Hello from India – where they have so many national languages that they didn’t teach us any helpful phrases, because English is becoming the way people communicate over here.
So India was great. Sorry, I’m so zapped from writing my personal journal and studying for tests that this blog seems to have fallen by the wayside. But I’ll try to catch you up a little bit.
In the words of my friend Adam, “India was dirty, nasty, smelly, disgusting, beautiful, awesome, and I can’t wait to go back.” That’s a pretty good summary. There are so many layers to India. I had a lot of great experiences and a lot of sad and frustrating experiences.
The first day I went to the American consulate office in India and that was … kind of boring in all honesty. It just wasn’t really what I wanted to be doing. That night my group trip left for our home stay. India is about as bad as China; and they’re main surface level similarities are that both countries have over a billion people living in them, but China is about the size of the US while India is about 1/3 of the size of the us, and also they both have massive pollution problems. So Chennai was truly filthy, and I’ve still got a cough from breathing in exhaust fumes rather than oxygen….
We took a sleeper train to Erode…it was uncomfortable to say the least. I was scared to sit in the train station, there was just dirt everywhere and I saw a rat just hanging out. There were beds on the train, but everything just felt like it was infested. I had a fun little room though with Mary, Jesse and Kaia. We were told not to buy biscuits from people on the train, because they have sedatives in them, and to tie our shoes up to help prevent them from getting stolen while we slept…I slept with my shoes by my head, Mary just kept hers on the whole night. Every time I woke up I had to make sure all my possessions were still there. We arrived in Erode at about 6 AM. We drove to our host family’s very nice, plain, clean house…it was kind of just walls and no ceilings. It felt like you were in an indoor courtyard. They made amazing tea and coffee for us and gave us a little tour. We walked around outside and looked at banana trees and coconut trees. I got to climb up part of a coconut tree!! We went to a couple of factories – a coconut factory, a cotton factory (I got to help make a carpet), a sugarcane factory, and an herbal medicine factory. I really like seeing that stuff because in the US I feel like we just see finished products…so it is so cool to watch raw materials become works in progress, so much work and time goes into that! We also saw a lot of schools. Most of the kids are just Obsessed with our digital cameras, and just try to snatch them and take pictures of themselves/nothing in particular. I loaned my camera out to many a children, but I made sure it was double looped on their wrist so they wouldn’t hurt it. One time I left my camera on the bus and kids would come up and ask for it and when I told them I didn’t have it they would just walk away from me! All the kids we saw though were learning English, and all were eager and curious to come up and talk to us. They pretty much just know how to say, “hi, what’s your name, how are you, I’m good, thanks,” so we had to use different methods of interaction. I played blocks with a girl. Sometimes you just sit with them and smile. My favorite time in India was probably teaching this group of Indian girls the hokey pokey (my idea!) – that was a blast! Also, I ended up getting into an intense game of basketball, 5 Indian girls versus 3 SAS guys and another SAS girl and myself. It was a good game, they gave us a workout! I’m pretty sure we won though… Yeah all the kids were just awesome. All the food we ate was so authentic! We ate off of huge green plant leaves one day. The food was spicy and delicious, I tried things although I had no idea what they were (be proud!!!), and I didn’t get sick at all (thanks to pepto probably). It was really nice to have genuine Indian food because on my other trips we end up eating at buffets or something that’s just like…this isn’t Thai food…so yeah we definitely got a good deal food-wise!! We went to the market one evening and that was such a good rural life snap shot! People grow food or have spices that they probably brought from their house, and then they just lay out a blanket and spread out their stuff on the ground and sit there. Our host lady and her two daughters who were 6 and 11 were all fabulous and completely fluent in English. That was awesome because we had so many conversations and asked so many questions…it’s rare where you get those kind of candid, honest answers from locals. We interviewed the lady for a good hour one night and audio-recorded a lot of it. One night we watched this drummer troupe drum for us and we got to dance with them. But their dances were hard and I have no rhythm so that didn’t work out too well, but it was fun! In between songs they would heat their drums up over an open fire to change the pitch! We went to a place for polio kids that SAS donates a lot of money to. Some of the kids put on a song and dance for us that was so cute! And in return we performed a horrible version of “Lean on Me.” Then we presented them with money and played with the kids a little bit. At the main school we were at, the kids put on this Fabulous performance! A group of 8 guys did this hilarious song/dance medley and then these 6 girls did this dance routine that could have been part of a high school competition! The kids treated us like celebrities, they just wanted to talk to us, take pictures with us, perform for us, play with us, get our autographs, trade stuff with us (like bandanas for bracelets)…they were so awesome. We took another sleep train back (we spent 2 days and 1 night at these peoples’ house) that was even worse than the first because we were right next to the “bathroom.” Gross. But hey – we were on a sleeper train in India, so not much to actually complain about! Everybody loved the home stay, but when we got to the ship everybody pretty much ran to their showers.
So in Chennai – days 4 and 5 of India…there were people right outside the ship letting us use their cell phones to call the states for $1/3 minutes…which is expensive, but better than my phone card, which would have cost me $.59/minute. So I called Jon and home, but the parents were gone so I got to talk to Jonathan (which was wonderful!) Then I showered and ate breakfast and then headed out to go shopping. I was planning on going with Mary and Megan, and the three of us would fit in one tuk-tuk and it would be great. Then this girl Elizabeth (who is also in my Vicarious Voyage group) randomly asked if she could come with us (she usually ignores everybody and I always try to be nice to her). So…she came with us…and Megan and Mary and I are all nice people…we’re just not friends with her. And she’s a Very difficult person to get along with. She is easily offended, so while I usually watch my mouth anyway I end up saying things that normally people would not be offended by, that somehow offends her, and then I have to backtrack and apologize and it’s…just very frustrating and a huge exercise in patience to be around this girl. She came with us and we all wanted to not be with her but Mary was like, “we are not leaving her alone in India,” and I was the one making sure we didn’t get separated in the mall (because we had two totally different agendas). So this girl goes up to Megan (who had the least patience with her of the three of us) and asks her if I was trying to ditch her. WHAT?!?!?! No. Ugh. Anyway finally I guess she realized that it wasn’t working out in terms of group dynamics and she had to go to different things and go back to the ship. Then we started having a ton of fun shopping. We kind of went crazy. India’s the last “cheap” place we’re going to, so I bought a lot of stuff. Up until this port, I was like, yeah I know how I’m getting everything home. Let’s just say that…now, I don’t. But I do have a lot of awesome presents for people!!! So I feel good about that. Also we got into some long/intense conversations with some of the shopkeepers and made friends with them. That made me feel better about spending the afternoon in an Indian shopping center. The tuk-tuk drivers rip us off just for fun and it’s obnoxious and one of the most frustrating things that happened in India. One driver in particular agreed to take us back to the boat for a reasonable price, but said we had to stop at one store first (they usually are working with that store, so if we buy something en route they’ll get a commission). One store turned into two, and none of us bought anything. So all of a sudden he just STOPS and is like, “my carburetor broke, sorry, get out.” And we were all like, “ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?” Megan, who reminds me more and more of Kay the more I hang out with her, starts just screaming and cussing at our driver because we all knew he was lying…and Mary and I are just sitting there going…ok, what do we do now, let’s just flag down another tuk-tuk. Finally we got one and as soon as our backs were turned our first tuk-tuk disappeared into the traffic. He let us out in the middle of a busy street. Traffic in India is not fun or safe to just be hanging out in. Anyway, we made it back to the ship alive and my whole body was sore from carrying all the bags. We decided to call that a night and went to bed early so that we could have a full day the next day.
