these two relatively heavy things early in the afternoon, which was probably a bad idea. They gave me a nice case with a handle to carry everything, but I ended up having to haul this thing around town for the next 4 hours. Needless to say, it got heavy! But I knew there was a chance that we wouldn’t go back there (which we didn’t), so I’m glad that I got it when I did. I don’t want that ‘ol buyer’s regret.

We stopped over at our tailor around 5pm to try on our suits and make sure they fit right. Mine fit great, so I didn’t need any adjustments, but David had a few adjustments for him to make. This is part of the reason why we asked for him to have the suits done a day before we left, so he would be able to make adjustments. Good thing we did!

Now that I had my suit I needed to find some nice dress shoes so I could wear my suit out before I get home and to the Ambassador’s Ball in a few weeks on the ship. I have shoes at home that I really like, but of course I didn’t bring them, so I wasn’t looking to spend too much money on a pair of shoes. Finding shoes in size US11 is HARD in Vietnam! Everyone there is smaller and therefore has smaller, skinnier feet. Most stores didn’t have anything larger than a US 9 (in men’s) but I somehow was able to find a store that had some nice shoes that I liked in a size 10.5 for a good price. Of course I bargained the price with him before buying. Always bargain before you buy anything in Vietnam. Unless the store says it has a fixed price, then you’re SOL.

Bootlegged DVD’s are everywhere in Vietnam. About any movie you can think of, both old and new is available for less than $2USD, and complete seasons of shows are about the same price. The people that I was with stocked up with a ton of movies, so that took a good hour for them to pick out all of the movies that they wanted. However, I didn’t get any. I don’t like that bootlegged stuff. I’m REALLY anxious to get an XBOX 360 though. They have them here, but for about the same price in the US, so I’m just going to have to wait until I have a real job and some money before I buy one.

We took a taxi back to the ship to drop off the stuff that we bought, then planned on meeting up with some other people to go out that night. Once we met up with them we decided that a $10USD massage lasting 75 minutes sounded AMAZING after walking around carrying stuff all day. Vietnam is full of massage parlors/shops/whatever you’re suppose to call them and we had a few handouts from people giving them to us in the street earlier in the day so we headed to one of those places. By the time we actually got to the massage place it was past 11pm, and they close at midnight so I asked the lady before we paid if we would still get the full 75 minutes, and she said yes so we went ahead and got the massage. Unfortunately, the lady that told us that we would get the full 75 minutes left and our masseuses stopped a little before midnight. Although we didn’t get a full 75 minutes, we still only paid $10 and the massage was definitely worth it while it lasted! That was my first actual massage that I’ve had to pay for. Definitely worth it.

After the massage I was spent, but David and Chris insisted on going to the casino before heading back to the ship so we headed there for an hour or so. I decided to give the video black jack a shot, throwing in $10 (which actually lasts a long time since minimum bets are less than $1USD. I didn’t have much luck with that though, I was out within half an hour. (Stupid machines) hah. David actually won a good amount of money on the automated black jack table though. So at least someone won.

When we were done we grabbed a taxi right outside of this casino, which was also a hotel, and asked the taxi if he knew where to take us to get to our ship. Of course he said yes, without really knowing where it was. Luckily, we negotiated a price before getting into the cab because he had no idea where to go. He went around for the longest time asking people on the streets for directions, but he couldn’t figure it out. Finally, I told him to go to the Ben Than market area because all of the taxi’s and motorbike people there know exactly where the ship is since they’ve given us rides to and from the ship and seen our bus stop there. So get lucky and find a motorbike guy that speaks some English (very little) and somehow communicated to him to tell our taxi driver how to get back to the ship. So about an hour later (it’s no more than a 10 minute drive usually) we finally get back to our ship. Talk about an adventure!

Day 66 – Vietnam Day 3

Saturday, March 29^th, 2008

We slept in this morning for the first time in over a week. We didn’t sleep too late though because we don’t want to waste any of our time in Vietnam (or in any port for that matter). We decided to check out the markets again but this time bargain and actually buy stuff. Fast wireless internet is pretty extensive throughout Ho Chi Minh City as well, so we were able to get a little while eating lunch. Enough to download my emails at least. I’ve got this whole plan worked out where I don’t have to use any of my internet minutes on the ship until we leave Japan. Then once we leave Japan I’ve got it worked out to how many minutes I can use every day so I don’t go over my 250 minutes originally allotted to me. I can get by doing pretty much everything that I want besides download my email, upload my pictures, and IM. I think this is quite an accomplishment. Me, Mr. computer guy who spends pretty much his whole day on the internet while at work, being able to limit my internet usage to sites that I can get for free plus 250 “anything” minutes. I don’t know anyone else on the ship who hasn’t already bought at least one more internet package (for like $.40/minute) besides David, because I’ve showed him all of my tricks that get me by without having to actually login.