The last day we got up and went to the orphanage. Apparently, they didn’t need crayons and pens, they needed diapers, and oh I don’t know, practical things like that. So I felt really dumb handing my stuff over that I brought for the kids. The visiting hours are weird and we had another bad tuk-tuk experience (called our driver lied to us when he said he knew where he was going and it took us literally 40+ minutes to get to this orphanage that’s 5 minutes away from the boat) so we only had about an hour there. But I really wish we could have spent more time at the orphanage! The kids were so cute and so messed up. It was a pretty big project, you had to focus on one for like 15+ minutes to even attempt a connection with one of them. I think the oldest kid there is like 34. They all had physical and/or mental disabilities. The orphanage couldn’t wash fabric fast enough so they end up sitting in their waste for hours. A good number of them were basically completely unresponsive. There was one boy there who was so cute though, and he would come up and blow up his cheeks so you would do the same, and then he’d pop them, and then he’d kiss his hand and put his hand on your cheek. Anyway visiting hours were over too soon, so we tuk-tuked to a temple, which we didn’t actually go to cuz we were all templed out and there was tons of good street shopping right outside. Since it was our last day, I was a VICIOUS bargainer, and it was awesome!!!! After the temple we went back to the mall area (because we realized that we did NOT buy enough cheap awesome stuff the day before) and bought more stuff (mostly for other people though). So anyway, it was a good day of shopping. Oh and for lunch we ate at this American restaurant owned by this Hawaiian guy. It was awesome. And clean. And delicious. And it was so American, he had like license tags from all the different states and bumper stickers from different universities and a Mariner’s jersey hanging up…so it was like eating in a little tiny piece of home…
Alright…well that doesn’t do India justice at all. I didn’t have the experience I thought I would there. I almost cried twice, but didn’t actually cry. I definitely saw a lot of layers of India, the city and a rural village, authentic food, private school for well off kids and a polio rehab center, and factories etc. I guess I just thought there would be one incident that would hit me really hard and just Bam change my life or something…and that never happened. So I ended up feeling like India wasn’t what I was expecting or preparing myself for, but also like it has changed me in ways that I don’t know about and will discover in like 20 years. It’s a good thing there’s so many SAS kids though because India definitely really changed a lot of peoples’ lives, and I’ve heard all their stories, and they’re amazing!!
This week on the ship is full of meetings, as usual, and tests, quizzes, papers, and reading, as well as fun things like the Sea Olympics, talent shows (kids and the crew!), and other random things. I know who I’m traveling in Egypt with though I don’t know what we’re doing yet, and I have tentative plans for Turkey that involve Troy!!!! How awesome will that be to say that I went to Troy!?! But I feel like Egypt is that last dangerous place we’re going to, and we’re only 11 hours ahead of Seattle time now. So I’m on my way back, we are officially past the half way mark. I can feel the flood of emotions starting to build up in everybody, we’re all so excited for the countries, people are planning out when they think they’ll start crying as the voyage creeps closer to a close, and people are so happy to be going back to boyfriends and families and apartments. It’s a strange mix. But I definitely have found my comfort zone on ship, I really like the people I’ve been hanging out with and am finally feeling like I’m making some good connections. Anyway, my goals for today are to start a paper, catch up on politics reading and on my politics journal…and then tonight is my “Sea Social,” which is where the section of the rooms that are in the Mediterranean Sea (my sea) are going to dress up like it’s new years of 1969 and hang out tonight….should be an interesting time!
That’s about it for now…I can’t wait to come back and talk about all the real stories in person. Hope everything is going well for you guys! Look for another update in about 2 weeks, we have a lot of transit aka class time before Egypt and then we spent 5 days there. You’ll hear from me after that.
Love,
Hilary
Friday, October 26, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
Thailand
Sawasdee-Ka!
NO, I have NOT forgotten about my poor blog…it’s just that I honestly have no time to write. Writing always takes longer than I think it will. I had a midterm this morning so I was studying for that, and now I have another midterm and a big project due on Sunday so that’s what I’ll be focusing on next…so I need to get Thailand out of my system because we’re going to be in India soon! We’re actually in Singapore right now bunkering I think is the term – getting more fuel and food; yay!
Alright the run down, Thailand Day 1:
I was on a group trip that was headed for Phuket and then Bangkok. We were the first trip off the boat, and I heard (although every rumor I’ve ever heard on the ship has been false) that they didn’t let everybody else (not on trips through SAS) off the boat until 2:30 PM so that people would miss their flights trying to make it to the Half Moon Party (a crazy drunken extravaganza). I recognized a girl from my Japan trip, her name is Ellen. We sat together on the bus and talked for most of the long ride to the airport, which was great because in Japan it was Ellen, five other girls and myself so I hadn’t gotten to know her that well and she was really awesome! She was pretty much my other half for the next 5 days, though we did meet up with some more awesome girls (Mary, Kendra, Roberta, namely) and had a great little group going. So the first day was just a lot of transportation. We finally arrived at our hotel-resort…which had the biggest most gorgeous swimming pool I’ve ever seen, complete with a bar you could swim up to, a little enclosed area, and an Ariel Little Mermaid rock in the water to pose on. I am seriously considering having my honey moon in Thailand, dependent upon the water not being yellow with visible specks of dirt in it when it should be nice and clear. That night Ellen and I went out with a couple other girls for dinner and shopped around at the market and then got a traditional Thai massage for about $9. It was way better than my Cambodian massages and it felt so good! After that we were pretty much just ready for bed.
Thailand Day 2:
Well, Ellen and I had switched things around so that we could be roommates and also be on the same busses for the same trips. We were with 120 people, divided into 2 groups of 60. From there, Ellen and my group was divided into three groups of 20 people and we did a rotation of three fabulous activities. First up was the Jungle Safari!!! It was amazing!! We all got ponchos on the bus while it was super sunny and our guide was like, “weather changes quickly here,” and while we were filing off the bus it started to monsoon-rain! Hahah. So we ponchoed-up and took a raft made of bamboo to the other side. My Keen shoes worked out perfectly, I just pranced across the rocks and logs and through the mud and water while everybody else worried about their shoes and socks. Some of us got a little lost but while we were lost I got to look at rubber trees up close! We met up with our group and spent an hour and half walking through this gorgeous green jungle amidst intervals of rain. Oh we also got large bamboo walking sticks which were actually very useful! After our safari we had lunch with the rest of our group – there was humongous noodles involved and rice with a spicy chicken sauce that was delicious. After that was elephant riding time!! Today I think was my favorite day in port, everything was so exciting, and it was so much fun hanging out with Ellen. Our elephant’s name was BuBu, or maybe BuPu, but I will call her BuBu. She was big and leathery and hairy and really fun to ride. I got to feed her some fruit at the end and she snotted all over my arm and it was really gross. It’s hard to describe riding an elephant without pictures! After elephanting, we had a guide take us on inflatable canoes down a little river. He let me paddle for a little while and that felt really good. Back at the hotel we met up with Mary, Kendra, Roberta, and Christina and went out to Mexican food. They had a live girl cover band playing which was hilarious and so much fun! We started signing along to one of the songs and the singer brought the microphone up to our table and we all shouted into it. It was a really cool atmosphere. After that Ellen and I wanted another massage so our groups split. Once again, after the massage we were ready for sleep.