Anyway, back to shopping in Vietnam. I just bought a few shirts that said things like Saigon, Good Morning Vietnam, Tiger Beer (popular in Asia like Budweiser or Miller in the states), and others. I was able to get each of them for like $2.50USD each. How can you go wrong with shirts that cheap?!?!

We ate out for dinner again at some random restaurant that we found. The food that we had for lunch and dinner were both excellent. Food is cheap here as well. So basically, everything is cheap in Vietnam, just like we were told :)

At night we all got together and basically just wandered around the city center area. A few of us wanted to find a casino to hopefully play some cards so we asked around until we finally found one inside of a hotel. They didn’t have any cards though, everything was on a machine. They had blackjack (which is what we all wanted to play)in a similar table-like environment, but it was still all just a video screen. There was a big screen in front of you with the dealer as she dealt the cards, then you could see on the big screen the total of each player (but not their actual cards) then everyone had their own video touch screen that they made their choices with. Needless to say, I hate video gambling games. The odds are set against you. This was better than playing slots, but I would feel more comfortable playing with actual cards, so I didn’t play.

Something I didn’t really mention before, the bus drops us off right in front of the opera house, which is sold out for the next 5 years or something like that. The taxi’s and motorbike drivers all know that our bus drops us off there, so they sit there and try to give us rides to different places. The whole area is kind of a tourist/shopping area as well, so they have plenty of business there. But there are about 5 or 6 little girls that hang around in the area at night, still in their school uniforms trying to sell people single roses. They’re some of the most hyper and outgoing little girls that I’ve ever seen. Extremely friendly though, and interested in where we’re all from and how long we’re around, ect. But you would never see a pack of little girls trying to sell flowers in a city in the states. I guess that just goes to show how safe Ho Chi Minh City is at night, or at least the area that we were in.

Day 65 – Vietnam Day 2 - Mekong Delta

Friday, March 28^th, 2008

We woke up early this morning to go on Mekong Delta trip through Semester at Sea. I refuse to go on any big SAS trips because they are so expensive and being put onto a set schedule when you want to see something just isn’t fun. However, I’ve done a couple small day trips and so far most of them have been good. Our trip to the Mekong Delta was perhaps the best one I’ve been on thus far though. I heard this same comment from many other people.

So the bus left the ship around 8am, our first stop was at this big Buddhist temple that was on the way. I’m not sure if they ever really told us the name of it, but it was a pretty big temple with a huge statue of Buddha in front of it giving the Buddhist peace sign. There were two men inside who were saying a prayer or doing some sort of song/ritual when we went inside. It was a beautiful temple, I’ll be sure to upload those pictures as soon as I can.

Our next stop was in the middle of nowhere to see people working in a rice field. I’m not really sure why we stopped there. They parked the buses right on the side of the street and we had to cross the street, then we just saw what a rice field looks like and how they harvest the fields. This is the kind of thing that just screams tourist to me and is kind of embarrassing to be a part of. I don’t like sticking out like a tourist in a big group.

Our next stop was pretty pointless as well. After our guide described how a market works in Vietnam, she dropped us off at one. Understand that almost all shops in Vietnam are in a marketplace type environment where you bargain for your final price. Never pay their initial asking price, always bargain. Anyway, we looked around for a little bit and then left to finally get to the Mekong Delta area.

First, the group of about 25 of us hopped on this Vietnamese boat (wood built, not designed like a regular boat you would see in America) and crossed the river, which is a huge area. We also were able to see a big bridge that was being built to cross the river. Our guide didn’t say when it began being built, but said that it is suppose to be done in September. To me, it looked like they had quite a ways to go, it looks pretty cool though. The river was full of a lot of boats, the banks are also lined with docks, boats, and houses.

Once on the other side of the river we stopped at this coconut candy making factory. I shouldn’t really call it a factory, because it isn’t like a traditional factory that you would think of. It was just a sheltered area with a couple machines to strip the coconuts and make them into powder, then the fudge needed to mold it into candy. The process is kind of hard to explain… Hopefully my pictures will clear that up a bit. Anyway, they gave us some free samples of the candy that was freshly made that morning and hadn’t yet been put into packaging. There were a bunch of different kinds, but every kind I tried was absolutely AWESOME. Soooo good. We watched them cut the candy strips then roll them in rice paper and package them. Then a few feet away from that they sold them. I bought 7 packages (between 10-20 pieces per package) of all different flavors that I’ve vowed not to eat until I get home and can share it with all of you. It’s going to be hard not to eat it, but it’ll be all that much better once I can with you :)

Once everyone was done trying and buying candy we hopped on a cart hooked up to these little mini-horses that almost looked like donkeys. To be honest, I thought they were donkeys at first… More like mini-horses (Rob&Big plug) I guess. These poor horses took like 5 of us up this road (with a hill) for about a mile, then we got into these smaller boats that held 4 passengers, then a rower in the front and back. This was about a 15 minute ride that took us through a small canal area leading back to the big river. It was beautiful to see. They also row boats different than we traditionally do, which is kind of weird, but it seems to work for them.

Our next stop was for a traditional Vietnamese lunch. Now this was interesting! First we were served this whole fried fish that was standing upright. A waitress came and chopped it up and put it into little spring rolls right in front of us. I have no idea what kind of fish it was, but it was delicious! The sight of it was a little different than anything that I’ve ever ate though! Along with the meal we got some fresh shrimp, spring rolls, and a few other things that I’m not really sure what it was. It was all good though and definitely filled us up! I would go back to eat there any day.

Our last stop before heading back was to eat some fresh fruit grown locally in Vietnam. I forget the name of all of them besides pineapple and papaya. It was a group of 5 different dishes though, I enjoyed them all even though I had no idea what they were.

So, like I said before, overall it was a really good SAS trip. The heat and humidity in Vietnam is terrible and we were sweating pretty much the entire time, but the food was delicious and the scenery was amazing.

Day 64 – Vietnam Day 1

Thursday, March 27^th, 2008

They talked about this great sunrise at preport that we were going to be able to see while going up the Saigon River to Ho Chi Minh City. So I woke up at like 6am to go out to the back of deck 7 and see it. However, it was cloudy/rainy so there was no sunrise. It was cool to see the ship going up the river though, this is the first river that we’ve went up to get to our destination. I had enough after less than 5 minutes and headed back to bed until our diplomatic briefing at 9am that morning before we could debark the ship.

Once again, our ship is located in a terrible location relative to the city. We haven’t docked in a good location where we could go somewhere without having to take a taxi/bus/rickshaw/tender to get to our destination since South Africa, which was located in an awesome spot right next to a big mall and lots of tour places for things to do in and around Cape Town. We’re basically just located in a big ship yard, much like India and Mauritius. Thankfully, there’s a free shuttle that runs from the ship to the city center area. However, the shuttle only runs every 40 minutes or so and going there on a bus takes a lot longer than a taxi or motorbike would. As long as we weren’t in a hurry we would take it though, because it is free – and free is good.

We don’t really have a whole lot of plans for Vietnam, so the first day we just went around to a bunch of different shops. Just browsing though on the first day, I really try to hold back from buying anything the first day. The first day you can get a feel for what’s available in a lot of places (if it’s abundant you’ll have more bargaining power) and what’s more rare. One thing that we wanted to take care of the first say for sure was get some tailor made suits made. We walked around, looked up some tailors on the internet (there’s a lot of different tailors in Vietnam), and went into a few stores for some quotes before we finally picked one that we liked. It was probably the 5^th or 6^th tailor place that we checked out before we agreed with the prices and thought that the stuff he had in the shop showed quality tailoring. Once we picked the tailor came the hard part, picking out the style and kind of fabric that we wanted in our suit. I would have done a lot more research beforehand if I could have, but I really don’t know what to look for in a suit. He had a book full of all different styles and helped us pick out what would look good for each of us though. He was very helpful to say the least. He didn’t speak the best English, but we were able to understand each other one way or another. So I ordered 4 tailor made suits for $100 each, a heck of a deal if you ask me! The suits are: solid black, solid navy, black with pinstripes, and grey with light pinstripes. After measuring us we had to pay half up front and scheduled a time to come back in a few days when it was done. We purposely made an appointment a day before the ship left in case adjustments were going to be needed when we tried them on. Taking care of all of that was a huge relief. It was stressful trying to find the right tailor then the right suits! But I’m happy with what I chose for suits and we were all confident in the tailor. The name of the shop (and I believe the tailor too) is Nhut Van. It’s just a small little shop right off of the street, but not too small

After taking care of the suits we grabbed a taxi and headed back to the ship. SAS always gives us a “Green Sheet” (I think I’ve talked about this before) in every port that has important country information such as emergency numbers, hospital locations, how to contact the ship, ect. It also has the location of where our ship is docked so we can get back to the ship. Well the location that they gave us for Vietnam was very vague so when we show a taxi driver the name of the place that we’re docked in, they have very little idea of where that actually is. Of course they’ll always take you, but we learned on our first cab ride that they had no idea where to go. We ended up giving him more directions on how to get back to our ship than he knew, and we had only been on this route once so our directions weren’t very good. Anyway, we got back to the ship without getting too lost. I heard some horror stories about other people taking taxi’s and them just getting lost and driving around for a long time. Luckily that didn’t happen to us!

We ate back on the ship, then took the free shuttle back to the main part of the city to check out the night market that was located outside of the Ben Than Marketplace. Ben Than is the main marketplace in Ho Chi Minh City. You can tell any taxi driver that you want to go there and they’ll definitely know where to go.

So we’re driving on the right side of the road again. Vietnam is the first country since Brazil to drive on the right side of the road. It’s actually really weird to see. I’m just use to driving on the left side now so when we’re driving I always thing the guy is going into the wrong lane at first. Hopefully I don’t find myself going down the wrong side of the street when I get home! Hahaha. I’m sure that won’t happen… I hope :)

Day 61, 62, 63 – Back on the ship

Monday, March 24^th, 2008

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 2^nd 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.