Thailand Day 3:
Today was sea cave day! We all went out on a boat together (yeah I get a lot of boat time) and then when we got to the caves there were two people to a boat plus a guide. The canoes were inflatable but very sturdy. Our guide’s name I think was Dee. We went to a number of different caves and in the process saw lots of fun animals. We first went to the Bat Cave I think, where there were TONS of fruit bats hanging from the ceiling! We had to lay flat on our backs to get into the caves and then it was dark and stinky around the bats. Back in the light on the other side we were in a lagoon type thing and it was so beautiful! We also went to a Diamond Cave where everything was really glittery…but we kind of got jipped cuz I guess it looks better when it’s dry and it was rainy out. We also went to two more caves. Outside of one there were a whole much of macaque monkeys! Ellen and I had brought a banana to feed monkeys if we saw them so we got all excited. There was only one monkey close by when I pulled the banana out of my pocket but 5 more immediately ran over across the rocks close to our boat. Then like 3 monkeys Jumped in the water and started swimming out to our boat!!! I did not know monkeys could swim! At all! AND THEN two of them Jumped onto our canoe and came up and started pawing at our arms and hands!!! It was crazy! So I got scared and ended up just giving the banana to the monkey that was like attacking me instead of sharing it with all of them and of course he ate all of it and didn’t share with the skinny monkeys. In the caves we also saw some very brightly colored crabs… I mean like bright turquoise!! And also some mud skippers which are just brown and hang out in mud and look like slugs. After the sea caves we had an amazing lunch on the way to the beach we were going to. My new favorite food is tempura pineapple. So then we got to the beach and of course I had forgotten to bring my bathing suit on the entire TRIP so I just hung out…some people were playing soccer on the beach so I kind of played for a few minutes but I wasn’t really dressed appropriately so it was difficult. I resorted to walking around looking at cool animals. I saw all of a sea cucumber’s guts still attached to the sea cucumber and also I saw an intact sea cucumber. Our guide found an enormous star fish that I got to hold! And we also saw tiny little white crabs in the sand. Back on the tour boat they gave each of us an entire coconut, so I tried fresh coconut and coconut milk…not that good…but I tried it! Back at the hotel we met up with our little group again and went back to the Mexican restaurant, shopped, and wandered around seeing the night life. We had a couple crazy incidents but they’re funnier in person I’m sure so you’ll have to remind me. But we ended up staying out pretty late and walking on Patong Beach at like 3 30 in the morning and eventually made it back to our hotel.
Thailand Day 4:
We had to get up early to get to the airport, we were headed to Bangkok. We were on the biggest plane I think I’ve ever seen, it had an upper level and 10 seats across! When we got to our hotel, our group ate at this little Italian place in the basement. Then Mary and I separated from the rest so that we could go shopping. We took a tuk-tuk to this disgusting day market where everything smelled like vomit and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Finally we started making our way back to the hotel, stopped off at a Starbucks (my first time doing that on this trip!) and ended up walking right into the Night Market (which was our goal of the day to find). The night market was so much fun! I bargained a lot and bought lots of cool little things. I just figured, India is the last super cheap place we’re going and I haven’t bought that much stuff yet and I need to use up some of this money…so yeah night market was super fun! Then it was massage time again, but this time I decided I just wanted a foot reflexology massage…that sounded perfect to me. The first place we went to was in a dark upstairs room and the owner was a Lady Boy and it felt really sketchy, and then they didn’t know what reflexology was (everybody else was advertising it), so I was like, this isn’t what I wanted and this place is freaking me out, so we left. Then we went to this super nice place that smelled like menthol and was brightly lit and you could see the street outside. So they give us these silk pants to change into and they’re working on our left feet and I realize that we forgot to ask if they take credit cards (a lot of them don’t). They didn’t. So we spent like 15 minutes trying to explain to them that we really did not have the money to pay for this, even between both of us, we didn’t have a debit card, and no, we were not going to send just one of us to go back to the hotel alone in the dark. So we just paid them some of the money and walked out. The third place we went to finally worked out. Our masseuses were very nice and when I told Jon I got a foot massage he goes, “what, it didn’t tickle?!?!” and I was like, “oh no, it did, I made a scene, don’t you worry.” It was actually a little embarrassing cuz you’re supposed to be quiet, and every once in a while I would just like yelp and flinch really hard and they would all laugh at me…ooops. Anyway we learned that of our $9 massage, our ladies only got paid $3/massage, got no hourly wage, and it cost them about $3 a day just to transport themselves from home to work. So Mary and I tipped them all the money in cash we had left…we tried to tip more but they wouldn’t accept tips on my credit card. We walked back to the hotel, and in the process, literally almost walked into a real elephant. Just walking on the street. Yeah. This other guy almost ran into it also and he screamed a little and it was kind of hilarious. Anyway…it had been a long day of walking, our feet felt great, and so we slept. Or, we slept until our roommates came back at 3 AM and needed to be let in…
Thailand Day 5:
We went to the Grand Palace and saw the Emerald Buddha (the biggest Buddha carved out of a single piece of jade). The palace was of course gorgeous and it was fun walking through that. Then we went to this huge jewelry store and tried on diamond rings just for fun and looked at other expensive things. Then we went back to the hotel, ate at the Italian place again, and then it was basically time to go. But I didn’t have my plate for my collection yet, so Ellen and I like bolted off to this market, couldn’t find one, but somehow made it back to the bus in time. The bus ride back to the port was 2 ½ hours long, and even after spending 5 days together we still talked for about 2 of those hours while most everybody slept. Back at the port, I dropped my stuff off on the boat and then made a big mistake – I took my $US to the little port shops…which are already more expensive and harder to bargain. But I had to get my plate, and also I got a phone card to call Jon and my parents. They were all super thrilled when I called at 3:30 and 4 AM…anyway I ended up buying more stuff than I was planning on at the port stores but I got some cool things. And that was Thailand.
Ship Life:
I had my politics midterm yesterday and I think it went fine. The second global studies test is coming up on Sunday so I’m studying a lot for that. My leadership class is going better, I think because we’ve started doing projects in port and the accounting is all set up so things are actually moving now. My friend group seems to have shifted a bit – I’ve been seeing less of Victoria and Camilla and Katie and more of the people I’ve met on my trips, which I really like. I still feel like I’m always in meetings, half of which occur during meals, but I’ve been having fun with people and also been spending a lot of time in my room studying and trying to sleep. Anyway, I’m feeling quite comfortable on the ship and having a great time. I think I need to go buy some Pepto before India though. I’m excited for India, all the professors keep saying, “you haven’t seen anything yet, just wait til you get to India. India will change your life.” So I’m a little nervous, but my home stay should be Awesome and Mary, Adam, Megan, and Jesse are all on it so I’m excited to hang out with them! Except Adam thinks he’s going to trade me for a cow…so I need to watch out for that among diarrhea and other things! Oh, and yesterday there was a GBLT Open Mic night and peoples’ stories on this ship are just amazing!! So many of them almost made my eyes water. We have a cool community here.
OK, sorry it took me so long to do this…you have no freaking idea how busy it gets here, it’s a little chaotic. And if it makes you feel any better, I’m about a week behind on my personal journal because I just don’t have the time it would take right now to write in it. And I’m two countries behind in my politics journal. I’m awesome at life. Also, we’re tearing through the water right now at about 25 knots, partly because we’re half a day behind because fueling took longer, but partly because WE’RE IN PIRATE AREA!!! Unfortunately, Captain Jeremy has never had any pirate encounters. The end.
Love,
Hilary
NO, I have NOT forgotten about my poor blog…it’s just that I honestly have no time to write. Writing always takes longer than I think it will. I had a midterm this morning so I was studying for that, and now I have another midterm and a big project due on Sunday so that’s what I’ll be focusing on next…so I need to get Thailand out of my system because we’re going to be in India soon! We’re actually in Singapore right now bunkering I think is the term – getting more fuel and food; yay!
Alright the run down, Thailand Day 1:
I was on a group trip that was headed for Phuket and then Bangkok. We were the first trip off the boat, and I heard (although every rumor I’ve ever heard on the ship has been false) that they didn’t let everybody else (not on trips through SAS) off the boat until 2:30 PM so that people would miss their flights trying to make it to the Half Moon Party (a crazy drunken extravaganza). I recognized a girl from my Japan trip, her name is Ellen. We sat together on the bus and talked for most of the long ride to the airport, which was great because in Japan it was Ellen, five other girls and myself so I hadn’t gotten to know her that well and she was really awesome! She was pretty much my other half for the next 5 days, though we did meet up with some more awesome girls (Mary, Kendra, Roberta, namely) and had a great little group going. So the first day was just a lot of transportation. We finally arrived at our hotel-resort…which had the biggest most gorgeous swimming pool I’ve ever seen, complete with a bar you could swim up to, a little enclosed area, and an Ariel Little Mermaid rock in the water to pose on. I am seriously considering having my honey moon in Thailand, dependent upon the water not being yellow with visible specks of dirt in it when it should be nice and clear. That night Ellen and I went out with a couple other girls for dinner and shopped around at the market and then got a traditional Thai massage for about $9. It was way better than my Cambodian massages and it felt so good! After that we were pretty much just ready for bed.
Thailand Day 2:
Well, Ellen and I had switched things around so that we could be roommates and also be on the same busses for the same trips. We were with 120 people, divided into 2 groups of 60. From there, Ellen and my group was divided into three groups of 20 people and we did a rotation of three fabulous activities. First up was the Jungle Safari!!! It was amazing!! We all got ponchos on the bus while it was super sunny and our guide was like, “weather changes quickly here,” and while we were filing off the bus it started to monsoon-rain! Hahah. So we ponchoed-up and took a raft made of bamboo to the other side. My Keen shoes worked out perfectly, I just pranced across the rocks and logs and through the mud and water while everybody else worried about their shoes and socks. Some of us got a little lost but while we were lost I got to look at rubber trees up close! We met up with our group and spent an hour and half walking through this gorgeous green jungle amidst intervals of rain. Oh we also got large bamboo walking sticks which were actually very useful! After our safari we had lunch with the rest of our group – there was humongous noodles involved and rice with a spicy chicken sauce that was delicious. After that was elephant riding time!! Today I think was my favorite day in port, everything was so exciting, and it was so much fun hanging out with Ellen. Our elephant’s name was BuBu, or maybe BuPu, but I will call her BuBu. She was big and leathery and hairy and really fun to ride. I got to feed her some fruit at the end and she snotted all over my arm and it was really gross. It’s hard to describe riding an elephant without pictures! After elephanting, we had a guide take us on inflatable canoes down a little river. He let me paddle for a little while and that felt really good. Back at the hotel we met up with Mary, Kendra, Roberta, and Christina and went out to Mexican food. They had a live girl cover band playing which was hilarious and so much fun! We started signing along to one of the songs and the singer brought the microphone up to our table and we all shouted into it. It was a really cool atmosphere. After that Ellen and I wanted another massage so our groups split. Once again, after the massage we were ready for sleep.
Thailand Day 3:
Today was sea cave day! We all went out on a boat together (yeah I get a lot of boat time) and then when we got to the caves there were two people to a boat plus a guide. The canoes were inflatable but very sturdy. Our guide’s name I think was Dee. We went to a number of different caves and in the process saw lots of fun animals. We first went to the Bat Cave I think, where there were TONS of fruit bats hanging from the ceiling! We had to lay flat on our backs to get into the caves and then it was dark and stinky around the bats. Back in the light on the other side we were in a lagoon type thing and it was so beautiful! We also went to a Diamond Cave where everything was really glittery…but we kind of got jipped cuz I guess it looks better when it’s dry and it was rainy out. We also went to two more caves. Outside of one there were a whole much of macaque monkeys! Ellen and I had brought a banana to feed monkeys if we saw them so we got all excited. There was only one monkey close by when I pulled the banana out of my pocket but 5 more immediately ran over across the rocks close to our boat. Then like 3 monkeys Jumped in the water and started swimming out to our boat!!! I did not know monkeys could swim! At all! AND THEN two of them Jumped onto our canoe and came up and started pawing at our arms and hands!!! It was crazy! So I got scared and ended up just giving the banana to the monkey that was like attacking me instead of sharing it with all of them and of course he ate all of it and didn’t share with the skinny monkeys. In the caves we also saw some very brightly colored crabs… I mean like bright turquoise!! And also some mud skippers which are just brown and hang out in mud and look like slugs. After the sea caves we had an amazing lunch on the way to the beach we were going to. My new favorite food is tempura pineapple. So then we got to the beach and of course I had forgotten to bring my bathing suit on the entire TRIP so I just hung out…some people were playing soccer on the beach so I kind of played for a few minutes but I wasn’t really dressed appropriately so it was difficult. I resorted to walking around looking at cool animals. I saw all of a sea cucumber’s guts still attached to the sea cucumber and also I saw an intact sea cucumber. Our guide found an enormous star fish that I got to hold! And we also saw tiny little white crabs in the sand. Back on the tour boat they gave each of us an entire coconut, so I tried fresh coconut and coconut milk…not that good…but I tried it! Back at the hotel we met up with our little group again and went back to the Mexican restaurant, shopped, and wandered around seeing the night life. We had a couple crazy incidents but they’re funnier in person I’m sure so you’ll have to remind me. But we ended up staying out pretty late and walking on Patong Beach at like 3 30 in the morning and eventually made it back to our hotel.
Thailand Day 4:
We had to get up early to get to the airport, we were headed to Bangkok. We were on the biggest plane I think I’ve ever seen, it had an upper level and 10 seats across! When we got to our hotel, our group ate at this little Italian place in the basement. Then Mary and I separated from the rest so that we could go shopping. We took a tuk-tuk to this disgusting day market where everything smelled like vomit and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Finally we started making our way back to the hotel, stopped off at a Starbucks (my first time doing that on this trip!) and ended up walking right into the Night Market (which was our goal of the day to find). The night market was so much fun! I bargained a lot and bought lots of cool little things. I just figured, India is the last super cheap place we’re going and I haven’t bought that much stuff yet and I need to use up some of this money…so yeah night market was super fun! Then it was massage time again, but this time I decided I just wanted a foot reflexology massage…that sounded perfect to me. The first place we went to was in a dark upstairs room and the owner was a Lady Boy and it felt really sketchy, and then they didn’t know what reflexology was (everybody else was advertising it), so I was like, this isn’t what I wanted and this place is freaking me out, so we left. Then we went to this super nice place that smelled like menthol and was brightly lit and you could see the street outside. So they give us these silk pants to change into and they’re working on our left feet and I realize that we forgot to ask if they take credit cards (a lot of them don’t). They didn’t. So we spent like 15 minutes trying to explain to them that we really did not have the money to pay for this, even between both of us, we didn’t have a debit card, and no, we were not going to send just one of us to go back to the hotel alone in the dark. So we just paid them some of the money and walked out. The third place we went to finally worked out. Our masseuses were very nice and when I told Jon I got a foot massage he goes, “what, it didn’t tickle?!?!” and I was like, “oh no, it did, I made a scene, don’t you worry.” It was actually a little embarrassing cuz you’re supposed to be quiet, and every once in a while I would just like yelp and flinch really hard and they would all laugh at me…ooops. Anyway we learned that of our $9 massage, our ladies only got paid $3/massage, got no hourly wage, and it cost them about $3 a day just to transport themselves from home to work. So Mary and I tipped them all the money in cash we had left…we tried to tip more but they wouldn’t accept tips on my credit card. We walked back to the hotel, and in the process, literally almost walked into a real elephant. Just walking on the street. Yeah. This other guy almost ran into it also and he screamed a little and it was kind of hilarious. Anyway…it had been a long day of walking, our feet felt great, and so we slept. Or, we slept until our roommates came back at 3 AM and needed to be let in…
Thailand Day 5:
We went to the Grand Palace and saw the Emerald Buddha (the biggest Buddha carved out of a single piece of jade). The palace was of course gorgeous and it was fun walking through that. Then we went to this huge jewelry store and tried on diamond rings just for fun and looked at other expensive things. Then we went back to the hotel, ate at the Italian place again, and then it was basically time to go. But I didn’t have my plate for my collection yet, so Ellen and I like bolted off to this market, couldn’t find one, but somehow made it back to the bus in time. The bus ride back to the port was 2 ½ hours long, and even after spending 5 days together we still talked for about 2 of those hours while most everybody slept. Back at the port, I dropped my stuff off on the boat and then made a big mistake – I took my $US to the little port shops…which are already more expensive and harder to bargain. But I had to get my plate, and also I got a phone card to call Jon and my parents. They were all super thrilled when I called at 3:30 and 4 AM…anyway I ended up buying more stuff than I was planning on at the port stores but I got some cool things. And that was Thailand.
Ship Life:
I had my politics midterm yesterday and I think it went fine. The second global studies test is coming up on Sunday so I’m studying a lot for that. My leadership class is going better, I think because we’ve started doing projects in port and the accounting is all set up so things are actually moving now. My friend group seems to have shifted a bit – I’ve been seeing less of Victoria and Camilla and Katie and more of the people I’ve met on my trips, which I really like. I still feel like I’m always in meetings, half of which occur during meals, but I’ve been having fun with people and also been spending a lot of time in my room studying and trying to sleep. Anyway, I’m feeling quite comfortable on the ship and having a great time. I think I need to go buy some Pepto before India though. I’m excited for India, all the professors keep saying, “you haven’t seen anything yet, just wait til you get to India. India will change your life.” So I’m a little nervous, but my home stay should be Awesome and Mary, Adam, Megan, and Jesse are all on it so I’m excited to hang out with them! Except Adam thinks he’s going to trade me for a cow…so I need to watch out for that among diarrhea and other things! Oh, and yesterday there was a GBLT Open Mic night and peoples’ stories on this ship are just amazing!! So many of them almost made my eyes water. We have a cool community here.
OK, sorry it took me so long to do this…you have no freaking idea how busy it gets here, it’s a little chaotic. And if it makes you feel any better, I’m about a week behind on my personal journal because I just don’t have the time it would take right now to write in it. And I’m two countries behind in my politics journal. I’m awesome at life. Also, we’re tearing through the water right now at about 25 knots, partly because we’re half a day behind because fueling took longer, but partly because WE’RE IN PIRATE AREA!!! Unfortunately, Captain Jeremy has never had any pirate encounters. The end.
Love,
Hilary
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Viet Nam / Cambodia
Wow. Back again. I feel like my blog entries are going to get shorter and shorter, but they don’t…they stay long. It took me a total time of probably 7+ hours to handwrite my personal journal, and another good chunk of hours to hand write my politics journal (which I’m doing for a grade), so by the time I get to this blog…I’m so exhausted from writing about everything, and I feel like I’m about a billion hours behind on school work. So anyway I’m just going to apologize now for the watered down version, which believe it or not, this is, and justify it with…at least I will remember all the real stories for when I’m home.
So Vietnam was fantastic! I spent the first and last of our five days in port in Ho Chi Minh City (which many people still refer to as Saigon), and I spent the middle three days in Cambodia.
I got up early the morning we arrived in Vietnam to watch our boat float down the Mekong River…much, much different from the vast ocean. It is always so exciting to see land! Vietnam looked pretty much how I had imagined it to look, very green and jungle-y with murky brown water. I did the City Orientation tour, which actually turned out to be really cool. We went to a temple built by the Chinese at some point during their 1000 year occupation of Vietnam, and then we went to this lacquer shop, which was incredible! We got to watch the artisans crush up egg shell and make these fabulous designs. They would drop the egg shell over a certain area of their project, and then use a brush and brush it away, but some of the egg shells would stick (where they were supposed to be in the art piece). I hope that makes sense. Then they would use this little chisel to clean up the edges and define the lines. It was so cool! They also use a lot of mother of pearl, and embed that into their intricate designs. It was very fun to watch and the finished products were just beautiful! We went to the presidential palace and got a tour of that which included seeing the room where south Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnam at the end of the war. We had a 4 course set meal lunch in which I tried a new shrimp dish (yayyyy Hilary!!!!). They brought out the shrimp wrapped around a piece of sugar cane, so you scrape it off and put it on this incredibly thin race paper circle and then put veggies and sauces in it, wrap it up and eat it. Very good. We didn’t get to go to the War Museum but we did get to go to some History Museum. The main thing we did there though was watch a cultural Vietnamese water puppet show…which was really fun! The puppets are dressed so eloquently and the puppeteers stand behind a screen waist deep in water for the entire 20-30 minute show. This would all be much easier to describe with pictures. Which I have TONS of. Have you guys heard of Weasel Coffee? I guess it’s famous and super expensive. There are no Starbucks in Vietnam because the Vietnamese like their coffee. I don’t even like coffee and I tried this Weasel Coffee and it was amazing! So we did that. I had told my tour guide that a bunch of us wanted to go get tailored dresses made, so after our normal tour, he volunteered to take us to a nice but not too expensive shop, take everybody else back to the ship, and then come back and pick us up! It was so nice of him!! So I got 2 dresses made, which I am very excited about!! I like one better than the other, but I will wear both for sure and…I got dresses custom made in Vietnam, so whatever. We went back to the ship, dropped off stuff, regrouped, and then a bunch of us headed back out. Not getting ripped off by cab drivers is an art! You have to be So careful with them. I was fine but I heard of people getting stuck with a $40 fare for like a 5 minute ride because they weren’t careful enough. I spent the night wandering with SAS-ers, hanging out around town and it was a lot of fun. Usually I don’t like to be in the big big SAS groups, but I met new people and everybody was really fun so it was OK for one night. My last day in Vietnam, I woke up 12 minutes before I had to be at the bus for my trip. We drove for like 3 hours and finally had lunch. After lunch we went to the Cao Dai temple, which is a really colorful, cool, religious place. Yellow = Buddhism, Red = Confucianism, Blue = Daoism, and White = all the new people who haven’t picked a focus I guess yet. So the monks all wear different colored robes and we watched them do their prayer service/ritual for like half an hour and it was really pretty and cool to see! Then we went to a cemetery/war memorial before heading off to Cu Chi to go crawl through tunnels!! It was a lot more than just tunnels though. The grounds are still run by the army so our tour guide recommended to us that we NOT try to bargain for things…we saw all types of different traps used, the original size of the holes the Viet Cong would use, original entrances, everything. It was so awesome. I did all the crawling I could do, I was wearing my grimy clothes and I had my flashlight. You could do either 30, 60, or 100 yards and I did all 100, but those tunnels were built for tourists to get an idea of what they were like, so I’m pretty sure they were similar, but fake. Then you could do a bonus 50 yard crawl through I think real tunnels, or at least more realistic. There were no turnouts for the whole 50 yards and it was smaller, narrower, and darker, and I did that one too!!! It was so much fun. It was really eery being there though because the military has a shooting range there too that they let tourists use ($1/bullet)…so while we were walking around this place we were hearing machine guns, M16’s, and AK47’s going off…creepy. Much as I hate guns, I would have shot one for the experience of it, but the joys of group travel moved our group along before I had time to. We watched a really anti-American war documentary before heading back to the ship. Then it was like panic time – everybody was trying to do all these last minute things before on ship time. (If you’re not back to the ship on time, you get dock time, which means once we’re in the next port…you can’t go out for a certain amount of time). I went out with this girl Jordan, I didn’t really have anything I needed to do except for find somebody to give me a postcard and bargain for last minute things, but Jordan needed stamps, postcards, and a magazine, so we were like rushing through Saigon. We decided, against all SAS rules and general safety precautions, to pay $1 and ride on the back of a motor bike. There are lots of those people trying to get you to hop on their bike and they’ll take you anywhere in town for $1. I hadn’t done it yet because I’d heard we shouldn’t do it and I knew they were dangerous…but I really wanted to, so I did it anyway. I thought I was going to die. I didn’t want to hold on to the anonymous driver in front of me so I held on with both hands to this bar behind me for Dear Life as he zoomed and honked and swerved. It was terrifying and completely exhilarating. Finally he plopped me down next to Jordan and we went about our errands. When we were all done we hopped on two different motor bikes and this time the driver was much slower and stayed with Jordan’s driver which was really nice, and it made it easier to look around and enjoy the city. My only worry with that was that I really thought this car was going to hit me when we were merging one time, but it didn’t : ) yay! haha Oh Daddy I’m sure you’re freaking out right now. But it’s ok, I’m still alive! I’m not one of the 25+ people that actually had to go to the clinic for bruises, burns and pussing scrapes they got for getting off of the wrong side of the bike or for getting completely thrown off while hitting another motor bike (this one girl’s face is messsssed up!!!) so I guess that’s why we’re not allowed to ride them. Alright so that was basically Viet Nam…I wish we would have had more time there, I really wanted to go on a trip on the Mekong River and I wanted to go to the War Museum also. I will have to come back sometime I guess…
Cambodia was amazing!! I had no idea what to expect, but it was just really beautiful there. There were a couple sweet thunder storms while we were there (it’s monsoon season), but the rain didn’t stop us at all. The first night all we really did was go on a river cruise (which was lame cuz it was cloudy so we couldn’t see the sunset and … we’re on a boat alllll the time so it wasn’t that magical) and then out to a buffet dinner. So many buffet dinners!! It’s annoying, because they make sense – everybody can find something, big room, blah blah blah…but I feel like it’s fake food from the countries we’re from, not their normal cuisine. After the dinner though when we got to the hotel, a group of 4 other girls and myself headed out to get some sweet $6/HOUR massages!!!! That was my first professional massage and it was an interesting experience…I’m glad I went with people. We were all really really excited about it. The next day after breakfast we went to the Tuol Sleng genocide museum…which used to be a torture prison…which used to be a high school…it was eery, creepy, gross, sad, and I didn’t take that many pictures there. Also eating beforehand was not the best idea. It was so hard to look at pictures of victims’ faces and learn about it, but it was so interesting and I really believe that it’s incredibly important for people to keep learning about atrocities the world has already seen in an effort to prevent them from reoccurring. But yeah, it was a dark, sober morning. From there we went to the Killing Fields which was somehow not what I expected but nauseating and powerful just the same. The Pol Pol regime didn’t want to use bullets on people because bullets were expensive and they didn’t want people to have a quick, relatively painless death. So they would use a lot of torture and especially for babies and kids they would just bash their heads on a tree (in front of their mothers, of course), before tossing them aside into a mass grave. So lots of the graves were next to trees used for that purpose, other graves were just grassy pits in the ground. The dirt we walked on literally had bones and teeth showing through from the rain that has brought them up to the surface. Also, Pol Pol was not his actual name, it was a nick name that stands for Political Potential…which haunted me all day. And, I didn’t realize before that the Khmer Rouge “boys” was not a mis-translation of our tour guide…the boys they used to do the killing were literally between 12 and 20 years old. It gets better: the current Cambodian Prime Minister was a Khmer Rouge boy….gross gross gross. So it was a sad and heavy morning. To lighten things up after that we went to the Russian Market, which I don’t think has anything to do with Russia, and did some bargaining. I got some COOL things there!!!!! I’m so excited about them! Then we went to lunch before visiting the Royal Palace where the King still lives and the Silver Pagoda (a room with like silver tiles as the floor). Then we headed to a history museum before going to the airport to fly to Siem Reap. Once in Siem Reap we went to dinner that also included these amazing cultural dance show!!! The outfits were gorgeous and the little mini stories were so cute! After dinner a different group of girls and I went out and got a $5 massage!!! We arrived down town via a Touk Touk (which is a carriage type thing attached to a motor bike). Our driver’s brother was named Sambo and he was really nice. He came to pick us up after our massage and got us safely back to the hotel. I want a Touk Touk. I got up the next morning for the Angkor Wat sunrise tour…but it was cloudy, as usual…but still it was fun to go see Angkor Wat in the dawn light as the day came on. It’s very magestic, but more about that later. We went back to the hotel for breakfast and to check out and then went to Ta Prohm (where Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was filmed). That place was gorgeous!!! The rocks were just so beautiful…it was all in ruins but some things were still standing and the bas-reliefs were so intricate and detailed! I really loved that place. Then we went back to Angkor Wat in the daylight. We got to walk around, take lots of pictures, and I got to climb to the top of it, to the third level. It was Really scary!!! The steps are so steep, and they go so high, and they are so falling apart…but it was an adventure, and I’m still alive!! And the top level of Angkor Wat was gorgeous!!! The windows without panes looked like a painted picture with the scenery you could see through them. It was just so grandiose and beautiful. We spent some time up there before making our way carefully back down, holding on to this skinny metal rod hand rail on our way down for dear life. I just found out yesterday that Unesco, the company that is preserving Angkor Wat, literally JUST declared that climbing the steps to the top of Angkor Wat was too dangerous for the thousands of tourists that go every year, and the day after we left Cambodia, I heard from the other SAS Cambodia trip, they had guards there already not letting people climb up. So I’m one of the last people ever to stand on top of that thing!!!! Hah! Then we went to Angkor Thom which was a temple with 200+ faces carved into the stones…there were just faces everywhere…there was also the Elephant Pagoda, with Tons of elephants carved into a wall, and then the Leper King Terrace with just one statue of the Leper King. After all those adventures we went back to the airport and finally arrived back at home sweet home…aka the ship. That was our last night to go out in Vietnam, so after I showered Melissa and Michelle and I went out to the night market and then out to this restaurant called Pho 2000 which is really famous in Saigon because Bill Clinton ate there in 2000 and it’s named after him I guess. There are a ton of pictures of him on the wall. So I got Pho Bo there (traditional Vietnamese beef noodle soup, and it was delicious, and dinner and a beer cost me a whopping $2.5, so yeah…pretty good.
So I think that is pretty much it. I am still meeting new people, getting to know acquaintances better, and everybody is just so excited all the time either about the last port or the next that people are always in a good mood and it’s a fun atmosphere. I know two of my friends that are going to be on my India home stay with me, and we’re getting sooo excited! Except for the boy, Adam, is already talking about trading me for a cow haha. But yeah I’m having a lot of fun with the people and everybody is passed the point of stressing out about classes lol so we’re all just kind of doing our best and hanging in there. For me, journaling and sleeping so that I’m not sick in these countries is sometimes a priority over doing homework that’s not due. So yeah I have a lot of catching up to do, but I’ve been experiencing everything safely and healthily and doing tons of trips so it is really wonderful.
However, there has been an outbreak of infectious diarrhea. If more than 2% of the ships population has it, our doctor is required to report it to the Center for Disease Control. From there, CDC has the right to board our ship, quarantine us from port, quarantine just those individuals that are sick, etc. We are supposed to dock in Thailand tomorrow and currently we are pushing upwards of 5% of people here having diarrhea…so it’s really serious…we really may not port tomorrow in Thailand. So that’s kind of scary, but hopefully my peers are taking care of themselves so that our doctor doesn’t have to lie (because she is definitely not going to put her medical license on the line so that we can give Thai people with leprosy and aids infectious diarrhea) and so that we can go to Thailand. Assuming all goes well, I’ll be headed off for more adventures tomorrow!!!
Until next time,
Hilary
So Vietnam was fantastic! I spent the first and last of our five days in port in Ho Chi Minh City (which many people still refer to as Saigon), and I spent the middle three days in Cambodia.
I got up early the morning we arrived in Vietnam to watch our boat float down the Mekong River…much, much different from the vast ocean. It is always so exciting to see land! Vietnam looked pretty much how I had imagined it to look, very green and jungle-y with murky brown water. I did the City Orientation tour, which actually turned out to be really cool. We went to a temple built by the Chinese at some point during their 1000 year occupation of Vietnam, and then we went to this lacquer shop, which was incredible! We got to watch the artisans crush up egg shell and make these fabulous designs. They would drop the egg shell over a certain area of their project, and then use a brush and brush it away, but some of the egg shells would stick (where they were supposed to be in the art piece). I hope that makes sense. Then they would use this little chisel to clean up the edges and define the lines. It was so cool! They also use a lot of mother of pearl, and embed that into their intricate designs. It was very fun to watch and the finished products were just beautiful! We went to the presidential palace and got a tour of that which included seeing the room where south Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnam at the end of the war. We had a 4 course set meal lunch in which I tried a new shrimp dish (yayyyy Hilary!!!!). They brought out the shrimp wrapped around a piece of sugar cane, so you scrape it off and put it on this incredibly thin race paper circle and then put veggies and sauces in it, wrap it up and eat it. Very good. We didn’t get to go to the War Museum but we did get to go to some History Museum. The main thing we did there though was watch a cultural Vietnamese water puppet show…which was really fun! The puppets are dressed so eloquently and the puppeteers stand behind a screen waist deep in water for the entire 20-30 minute show. This would all be much easier to describe with pictures. Which I have TONS of. Have you guys heard of Weasel Coffee? I guess it’s famous and super expensive. There are no Starbucks in Vietnam because the Vietnamese like their coffee. I don’t even like coffee and I tried this Weasel Coffee and it was amazing! So we did that. I had told my tour guide that a bunch of us wanted to go get tailored dresses made, so after our normal tour, he volunteered to take us to a nice but not too expensive shop, take everybody else back to the ship, and then come back and pick us up! It was so nice of him!! So I got 2 dresses made, which I am very excited about!! I like one better than the other, but I will wear both for sure and…I got dresses custom made in Vietnam, so whatever. We went back to the ship, dropped off stuff, regrouped, and then a bunch of us headed back out. Not getting ripped off by cab drivers is an art! You have to be So careful with them. I was fine but I heard of people getting stuck with a $40 fare for like a 5 minute ride because they weren’t careful enough. I spent the night wandering with SAS-ers, hanging out around town and it was a lot of fun. Usually I don’t like to be in the big big SAS groups, but I met new people and everybody was really fun so it was OK for one night. My last day in Vietnam, I woke up 12 minutes before I had to be at the bus for my trip. We drove for like 3 hours and finally had lunch. After lunch we went to the Cao Dai temple, which is a really colorful, cool, religious place. Yellow = Buddhism, Red = Confucianism, Blue = Daoism, and White = all the new people who haven’t picked a focus I guess yet. So the monks all wear different colored robes and we watched them do their prayer service/ritual for like half an hour and it was really pretty and cool to see! Then we went to a cemetery/war memorial before heading off to Cu Chi to go crawl through tunnels!! It was a lot more than just tunnels though. The grounds are still run by the army so our tour guide recommended to us that we NOT try to bargain for things…we saw all types of different traps used, the original size of the holes the Viet Cong would use, original entrances, everything. It was so awesome. I did all the crawling I could do, I was wearing my grimy clothes and I had my flashlight. You could do either 30, 60, or 100 yards and I did all 100, but those tunnels were built for tourists to get an idea of what they were like, so I’m pretty sure they were similar, but fake. Then you could do a bonus 50 yard crawl through I think real tunnels, or at least more realistic. There were no turnouts for the whole 50 yards and it was smaller, narrower, and darker, and I did that one too!!! It was so much fun. It was really eery being there though because the military has a shooting range there too that they let tourists use ($1/bullet)…so while we were walking around this place we were hearing machine guns, M16’s, and AK47’s going off…creepy. Much as I hate guns, I would have shot one for the experience of it, but the joys of group travel moved our group along before I had time to. We watched a really anti-American war documentary before heading back to the ship. Then it was like panic time – everybody was trying to do all these last minute things before on ship time. (If you’re not back to the ship on time, you get dock time, which means once we’re in the next port…you can’t go out for a certain amount of time). I went out with this girl Jordan, I didn’t really have anything I needed to do except for find somebody to give me a postcard and bargain for last minute things, but Jordan needed stamps, postcards, and a magazine, so we were like rushing through Saigon. We decided, against all SAS rules and general safety precautions, to pay $1 and ride on the back of a motor bike. There are lots of those people trying to get you to hop on their bike and they’ll take you anywhere in town for $1. I hadn’t done it yet because I’d heard we shouldn’t do it and I knew they were dangerous…but I really wanted to, so I did it anyway. I thought I was going to die. I didn’t want to hold on to the anonymous driver in front of me so I held on with both hands to this bar behind me for Dear Life as he zoomed and honked and swerved. It was terrifying and completely exhilarating. Finally he plopped me down next to Jordan and we went about our errands. When we were all done we hopped on two different motor bikes and this time the driver was much slower and stayed with Jordan’s driver which was really nice, and it made it easier to look around and enjoy the city. My only worry with that was that I really thought this car was going to hit me when we were merging one time, but it didn’t : ) yay! haha Oh Daddy I’m sure you’re freaking out right now. But it’s ok, I’m still alive! I’m not one of the 25+ people that actually had to go to the clinic for bruises, burns and pussing scrapes they got for getting off of the wrong side of the bike or for getting completely thrown off while hitting another motor bike (this one girl’s face is messsssed up!!!) so I guess that’s why we’re not allowed to ride them. Alright so that was basically Viet Nam…I wish we would have had more time there, I really wanted to go on a trip on the Mekong River and I wanted to go to the War Museum also. I will have to come back sometime I guess…
Cambodia was amazing!! I had no idea what to expect, but it was just really beautiful there. There were a couple sweet thunder storms while we were there (it’s monsoon season), but the rain didn’t stop us at all. The first night all we really did was go on a river cruise (which was lame cuz it was cloudy so we couldn’t see the sunset and … we’re on a boat alllll the time so it wasn’t that magical) and then out to a buffet dinner. So many buffet dinners!! It’s annoying, because they make sense – everybody can find something, big room, blah blah blah…but I feel like it’s fake food from the countries we’re from, not their normal cuisine. After the dinner though when we got to the hotel, a group of 4 other girls and myself headed out to get some sweet $6/HOUR massages!!!! That was my first professional massage and it was an interesting experience…I’m glad I went with people. We were all really really excited about it. The next day after breakfast we went to the Tuol Sleng genocide museum…which used to be a torture prison…which used to be a high school…it was eery, creepy, gross, sad, and I didn’t take that many pictures there. Also eating beforehand was not the best idea. It was so hard to look at pictures of victims’ faces and learn about it, but it was so interesting and I really believe that it’s incredibly important for people to keep learning about atrocities the world has already seen in an effort to prevent them from reoccurring. But yeah, it was a dark, sober morning. From there we went to the Killing Fields which was somehow not what I expected but nauseating and powerful just the same. The Pol Pol regime didn’t want to use bullets on people because bullets were expensive and they didn’t want people to have a quick, relatively painless death. So they would use a lot of torture and especially for babies and kids they would just bash their heads on a tree (in front of their mothers, of course), before tossing them aside into a mass grave. So lots of the graves were next to trees used for that purpose, other graves were just grassy pits in the ground. The dirt we walked on literally had bones and teeth showing through from the rain that has brought them up to the surface. Also, Pol Pol was not his actual name, it was a nick name that stands for Political Potential…which haunted me all day. And, I didn’t realize before that the Khmer Rouge “boys” was not a mis-translation of our tour guide…the boys they used to do the killing were literally between 12 and 20 years old. It gets better: the current Cambodian Prime Minister was a Khmer Rouge boy….gross gross gross. So it was a sad and heavy morning. To lighten things up after that we went to the Russian Market, which I don’t think has anything to do with Russia, and did some bargaining. I got some COOL things there!!!!! I’m so excited about them! Then we went to lunch before visiting the Royal Palace where the King still lives and the Silver Pagoda (a room with like silver tiles as the floor). Then we headed to a history museum before going to the airport to fly to Siem Reap. Once in Siem Reap we went to dinner that also included these amazing cultural dance show!!! The outfits were gorgeous and the little mini stories were so cute! After dinner a different group of girls and I went out and got a $5 massage!!! We arrived down town via a Touk Touk (which is a carriage type thing attached to a motor bike). Our driver’s brother was named Sambo and he was really nice. He came to pick us up after our massage and got us safely back to the hotel. I want a Touk Touk. I got up the next morning for the Angkor Wat sunrise tour…but it was cloudy, as usual…but still it was fun to go see Angkor Wat in the dawn light as the day came on. It’s very magestic, but more about that later. We went back to the hotel for breakfast and to check out and then went to Ta Prohm (where Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was filmed). That place was gorgeous!!! The rocks were just so beautiful…it was all in ruins but some things were still standing and the bas-reliefs were so intricate and detailed! I really loved that place. Then we went back to Angkor Wat in the daylight. We got to walk around, take lots of pictures, and I got to climb to the top of it, to the third level. It was Really scary!!! The steps are so steep, and they go so high, and they are so falling apart…but it was an adventure, and I’m still alive!! And the top level of Angkor Wat was gorgeous!!! The windows without panes looked like a painted picture with the scenery you could see through them. It was just so grandiose and beautiful. We spent some time up there before making our way carefully back down, holding on to this skinny metal rod hand rail on our way down for dear life. I just found out yesterday that Unesco, the company that is preserving Angkor Wat, literally JUST declared that climbing the steps to the top of Angkor Wat was too dangerous for the thousands of tourists that go every year, and the day after we left Cambodia, I heard from the other SAS Cambodia trip, they had guards there already not letting people climb up. So I’m one of the last people ever to stand on top of that thing!!!! Hah! Then we went to Angkor Thom which was a temple with 200+ faces carved into the stones…there were just faces everywhere…there was also the Elephant Pagoda, with Tons of elephants carved into a wall, and then the Leper King Terrace with just one statue of the Leper King. After all those adventures we went back to the airport and finally arrived back at home sweet home…aka the ship. That was our last night to go out in Vietnam, so after I showered Melissa and Michelle and I went out to the night market and then out to this restaurant called Pho 2000 which is really famous in Saigon because Bill Clinton ate there in 2000 and it’s named after him I guess. There are a ton of pictures of him on the wall. So I got Pho Bo there (traditional Vietnamese beef noodle soup, and it was delicious, and dinner and a beer cost me a whopping $2.5, so yeah…pretty good.
So I think that is pretty much it. I am still meeting new people, getting to know acquaintances better, and everybody is just so excited all the time either about the last port or the next that people are always in a good mood and it’s a fun atmosphere. I know two of my friends that are going to be on my India home stay with me, and we’re getting sooo excited! Except for the boy, Adam, is already talking about trading me for a cow haha. But yeah I’m having a lot of fun with the people and everybody is passed the point of stressing out about classes lol so we’re all just kind of doing our best and hanging in there. For me, journaling and sleeping so that I’m not sick in these countries is sometimes a priority over doing homework that’s not due. So yeah I have a lot of catching up to do, but I’ve been experiencing everything safely and healthily and doing tons of trips so it is really wonderful.
However, there has been an outbreak of infectious diarrhea. If more than 2% of the ships population has it, our doctor is required to report it to the Center for Disease Control. From there, CDC has the right to board our ship, quarantine us from port, quarantine just those individuals that are sick, etc. We are supposed to dock in Thailand tomorrow and currently we are pushing upwards of 5% of people here having diarrhea…so it’s really serious…we really may not port tomorrow in Thailand. So that’s kind of scary, but hopefully my peers are taking care of themselves so that our doctor doesn’t have to lie (because she is definitely not going to put her medical license on the line so that we can give Thai people with leprosy and aids infectious diarrhea) and so that we can go to Thailand. Assuming all goes well, I’ll be headed off for more adventures tomorrow!!!
Until next time,
Hilary
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)